Aug 21st 2025, 15:43:28
Ah, Bartle! I remember that fellow! :)
As an achiever I obviously already know that all the other types are players that are bad at the game and have just invented inferior 'reasons' to play to hide from the fact they are ASS ;)
But seriously though, as an achiever you want to "be the best" and so eventually beating the other achievers on a level playing field is not enough, so you are drawn into the metagame of beating all the other player types at their game.
Beating the "killers" is an interesting one. Fundamentally it's quite simple, but to understand why means also excelling in the exploring and socialising games, inferences can be drawn here, but I'm not making any arguments about that.
Bartle states that killers get their enjoyment from other players raging as a result of being killed? What I think this means is that they don't see the killing as "winning" so much as they see the other player raging as "losing", and that this is their win condition.
That is why you cannot beat the killers by killing them. They don't care, because they didn't get upset about being killed so they didn't lose. In the killers' game, you didn't win because you didn't make them rage.
One approach might be to try and deprive them of their win condition by not raging. You could play, be killed, and not care about it. However the killers' aren't the brightest bunch and are quite happy with pretending you are mad. Just like they are happy pretending that other people losing is somehow them winning.
So we need a different approach. We explore further!
The fact that their win condition relies on an external factor that is entirely under our control is a vulnerability that can be exploited.
If a killer can't kill you, then there is no "loss" (ie no rage, real or imagined), and that means there is no win condition for them.
Furthermore, if they are unable to kill, they themselves rage! They will deny it, but this is futile. By definition it is the killers entire reason to exist, and they have already outed themselves in every whiny post on AT ever. Let the record stand, these posts are clear evidence that taking away their ability to kill drives them insane.
In killers' minds, the rage is the "loss", the win condition is that the other player loses and so they are compelled to see the other player as having won. Thus a killer is easily defeated, simply by not playing their game. Of course the fact that a killer is raging isn't the achievers' win condition, because the achiever is playing a different game. The achiever wins because he beat the killer at their own game.
Even knowing this, there is nothing a killer can do. They are caught in a catch 22 situation. Whilst ever they remain in the killer mindset, their only win condition is predicated on rage. Whilst ever they remain in the killer mindset, being deprived of the ability to win makes them rage.
The only winning move is not to play.
How about a nice game of chess?
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