I was talking about some of the old theory models the other day, mostly the WotC study of gamers and Bartle's play styles. The thought occurred that it would be worth pointing out some of the many differences between these two (professional/academic) studies and other 'RPG Theory', especially the Threefold models (GNS and GDS).
The first major difference that a rather casual inspection should show is that the professional/academic studies both collected significant amounts of data before making any claims or definitions. With data in hand, it was analyzed, trends noted and the model created.
This stands in sharp contrast to the development of the Threefold models which grabbed and defined terms based on personal experience, taste, and power struggles within their respective forums.
The second major difference is found that the professional/academic studies are both based upon two unrelated axis of information, that together produce the resulting descriptions.
Bartle's model used the following: Player -- World, Acting --- Interacting to produce Achievers, Killers, Socialisers, and Explorers.
WotC used Strategic --- Tactical, Story --- Combat to produce Power Gamers, Thinkers Storytellers, and Character Actors.
In short, they used two scales of what are directly opposed concepts that allow direct measurement. Indeed, they had to as it was based upon measurement in the first place. Thus one could 'test' for an individual's focus and where they sit on those scales. It allows for players of mixed tastes by nature as they would just measure towards the middle when their score was totaled.
In contrast the Threefolds prevented any such measurement as they did not have any opposed axis of measurements as part of their construction*. They were instead idealized 'end states' at the points, three different ideas each unrelated to each other.
Each corner perhaps could have been one end of a possible axis, but that was never considered.
Keep that point in mind.
Now imagine the impact on the WotC or Bartle's models if instead of their two axis, they had attempted to define things only in terms of two ends. Say Tactical Focused and Story Focused for the WotC study. A full 75% of the study's users would have dropped out of the model.
The result would have been very useful to Character Actors, but would have had the rest of the player base up in arms. Which is basically the overall reaction to the two Threefold models when looking at them in hindsight. Most seem to hate them, while a few love them beyond reason.
And doesn't that result make perfect sense when one steps back and looks at it?
*The Threefold/GNS originally did start out with an axis, the poorly named Drama---Sim which is better viewed as Meta-Game ---Sim, but this was quickly lost when Gamism was brought into the mix, as it didn't have a scale or opposed point of its own.
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11 comments:
I don't really think "gamists" should be a faction honestly. I know people who prefer rules-lite narrative systems but exploit situations constantly to provide whatever advantage they want. Just as I know players that like consistent mechanics and a rule for whatever they might like to do, but they're not particularly interested in exploiting those mechanics. Then there are some players like myself who are sometimes in the mood to exploit the system and sometimes only want to play out an interesting scenario.
I know there are narrativist and simulationist preferences, I've seen that time and time again, but this idea that a gamer specifically wants mechanics so he can exploit them independent of the other two favors doesn't jive. Mechanics are just a medium just as the story is also a medium. Cunning Role Players can exploit a game entirely independent of mechanics, while other less-cunning RP'ers require the mechanics as a crutch to make up for their choppy logic and poor social skills. Gamers want to win. All of them. This threefold model is about preference. Narrative gamers want a story. Simulationist gamers want a consistent in-game reality. All gamers want to have their characters come out on top and will strive for that. Therefore the idea of measuring how much a player wants to come out on top is irrelevant.
I thought the original r.g.f.a viewpoint of an axis that measure Meta-game (decisions/goals of the *player*) vs. Simulation (consistent in-game only reasons/causes) was valid.
At least as valid as any axis.
With that in mind, I question the whole point of Gamism in that it wasn't an independent desire from that axis, but was rather a specific point along that axis.
In simple tradition dungeon crawl terms- it was Simulation as long as one was in combat (fully covered and obeying the rules that reflected in-game reality), and no outside that (where role-play and other player based matters control).
It didnt' go far, and I didn't really push it. Perhaps I should had.
No worries dude. I was just in a oddball commenting mood today. It's good to see you back. Your blog is one of the ones I really look forward too.
Mmmm, I disagree with a number of these points.
