player types

Dark Personalities and the User Type Hexad

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Dark personality Dark Personalities and the User Type Hexad

A while back, I was asked how “Dark Personalities” fit with my Hexad of User Types. At the time, I had no answer – because I had never heard of dark personalities.

So, as I always do, I responded with honesty and promised to look into it. I have touched on it with how I now explain disruptors in my book and in some papers I have helped with – but have never really mapped them out to make it easy to understand.

The first thing is to discuss what dark personalities are. It seems to stem from an article in the Journal of Research in Personality by D. Paulhus and K. Williams. They describe three types of dark personalities: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Read More ...

Hidden in the User Types Hexad

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User types hexad mystery Hidden in the User Types Hexad

For the first time that I can remember, someone has asked a question about a little “hidden” feature of the User Types Hexad. Two secrets actually.

Take a look at it now, what is odd?

I love symmetry – it is a quirk of mine. I hate how my kids build with LEGO, they always put the wrong colours together and use odd numbers of bricks and the like! Drives the little picky part of my brain insane. That’s part of why I have the hexagon shape, it is perfectly symmetrical – except for the circle in the middle. Read More ...

Emergence: Learning to Love the Unintentional

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Kingslanding Emergence Learning to Love the Unintentional

Emergence in Games

Emergence is a well-known concept in game design. Emergent gameplay comes when players interact with the mechanics of the game creating situations that have not been deliberately designed.

This could be part of the game design or it could be unintentional. For instance, the game may offer several tools to solve a puzzle, but allow the player to use them in any way they see fit. If the puzzle requires you to reach an item that is high up, there could be an infinite number of ways to get it. Use a grapple hook, build a tower, make a jetpack and so on. Read More ...

Exploring the Disruptor User Type

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Disruptor3 Exploring the Disruptor User Type

As time passes and I learn more, I often re-evaluate my past blogs and ideas – none more-so than my User Types! Now, don’t panic, I am not about to release version 3 – the User Types Dodecagon. The purpose of this post is to just clarify my current thinking around the disruptor type, based on what I know now.

The basic idea is still the same. Disruptors disrupt a system in some way. This may be by acting on users or on the system itself. As with the Player type, the Disruptor type is a group rather than a single type. However, I don’t tend to go into the detail as the effect on your design is generally similar for all the variations of the type. Read More ...

Why User Types?

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Me presenting the gamification user types hexad Why User Types

Second post in a day, not very SEO clever, I know.

I wanted to take a moment to explain my view on User and Player types and their use in gamification.

First up, some bullets so you get the idea quickly.

What User Types are not;

  1. Perfect
  2. Applicable to every situation or project
  3. The same in all contexts
  4. Pure science

What User Types are;

  1. A tool in an overall toolkit
  2. Easy to use and get your head around
  3. Useful if you understand their limitations
  4. In my case based on motivation (eg Self Determination Theory), observation and research

I created the my User Types, because I wanted to use something in my thinking and design that focused on users, but was not built for games. I had been using Bartle’s types, but they just did not fit well with gamification – this is something he repeatedly tells people! It was also very hard to talk to people in enterprise about killers (i.e. people who take pleasure in the harm they can cause others). I also wanted to approach my types from the perspective of what motivated people rather than how they behaved. Read More ...