Richard Allan Bartle (born January 10, 1960) is the author of MUD, the very first multi-user dungeon. He created MUD along with Roy Trubshaw at The University of Essex in 1979.

Bartle has a PhD in artificial intelligence from Essex University. Bartle lectured at Essex University 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 the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering (http://www.essex.ac.uk/ese/), 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 (http://www.google.com/search?q=0131018167).

External Links

• Richard Bartle's website (http://mud.co.uk/richard/)
• Description of the creation of MUD (http://www.ludd.luth.se/mud/aber/mud-history.html)