achiever explorer socializer killer

The Bartle taxonomy of player types is a classification of game players based on a 1996 paper by Richard Bartle^[1] according to their preferred actions within the game. The classification originally described players of multiplayer games (including MUDs and MMORPGs)

I wonder if it would take much to adapt that to classify the motivations of people in the real world, too. Gaming and fantasy more broadly play on normal every day motivations. Even the "killer" designation has more to do with being competitive and adrenaline seeking than the oft used but incidental themes of killing everything.

I think that it was training in martial arts fifteen years ago that first started to undercut my interest in fantasy. I'd spend months or even years levelling up in a video game, only to get bored and never play it again. Training felt like levelling up in real life. That hadn't felt possible for me. Games make achievement accessible.

I was there for the earliest days of multiplayer games and online worlds for players to socialize in. It was an interesting phenomenon to be a part of, for a while. Our achievements were no longer sequestered within our own private games, but shared socially. I could see and interact, cooperate with or be killed by, other players levels above or below, in newbie rags, or decked out in epic raid gear.

Gaming tends to be the most addictive to people who feel unable to get anywhere in real life. Unable to earn the respect and companionship of others, gaming can be rewarding in ways that feel valuable. Maybe it is valuable. We might debate whether "real life" is all its chalked up to be anyhow, but I no longer think it's all that debatable. 

We're not evolved to sit on our butts all day having pretend interactions. It doesn't fulfill biological needs for socialization, but papers over all that with momentary feelings of sating those needs. We quit game after game, never to play them again, we read novel after novel, or watch movie after movie, but only get one life. 

Real achievement is hard though. Thwarted at almost every turn, it can take so long to get anywhere, in a world that isn't designed to be fair. We can be gimped by bad choices and worse luck, and there's no rerolling a new character. All we can do is keep pressing forward.

Or say fuck it, and get lost in escapism. Maybe at some point, that is the rational choice. What difference does any of it really make anyhow? I don't know how to answer that, but feeling like I was getting somewhere for a change made it feel like a dumb question. The benefits to my well being have been substantial, such that I've come to hate escapism as little more than a means to throw my life away instead.

Exploring a world of fantasy is not the same. Socializing between digital avatars is not the same. Kicking someone's ass in a video game is not the same. A lot of my reasons for choosing escapism are still relevant though. I'm still not having much luck getting anywhere, aside from sparring, but I can't seem to find the motivation to do much else. 

Not much else has gone all that well, but my constant injuries would suggest that training isn't going all that well, either. Somehow it feels natural to keep pressing forward with that, while everything else just sucks. I guess this is just a dark twist on the growth mindset I went on about before everything went to hell. A focus on self-improvement, when nothing else proves motivating. Now, a tortured skeletal framework of the same idea.