Richard Bartle Archives - Gamified UK

Using the Gamification User Types in the Real World

February 3, 2015December 9, 2013 by Andrzej Marczewski

One of the main questions I get about my User Types, is how do you actually make use of them?

What I have provided is a simple framework to look at basic motivations of users who are using your system. However, if it was just an analytical tool, it would not be all that much use really! The main reason I developed the user types was to help you in the planning and design phase – not just with analytics and improvements!

There are two main ways to go about using the user types in the early phases of your design.

Survey the populous

The first and the one that most people want to ask me about, is a survey of potential users. I built a basic one that can define your user type and how influenced you may be towards rewards. You could get a representative sample to send you their type results and then start to build a system that caters for the most prominent types.

Whilst this is a reasonable thing to do, it does have a couple of drawbacks. It assumes the test is right – which I would like to think it is, but it is still an assumption. It also requires people to answer honestly, something that we all want to do, but at times we don’t realise we are not being honest on these things. We give the answers we either want to see or hope that others want to see.

The final and actually most important drawback is the nature of people themselves. You see, the test can give you the type for a potential user at that moment in time – before they have started using the system and out of context. One of the things that Richard Bartle found when he was looking at Player Types was that over time the type would change. So they might start off a Killer but after months of play they would develop into a socialiser. This is because as people master or get bored of certain types of playing, they evolve.

So the user type you are when you first start using a system, may not stay the same. So surveying and building your system based on initial types may actually be counter-productive.

This is the approach if you are looking for a short term campaign, you just need to work out what your potential users want over the immediate term.

Build it for the people you want

So, the alternative is to come at it from another direction. Define the problem your gamification is trying to solve. Next work out what kind of user types are most likely to be able to help solve it – and build the system to encourage and support them.

For instance, if you are looking for innovation in your company and you want to get people to submit new ideas, what types of people are most likely to give up time to do this? Well, initially it would make sense that Philanthropists would be up for the challenge. Their “joy” comes from helping others and adding to the greater meaning of things. This being the case, you need to create an environment that allows them to give their ideas, but also to advise others and support them with their ideas. You may also want to consider Free Spirits. They are creative and could be the ones who have explored areas where there can be innovation the most. So you would create a system that encourages and supports their involvement. You give them tools to think creatively and develop their ideas.

That is not to say you ignore the other types. You can create social networking opportunities for socialisers or add voting systems with points and badges for the players, but they are not the ones who will be helping you directly solve your problem – the need for innovation. Also, remember that different motivations appeal to people in varying degrees and combinations. Whilst they may be a socialiser, they can still have traits that a philanthropist may have.

This approach will help you build a system that solves your problem. Yes users may evolve their type during usage, but the system will still encourage others to come along and use it. Also, designed well, you can keep the evolved users on board in other capacities. The point is, solve the problem!

Game Thinking – Breaking it Down

November 18, 2014October 21, 2013 by Andrzej Marczewski

Game Thinking 4 Game Thinking 8211 Breaking it Down

Ever since I first started considering Game Thinking, I have been trying to come up with a way to break down all of the parts that make it up. The first attempt was my article about the differences between serious games and gamification. This gave me a basic outline of the 4 areas I considered to make up Game Thinking.

Since then, I have been thinking about this a lot. I have been trying to break it down even further. The next step was my article on the term serious games. This broke serious games up into 4 basic types. Teaching Games, Simulations, Meaningful games and Purposeful games.

This lead to me writing down a basic outline of what would fall under the other headings in my list. After good conversations on Google+ (here and here), I finally came up with an outline of what actually comes under Game Thinking.

Game Inspired Design

This used to be called gameful design, but this now has more gamification like connotations. This is where no actual elements from games are used, just ideas. So user interfaces that mimic those from games, design or artwork that is inspired by games or the way things are written. All of these have links to games, but do not contain anything that you would consider to be part of a game (mechancics, dynamics, tokens etc.)

Gamification

Gamification is generaly defined along the lines of “The use of game thinking and elements in non game contexts“. Here I have split gamification into two distinct types. Intrinsic and Extrinsic. This is very similar to Karl Kapps two types of gamification, where he talks about structural and content gamification.

Extrinsic gamification is the sort that most people are used to, where game elements are added to a system. Things like points, badges, progress bars etc.

Intrinsic gamification is more about using motivation (RAMP) and behavioural design to engage users.

