1. METANOMICS WELCOMES RICHARD BARTLE MARCH 10, 2008 ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Welcome, everyone, to Metanomics and to this four sims amphitheatre on CMP Islands one, two, three and four. Before we jump in, Id like to point out that United Business Media has reorganized CMP. So what has been called CMP Metaverse, the folks who brought us the Life 2.0 Conference, is now Think Services, a subsidiary of United Business Media. Im sure well hear a lot more about this next week for the Second Life 2.0 Conference, which takes place right here on CMPs four islands, from March 15th to the 21st. Next week Metanomics will be part of Life 2.0. My guest will be Nick Yee, the research scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center, a recent Ph.D. from Stanfords communication department and one of the cutting-edge researchers examining the sociological dimensions of Virtual Worlds. As always, a tremendous thanks to our sponsors SAP, Cisco Systems, Generali Group, Saxo Bank, Kelley Services, Sun Microsystems. And a very special thanks to my own institution, Cornells Johnson Graduate School of Management, for supporting me in this effort, and to Second Life Cable Network for filming and distributing these discussions with such fascinating people like our guest today, Richard Bartle. Before we move on to our guest, I also want to give it up to another key contributor that has

2. made these Metanomics events so successful, and that you, our audience. Metanomics has about 650 members in Second Life, and our shows have generated a lot of discussion in-world and in the blogosphere. We all know success breeds success, but now were also learning that opportunity breeds a lot of work. So before we move on too far, what Id like to do is give you, our audience, a quick update on the state of this series and also ask for a little bit of help. So first, over the last few weeks, Ive been working with Jan and Alja Writer and their company, Artesia, to find ways to connect more effectively with Metanomics four core audiences. Who are these audiences? Real World enterprises who are seeking to understand how they can use Virtual Worlds to achieve their Real World strategic goals; virtual entrepreneurs who are identifying ways to serve both Real World and Virtual World clienteles; World Developers and Regulators who are envisioning the forces and the policies that are going to affect the future of the Virtual World industry; and finally, academics who are trying to understand and educate these communities or who plan to use Virtual Worlds as a laboratory for their research. So how are we going to connect with these audiences more effectively? For starters, we now have a Facebook page and a Twitter account [AUDIO GLITCH] Metanomics, and were also beefing up our website metanomics.net. I encourage you all to join the Facebook group, follow Metanomics on Twitter and check out our website at metanomics.net. More importantly, if youd like to take an active part in helping this community grow, wed love to hear from you. Were looking for people to help us manage these channels of communication, post content on our website, persuade websites that reach our key audiences to link to us and generally help get the word out. Were also looking for people to help us get more input from the communities on what guests we should be considering for

3. future shows and how we might be able to improve the shows that were doing or add other types of events that our community would find valuable. We have a lot of exciting things in the works for Metanomics and, if youre interested in being a part of it, please contact me, Beyers Sellers, in-world, or my Real Life persona, Robert Bloomfield at RJB9@cornell.edu. Now before we jump into the show, I have one more thing to do, which is, I would like to encourage everyone to join the Metanomics group within Second Life so that you can participate in the backchat during the event itself. Its a great way to get your questions in to me and our guest. You can also instant-message me directly. Now, on to our guest. Today Metanomics is delighted to host Richard Bartle co-developer of the first Virtual World, the Multi User Dungeon. Richards written many articles and a comprehensive book on the design of Virtual Worlds and is a contributing author on the academic website Terra Nova and has written with great insight and often a sharp tongue on the state of Virtual Worlds today. Richard, welcome to Metanomics and Second Life. RICHARD BARTLE: Hello. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Were delighted to have you on. Before we go too far, can I ask when is the last time you were in Second Life? RICHARD BARTLE: The very last time before I logged in yesterday to download these

4. huge patches would have been, oh, I dont know, three, four weeks ago, something like that. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Oh, okay. So you are a reasonably common frequent Second Lifer, which is nice to-- RICHARD BARTLE: No, no, no. Im not really reasonably frequent, but I do pop in every once in a while. And mainly I have to go in if I have a reason to go in. I dont go in just for the fun of it. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. Well, Im glad to serve as one of those reasons today. Can I ask what other things have brought you in to Second Life? RICHARD BARTLE: Well, sometimes I want to find things out that Im writing about so I go in and look around and find the [map?] assuming I can ever figure out how to use the interface. Sometimes I go in to attend talks and so on, but [AUDIO GLITCH] other times I just go in just to make sure my account hasnt died. I mean it is kind of like London to me. I go to London every once in a while, but then I might not go for three months and then twice in a week. So yes, it is kind of like that. Its a place. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Now I guess your big original claim to fame is the MUD, the Multi User Dungeon, that you co-created many years ago. Would it be right to characterize that as sort of an online text-based version of Dungeons and Dragons and related role-playing game? RICHARD BARTLE: No. First of all, as you say, I co-authored it. The other author,

