Applying the 5 Domains of Play: Acting Like Players

all right welcome back so thank you coming um cool let's get this show on the road this is a really full room holy crap thank you for coming ah my name is Jason Vandenberg I am a creative director at Ubisoft which means that I make problems for a living and I'm here to talk about acting like Clair so I'm gonna get started because I got a lot of stuff to get through so what I'm gonna give you a quick rehash first quick question how many people in this room saw my talk last year on the vault at all okay about half the room maybe a little bit less good all right so I'm gonna do a quick intro for those of you who didn't see that who are going what is this all about for the rest of you you know get on your phones and check your email or something okay big five big five is a structure of human psychology that is being used by academia worldwide I discovered this randomly about two years ago had no idea it existed I was thrilled to find out

about it big five is it's five five different domains open the spooks hello am I getting a do not freak on me PowerPoint yeah there we go okay there we go I was clicking the wrong thing openness to experience conscientiousness extraversion agreeableness and neuroticism the these are five different personality groups if you're experienced in psychological theory you'll be familiar with the sorts of things that these talk about the reason I was excited about this particular model is that inside each of these are actually six what are known as facets and these are far more specific and this means that altogether the system is really thirty different spectrums of human personality and motivation I thought that was pretty cool so what I've been doing is I spent the last two years correlating these and through correlation I mean I have been doing interviews with people asking doing the

big five test and then asking them about their play style what they like in games and I discovered that the correlate your personality test will predict the kinds of games that you like so the five domains of play are the names of the game features that will satisfy people with those motivations so people who are open to experience like gasp new things in their video games I know that that sounds pretty obvious but this work hadn't been done before so here we are um at the end of the talk last year I pointed out that in eroticism which is we'll talk about in a minute was a big question mark it didn't really correlate and I have more data on it didn't correlate at all it didn't seem to in any of my interviews neuroticism was well I'm gonna get to in a minute so that's really all you need to know about the big five right now to understand the rest of the talk that's the intro what have I been doing since last year the answer is pretty simple

more research we're doing more research but this time instead of just qualitative research where I was doing personal interviews we actually started doing some quantitative research as well we have my sisters is a PhD psychologist teacher at the University Washington at DigiPen she has been testing her classes and so we have made big tests and we have been using students as guinea pigs to find numbers to see if these correlations that we found in quality in the qualitative research actually existed so it looks like this we give them the test the the ocean test and then we give them a test that is the five domains test you know do like these types of game played you cetera and what I have now is I have some numbers of correlation they look like this Oh point four to this probably means nothing to you it didn't mean anything to me when when it was first presented to me in correlation a 1.0 is a hundred percent and a zero means none so oh four - that's pretty okay in in social sort of

psychological study terms it's pretty good it's not great it means there's some noise in the data but it's okay three to seven five one to eight that's low we need to fix that and then neuroticism came in at a whopping 0.15 this is precisely the same kind of results that the other guy who's done big five research discovered it was Nicki who did a big world of work after a study found pretty much the same thing so neuroticism doesn't jive what the hell is going on with that this is where every war at the end I'm gonna quickly answer this question and then we'll get into the meat of the talk neuroticism it reflects the tendency to experience negative emotions a high score in neuroticism is Woody Allen who is like but everything sucks every time something goes bad and a low score is obi-wan Kenobi who meets his death like this yeah okay bring it on it's cool I'm

cool with that okay the problem that I had in my test was that in my conversations is that I would ask these people with high scores what are your favourite games and they would tell me resident evil I don't say bright oh cool that makes sense you'd like that you're freaky you get freaked out easily right so cool that makes sense and then I would ask the people with the low scores and they would say yes Resident Evil okay that makes sense because yeah you don't normally experience intense emotions and so you like the WoW help doesn't predict what game you're going to buy this was the problem that we left on neuroticism with I still called this domain threat since that seemed about right turned out to be about right we solved this problem here are the six facets of neuroticism anxiety anger hostility depression they're all the things that you would think they would be based on these things and what I realized this year in a conversation with one of my with my game designer Pat Harris who he was throwing out ideas about how to solve this thing he pointed out that we already have a name for one of these anger hostility means that when

something goes wrong you freak out really I have no idea what that's like I don't do that ever we have a word for that okay we know about this I had to stop playing racing games because I broke my seventh controller and yeah it's bad so we know about this when people experience anxiety they will stop playing a game because of intimidation when people who are have a tendency towards depression will quit their game based on despair if you played a triple town you had the experience of I've had this fantastic game and it's gone on for a week and a half and then I lose and I go back I put it away and then I always come back of course I always come back I love Triple Town thank you Dan thank you judgment addiction hurt these are reasons why you're right so threat the

