Richard Bartle releases his classic “Designing Virtual Worlds” book for free
Richard Bartle is a luminary in the field of game design. He invented a system for classifying gamers' preferred game actions called the "Bartle taxonomy", which helps game designers understand player motivations better. Think of it like user personas in software development - Killers love competition, Explorers love discovery, Achievers love mastery, and Socializers play games for social reasons. When designing a game for mass appeal it's often important to make sure players of all stripes find reasons to enjoy it, and Bartle's taxonomy is a great framework for analyzing how different types of players will interact with a game.<p>You can take an online version of the Bartle taxonomy questionnaire to get your own results here:<p><a href="http://matthewbarr.co.uk/bartle/" rel="nofollow">http://matthewbarr.co.uk/bartle/</a>