5. Roy Trubshaw, hed never even played Dungeons and Dragons, so that wasnt a big influence on him. I mean I took some things out Dungeons and Dragons and put them into MUD. [AUDIO GLITCH] deliberation. I mean some things I put in because--well everything I put in because I wanted in for a reason, but some things I put in because I looked at the alternatives and went with the one that was from Dungeons and Dragons. Other times I didnt go with the one from Dungeons and Dragons. But, in that sense, it was a source of a possible way to doing things. Lord of the Rings was probably more of an influence than Dungeons and Dragons. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. Now I think many of our audience members will know Gary Gygax passes away last week, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons. It does seem like the Virtual World industry owes a fair debt to this man since you can see elements throughout Virtual Worlds of that role-playing game. RICHARD BARTLE: Well, yes, you can. Not so much in Second Life as in World of Warcraft perhaps. But, yeah, the thing is that Gary Gygax wasnt the only inventor of Dungeons and Dragons. There was Dave Arneson as well. He didnt do it just on his own. And same as with MUDs, we would of got those things anyway. I mean I happen to be one of the two people who was in on the first MUD, but, if Id never been born, wed have still got them. The same thing with Dungeons and Dragons. I mean I was playing role-playing games before Id ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons. One Id made up myself. That said, Dungeons and Dragons was a seed, which, when it planted, grew in a particular way. And if it had been planted in, say, another country or at another time, it would have grown differently. So a lot of what weve got in Virtual Worlds carries the imprints of the original

6. ideas of Gygax and Arneson, which is the _____ of--and embodies their personalities in a certain way thats carried on, which would not necessarily have happened if somebody else had invented it and had been carried on some other way. So, yes. Although Dungeons and Dragons didnt have an immense influence on the very first MUD, it certainly it had an influence on _____ MUDs, which were a development of an element of MUD1 and the _____ are the ones that are the game places mainly used by the big game worlds these days. So he certainly came in that way by _____ MUDs more than by the early ones that came out straight after MUD1. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Now another one of your activities--as I mentioned earlier youve written a lot of things. Its been rather time-consuming for me to prepare for this interview-- RICHARD BARTLE: Oh, Im sorry. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: --just keeping up with all the work youve done. Quite all right. We appreciate it. One of the things that seems to have had particular traction that youve worked on is the model of the four player types. You created a test now known as the Bartle Test, in which you ask people 30 yes or no questions, and you use those to categorize people into four types of players: achievers, killers, explorers and socializers. So I guess my first question to you is: What type are you? RICHARD BARTLE: Okay. Well, the first thing is, I didnt write the test. I wrote the paper upon which the test was based, though I did all the development for all the player types, but I didnt actually write the test. That was done by Erwin Adreasen. So hes the one who gets all the credit for that. And I certainly would never have called it the Bartle Test if Id have

7. written it. Anyway, the answer to what type am I is what type am I role-playing at the time. And if youre the designer, you dont play for the same reasons as regular players. Normal players will [AUDIO GLITCH] for a reason because theyre going to have fun. But Im not playing to have fun. Im playing to have designer fun, which isnt the same thing as player fun. So I cant answer any of those questions that come up because thats not why Im playing. Those questions are only for people who are playing Virtual Worlds for fun, which is the vast majority, [but you cant go farmers?] on World of Warcraft. Although the majority of people will be playing for fun, there are some who arent playing for fun. Some of them playing because theyre journalists or because theyre customer service reps or because theyre politicians wanting to grandstand or whatever. But the ones who are playing for fun, those are what my four types apply to. But, sadly, I cant play for that kind of fun. Some designers apparently can, but I cant. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Well, I know they tell musicians if you ever want to ever stop enjoying music, go professional. So maybe its something very similar for you. RICHARD BARTLE: So it is. Of course, what happened is I just see the design, I dont see whats going on in there. I mean right now Ive got my Second Life screen consists of a very, very large text window obliterating everything behind it. So I can see whats being typed on the different channels, but I dont get to see all the pictures because Im not particularly interested in the pictures. Whereas, if I were playing Second Life for a--like an immersive reason, then I would want to see the pictures because thats part of whats projecting me there. But because I understand all this kind of stuff, thats not a factor to me because its like I see underneath whats going on. The magics not there. So although I really envy the

8. people for whom the magic is there, my fun comes in making the magic, not in experiencing it. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: So let me actually follow up on that, Richard, if I could. My understanding is these categories were designed to help the World developers create a balanced environment. And so you do have in the article--at least I believed its the first article you wrote on this, you talked a fair bit about achieving the balance and how the difference types of players feed off one another, how they encourage one another in some cases. I mean is this something that your impression is that game designers are actively using as they try to balance their games? RICHARD BARTLE: I dont think they use the dynamics so much. They use a bit so it saves them if you want to have fewer killers and add more explorers, and the way to add more explorers is to add content of this particular kind. I dont think they do that, but they do look to see what kinds of players theyve got so that they can provide content for them. I know that because there are things like questionnaires that are sent out to the beta testers on some games, which will ask them questions that are aimed at finding out what type they are. In fact, then they actually ask them, Now explicitly, which one of these are you? Which one of these things would you want to do? So I know that now it gets used. That doesnt mean that its necessarily correct. Its just that its better than not doing it at all. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: There was a Terra Nova post not too long ago that suggested adding categories. And one in particular that was mentioned quite a bit was adding a category for builders, particularly for Worlds like Second Life, in which user-created content

9. is very important. So whats your take on that type of modification? RICHARD BARTLE: Well, okay. First of all, that type of modification just does not fit into a four-type model. The whole point of that model is that it covers all the bases. So you cant just add another one in because its [varieties from their being two axis?]. And then trying to start to picking a fifth one is where does it go. So if you want to add more then youre basically adding another dimension which has four not six. Sorry, not one. Okay, thats the first standpoint. Then I raise the second point is why do [AUDIO GLITCH], and the mistake that people make [AUDIO GLITCH] is theyre looking at building as an activity. But my model isnt about activity. What its about is where people get their fun from, and building is an action in a Virtual World just like in Virtual Worlds hitting somebody with a sword is an action. So hitting somebody with a sword didnt make you a killer. It didnt make you an achiever. Why are you hitting somebody with a sword? So the same question here is: Why are you building? Are you building because you want people to come along and look at you stuff and say how great it is? Its like its a conversation piece that would be maybe like building for a socializer reason. Are you building because you love the idea of creating prims and attaching little bits--code snippets to and see what marvels you can produce and how hoochy you can make your hair? Then you might be an explorer. Are you doing it so that when people walk past there, their own [sims?] are forced to turn around and rotate and look at you. Well, if you are then, you may be doing for it for griefer reasons even though you probably wouldnt say that. And finally, are you doing it because you want to create a big business and sell things and get your name known everywhere so everybody knows who you are? Well, in

