GAMASUTRA-1

One should understand the commonly misunderstood yet over used metaphor from game design that we use in gamification, “Player Types”. Following is an attempt to create something similar to Richard Bartle’s player types, but for gamified systems.

A Flawed Metaphor for Gamification
Analyzing the common usage of Richard’s player type theory makes it obvious that as a metaphor for gamification, it is useful but flawed.  Gamification is not the same as MMORPG’s (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) – the thing that Bartle’s Player Types is designed for.  There is one massive assumption. In pure games, players WANT to play. In a gamified system, that is not always going to be the case. Also, gamification does not generally include much in the way of gameplay.
Concentrating on the intrinsically motivated users, there are four basic types. The diagram below shows how this looks.

Players are the ones who like to get the achievements in the system; they like to see their names on the leader boards. They like the “game” of it all. They are also the most likely to make use of “loop holes” to gain an advantage. There are to play the game and are happy with the extrinsic rewards.

Socialisers are the ones who want to interact with others. They like to be connected to others. They are interested in parts of the system that help them do this. These are the ones will evangelise your internal social networks. Most motivated by the social connections aspects of relatedness.

Free Spirits like to have agency. They don’t want to be restricted in how they go through their personal journey. They will be the most creative, have the fanciest avatars, create the most personal content, but also like to explore. They seek self-expression and autonomy.

Achievers are the ones who want to be the best at things, or at least be achieving things within the system. They want to get 100% on the internal learning system. They do this for themselves and are probably not that bothered with then showing off to others about it.

Philanthropists want to feel that they are part of something bigger.  They want to give back to others. These are the ones who will answer endless questions on forums, just because they like to feel they are helping. They want a system that allows them to enrich others and feel a sense of purpose.

As you can see, those willing to “play” can fall into any one of the five categories (or any combination of the five). However, they are the only ones who will fall into the player type. Those who are not willing to play the game to collect the rewards and climb the leader board, can still be motivated and engaged, you just have to try harder and be less obvious.  That said, if you look at it – you still have the most powerful intrinsic methods available. It is easy to see that each type of user will need different types of motivation within your system. It goes again to show that you have to cater for everyone, not just the players with a points and badges system. This is likely to cater only for the smallest number of people. For this, we will ignore the player user type, concentrating instead on the intrinsically motivated groups. These types follow a simple pattern.

• Philanthropists and Free Spirits both prefer to act within a free and unstructured environment.
• Achievers and Socialisers tend to need a structure around them.
• Socialisers and Philanthropists are not looking to gain anything material from the system. They are there for the warm fuzzy feelings they get from engaging with or giving to others.
• Achievers and Free Spirits are there for varying degrees of personal gain. Not in bad way though. Achievers are interested in improving and gaining understanding. Free Spirits want to be able to create and use the system to best suit them.

So, we can categorize these as the following

This leaves us with eight user types, four intrinsically motivate and four primarily extrinsically motivated. The next step is to look at what these eight types are acting on, in our gamified system. They describe whether a player is interacting with or acting on people or the virtual world. This gives us two diagrams to help visualise this. The first describes the intrinsically motivated users, the second the extrinsically motivated.

As you can see, within the Player User types there may well be some crossover of motivation. Consumers and Exploiters may share many of the same traits but the difference is, exploiters will try to find the boundaries of the system and how that may benefit them while consumers just want to get their reward with as little action from them as possible.

Possible Interactions

All of these different user types have the potential to affect each other in your system.

For example, Philanthropists are the parent figure. They are the ones who are likely to want to help anybody they can, no matter of the other person’s motives. Exploiters, on the other hand, will make use of anyone and everything they can to get personal gain from the system.

Socialiser and Networkers will wish to interact with people. Neither will be after anything from people
directly. In the case of a networker, their reward comes from being connected; where as the socialiser’s reward is knowing you and interacting with you.

Self Seekers have no real interest in in the people within a system but they are just a means to an end. In a similar way, Achievers are not there for the people, they are there for self-enrichment. The big difference here is that the Self Seeker is the one who will collect badges and trophies in a system to show off their expertise to others. The Self Seeker is very similar to the Bartle Achiever player type!

Free Spirits and Consumers have the least impact on any of the other users. Their interests are purely personal, using the system to get what they want from it. Other users are of no direct interest to them.

Stay tuned for Gamasutra-2!

Reference: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndrzejMarczewski/20130318/188620/Gamification_User_Types.php