Personalities in a Game – Player Types
Just as in work and careers there are Leadership Styles, Business Behavior Styles and Personality Types all with multiple models in attendance, in the serious area of games, thousands of person years of gaming and far fewer years of academic research have yielded serval frameworks to classify Player Types. Of them The Bartle Player Type Model is arguably the most commonly applied.
Richard Bartle, a British writer, professor and game researcher, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bartle) has widely researched the area of player personality types for multi-player online games (MOGs), specifically for massively multi-player online games (MMOGs). His research into player psychology and concomitant player classification culminated in the gold standard for Gamer Types, The Bartle Player Type Model. Bartle’s model is based on the individual’s playing preference. It classifies players into 4 types in a 2×2 grid which maps players based on 2 key preferences that determine the player’s goal in the game:
- Player’s game experience: does the player prefer to focus on the game world or on other players? (Player Control Dynamic)
- Player’s role in the game: Does the player prefer to simply act or interact? (Player Content Dynamic)
It is important to note that each player displays all styles in varying degrees in games with one style being dominant. As in all personality type measurements, the metric used to measure player types, the Bartle Quotient, gives us the dominant player type along with the relative presence of the other player types styles.
Bartle’s Model characterizes players into 4 main types: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers.
Achievers: These players focus on the outcome – recognitions, rewards, gains with little thought to gameplay, the rules or real progress. They prefer to act on and control aspects of the game world. They are the “Diamonds” of the player world.
Explorers: Explorers are the “Spades”, the discoverers of the player world, preferring to interact and delve deeper into the world and the game strategy to learn how it works. These players enjoy interacting with the game world and its objects.
Socializers: Socializers prefer to build relationships and collaborate with other players, enjoying the social aspects of the game with little interest in the game world and the strategy. They are the “Heart” of the player world and enjoy building communities and interacting with other players in the game.
Killers: Killers are competitive players who act on other players and prefer the competitive aspects of the game that enable them to win over opponents. They enjoy creating change and chaos and prefer act on and beating other players. They are referred to as the “Clubs” of the player world.
The classification offers a lens into the motivations and game elements that engage players of specific profiles in the game. Typically, successful MOGs and MMOGs keep in mind the 4 player types, offering each player type motivation to engage in the games. Several good games also focus on engaging a specific player type. For instance, single shooter games tend to attract the Killer type players. A game like Call of Duty would appeal to Achievers. Open world games, games like Elder Scrolls Online often appeal to Explorers while games like Farmville or The Sims appeal to Socializers.
In behavioral and leadership learning, well-crafted multiplayer online games recognize the existence of multiple player types and offer the engagement required to include different personalities with distinct traits and motivations. Since games cut across distinct behavioral and leadership competencies, such games, offer lasting learning experiences that motivate, engage and integrate skills.
There is, naturally, an interplay between standard personality types’ assessments used widely by industry for psychometric profiling and player types’ assessments, since both deal with similar behaviors and aspects of the same individual in arguably different contexts.
Watch this space for more on this subject!
Now getting back to the Bartle Type, what is your dominant Player Type? Take the Bartle Test here to find out, a simple test comprising 30 random questions, https://matthewbarr.co.uk/bartle/ .