The Mercenary User Type

Mercenary 1481724604 The Mercenary User Type

With the news that a hacker group is using gamification to try and get people to engage in DDoS attacks, I got to thinking about what type of user may wish to engage with this.

Initially, the Disruptor sprang to mind, more specifically the Destroyer type. They act on the system to disrupt it and normally for not very nice reasons! However, there was an issue. Disruptors are self-motivated, they are not there for reward as much as recognition or just plain mastery and enjoyment. So using points and prizes to coerce a disruptor behaviour actually sits more in line with the Consumer type in the Player section of the Hexad. Read More ...

Gamification User Types HEXAD Validation Study

I thought it would be good to finally show you all the research results from Austrian Institute of Technology and HCI Games Group, Games Institute, University of Waterloo and of course Gamified UK around the User Types and the survey.

The link below will take you to a blog written by one of the researchers, Gustavo Tondello, who explains it all better than I can!

https://medium.com/@hcigamesgroup/the-gamification-user-types-hexad-scale-a6d8727d201e

Several studies have indicated the need for personalising gamified systems to users’ personalities. However, mapping user personality onto design elements is difficult. To address this problem, Marczewski developed the Gamification User Types Hexad framework, based on research on human motivation, player types, and practical design experience. He also suggested different game design elements that may support different user types. However, until now we were still lacking a standard assessment tool for user’s preferences based on the Hexad framework. There was also no empirical validation, yet, that associated Hexad user types and game design elements. A collaborative research project by the HCI Games Group, the Austrian Institute of Technology, and Gamified UK sought to accomplish these two goals: (1) create and validate a standard survey to assess an individual’s Hexad user type and (2) verify the association between the Hexad user types and the game design elements they are supposed to appeal to. Read More ...

New Gamification User Type Test

Hi all.

Lots of changes on the go at the moment, but one big one is an overhaul of the User Type Test. In collaboration with the Austrian Institute of Technology and HCI Games Group, this new test has been validated and should provide a much more accurate set of results over time. It is early days yet, but the last version had over 4,000 responses – so I hope we can do just as well here.

It will be used for continued research by them (I will link to a couple of papers that have been written about the process once they are available), but also for my own interest. Read More ...

What does HEXAD stand for?

A question no one has been asking was “What does HEXAD actually stand for?”

Well, I thought it was time to make something up to satisfy that question that no one wants the answer to!

First off, Hexad just means a group or set of six – that is why it was chosen. I needed a name for the User Types for various papers that were being written, and with the help of Dr. Barry Herbert – I settled on Hexad!

However, I don’t like leaving things without some deeper meaning, so have been trying to see if I could make a meaningful  acronym from HEXAD. So here goes; Read More ...

Where is the Killer / Winner Type in your HEXAD?

This is a question I get asked all the time. “I love it, but where is the Killer/ Winner type?”

The first thing to address here is that Winner and Killer are not interchangeable terms in the world of types. In Bartle’s types, the Killer is a type of player who gets pleasure from domination and humiliation of other players. This is not the same as wanting to win. If winning is what crushes the spirit of other players, then the killer would probably do their best to win – but that is not their driver. Read More ...

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