Serious Games

Spoken about here already, this group includes full games that have been created for reasons other than pure entertainment.

Teaching Game: Teaches you something using real gameplay.
Simulator: A virtual version of something from the real world that allows safe practice and testing.
Meaningful Game: Uses gameplay to promote a meaningful message to the player.
Purposeful Game: Uses games to create direct real world outcomes.

Games / Play / Toys

Ok, this is a bit more complicated. I originally started with just games here, but was challenged by a few people including Prof Richard Bartle. The challenge was “Where does play come into this?”.

Now, I have to admit, I was not ready for this and had to think hard, read hard and discuss hard. For those who don’t know, there is a very academic conversation to be had around what a game is. There is no true single definition, but most accept that it is a type of play. Play, in this context, is confined only by implicit rules. A ball is governed by implicit rules such as gravity. You don’t impose gravity on a ball, it is just there.

Play begins to become a game, when you start to add explicit rules to it. If I kick the ball through a goal, I get a point and win (Zero sum). If we work together to get the ball through a series of obstacles, we win (non zero sum). For some this will boil down to competition (with the system or other players) and cooperation. For others, there is much much more to it!.

Toys come into this as another part of play that is important to consider. A toy seems to have two main varieties. An object or representation of an object that obeys implicit rules, but has no explicit rules on it’s own. So a ball, a transformer etc. You can play with them however you want, within the toys own rules – gravity, shape, fragility etc. The other seems to be a playground. Take Gary’s Mod or Minecraft (in creator mode). You are in a virtual world that has it’s own implicit rules for how the world behaves and the restraints that you as the player have within the world (magic circle). With Minecraft this would be things like how far you can dig down, how far you can dig up, how certain blocks behave with other blocks. However, within those constraints you can do what you want. You can use the world itself as a toy.

There are hundreds of thousands of words dedicated to this conversation, but for me it is important not to forget the importance of play when you look at Game Thinking.

Back to games and I have split them up into 2 basic categories. Entertainment and Art. Entertainment is what most people would consider games. Call of duty, Civilization, World of Warcraft – that sort of thing. Art is more subjective. I would consider a game such as Proteus more art than game, some would not. That can be discussed elsewhere I am sure!

I have added a third type under games, that dotted lines back into serious games – Adver-games. These are proper games that are created to advertise something. The game is real, it plays like a game, but at some stage it is being used to try and sell you something. I have not put this directly under serious games as personally I feel that serious games should serve something resembling a higher purpose – possibly snobbish on my part though.

What now?

This is my take on Game Thinking. For me this represents the majority of things you should have in mind when you hear the word gamification. Limiting yourself to the standard definition is going to reduce how effective your thinking will be when it comes to designing solutions for people. I know that others have other ideas – so I throw this open for you all to interpret, add too and take from.

A huge thanks to everyone in the Gamification Google+ group who helped my thinking here!

Bartle’s Killers . A misunderstood group of people.

January 21, 2016June 24, 2013 by Andrzej Marczewski

Last week I had the opportunity to present at the fabulous Gamification World Congress 2013. Among other things, it was the first and probably only times I would see my face on a 10 foot screen on the front of a building!

Another highlight in a day of highlights, was getting the opportunity to spend a few hours with Richard Bartle. Many of you will have seen me mention him before, the creator of the Bartle Player Types. These types are often spoken about by people involved in gamification and are one of the main inspirations for my User Types. Originally written to model the behaviour of players in his MUD virtual world (the grandfather of all MMO’s like World of Warcraft), the Bartle Player Types have also been adopted by many in gamification.

In some ways, this seems to perplex Richard, as his Player Types are very specific to MMO’s and in his mind don’t lend themselves that well to other types of game – let alone gamification.

The big issue is that most people who are talking about his Player Types and how they apply to a gamified system, don’t seem to have actually read the original definitions of the types and what they actually are. It seems that most of seen the now iconic diagram and have made up their own definitions. They don’t, for instance, take into account that they are a full model of how players behave and evolve during their stay in a virtual world – i.e. their type changes over time. When these types don’t work for other non MMO systems, people often feel that this is a weakness of the original model – again, proving a lack of understanding as to what the model is meant to define!

4 bartle player types 300x229 Bartle s Killers A misunderstood group of people — Richard Bartle’s Player Types

For three of the types, this is not a massive problem. Explorers, Achievers and Socialisers are fairly self explanatory. However, there is one type that seems to be very misunderstood – Killers.