10. that case, youd be doing it from achiever reasons. So building is the activity, but it isnt itself a fun. The reason you do it is for fun, not for the thing itself. Does that answer the question? ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think its interesting that youre looking beyond the action to the intention, sort of the root cause, which I think is consistent with--actually I was at a presentation by a marketing group, Market Truths, a few days ago in Second Life. So theyre a Real World marketing company that is trying to figure out how to reach the various market segments in Second Life. Theyve developed a very similar model. Their terms are rather different. They dont have killers. Lets see, they have team players, entrepreneurs, chameleons, competitors, connectors and apprehensives. So of course, my first thought was, they have six categories. You have four. Their model must be 50 percent better than yours. RICHARD BARTLE: So, they've got these six categories and where do these categories come from. Whats the relationship between the categories? And anyone can just plump together things. I mean you read the things that have been plumped together in magazines: What kind of homeowner are you? Are you the tortious homeowner? And theyve got all these trendy little _____ theyve got. But its okay plumping things together, but you got to have some feelings underlying to why its happened, something that explains the reason that people are doing these things. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yeah. They actually did, I thought, quite a nice job of that. I was pleasantly surprised because my reaction initially was much like yours, and it turned out that what they had done to form those segments is, they first identified a number of categories of

11. individual characteristics, like how extroverted people are, how competitive, how creative, and then they used that to form the clusters. So I think its interesting to me--they tested this on a sample size of, I think, a little under a thousand people. RICHARD BARTLE: Oh, Im not saying that its not correct. There are plenty of things that you can use. I mean mine is so if you want to want to play a Virtual World for fun, then this is my category. My system works. Whether that fun is in a Virtual World that is a game or a Virtual World that isnt a game. It generally works. In fact, it works beyond Virtual Worlds within their website, but I doubt Ill make any claim for that. I just keep getting told that by people who want me to pat them on the back or something. I am actually quite happy about it because I cant justify it works on their system. What I can justify is why it works in Virtual Worlds, and thats why Im not going to extend it to that. If it turns out later on that it can be extended to these other things, I think thats fine, but Im not making those claims. Now I dont know what the other types are. Well, I do know what they are because I can read them here on the screen. I mean I dont know what the relationship between them is and how you might move from one [count?] to another or whatever or what the paths are and what the relationship between them are and whether there are other types that they havent identified, which might be revealed if you were to create a model that supported those types, rather than just creating six boxes and throwing people in them. Now it may be that theyve got all that, but I mean I wasnt at the destination, so I dont know. And even if they dont, you see, its quite possible that what theyve got is far more useful to them when theyre discussing [commerce?] Virtual Worlds than any notion of [AUDIO GLITCH] because obviously as a designer I want things that are fun. But if youre a business person, youre

12. not particularly interested in fun unless fun is one of those things that gets you a lot of money. The other thing is that if youve got a theory with some kind of structure beneath it, that means that you can be fairly sure that the clusters theyre at the same kind of conceptual level. For example, quite often when you ask people, Why do you play Virtual Worlds for fun? they will say things like, I want to be immersed. Well, immersed isnt one of my player types so how does it fit in? Well, the thing is that what immersion maps onto is the progression between types. So as you play the game and you move between the player types, you become more and more your real self in the Virtual World, then thats how immersed is measured. Youre at your most immersed when you feel that the character, the avatar youre controlling, is you. Its not so much when you feel, its when it is you. So thats what immersion is. Immersion is like another dimension. But if you could do a cluster analysis, then immersion would show up as one of the reasons why people want to play. But its not the same thing, not the same kind of object as the player types and other things that people will say about community, for example. Thats another reason that people want to play. And, again, theres a relationship between community and the player types, but its--Ill have to give you my third-year lecture to explain this. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Sounds perfect. RICHARD BARTLE: But, again, its all _____ to those four. Its a different thing. So for all I know there are many player types here: team player, entrepreneur, apprehensive, competitor, connector, chameleon. It might be that some of those are like apples and

13. oranges and peaches and pears. And then some of them are like fruit, and then other ones might be Coxs Orange Pippins, which is the clear type of apple. I mean I dont know how detailed they are or what things have gone into that, but if youve got a structure which explains why things work, then that would add credence to the model and make it more supportive. So then the next thing I would do is having been given those types would be to say, Okay, lets see if we can find out the reason why there are those six types--build a model that would explain the reason behind those six types. Maybe we might find some other types that we havent identified before, which might have showed up if we were to _____ other people. It might that people who arent playing Second Life, who would play if we were to talk to them in the right way. So that's the sort of thing _____ take from that initial result there. Sorry about that. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: No, no. This is great. This is great. And for people who want to spend a little extra time to sort this out, a written transcript will be available on metanomics.net in about a day. And I will see if we can get a little bit of text up explaining in a little more detail what Market Truths is doing with their psychographic segments. Lets move on a little bit to another article that you wrote, which was titled something very close to Virtual Worlds Are Designed by newbies. RICHARD BARTLE: That was right. Yeah. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: So for anyone who doesnt know, a newbie or a newb is usually a derogatory term for people who are new to Virtual Worlds, not wise in the Virtual Worldly

