What does it mean for a player to be described as a “heart”, “diamond”, “spade”, or “club”?
The terms come from a paper by Richard Bartle called “Players Who Suit MUDs”, specifically referring to MUDs (or multi-user dungeons, which were semi-precursors to MMORPGs). Long story short is this: they are terms that describe your general style of play and the manner in which you feel rewarded by the game: • Diamonds = Players who want to be the biggest, strongest, fastest (the folks that want to be on the top of the leaderboards) • Spades = Players who want to see the whole game, to explore everywhere (who want to get every trophy, get every tattoo, see every location, complete every quest) • Hearts = Players who want to socialize, meet others, do good deeds (and end up often in chat/forums) • Clubs = Players who want to triumph over other players (PvPers) The categories are not mutually exclusive – people often exhibit various amounts of the traits in each category. You can find out in which categories you fit by taking this test. The Rye made a version of the Bartle test “suited”
