Gamification User Types: Free Spirits

6 Free Spirits Gamification User Types Free Spirits

I thought I would dig into some of the User Types a little more deeply from time to time. This week I would like to look at Free Spirits – as they have been causing a little confusion for some.

These types are looking for autonomy and some form of freedom, both of “movement” and expression, in your system. This can come in several forms, but for our purposes I want to concentrate on two main variations of our Free Spirit.

[inlinetweet tweeter=”daverage” suffix=”#gamification”]Free Spirits want to explore your system or change it in some way [/inlinetweet] Read More ...

User Types Test: Stats and conclusions

Card image User Types Test Stats and conclusions

Since I first launched my User Types nearly a year ago, I have had lots of great feedback, interesting criticism and a few changes of heart here and there. I have tried to evolve the types and add detail to them, in an attempt to help other people make use of them. The goal was to create a usable framework to help you plan and build gamified systems by identifying a few basic types of users and how to engage them.

Along the way, I seem to have actually made it too complex for many – something than 1.5 tries do deal with (a little). It is also based in part on the stats I have collected from the User Types test that has been running for many months now. So first, some stats. Read More ...

Achievement, Not Just for Achievers!

Victory Achievement Not Just for Achievers

Achievement is a word that, in gamification especially, has several potential meanings and can cause significant confusion. In gamification, it is often associated with things like points and badges. The same can be said for video games these days (think Xbox achievements and Playstation trophies).

To confuse things more, people can be categorised in gamification and video games (using my user types or Bartle’s player types) as achievers. This makes it look a little like only one type of user will actually experience achievement. Read More ...

An Interview with Richard Bartle about Gamification

20121231 083851 An Interview with Richard Bartle about Gamification

Happy New Year everyone. To start the year with a nice bang, I present an interview that Richard Bartle was kind enough to do with me. You may know the name, without him games like World of Warcraft would never have existed. He also gave us the Player Type Theory. Here I ask him a few questions about his thoughts on Gamification.

How would you define gamification?

In the old days, gamification meant changing something that wasn’t a game into a game. For example, you might have some kind of simulation that you would “gamify” by adding gameplay to it. Read More ...