The 2 dimensional Bartle test is one of the oldest online tests in existence, and recently a 3 dimensional Bartle test has become available, you can take it here if you're interested:
The 3-D Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology
It was forty years ago that the first online game was developed. One of the people involved was Richard Bartle who at some point decided to research what kind of people play online games and what they do for fun. Eventually Bartle came up with a test which categorized players as Killers, Socializers, Achievers, and Explorers, hence the Bartle test was born.
Killers and Socializers interact with other people, with the distinction that Killers engage with others in a competitive fashion. Achievers and Explorers interact with the game world, with the distinction that Achievers engage with the game world in a competitive fashion. Not surprisingly Killers and Achievers are primarily younger men.
While the World vs Players dimension is clear and may give an immense insight in human psychology and morality, Richard Bartle decided to label the second dimension as acting and interacting. Achievers act upon the world, Killers act upon other players, Explorers interact with the world, Socializers interact with other people. This however is not something that easily translates to the real world.
We can view a farmer as someone who primarily interacts with the world, and a psychologist as someone who interacts primarily with people. In the case of the second dimension I would argue that Killers and Achievers compete, while Socializers and Explorers cooperate.
We can easily translate competition and cooperation to the real world. Capitalists believe in competition while Communists believe in cooperation. This also has an impact on game design, as a game can make it very difficult for players to cooperate in the game world, as well as very difficult for players to compete in the game world. However, whenever you put a bunch of people together and communication is allowed some form of social competition and cooperation will occur.
The original Bartle test had just these two dimensions, and at some later point in time Bartle decided to add a third dimension, which he named implicit vs explicit. This is where things get even trickier. Implicit gamers do whatever they enjoy doing while explicit gamers are methodical and set themselves goals. This sounds a lot like the personality trait known as conscientiousness.
Subsequently one could argue that Bartle reinvented the Big 5 personality traits, though in doing so he may have provided some interesting insights. The Big 5 personality traits are: open-mindedness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism.
The World vs Players dimension easily captures extroversion, but the former is a much better dimension as it suggests that introverted people may simply be more interested in the world than they are in other people.
The Competitive vs Cooperative dimension easily captures agreeableness, but the former is better once again as it easily translates to the real world and evolutionary psychology instead of being some obscure metric. Bartle also ascribes some neurotic tendencies to Competitive players, which may or may not be justified.
The Explicit vs Implicit dimension easily captures conscientiousness, though Bartle also tries to ascribe some elements of open-mindedness to Implicit behavior.
One interesting observation Bartle makes is that as the player progresses through the game world, so does the player's behavior. While it's known and believed that the Big 5 personality traits change slowly as we age, if we take Bartle's observations into account it's not age that changes people's personality, but their standing in the world.