First, the Bartle styles include a class not really found in most RPGs, the "killer" [of other players]. In fact, once he talks about social MUDs he pretty much redefines the term to mean "griefer," someone whose entire goal in playing the game is to mess with other people in any way possible. I would argue that's an uncommon and unuseful category for RPG players. His achievers/explorers/socializers remaining three categories are not too far away from gamist/simulationist/narrativist.
The WotC breakdown is terrible because it completely omits simulation. It's trivially obvious to see RPG players that like world exploration and versimilitude and they failed to ask the right questions to identify that section. They artifically made their "axes" of focuses in an attempt to make their data tidy (combat, tactics, strategy, and story) I think a cursory review of any gamers shows there are popular different focuses than those four. Essentially, since their players lean heavily towards the gamist side, they see more differentiation there (thinker, powergamer) and confuse the rest of the focuses into the storyteller and character actor buckets.
Combining these two, though, I think we can see that "actors" and "storytellers" should be broken out perhaps from the one D or S section of the G*S models.
gamist=achiever=(tactician, powergamer)
simulationist=explorer=forgotten
narrativist=(storyteller, actor)=socializer
All this really shows is that if you look hard at any of the "points" of these models you can start to make sub-differentiations of "flavor" of gamist, etc.
So I think all the models aren't 100% right, but I do question your assertion that the opposed-axis models are more fundamentally correct than a triangle or whatnot. I think the opposed axes are generally 'forced'. In analysis, you can compare 2, 3, 4, or more important factors, getting a slider, a triangle, opposed axes,or a "spiderweb" coverage graph - I think assuming that there must be two mutually opposed axes of interest at work is not well founded in either study and is just a perhaps helpful, perhaps flawed conceptual model imposed upon the data with no better justification than the "oh, people on the Internet just thought it up" of the GNS triangle.
I think the comments from Helmsman confuse means with ends. If you prefer a "narrativist" ruleset but your goal is to "win" the game, you are gamist. If your goal is to have told a good story, you're narrativist. And just because a classification exists doesn't mean someone has to be "100% X all the time," of course people can be a mix or want different ends at different times.
Of course losing puzzles/exploration on a "combat <--> roleplaying" axis is also annoying, as there's an assumption that combat is the king of those activities.
My current thoughts about Ron Edwards is that he basically treated the RPG community as his own story game. In a game with narrative mechanics, you manipulate the rules in order to push your vision of 'reality' forward at the expense of other people's visions of 'reality', to make your character seem awesome. That's the whole reason for the rules to exist -- to facilitate who gets to control the conversation.
Sound familiar?
@Helmsman: Things have been very busy here, and while I've had a lot to write about- I haven't had the time.
But I hadn't left :)
@mxyzplk:: I disagree with your disagreements.
First, with respect to Bartles- I didn't say it applied to table top rpgs (nor does Bartles). I note it as an example of a well constructed theory. So you waste your time ranting on that point.
You also miss the boat on Simulation being missing from the WotC model. It's there, it's just not named directly.
Look again for yourself and see if you can find it.
As for an axis based model being better, aside fromm the fact that nearly all profesional models use that method...
...if you like unmeasurable assertions instead of measurable ones, I must wonder at your goals as well as the validity of your results.
K. Bailey: Why you are so easily offended by what is important to others is beyond me.
WotC took the data first, and then developed the patterns after. One shouldn't be 'annoyed' that combat showed up as a major point of difference unless you enjoy being annoyed at reality.
Besides, you can still have your puzzles and the like. They are directly mentioned as part of Thinker.
As for your theory on Edwards, perhaps correct and perhaps not. I can think of other reasons for his behavior than a conscious game on the Internet.
But not all "professional models" use a competing axis model. They do if there are truly two unrelated and opposite factors but that's often not true, and it's not true in this case.
Take the well known project management "triangle" - scope, cost, time. They are three things you have to choose between in any given project, so there is a triangle model as to where you fall on it.
Furthermore, I think a non-axis model is more useful when you are trying to be less about the "opposition." Are world and social exploration really opposed concepts? Or tactics and strategy? No, they are different things taken in different amounts in a given player/game/moment. Setting them up as opposed pairs creates a false order, and an order based on hostility - hostility I can see in your response to my posts, which are discussing the topic not personal attacks.
