The more you know about who is playing your game both current and prospective players—the easier it is to design an experience that will drive their behaviour in the desired way. One rubric that can help you understand your players is to leverage the work accomplished by Richard Bartle in understanding player types. In his seminal work, developed by studying players of MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games), Bartle identified four types of players. Since then, the number has expanded from 4 to 8 to 16—however, the four types shown in diagram remain arguably the stickiest, and therefore the most interesting for our purposes.
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| Bartle’s player types. |
Explorers
An explorer, in brief, likes to go out into the world in order to bring things back
to his community and proclaim, “I discovered this thing!” In a sense, the experience
is the objective. One example of a game suited to the explorer player type
was Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo Entertainment System. A player had to
play 100 games or more to find every hidden level behind every pipe and block,
and bring that knowledge back to his peers for kudos.
Achievers
People who like to achieve are an integral part of any competitive game. They
drive a great deal of projects, services, and brands. The problem with designing
exclusively for this player type is that it’s difficult to develop a system where
everyone can win and achieve. And for achievers, losing at the game will likely
cause them to lose interest in playing it.
Moreover, a common bias we’ve observed when working with clients to gamify
their experiences is that the majority of system, site, and product designers are
high-achieving people. So, you naturally infer that the majority of players are
similarly inclined. This turns out not to be true at all. The majority are socializers.
Socializers
This player type is made up of people who play games for the benefit of a social
interaction. Games focused on socializers comprise some of the most enduring
games throughout history—dominoes, bridge, mahjong, poker—the thread
tying them together is that each is an extremely social experience. To be clear,
it isn’t that socializers don’t care about the game or winning—they do. To them,
the game is a backdrop for meaningful long-term social interactions. It’s the
context and catalyst, not the end in itself.
Killers
Also known as griefers, killers make up the smallest population of all of the player
types. However, they are important to understand. They are similar to achievers
in their desire to win; unlike achievers, however, winning isn’t enough. They must
win and someone else must lose. Moreover, killers really want as many people as
possible to see the kill, and for their victims to express admiration/respect.
Bartle did not intend or develop these four player types to serve as a personality
inventory. But with decades of game-thinking under our belts, it is easy to see how
they can be useful when considering the players of gamified systems. And by placing the player types on an axis, we can see how they range from acting to interacting, and from people to environments.
If you take Bartle’s test to figure out your player type, you will notice that, as we
mentioned, they are mutually inclusive. In other words, a player can have characteristics of all four types at the same time. However, most people are not. For the average person, the breakdown might look something like this:
80% socializer
50% explorer
40% achiever
20% killer
If the scores were mutually exclusive, however, and a player could only be one type,
we learn that the vast majority of people—as much as 75%—are probably socializers. In the context of the runaway success of games like FarmVille or poker, that statistic should not come as a particular surprise. Explorers and achievers each make up about 10% of the population, and killers account for 5%.
Take a online Bartle Test here.
Take a online Bartle Test here.
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