I have heard many definitions of the killer type, from players who are determined to be the best, to players searching for respect at the end of a gun, to players driven by survival.

Here is the original description, taken from http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm

“Killers get their kicks from imposing themselves on others”

This continues with

“The more massive the distress caused, the greater the killer’s joy at having caused it”

Richard explained to me that this type of player will do anything to cause the destruction of others. They may collect points (like an achiever), they may explorer (like an explorer) and they may even socialise – but these will just be as a way to gain better weapons, find new ways to kill and to gain knowledge about others on how to kill them the most devastating way.

People have asked me why I don’t include the killer type in my four main User Types. There are a number of reasons for this. One reason is that I do sort of include them in my four extrinsically motivated user types, Self Seekers, Consumers, Networkers and Exploiters. These types are only interested in what they can gain from the system or other users. Similar to the Killer type, they will socialise, collect point, help others, create things etc – but only to get things they want.

However, the main reason is due to the nature of gamification and especially Enterprise Gamification. Imagine, if you will, a large company with a gamified system. The system has its rules and it has its users and they include a few killer types. What exactly will they do? You don’t have a real game world. They have nothing to kill. However, they can disrupt the system and cause distress by abusing it – the kind of thing that my Exploiter type may do. They may also exploit other users, in the way my Self Seeker might. If your system allows this to happen or at least allows it to happen to the extent that others are seriously affected by it, you may need to rethink it!. Another thing to consider is whether these kinds of extreme behaviours should be covered by your systems rules or the rules or policies of the company. Often these would have information about abuse of other employees and the companies systems (like email or social media).

If I have a point it is this. If you are going to quote another person’s work, or try to re-purpose it, you have to understand it first. My User Types are initially based on inspiration from Bartle’s Work, but actually come from the four motivators I talk about in RAMP, relatedness, autonomy, master and purpose. It was Richard himself that showed me how I could make it look and feel similar to his work.

Different Types of Users in Gamification

April 20, 2014January 30, 2013 by Andrzej Marczewski

There is rather an important update at the end after Richard Bartle offered me some advice!

It had to happen eventually. I had to look at some kind of “player type” theory. Many people have one, Richard Bartle probably having the most famous and most abused of the player type theories out there.

What’s it all about Richard?

For those that don’t know, Richard Bartle labelled players as one of four types to help him understand how they interacted with each other and their environments in MMO games (Massively Multiplayer Online). The labels he used initially were;

Killer
Achiever
Socialiser
Explorer

Quoting straight from the original text, here is a brief explanation of each of these (very, very brief)

Players use the tools provided by the game to cause distress to (or, in rare circumstances, to help) other players. Where permitted, this usually involves acquiring some weapon and applying it enthusiastically to the persona of another player in the game world.

So, labelling the four player types abstracted, we get: achievers, explorers, socialisers and killers. An easy way to remember these is to consider suits in a conventional pack of cards: achievers are Diamonds (they’re always seeking treasure); explorers are Spades (they dig around for information); socialisers are Hearts (they empathise with other players); killers are Clubs (they hit people with them).

If you want to know more, have a look at his original text http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm.

A Flawed Metaphor for Gamification

After speaking with Richard and exploring others use of his player type theory (Amy Jo Kim’s Social Player Type is a very good reworking), it becomes obvious that as a metaphor for gamification, it is useful but flawed. At the end of the day, gamification is not the same as MMORPG’s – the thing that Bartle’s Player Types is designed for (and of course works well for!). For the most part there is no game play, but it is still a handy way to label people, and we can see similar behaviours. However, there is one massive assumption. Your players WANT to play. In a gamified system, that is not always going to be the case.

As I see it, we need to take a step back and start from just two types of users initially. Those willing to “play” and those not willing to play. Here, when I say play, I mean those who can be engaged with the extrinsic things like badges and trophies. To many, this is of no interest at all. But that does not mean you can not create a system that will engage them as well. You just have to think about it.

Do You Want to Play a Game?

In gamification, I can see five simple user types (there are more, but I want to look at this as simply as Richard did with MMO’s).

Player
Socialiser
Free Spirit
Achiever
Philanthropist

Yes, I have indeed stolen two of the original labels – but they fit fine! Each of these five user types can be strongly influenced (though it does not have to be exclusively) by one of the four intrinsic motivators I have previously mentioned, or by extrinsic rewards.

