Richard Allan Bartle (born January 10, 1960) is the author of MUD, the first multi-user dungeon. He created MUD along with Roy Trubshaw at the University of Essex in 1978.
Bartle has a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Essex. Bartle lectured at Essex until 1987, when he left to work full time marketing MUD (now known as MUD2). Recently he has returned to the university as a part-time professor and teaching fellow in Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, supervising courses on computer game design as part of the department's degree course on computer game development.
He is the author of the book Designing Virtual Worlds (2003), ISBN 0131018167. The International Game Developers Association gave Bartle the "First Penguin Award" at the 2005 Game Developers Choice Awards for his part in creating the first MUD.
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