Richard Allan Bartle (born January 10, 1960, in England) is a British writer and game researcher, best known for being the co-author of MUD, the first multi-user dungeon. He is one of the pioneers of the massively multiplayer online game industry.

Bartle received a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Essex, which is where he created MUD along with Roy Trubshaw, in 1978.

He lectured at Essex until 1987, when he left to work full time on MUD (known as MUD2 in its present version). Recently he has returned to the university as a part-time professor and teaching fellow in the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, supervising courses on computer game design as part of the department's degree course on computer game development.

In 2003, he wrote Designing Virtual Worlds, a well-received book about the history, ethics, and "nuts and bolts" of massively multiplayer games.

Bartle is also a contributing editor to Terra Nova, an influential collaborative blog that deals with virtual world issues.

He presently lives with his wife, Gail, and their two children, Jennifer and Madeleine, in a village just outside Colchester, England.

Awards

• International Game Developers Association "First Penguin Award", at the 2005 Game Developers Choice Awards, for his part in creating the first MUD.

Works

• Spellbinder, 1977, a pencil and paper game also known as Waving Hands, first described in Bartle's fanzine Sauce of the Nile^**
• MUD, 1978, the first multi-user dungeon ^*
• "Description of the creation of MUD", November 15, 1990
• Designing Virtual Worlds, 2003, New Riders Pub. ISBN 0131018167

References

• Richard Bartle's website
• Richard Bartle's blog
• Terra Nova collaborative blog
• Sci-Tech Today, January 4, 2006, "Inside the Underground Economy of Computer Gaming"
• GameSpy interview, October 27, 2003
• Bartle Test, the MUD personality analyzer

1960 births | Computer and video game designers | Living people | British writers | Technology writers | University of Essex alumni