Using Player Types

Why use the player types model for virtual world design?

One purely pragmatic reason is that because it was the first such model, everyone knows about it; it therefore provides common ground for communicating ideas with other designers. This is by no means the only reason, though.

The model’s main strength is its categorization of players into the four particular types: achievers, explorers, socializers, and killers. It has its roots in a consideration of what people find fun in virtual worlds, and is therefore attuned to situations that might impact on this: all big design decisions, in other words. If you’re creating a virtual world and don’t have an actual user base yet, categorizing it along the lines the model advocates will give you some idea of how the players might take to a feature (or not); if you’re running a live game, the model will suggest how proposed changes might be received by existing players.

The dynamics that underlie the categorization are of less practical use to most designers. Occasionally it might be that a major, major alteration is planned, which will throw the balance so out of whack that some compensatory change will be necessary to stop a hemorrhage of players; this is not something that is an issue most of the time, though. When you add new functionality, it’s useful to run through the player types to be sure it doesn’t help or hurt any of them too much; it’s less useful to wonder what the next level of knock-on effects will be. Dynamics are useful for consultants looking at virtual worlds that have either no user base or a very ill one; for day-to-day design, categorization is the handier tool.

You don’t have to use this or any other model, of course. This one happens to have been applied successfully over the years to the players of a wide variety of virtual worlds, but that doesn’t mean another model might not help designers more. The main problem is that there really aren’t any other models to speak of right now; about the only other one in regular use categorizes players on the basis of their experience—“What will newbies make of this?” Perhaps the greatest service the player types model has rendered is to show that theoretical design aids can exist at all; if someone can produce a superior one, so much the better.

The player types model does have its limitations, of course, and designers should be aware of them. The main ones to watch out for are:

• It doesn’t address how players change style over time. The classic path is killer to explorer to achiever to socializer, but others are possible.

• It doesn’t account for players who appear to play one style while actually playing another. If your achievers regard killing as achievement, it’s bad; if your explorers see it as worthy of exploration, it’s a calamity.

• If a virtual world is large enough that it can split into (geographical or social) sub-worlds, the model might apply separately to individual sub-worlds but not to the world as a whole.

• It assumes that players are independent. For virtual worlds with large numbers of players, this may not be the case. Killers don’t often get along with each other, so in most worlds they play as lone wolves. However, in a large world where one of them can lead a gang of 50 impressionable achievers, their effect is somewhat magnified.

• It assumes that virtual worlds are independent. Players might have cut their teeth in a different virtual world before visiting this one.

• It can’t account for poor design. If your world has too few socializers, the model can suggest means by which to increase the numbers, but they may not work. It has no way of knowing you’re running a MUD played using mobile phones and that people just can’t be bothered to thumb in commands.

• It is open to misinterpretation. Players aren’t always good judges of their own playing style: Many achievers seem to think they’re killers or explorers; some killers mistakenly label themselves as socializers. Asking self-appointed representatives of one type what they think of a possible major change could lead to a questionable result.

Beyond this, the model may apply but still be of little or no use. Designers of worlds that people play for reasons other than having fun (for example, to learn creative writing) have no real need of it; designers of worlds that people can’t have fun playing (for example, because the worlds are depressing or incomprehensible) have other problems they should solve first.

On the other hand, the model has been successfully applied beyond the confines of virtual worlds into domains such as online community management and tabletop RPGs ¹.

Although designers working in areas related to virtual worlds may find the player types model flexible enough to be of use, the further they are away from the subject then the less likely the dynamics are to work. They can use it to inform, but probably not to prescribe.

I should point out that although this research has been used on a number of occasions to “prove” that game-oriented virtual worlds “need” killers, this is not the case. The model is descriptive, not normative: It shows what will happen if the proportions of player types changes, but doesn’t advocate one over another. If you want achievers but don’t want killers, you can have them; you need to be aware that without intervention the achievers won’t stay long, though. Similarly, if you design a game targeted at killers, it will require a major effort to stop the poor ones from quitting in frustration and the better ones quitting when there’s no one left to bully.

It is important to remember that even if the player types dynamics are functioning and changes are being made with an eye to the categorizations, it may all be worth nothing. External influence can easily overwhelm the model. If the virtual world crashes the whole time, or the customer service representatives are unusually surly, or the price triples, then players have some reason other than lack of fun to consider not playing. If that’s the case, designers should concentrate on high-profile changes of whatever nature they feel is appropriate—anything, so long as it will pull in some players after the problems are fixed. It’s no use trying to balance a player base when there are no players to balance; recover the players, then balance it.

Most of these external effects need only be planned for as contingencies, if at all. There is one, however, with which designers do need to be concerned as it is the very life blood of their virtual worlds: the newbie flow.