hexad

Introduction to Gamification Part 8: User Types

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Intro to Gamification Part 8 Introduction to Gamification Part 8 User Types

There are many tools available to gamification designers to help them with their designs. One of the most useful for me, for reasons I will go into here, is the concept of User Types.

There are many views on user profiling and many ways to do it. Some people love it, some hate it. I am in the middle. It is a very useful tool, but it is not the only thing you should rely on. For me, they can be a useful way to understand or at least considers the motivation so those who will be using your system.

Bartle’s Player Types

In the games world there are a few famous player type models, Bartle’s Player Types being the most well known [1]. In these he breaks down players of his famous Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) game into 4 key types. Killer, Achiever, Socliasler and Explorer. Each type of player had a different motivation to play the game. Read More ...

User Types HEXAD: What Links Philanthropists to Socialisers

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A new paper looking to validate the User Types HEXAD Survey has just been released from the HCI Games Group (Games Institute, and Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo). You can find it here Empirical validation of the Gamification User Types Hexad scale in English and Spanish or free… http://hcigames.com/download/empirical-validation-hexad-scale/

One of the findings is something that has been noted before and is not a surprise to me, but something I realise I have never explained. The finding is that the Philanthropist and Socialiser types are very closely linked when you look into them. Read More ...

Considering Age and other factors in Gamification

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When speaking to people about gamification, I often hear comments along the line of “Yeah, but games are only for kids”, or “Yeah, but the age groups who work here are not interested in games”.

What is very nice these days, is how easy it is to dispell these myths with statistics (yeah I know, Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics).

Roughly (I say this as this is coming from multiple sources and 2017 quarters), in the UK, 43% of people aged 6-64 say that they play video games in some form. Of that group, 57% are male, 43% female. If we consider that working age is around 18 to 60 (ish), you are looking at about 78% of the total gaming group are potentially playing games., peaking around the 25 to 44 age group, but still significant in the 44 to 64 age group. Read More ...

The Trouble With Types

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Player Types and User Types, I’m not gonna lie, I love ’em. I imagine that is obvious considering I have spent so long making my own!

However, it’s time for a bit of a tidy up of misconceptions about types –  a misconception my love of them may even have helped to perpetuate.

Misconceptions

Bartle has 4 Player Types

Actually, he has 8. He realised there were limitations and duality in his 4 types, so he created a set of 8 that accounted for this. https://mud.co.uk/richard/selfware.htm

Everyone is Just One Type

No matter what model or taxonomy you use, the likelihood is this is just not true. We probably display all types in our personality, just in different amounts and in different contexts (more on that in a moment) Read More ...

User Type HEXAD Lenses

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One of the cool things about working in gamification is having access to some very cool and very intelligent people! One of those is a chap by the name of Carl Eacott. We met on Twitter some time ago and then months later discovered we lived on the same street. Since then, I have ended up working in the same company and to save the planet, we car share. The awesome thing about this is I get 2 hours a day to speak to a genuine work psychologist. It has been hugely interesting and has led to many “Ah-Hah!” moments. One of those was the idea of using my User Types HEXAD as a series of lenses rather than specific set in stone types. Read More ...

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