14. ways. So youre basically saying Virtual Worlds are designed by people who dont know anything and havent experienced anything. You want to walk us through that argument? RICHARD BARTLE: Yeah. And so the first thing I would point out is that article is not accusing designers of being newbies. And I made a distinction. I didnt actually call them newbs because the original term newbies, which were kind of small children kind of thing, you know. You pat them on the head, and its quite affectionate, really. When you get to N00bs with two zeroes instead of the os, then youre really into the insulting end. So what I kind of meant was people were actually new to playing Virtual Worlds. Those are the people who are, in effect, designing it because you create a new Virtual World now, you got to get your players from somewhere, and you got to get your players from either an existing Virtual World or from some untapped theme of new players. So given all the hardcore gamer types are already playing is--you got to spread the net wider. And to spread the net wider, youve got to make the game more appealing to the people who are going to come along. So even though, for example, Text Worlds are rich and sophisticated and many people would like them, youre not going to get any newbies playing that because its hasnt got pictures, and they want pictures. And they havent got pictures so theyre not going to play it. So it didnt matter how good it is, theyre just not going to play it. And the same way that you might have the worlds most wonderful Virtual World in French, youre not going to get any English speakers playing because we dont speak anything other than English. And some of us dont even speak that. So its just not going to happen. So people are designing Virtual Worlds in order to attract newbies. One sort of [AUDIO GLITCH] players in Virtual Worlds, what happens is that the very first

15. Virtual World you play is one that you judge all the others by because when you go in youve got this sense of wonder. And so you play it, and its, Oh, wow! Fantastic! And then you get to the end, except most of them dont actually have an end, and then you start getting frustrated because its like youve won, What do I need to do? But I cant win because its not that Ive won. It doesnt have an end, but what is there to do? And people get frustrated. Eventually theyll leave and play some other Virtual World. The thing is, in the other Virtual World, they instantly compare with the original one which whatever it was they think was a lot better than the new one, and, therefore, the new one has got to adapt to what they want if theyre going to play it. So unless the new Virtual World they go to has got all the features that the old one had, including perhaps the ones that caused it to fail in the first place, then theyre not going to like it. So the new one has to adapt for them, and then weve now got this cycle where people are taken into a Virtual World because its being--I wouldn't say dumbed down so much as its being made attractive for them in ways which, in the past, werent regarded as attractive. And now dont say grown up, they're moving to another Virtual World. They expect that same thing in there. So the designers, if they want the players, have got to address their concerns. A few years ago, voice in Virtual Worlds was regarded by players as something which they should never have because it stops you from role-playing. However, all the people now whove grown up in playing World of Warcraft and so on, with the voice there, will expect any Virtual World they play from now on was to have voice in it. Which means that anybody who remembers the old days when you could role-play is now stuck because no ones going to write a Virtual World thats got no voice in it because they wouldnt get any of the people who were expecting voice.

16. So this is what I mean by designed by newbies. Its not designed by newbies who are sitting down and writing it on the back of an envelope or what they want in a Virtual World. Its just that because the Virtual World has been designed to accommodate their needs--it usually means effect. They are doing the designing just by their-- ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: The market demand. RICHARD BARTLE: No. Its just their expectation. So thats how this works, and so we miss so much. In my pessimistic days, I just think that 20 years from now people will be saying these things and will be wondering why on earth anybody would ever have spent two, three, four hours a night every night in these for years at a time. Theyll just think, Well, why is anybody doing this? These are anodyne. And they may well actually be anodyne because well have watered them down so much and taken things out and lowered peoples expectations or addressed the lower expectations to the point when there isnt anything thats worth doing in them. And so thats my pessimistic World view. I do have less pessimistic ones. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yeah. Well, let me ask you what you think of this comparison, which is that the movie industry very early on, because of the great expense of making movies, it was essential that all movies would hit a very broad audience, and so we had lots of silly comedies or tear-jerkers and things like that, sort of shooting for the lowest common denominator. Now that technology has made it a little cheaper to make movies, we have lots of small independent film producers. And so Im wondering do you see a day where you can

17. go to the Indie game, and people will develop high quality new games that are in French and require text or some such because its cheap enough that they dont need the enormous audience to make it sustainable? RICHARD BARTLE: Yeah. Thats what I want to see. I spoke at the Indie MMO Convention last year, and thats pretty well what I said. But once the tools become cheap enough--sorry, inexpensive enough--that anybody can use them, once you can go online and buy a model of a dragon for half a cent, and you can populate these things with as much artwork as you want, and its all consistent to your own work, and its all animated, people can get down to the business of creating Virtual Worlds again. When it was text, it wasnt actually all that hard for people with enough time to write new descriptions, just to write one description. And, yeah, there might be enough text in a Text World for a model, but people can write a models worth of text description, and people did, and we got this flowering of Virtual Worlds. But then once the tools became too established, it turned out that people were just taking the tool sets and creating clone worlds of each other. We got this stock MUD syndrome where thered been 1,500 _____, of which 1,200 were identical. That is like patch in between where you get--from it being hugely expensive to where it's being just about enough for people to afford for them to be able to create their own stuff. And then itll come down even further until well probably go through this level where everybodys going to be, if you want to, in a Virtual World, yeah, you can run your own. But you just download an existing one, and there it is for free. But, hopefully, you'll go through that, and I'm sure well go through that, and then people will be able to create their own Virtual Worlds for whatever purpose as easily as they create their own web pages. Now that is the sort of thing I want to see because I want to see Virtual Worlds that are going to surprise me. I dont want to see

