"Father of the MUD" Richard Bartle once identified four different types of online gamers, who could be sorted based on their answers to a series of questions known, sensibly, as the Bartle Test. According to Bartle and his test, those who play online are either Achievers, who prefer to gain concrete measurements of succeess; Explorers, who prefer discovering areas, creating maps and learning about hidden places; Socializers, who prefer to interact with other players, or Killers, who prefer to be in conflict with other players.

Bartle has maintained that a mastery of each gamer type on the part of MMO developers will help them tailor and balance gameplay to attract the broadest audience. According to Zen of Design, GoPets' Erik Bethke focused his business model solely on the Socializers -- "carpet bombed" them, in his words. Apparently, though, broadening the focus by researching patterns of item purchases in his pay-for-goods model yielding some interesting results, as Zen of Design reported:

One eye-raising stat came from the fruit tree. The fruit tree simply produces a piece of fruit once per hour, providing what Erik describes as one of the few ‘Achiever’ elements in an otherwise purely Socializer game.

What they found was that people who purchased the fruit tree were 11X more likely to be active players, and of active players, 4X more likely to be heavy users than your standard active player. Thus, fruit tree buyers (and theoretically, Achievers) are 44X more likely to be profitable customers than your average schmuck. At least in GoPets.

Another eye-raising stat came from the Content Creator, one of the few ‘Explorer’ elements in an otherwise purely Socializer game. What they found were that these people were 16X(!) more likely to be active players, and 4X more likely to be heavy users than standard active players. Thus, content creators (and theoretically, Explorers) are 64X(!) more likely to be profitable customers than your average schmuck. At least in GoPets.

Bethke himself chimed in on the discussion and reported that mixing it up, even emulating the crafting dialog layout from World of Warcraft, resulted in revenue that doubled in only seven days. Now Bethke wants to expand GoPets to include questing and combat. It's interesting evidence directly from the field that these ideas have solid merit!

[Via PlayNoEvil]