The diagram below shows how this looks.

My User Types (I hesitate to say theory!!)

Players are the ones who like to get the achievements in your system; they like to see their names on the leaderboards. They like the “game” of it all. They are also the most likely to make use of “loop holes” to gain an advantage. They are a group of user types in their own right, Bartle’s Player Types cover them very well though! There to play the game and are happy with the extrinsic rewards.

Socialisers (as in the original Player Type) 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 find the most holes in a system. 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. (This differs from the original definition, but I could not think of a better word!!). May also be motivated by status as a representation of thier personal achievment They need a system that will enrich them and lead them towards mastery.

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.

There Can be More than One

As you can see, those willing to “play” can fall into any one of the five categories (or any combination of the five). However (obviously), they are the only ones who will fall into the player type. Those who are not willing to play the game of collect the rewards and climb the leaderboard, 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.

Depending on how this is received, I may do an additional feature on how the different user types interact with each other (similar to the original Player Types). All I will say is that if you think you may get extreme player type users, make sure your system has as few loop holes as possible!

UPDATE!!! A more Bartle way of looking at User Types

This is pretty exciting (for me at least). I have had an exchange with Richard Bartle after he read this on Google+. He suggested a more structured way of viewing this “theory”. It actually does the one thing I was trying to avoid – makes it fall in line with the way his Player Type Theory is Visualised. However, as he is the one who suggested it, I can’t argue!

For this, we will ignore the player user type. In my model they are the ones who are looking for the extrinsic rewards, and will “play” as long as those are there. They are also a group in their own right that can be broken down and categorised in many ways, including the Bartle Player Type. We are really interested in engaging the other four identifed user types. Richard helped me to see that these types follow a 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 (as Richard describes it) 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.

Material may not be the best word for this type of personal non extrinsic reward – but I can’t think of better at the moment!

My User Types, with a dash of Richard Bartles advice and experience.

Massive thanks to Richard!

This is all very academic, my hope is that it will give people another way to visualise gamification and how to motivate different types of people. It may turn out that this is not the best way of doing it – but that is the joy of our new world. It keeps getting more defined and better understood.

Check out Part 2 of this at User Types in Gamification – Part 2: Players and Balance

Why not take the User Type Test and see which of the 4 basic types you may be?

An Interview with Richard Bartle about Gamification

December 31, 2012December 31, 2012 by Andrzej Marczewski

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.

The modern use is almost the complete opposite. Now, it means taking techniques from games and applying them to non-games. The result is a non-game that includes some game elements – but crucially NOT gameplay. If it did include gameplay, it would be a game; then we’d be talking “serious games” or “games for a purpose”.

We in gamification use an awful lot of games related theories and ideasin very out of context ways – your player type theory is especially assaulted in this way. Is there a legitimate use for these as metaphors in gamificaiton or should they be left alone?

There is a legitimate use, yes, of course. If they seem to work, hey, go for it! The smart thing to do would be to try to understand WHY they work, though, because then you have a theory; from a theory, you can derive a better set of criteria for your particular purpose.

Back in prehistoric times, people used to get cold in winter. Animals didn’t get cold. The sensible thing was to use animal skins to keep warm. It worked. However, once people understood what it was about animal skins that kept them warm – the closely-packed fibres – they began to take those fibres and weave them together to make wool. Wool makes much better clothing because it’s not as stiff, plus you don’t need to kill the animals to get it.

Using player type theory for gamification is like using animal skins. Sure, it seems to work, but if you knew what about it was important for gamification, you could perhaps distil that idea and make wool instead.

All I would ask is that if someone does come up with a theory, it IS actually a theory and not merely a categorisation. It’s fine to say “we asked 100,000 people blah blah blah and ran this military-strength statistics package over the answers and can now say that there are these types of users”, but ALL it tells you is that there are these types of users. It doesn’t tell you how they interact; it may, but probably won’t, tell you why these types are important to gamification. For that, you need a theory of either user types or of gamification. When you get that, you’ll have a discipline you can DO something with.

Coming to your player type theory for a moment, not particularly on a gamification note, would you say there was a particular player type or combination of types that you would predict a cheater would have. By cheating I mean someone who is using a non standard or non deliberate bug / feature of the game, to gain advantage over others.