18. the same old things and looking in things and thinking, I know this person doesnt know anything about design, or looking at things, saying, How do I [AUDIO GLITCH] now? _____? Should have done it this way. Ah, I see what they did. Oh, thats clever. Wow! And thats the sort of thing that I want. I want--so much potential. And in the moment, whats holding them back is development costs because, if it costs around $130 million to make Richard Garriotts Tabula Rasa, and he earns $15 million in a year, then its not going to lead to large numbers of Virtual Worlds made. But if you could make Richard Garriotts Tabula Rasa for a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars, then all of a sudden, well, thats a lot more interesting because people could make a game, and it doesnt matter if it fails. At the moment, it matters if it fails. If somebody got a good idea to creating a Virtual World, and they go to a publisher, and they say to the publisher, Okay, I want $50 million. This Virtual Worlds got a 25 percent chance of making billions, the publishers going to say, You mean theres a 75 percent chance Ill lose my $50 million? And thats the kind of attitude youve got to get through at the moment. And so I do see the ability for people to create their own personal Virtual World, the end point will, not the end point, so that's as far as I see. And thats as far as I saw when I co-wrote the first MUD. Eventually, everyones going to be able to create their own World, and then I want to see them. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: You wrote an article in which the interviewer asked you what would you do if you had ultimate power, and you said youd get rid of World of Warcraft. And then we followed that up with a little bit of an email exchange where I mentioned that you have been critical of World of Warcraft, and you said, Yes, but dont forget Im critical of

19. Second Life too. So I thought we might talk a little bit about your take on these two Worlds. And let me just start by asking, I mean, is the issue with World of Warcraft simply that you believe that theyve emphasized visuals over content and that theyre playing to the lowest common denominator? RICHARD BARTLE: No. No, no. The reason I was [talking?] World of Warcraft down is because its got ten million players, and if those ten million players want to play other Virtual Worlds, then weve get far more Virtual Worlds. World of Warcraft is actually pretty well designed. I mean its creating at the top level, but its actually pretty well designed. And, no, I havent got anything against the design of World of Warcraft or the operation or deliveries or anything like. And I quite like the pictures because I dont like that whole [Uncanny Valley?] stuff that were getting at the moment. But, the reason I would close it down isnt because I hate World of Warcraft and want to dance on its grave and burn it and throw those ashes around or whatever. The reason I said I would close it down is because then wed have ten million people giving other games a chance. And some of those Virtual Worlds may be better than World of Warcraft for those individuals. They may be worse than World of Warcraft for those individuals, but at least theyd get a chance. In the moment, its gobbling everybody up. Now eventually World of Warcraft will finish. It will gradually decline. I mean they may only have five million players in five years time. Who knows? But what I want to do is to see the new Virtual Worlds that come out as a result. I dont want to have to drop dead before it all happens. So thats why I said that. And I didnt actually get any death threats, which is kind of good, but I did get some quite criticism because people assumed that I wanted to close

20. World of Warcraft for other reasons. If youd have asked me the same question five years earlier, I would have probably said I wanted to close Everquest because that was a big one. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: You dont believe that World of Warcraft is-- well, lets call it a gateway world that brings ten million people into their first Virtual World experience, but then leads them to others that perhaps will be more like the types of games that you were discussing earlier? RICHARD BARTLE: Well, the thing is, if it is a gateway World-- as I was discussing when I answered the newbies question, if people when they leave Second Life will want, in general, to play--not Second Life. People, when they leave World of Warcraft, in general, want to play World of Warcraft. Except--not World of Warcraft, they want to play some other game that is World of Warcraft. And weve seen this time and time again in the past where people have--their Virtual World has been closed down mainly--it could be because of mismanagement. It could be because of play behavior. It could have been because it was badly designed. And then they go into another Virtual World, and they want it to be exactly the same as the one that just closed down or exactly the same as the one they just left because it was [galling?]. Now it isnt the case for everybody. The reason that this happens is because people at the end they get kind of frustrated because the game hasnt, in effect, let them win so they go off and try and win another game. But some people see that, and they see it as, you know, I dont actually have to be _____ and play. They can conceptualize from having played the game. They dont need to be given formal, Congratulations. Youve won. They realize that

21. theyve won, and those kinds of people will go on and play other more sophisticated or different or Virtuals saying different things. And from that, yes, we will [AUDIO GLITCH] everybodys educated, then they will play other Virtual Worlds. Some of them may even come to Second Life. Some of them probably have. And so let me get you to talk a little bit about Second Life. Maybe we can start with the criticisms. What is it that you dont like in what you see in Second Life? RICHARD BARTLE: What I dont like, I dont like the interface. Geez, what a crock. Blimey! I mean, for heavens sake. Next to unusable. If you try to find something out, theres a bunch of things at the bottom you got to click, a bunch of things at the top and then a bunch of windows you got to click for having accidentally clicked on things on the bottom--open them up. And then when you try to move, its like some Scooby Doo thing where the ground moves faster than your legs do or vice versa. Geez. The interface is not great. Thats why generally when Im in Second Life, I expand the text window just to cover it all up so I dont have to look at it. Thats just a point of view. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Let me point out that the crowd appears to agree with you both in the Metanomics chat channel and in the local chat channel. RICHARD BARTLE: So let me just zoom down the window and have a look. Oh, yes, theres some dead bodies in the audience. Theyre really paying attention. Yeah, okay. So theres the interfacing. And the reason why that's a problem is because all

