Bartle taxonomy of player types

[12] Also known as "Diamonds" (♦) , these are players who prefer to gain "points", levels, equipment and other concrete measurements of succeeding in a game.

[15] One of the appeals of online gaming to the Achiever is that they have the opportunity to show off their skill and hold elite status to others.

Explorers, dubbed "Spades" (♠) for their tendency to dig around, are players who prefer discovering areas, and immerse themselves in the game world.

[18][14] Combat and gaining levels or points is secondary to the Explorer, so they traditionally flock to games such as Myst.

[18] Whereas an Achiever may quickly forget a gaming adventure; the Explorer will recall fond memories about their experience.

With the advent of the World Wide Web, gamers' association has partially moved online.

One former popular form of gaming video is the Let's Play format, which has largely been replaced by live streaming on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube.

[citation needed] They take full advantage of the ability to join guilds or kinships in many online games.

[29][30] Causing mayhem among computer-controlled people and things may be fun to the Killer, but nothing amounts to the joy of pitting one's skills against an actual player-controlled opponent.

[34] In 2006, after running for ten years on a web server maintained by Erwin Andreasen, the database met with intractable scalability problems.

[38] Bartle's divisions provide a foundation for investigating gamer psychology; however, subsequent studies have noted certain limitations.

[39] Bartle's motivation factors were analysed for correlation by factorial analysis based on a sample of 7,000 MMO players.