Your example of the PM triangle is off base, for it's used towards a different end, i.e. it's not trying to define RPG styles in a measurable and logical way- it's attempting to define constraints in a field where contraints are effectively the sole subject.
As for non-axis models being less about opposition, I can only laugh at such a foolish suggestion. The threefolds were all about opposition from day one. That can not be avoid when the model starts and end with being about idealized states.
An axis meanwhile is just a measurement without value until someone brings something of their own to it.
You further reveal you lack of understanding when you ask "Are world and social exploration really opposed concepts?". Few things could be plainer if you understood what and who the model was about.
But if you want to pick a fight on that level- take it up with Bartles. You can overwhelm him with your knowledge vast that surely overides his PhD and founding work in MUD design and operation.
Good luck with that.
As for my hostility, I assure you there was none before unless you brought it with you.
There is now however. At this point I think you're a idiot who's wasting my time.
STEPHEN J.
"The threefolds were all about opposition from day one. That can not be avoid when the model starts and end with being about idealized states."
I would argue that I think this was a product of the natural argumentativeness of the community rather than inherent in the model itself. You say that, "Each corner perhaps could have been one end of a possible axis, but that was never considered" - I actually don't think that's correct; in my understanding of the models, all gamers are classified as being somewhere between all three vertexes, with no real player ever being perfectly on one point with no element at all of the other two. Nor, in the core explications of the threefold models, is a hierarchy of preference for one style over the other two ever explicitly established. Essentially, the threefold "triangle" is simply three different axes arranged in a single figure, with the position of a single gamer on all three axes plotted into a single point within the triangle.
I think what tended to happen in discussion of the models is that the discussers' own biases of preference (we all have them) tended to come through with varying degrees of conscious intent, and it was then inferred (sometimes accurately, sometimes not) that the writer saw the hierarchy of his own bias as an inherent part of the model, and understood and argued for the model in that perspective.
Ron Edwards, who prefers and enjoys Narrativist play above all others, inevitably cast Narrativism as the "top" of the triangle in his explications of the GNS model, with less interest in and appreciation of the Gamist or Simulationist approaches to play. The backfire of his particular vociferousness is that his preference becomes so publicly associated with the GNS model that the GNS model is assumed to be designed around his preferences rather than his observations. Guilt by association, as it were.
Ah, OK, I guess I mistook someone using big words for someone being up for actual reasoned discourse. My mistake.
Does disagreement with an aspect of some random dude you cite in a blog post really threaten you so much you have to resort to namecalling?
STEPHEN J: I feel you make a valid point in that perhaps a good goal (it was not an original goal in either the GDS or GNS case btw)is as you put it a "three pointed axis" free from bias.
The problem however is that such an axis is impossible to construct or measure while classic axis models are widely used and measured in and out of the RPG niche (Myers-Briggs being an example from another field).
As such, those models were all assumption while things like the WotC study had actual data.
No such information exists for GDS/GNS, and I would contend it would be impossible for it to exist. While a person can be expected to be rationally measured directly against a single standard (i.e. axis) at a time- it is not really possible to measure them against three simulatiously different goals as a threefold requires.
Thus a threefold is nothing more than three idealized states, and as such can only be judged by the viewer as liked or disliked in total.
With such a foundation, it was inevitable that they become all about opposition because that is all they could be used for.
Rod Edwards you already detailed. In r.g.f.a it was used a method for defending the simulation style of play before and beyond all else- for like Edwards the model was developed and controlled by a specific group with specific interests, in that case self-defined Simulationists.
A well designed axis model avoids these pitfalls, and allows pratical measurement. It is in all ways a better model.
@mxyzplk: Bartles is hardly some "random dude". You once again show your ignorance.
As for calling you names, you're the one that decided to pull out the victim card without cause.
So I decided to show you what it really means to insulted. It aided me greatly that your self-declared victim status did cause me to lose all respect for you.
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