22. those 12 million residents, however many it is now--who come to Second Life, they spend five minutes with that interface, and then it doesnt matter if this was the best thing that theyd ever know. Theyre not going to get that far, and its a big barrier to entry. So thats why its an issue. Its a problem because it puts off casual players, potential players. And once youre in there and you understand things and you know where to look and you know how to do all those various things, okay, thats fine. But it puts potential players off, and thats a barrier. Okay. So thats one problem Ive got with it. Another problem Ive got is the design problem, is the whole grid system, which is basically double-loaded about four players per PC, and that is not how you do a grid system. If you want something this size which works, then you do what even [linists?] are doing and you use supercomputer technology so that you can indeed have 5,000 people all in the same location because they aren't all running on the same PC. Now thats a problem that Second Lifes got there. You see in the paper--see some _____ concerts in Second Life, and, yeah, you go there, except you never get in because, if you did get it, youd crash the server because you only handle 40 people. Thats a problem that Ive got as well. Its just an architectural problem. It could be done differently using a different computer architecture. However, when they designed Second Life, they didnt know it was going to be as phenomenally successful as it is. I mean you can hardly blame them. They were perhaps hoping the hardware would [AUDIO GLITCH] quicker than they have done. And they didnt know the extent to which the players who got over the initial barrier to entry got in there would be creating things and eating up CPU time the whole time. So I mean they were flying in the dark, and they have done quite a good job of it, but, really, its the wrong underlying architecture.

23. Other things that are kind of annoying, the business models a bit of a pain. Basically its a land rent [AUDIO GLITCH] except anybody who wants to buy land doesn't actually buy it from Second Life because its all been bought up within an instant by land bots or peoples-- or whatever, who just run it straightaway and then charged whatever they liked for it. So if I wanted a little island from Second Life, I couldnt go to Linden and say Id like to buy an island. Id have to go to the people who already bought the island speculatively, and they were now holding it to ransom against people who want to buy it. Its a bit like if you wanted to buy the name name, whatever the name that you want, chances somebody else has already bought it, and its--just sitting there waiting to charge you through the nose for their having bought it. The reason that thats a problem isnt so much from the commercial side, but the fact that it just means that its hard for the little guy to do anything in Second Life because, if you want anything, you got to go to the people who happen to have bought it first. And then they just sit on it, and they can charge whatever you like. So in a way, its off-putting to people who might want to invest in something and then find its more expensive than its supposed to be. Other things about it--I know Ive got some issues for the effect it has on other Virtual Worlds because of some of the business decisions that have been made, like the intellectual property and so on, but those arent really my problems with Second Life itself. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Well, actually, let me say those are topics I would love to discuss so maybe we could move a little toward those.

24. RICHARD BARTLE: However, you didnt give me a chance to say theres also lots of really good things about Second Life. From what just happened, it sounds as if Im sliding Second Life off. I mean I believe Second Life is a good thing and would defend it to the death. Well, not my death, but somebodys death. But before we switch to other things, just so that people dont think Im taking potshots at Second Life. You did ask me to criticize it, in like whats wrong with it. Okay. This is that caveat. Your next questions about IP and stuff. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: So its really about property more generally. My understanding is, youve been a pretty consistent critic of real money trade in games. I would say I dont use Second Life as a game as much as a platform or environment. But certainly, in the games, you seem to have been pretty consistently opposed to real money trade. Well, I guess maybe my first question: Can you talk a little bit about your take on real money trade in Game Worlds, and then maybe we can turn toward what that might mean for Second Life and similar Worlds. RICHARD BARTLE: Okay. Well, first thing is if a Virtual World is designed for real money trading, then Ive got problems with it. So Second Life, yeah, thats created with real money trading in mind so, yeah, go for it. Thats the designers privilege. And really there are some Game Worlds which have a business model based on buying virtual _____ micro transactions. Personally I wouldnt play those games because I dont want to have to buy tiny little things lots and lots of times just by _____. I also dont like people being able to be better than me in a game sense because theyre richer than me or more profligate than me. But there are plenty of people who do that, and it seems to work well in the Far East. What I object to is when the Virtual World is not created for RMT, real money trading. But

25. nevertheless, it goes on, against the wishes of the designers, and against the wishes of the majority of these people who play. Thats what I object to because people who dont want to play a game with RMT shouldnt have to. And a designer who creates a World in which RMT can occur should not have to compromise their design just to stop people from cheating because thats what it is, its cheating. If its against the rules to do it and people do it, then its cheating. And if they dont believe its cheating, well, then theyll be surprised when they get kicked out. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: So now the legal scholar Joshua Fairfield, who actually was on Metanomics way back in, I think it was in October or September actually, hes talked about the positive aspects of real money trade, basically that trade creates welfare games. You have two people who are willing to go into a trade. Its making them both better off. And I understand he said at the Singapore State of Play Conference, he summarized this by saying, Every time you stop someone from trading, God kills a kitten. I dont know if you remember that line. RICHARD BARTLE: Yes, I did remember that line. I talked to him for a good hour outside the conference about that. No kittens were hurt in the making of this movie. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: But so you just dont think that applies if the rules of the game are no RMT? RICHARD BARTLE: No, because theres more than one way of measuring value. Hes looking at exchange value and how much he talks to [solve things?]. But theres a threat to