OK, so the thing is, each player type has its own definition of what counts as “cheating”. Some of these things are not regarded as cheating at all by players of other types, so they just do it.

Achievers, for example, follow an unwritten rule that the game is a meritocracy: better players do better at the game. They feel that if someone has status, that should be because they earned it within the context of the game. They are horrified if people can buy achievement some other way – “play to win”. To them, it’s like buying a PhD or a world record. For socialisers, however, who just want to hang out with their friends, buying improvements to their character so they can run with the big boys is perfectly fine. Why wouldn’t it be?

Likewise, achievers don’t like it when there is gated content that contains special rewards: they feel it’s a back door for rich kids to get good gear that makes them appear to be better players than they really are.

Explorers, however, have no problem with paying to access new content – they love figuring it out. They want to understand the game; if new content means more to explore, they’ll happily pay for it. Their own gripe is web sites that “give away” solutions. To an explorer, looking up a solution is cheating – yet all the other player types do it routinely without a second thought.

I did a short presentation on this subject earlier this year, if you’re interested – slides here http://mud.co.uk/richard/Lincoln.pdf. (trust me, click the link! Ed.)

Have you seen examples of gamification that you think have been donewell? What made them work for you.

I’m a game designer. I want all gamification to take that last extra step and become a game. From that point of view, no example of gamification is done well!

However, looking at it objectively, I’d have to say that the ones that impress me most are the simple ones that have been going since forever. Gold stars for children’s work, employee-of-the-month; loyalty points to some degree, although it’s now basically just bribery. There are some very clever examples of more creative gamification in action, but have a short shelf life: they impress for a short while, but you have to change them if you wish to keep using them.

Do you feel there is future for gamification as a stand aloneenterprise, or will it just become one of those things that people are doing as a matter of course, a bit like social media has now become.

There is a future, yes, but it’s a bespoke one. The way I see it, it’s a bit like the early days with advertising.

You would see billboards saying “buy our beans” or “buy our wagons” or “buy our crockery”. After a while, there were so many of these around that if you wanted to get people’s attention you had to be more creative. You wrote different things on your billboards, you advertised in other media; brands emerged. Nowadays, the whole advertising industry is founded on creativity, because only by exposing people to new advertisements will advertisements be effective. It’ll be like that in gamification: people will grok leaderboards and points and badges once everyone is doing it, so the winners will be those who innovate for individual projects.

Obviously there’s a bandwagon at the moment, with people diving in who don’t know what they’re doing, and they’ll hang around only until the next bandwagon comes along. It’s a bubble and it will burst. Those who remain in the field, however, will have a greater understanding of what they can do with gamification. So long as it doesn’t have a bad name, it should be able to regroup and flourish.

I once made a plea for games designers and the games industry as a wholeto get involved in gamification, I know that it would not be for everyone, but if we are getting it wrong in their eyes, it seems reasonable that they could be able to help. Do you see a role for games designers in gamification?

Yes, it seems an obvious idea. Only now are people working in serious games actually approaching game designers, after years of thinking “how hard can it be?” and finding out the answer to their cost. Gamification
needs to go through the same realisation.

I have three caveats, though:

If a game designer tells you that what you plan is not going to work, don’t blame them when you tell them to do it anyway and it doesn’t work.
Most game designers aren’t all that good at game design, they’re just better than you.
The better the game designer, the less likely they are to like vanilla gamification. They want people to play their games because they’re fun, not because you played some cheap psychological trick on the players.They will almost certainly prefer to create a game than a gamified non-game and will probably beg you to let them do so.

In my opinion, game designers may be better employed as consultants rather than actual gamifiers. As an analogy, if you started a new field of creativity called “graphic design” and started trying to draw pictures yourself, you will suck at it. You could ask an artist to do it and get pictures that didn’t suck, but you’d need to keep a tight rein on what they did or you’d end up with a work of art not quite fit for purpose. The artist may come up with ideas you would never have had on your own, but they may need editing before you use them. What you really want is a graphic designer – an artist with an engineer’s attitude. Dropping the analogy, what you want is a gamifier – a game designer with an engineer’s attitude.

If you could give one piece of advice to anyone entering gamificaiton,what would it be?

Be cynical. Gamification is itself being gamified: if you’re cynical, you stand a better chance of seeing the gems through the hype.

Again, massive thanks to Richard Bartle.

If you want to fid out more about him, MUD or Player Type Theory, head over to http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/