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!
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.
“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.
Last week I started to explore my ideas about the different types of users there are likely to be in a gamified system. I have had loads of feedback, mostly very positive. Thanks for that. One question that keeps coming up is “what about the Player user type”? “There must be more too it!”. The answer is, of course, yes. There is a lot more.
What I explored last week was really just the intrinsically motivated types of users. Those doing things for purely self related reasons. Helping others, because it makes them feel good. Learning because they want to and enjoy the experience. Creating content that they feel will add to the greater meaning of a system.
The player type of user was there to describe the idea that there are those for whom the intrinsic value of an activity is far less important than the reward that they can get from doing the activity.
What’s in a word?
In theory, you could settle for calling them; Player Achiever, Player Socialiser, Player Free Spirit and Player Philanthropists – believe me, I wish I had! However, as with all good systems, it helps to have names you can visualise and connect with behaviours. So, I propose the following. Oh and I can’t stress enough – this is not a theory, this is a categorisation. It is also not the same as Bartle’s Player Types, because we are not looking at real games.
8 User Types
This leaves us with 8 user types, 4 intrinsically motivate and 4 primarily extrinsically motivated. The next step for my categorisation is to look at what these 8 types are acting on in out gamified system. Bartle’s original axes help here. They describe whether a player is interacting with or acting on people or the virtual world. This gives us 2 diagrams to help visualise this. The first describes the intrinsically motivated users, the second the extrinsically motivated.
Philanthropists Act on Users for Intrinsic Reasons
For example, people who answer questions on forums or edit entries on Wikipedia.
Achievers Act on the System for Intrinsic Reasons
People who will learn from the system, just because they enjoy it. Those who will wish to perfect task, just because they want to. May also be motivated by status as a representation of their personal achievement
Socialisers Interact with Users for Intrinsic Reasons
Those people who just like to talk to others and enjoy being connected to people
Free Spirits Interact with System for Intrinsic Reasons
Those looking to enjoy the self expression a system may afford them. May also be explorers. Want to get the most from a system, because they enjoy it
SelfSeekers Act on Users for Extrinsic Reward
They will answer questions and help others, but purely to get rewards and visible status from the system. Quantity over quality – unless quality gets them more rewards. They are uninterested in the social aspect of users
Consumers Act on the System for Extrinsic Reward
A consumer wants to use a system that can give them something. An example would be people who use one particular airway because of the loyalty scheme.
Networkers Interact with Users for Extrinsic Reward
They want social connections, but to give them some form of status or reward. An example of this are people who network and tweet etc. just to get higher Klout scores
Exploiters Interact with the System for Extrinsic Reward
Similar in nature to Self Seekers, they are the people who will like or upvote or retweet something multiple times to gain reward. Unlike Free Spirits, who will seek the boundaries of a systems capabilities for fun, they are very likely to find the loopholes in your rules and exploit them
As you can see, within the Player User types there may well be some cross over of motivation. Consumers and Exploiters may share many of the same traits. The difference is, exploiters will try to find the boundaries of the system and how that may benefit them – consumers just want to get their reward with as little action from them as possible.
Possible Interactions
All of these different user types have the potential to affect each other in your system.
For example, Philanthropists are the parent figure. They are the ones who are likely to want to help anybody they can, no matter of the other persons motives. Exploiters, on the other hand, will make use of anyone and everything they can to get personal gain from the system.
Socialiser and Networkers will wish to interact with anyone. Neither will be after anything from people directly. In the case of a networker, their reward comes from being connected, where as the socialiser’s reward is knowing you and interacting with you.
Self Seekers have no real interest in in the people within a system, they are just a means to an end (that end being the shiny shiny things). In a similar way, Achievers are not there for the people, they are there for self enrichment. The big difference here is that the Self Seeker is the one who will collect badges and trophies in a system to show off their expertise to others. The Self Seeker is very similar to the Bartle Achiever player type!
Free Spirits and Consumers have the least impact on any of the other users. Their interests are purely personal, using the system to get what they want from it. Other users are of no direct interest to them.
Putting it together visually
I could call this, making a pretty picture that looks like Bartle’s full 8 Player Type model!
All of this can be represented in a sort of ‘3D’ / TriDimensional version of our two Acting On diagrams from earlier.
How do you create a balanced system for all types of users?
The answer is, with great difficulty and it depends on the goals of your system. However, if you go back to when we just had five user types, Player and then Philanthropists, Socialisers, Achievers and Free Spirits, it becomes a little clearer.
Create a system that appeals to the four basic intrinsic motivations and user types. Make it social, make it meaningful and give people some freedom. Then, integrate a well thought out reward system (points, badges etc.). If you do it this way around, you are not creating a system that relies on the rewards to run. That way, you get the intrinsically motivated people anyway and those that are there for rewards are catered for.
Next, looking a little deeper, the eight types of users can help us decide how to balance the system. It is important to keep in mind that you want more of the intrinsically motivated users if possible. These are the ones who will keep coming back, keep producing content or whatever else they are meant to be doing.
If the system is flooded with Self Seekers and Exploiters then you stand the chance of devaluing everything. Self Seekers run the risk of generating lots of meaningless content whilst exploiters will reduce the value of things like upvotes and likes if the rewards are badly implemented.
Philanthropists and Achievers can both help a system thrive. Philanthropists want to help everyone. They want to answer questions and guide users. Achievers, depending on the type of system, may also wish to do the same. They are interested in being the best – at mastering things. They will want to give the best answer to a question, not so much to help the user, but to know they were the best. However, as their main aim is self-enrichment, they can also give very little back to as system aimed at teaching – which may be just what you want!
Free Spirits and Consumers tend to give very little back to the people, consumers especially. Too many of either of them and the social aspect of your system stands a good chance of not working. It is possible that consumers are all you want (with a loyalty scheme), but it is worth considering you can get greater value from engaging everyone else.
Socialisers are great for evangelising a system and bringing more people too it, however, they don’t add content to systems as much as other types. Networkers are similar, whatever their motivations may be. However, networkers will bring in anyone, not just relevant people. Too many of them and the social aspect of the system can become diluted. Look at users on twitter with 30,000 “friends” then look at what content these friends actually generate. The likelihood is that of these 30,000 people, they only interact with a tiny fraction – so will other users.
Also (to satisfy a question I have had), exploiters are the most likely to “cheat”. Now, cheating is different things to different people. In this case, I mean they are the ones who will “exploit” loopholes in the rules to gain – even if it is at the expense of others within the system.
It is really important to keep in mind, these are all just and seconded to help clarify thinking. Real life is not as black an white, users will most likely display traits from multiple user types. But, they will usually have one that guides them more than the others.
Thanks for all the feedback and I hope I get loads more. This is not a finished product in my mind and I will probably revisit it in the future. I hope you find it of use and that it makes defining your systems a little easier.
Why not take the User Type Test and see which of the 4 basic types you may be?