26. losing, which is used value. Those of you who are really obscure will recognize that Im actually quoting Marx in economics here so I better not go too far about it. But the point is that some things have value that is--the value is not in the exchange. It's in the having it. When people play Virtual World, they value not having people buying success. Lets suppose that the richest person in the world, who now appears to be Warren Buffett, wanted to play a Virtual World with no RMT in it. In other words, he only wanted people who would play in a Virtual World, he wanted their characters success to reflect the players success. He didnt want the characters success to affect the players Real World success. Now heres the richest man in the world so hes going to create this Virtual World, and hes willing to pay anything to stop people from doing RMT. Now, can he do that? Well, no, because some stupid little [guy?] comes along and starts trying to sell gold to some other little [guy?] whos play when they shouldnt do. Now if it was all economics based, why cant the richest man in the world who could buy the entire house and everything those people owned and not even notice it, why do you think _____ could be spoiled by it? I mean doesnt he get to kill any puppies or kittens or whatever it is, the little small fluffy animals? No. His values is a world where this doesnt happen, and yet it only takes somebody to put it in, and it spoils it. Can you see you see this whole thing [AUDIO GLITCH] literally theyre like pollution. The power company wants to create power. The coal company wants to sell its coal there _____, whats not to love. If you stop them selling it to each other, then some kittens will die. Well, hard luck kittens. The rest of you are going to die from too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Its the effects on

27. the people who arent engaging in the transaction which is the problem, not the ones who are the people who are engaging in it. You want to win a sports race. Well, just come in and you just take the drugs. Well, because if you [AUDIO GLITCH] drugs, then everybody else would have to take the drugs, and that would spoil the game or the race. Well, thats their decision to make. No, it isnt. You cant have people taking drugs to win a hundred meters race because then it becomes instead of being a hundred meters race, it comes to who has got the constitution that will keep them alive long enough to run the hundred meters race, with all the drugs being pumped into it. You got to stop that sort of thing, otherwise it kills off the people who are doing. Its like a parasitic on it. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Let me ask a slightly different question, which is that-- RICHARD BARTLE: Sorry. You got me mid-rant. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Oh, Im sorry. RICHARD BARTLE: No, its just I--go on. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Well, I mean its very closely related. But a number of the big game manufacturers are now incorporating real money trade directly into their platforms. I think probably Sonys Station Exchange and Entropia were the first, and now theres a company called Live Gamer that is working with developers to bring this to a number of

28. additional games. So heres a case where the game developers, I guess, are basically saying, We cant stop real money trade, and so were not just going to allow it, but were going to make it something that we control to make sure its legitimate and, of course, profitable. RICHARD BARTLE: Well, yeah. This is the, We cant stop people taking cocaine so lets legitimize it and let everybody take cocaine if they want to and blow the effects on society. Sorry. Blow is probably the wrong word--damn the effects on society. So yeah, now there is an argument for that. You can say yes, we should allow all these things. Prostitution, we cant stop it. Lets allow it. People going into schools and shooting children for fun. We cant stop it. Lets allow it. Well, no. At some point you got to stop something. Now the Sony Station Exchange is not actually a success. Part of the reason it--okay, youve saved quite a bit of money on those service for customer service complaints, but a great deal of fraud goes on. Essentially what happens is that the nefarious people sell things to Sony. Sony sells them to the other customers. The nefarious people cancel the payment that they made to Sony via PayPal. Sony takes a big hit because they canceled the payment. So what's happened is that one persons got what they bought. The people who bought it canceled the payment, so the people who sold it, they get the money from Sony, but Sony doesnt get their money from the people bought it. So Sony takes a hit on that, and its quite a big one because the more that it happens, then the more people are going to try on with different characters. So first of all, its facilitating trade between users, which is what happens on Station Exchange. Thats a good way to lose money as a developer. Selling things to users yourself is a different matter, and thats a lot safer because, if I sell

29. something to you, and then you cancel the payment, I can take it back off you. But if you sell something to somebody else and then they cancel the payment, I cant get the money back. Anyway, youll sort it out. Just because theyve got those, it doesnt stop real money trade on any of the other servers. The other servers that theyve got for EverQuest II all still got real money trades going on. Payers dont go and play on the Sony Exchange-enabled servers. They keep playing on the old servers, and the reason they keep playing on the old servers is because whatever they say about, Yes, we want to be keeping up with our friends at home, basically they want to cheat. They do it on a server where its not allowed because then people dont know theyre cheating. But, of course, they are. If they really thought that it was perfectly okay and above board and so on, they should go and play on where everybody else who thinks its perfectly okay and above board. But they know its not, and what they want is the advantage of having paid for something without the stigma of its being known. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Well, thank you so much for those insights. Were nearing the end of our show, Im afraid. But there have been a few questions coming from the crowd that I was hoping we could discuss a little bit. RICHARD BARTLE: Yeah, okay. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: So the first one is from Prokofy Neva, and she writes, Youve written about the definition of griefing on Terra Nova and commented that people are diluting its meaning in Second Life. But the working definition of disruption of immersion seems appropriate. What would you say about not only the definition of griefing, but

30. remedies for griefing in Virtual Worlds? More immersion? RICHARD BARTLE: Well, the first thing to point out is go into Second Life where the definition of griefing is flipping. Its been flipping in all sorts of things. I read [AUDIO GLITCH] Ph.D. last year by a guy at Curtin University--thats Australia for that. Basically there are a number of ways that people view griefing. For some people, griefing is when somebody else does something that you didnt like. So they walked out the door as you were walking in through it, and they griefed you because you didnt like that. Now thats hardly griefing, but some people think it is. Originally, griefing meant I do something to you that I know youre not going to like, and the reason I do it to you is because I know youre not going to like it. So Im deliberately causing you grief. So its in my mind. Now it might be what I think Im causing a problem is that Im not causing any problems at all. So for example, at the moment, somebody could be griefing me by making obscene gestures. But Im not going to see any of those because Ive got this big text window covering my whole screen. So they would be griefing me, but I wouldnt be aware of it. Now the definition sort of switched over the years, in that what was before was kind of potent accusation is now being used many, many times by people who wanted to make things sounds like they were things more potent than it was, in order to get sympathy or whatever. So now its come to the other side where its now if you could see that youve been griefed, then youve been griefed. So people who are annoyed by the behavior of somebody else, even though the persons not aware that theyre annoying you, or if they are aware that they are annoying you, but then theyre perfectly within their rights to do it. I mean Im sure--but the person I was about to say actually is griefed so maybe I shouldnt go

31. on with that one. But there are ways that people who have got perfectly legitimate activity interfere with other people who [AUDIO GLITCH] thats just the way things are. So if I buy an island and I erect something on it that I thinks really pretty and you dont like it, you might think that Ive griefed you by building this awful monstrosity. But other people might think its rather nice. If Id made it, it probably would be an awful monstrosity, but thats not the point. So youre griefing me by having this awful thing nearby me and devalue my property. Well, no, Im not griefing you. You knew when you bought the property that the one next to it could have anything on there. And if I did it deliberately, if I knew that you were a Hindu, and I deliberately built a huge cow next to your property and then had it killed every day at 12:00 just to annoy you, well, now that would be griefing. But if I happened to be somebody from the Dairy Association of America, and I sold them a big place with a cow and put the cow on top of it, then it turns out that my next-door neighbors a Hindu that is offended by it, well, thats hardly my fault if I didnt know any of that. What am I supposed to do? Check every single person to make sure theyre not going to be offended by me building a cow? So with all this sort of differences in griefing deliberately comes across as though Id been griefed, which is a perception of having had awful things happen to you, which may or may not reflect reality. So thats a sliding scale. And as to what do to about it all depends upon the nature of the grief. Sometimes the people who call grief are the ones who were doing the griefing. Then theres vexatious. They complain, Everyones picking on me. Everything awful is happening to me. All these

32. people keep doing things to me. First of all, they may be doing it because youre griefing them and you dont realize it, by your definition of griefing. Or they may be doing it to you by accident, and youre just spotting all the bad things, not the good things. It may be just coincidence. But it could well be theyre griefing. It just depends on what [AUDIO GLITCH] is as to how you deal with it. And if its somebody whos--under the original definition, which was somebody whos deliberately causing others pain and then hiding behind some, This isnt real. Its just a game, or, This is just virtual reality. Im role-playing. Well, you say, Okay. Well, Im role-playing as well by playing the evil god whos going to kick you out of here. Goodbye. [CROSSTALK] ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Lets see. We have time for one more question, and it comes from Joia Sands, and the question is: Do you measure success in a game versus a Virtual World differently? And you personally, not as a developer or from a corporate perspective. RICHARD BARTLE: Do I personally regard success-- ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yeah, differently in games versus Virtual Worlds? RICHARD BARTLE: From whose point of view? My point of view or--I mean-- ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: I guess this is from you more as a user, as an individual citizen. You started off saying often when you go into Worlds, youre actually doing it as a developer. Actually, let me ask: Do you go in and just play much in any games? RICHARD BARTLE: No. No, no. Never.

33. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Never? RICHARD BARTLE: No, that I cant because everything thats going on there I see why it's- -I cant play as a regular player because Im not a regular player. Im a designer. And if I go into a game, yeah, I may be playing a character, its not pleasurable to play in the same sense that a regular player would play it. For me to have fun, I look at different things. Now there were some interesting design things within Second Life that I would be interested to go and having a look around and so on and finding out what theyre there for, whats the reason they were created. But theyre not. Theyre usually there for some kind of functional reasons. If theres isnt a set reason, then its usually in a setting thats not to do with Virtual World design, but to do with some other arts design. And which, although Im kind of attuned to, Im not going to be as attuned as somebody for whom sculpture is their medium. To me, Virtual World design is my medium. When I look at Second Life, Im not so much looking at the art within Second Life as the art of the creation of Second Life. Likewise if Im playing World of Warcraft, what I would find exciting there is the art of the creation of World of Warcraft, not the pretty pictures that are in there. I mean theres a path to the art. Not the quest. Not the grinding. Not the in-jokes. None of those things there fun to me. So when I play it, what do I regard as success? I mean Im not playing for success. Success for me is if I go into a Virtual World, and Im pleasantly surprised because something is in there that Im not expecting. And when I figure out why its in there, it just hangs together so brilliantly that thats what then what Id want to see, but it didnt take me that long at all normally to find that sort of thing in the Virtual World. I dont have to play--

34. endure a few levels in a role-playing game and, in Second Life here, Id probably have to spend money to do it full justice. But after a few hours in Second Life, its not hard to get the measure of the Virtual World design. Obviously, I cant get the measure of the society anymore than I can a Real World city. But I know what the design was designed like. Its got some very good features. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. Great. Well, Im afraid were all out of time. But, Richard, thank you very much for coming on to our show, Metanomics. And we hope youll be back sometime soon. Its been fascinating to get your take on Virtual Worlds from the days of the MUD to today. And I want to say also thank you to all our audience members across Second Life here at CMP and also at our event partners. And we do encourage you to join our Facebook group, Metanomics, that follow our Metanomics Twitter and check out the website metanomics.net. Again, if youre interested in helping out, helping us find guests and topics and improving what were doing week by week, please contact me, Beyers Sellers, or you can get me through the Real World at Cornell University, rjb9@cornell.edu. This is Rob Bloomfield and Richard Bartle signing off. Thank you all for listening. [END OF AUDIO] Document: cor1010.doc Transcribed by: http://www.hiredhand.com Second Life Avatar: Transcriptionist Writer