domain of neuroticism is a guide to the designer to explain why people will stop playing a game that they are otherwise enjoying it's a warning it's a warning even if you do everything else right and you get them to buy it and you put all the right features in there if you if they're neurotic type people if they have high scores in here they're going to stop playing even though they like it so that's cool and it's enough for me today because I'm for my purposes it's not really the part of the psychology that I'm studying right now so let me go and what for the purposes of this talk I'm going to take that one out because I'm more interested in talking about appeal right now on a focus the conversation appeal but for those of you who attended the talk last year I kind of left it as an open question I felt that I was obligated to then provide the answer so that was Ruby Gunn so we're gonna take that one off we're just going to talk about these four openness to experience conscientiousness extraversion and agreeableness okay so

since they'll talk that I gave I've had this problem I keep asking I keep getting asked this question in worked on farcry 4 farcry 3 that was a moment that I remember vividly I was going to give this the talk I gave last year I was walking across the floor and the producer shows up named Dan hey you know Dan Dan is about 6 foot 4 news and I'm like hey Dad I'm going to GC when the this presentation and he says oh yeah on what human psychology blah blah blah blah blah and then goes well what's it good for I was like ah now it actually had this conversation many many many times since then but it was really the conversation with Dan that stuck in my head because he's really terrifying as a person and he's a good guy but what's it good for what's it good for dan look here's the deal I have these

spectrums of personality and I can tell you if your game satisfies these bands of motivation right if your game kind of kind of covers those area and then you test the gamer and their scores fit in the inside those things then they're gonna like the game Dan and then if they're outside I can I can tell you that they're not gonna like the game isn't that cool so what what's it good for the implication of course being that I'm spending Ubisoft's money on this so I had to answer this goddamn question and I am I hope you don't think it's bragging when I tell you that it took me only 12 months and about 17 versions of the presentation to accomplish my answer it was a bit of a chore so here is my answer to the question and this is my answer to the

question for what psychology of all kinds is good for this is not the big five okay I believe that it's only good for one real thing there are many things that we can talk about in terms of statistics and you know gathering and player modeling and all of that thing but in terms of making the game there's only one thing that this actually helps us with developing accurate empathy developing accurate empathy and we devalue this because it is not a checklist that's cool I'm putting that aside here's the thing our gamers when we begin in our experiences right we start out in kind of this maybe if we're Lamarr Yan we're like haha nerd he likes video games right what the hell right and then as we get into the business we slowly evolve and we start to realize okay we have to understand how this gamer is thinking how do we do this what are they what do they want what do they want from us and the job of the designer the job of the designer is to develop accurate empathy

is to be able to understand what is going on inside of not just your head not just the head of the guy next to you but all of your players in best case best case all of your players all of your players I'm gonna hit that a point one point one more time because there was a second guy who asked me an important question that I thought needed answering why am I doing this why why have died done this for two and a half years why have I been chasing this why am i standing up here is it just attention to I just want to feel important it's not here's the problem all gamers hopefully these will be my players now the issue is when I begin designing the game these are the players I understand I get these guys right but the variation in human kind means that these guys are ones that I wants to understand but I do not naturally and my problem is my goal is that if you pay for my game you set

the controller down satisfied regardless of who you are if I if you saw the poster and you bought this thing I want you to go away satisfied if you walked into the theater with a ticket god damn it it's my obligation to entertain you that's the Covenant that's what we've agreed to do but I don't understand all of you guys so develop accurate empathy this is my role this is my task this is my job as a designer develop accurate empathy so I can understand a broader swath of humanity the problem is that's actually a really nice way of saying a completely different thing we all have bias and this gets in our way as a designer Robert McKee is a script writing teacher he said a fantastic thing he says if you're a writer and this applies to designers you it's okay

for you to go through your life and believe lies and misunderstand human beings and not confront the truth that's ok but if you're a writer or a designer you are obligated to live truthfully and to design truthfully because your audience wants truth that's what they want so you have to overcome your personal bias it's hard but we have this tool and I'm gonna show you now how this works so how do we overcome personal bias you go take the test let's imagine that you go when you take the big five test this is your scores bang bang bang big bang actually you're gonna get more numbers than that but just for the purposes of this let's say those are your scores okay what you're gonna do is you're going to invert those scores you're gonna flip them around okay reverse them those are your empathy blind spots okay those are the parts of

humanity that you do not naturally understand your job as a game designer is to go and fill those blind spots fill them in with data however you possibly can at this point you've got the whole message of the talk if you're welcome to go that's that's my entire message really fill your empathy blind spots okay now I have a tool that I've built to make it easier for you because it's kind of a pain in the ass okay it's really hard it's really hard to do and I have a technique that I randomly I don't know if invented is quite the right word stumbled on it's called player acting I call it player acting so I think said Mike Mike Mike caps fixed the fix the name it's better player acting learn to play as though you were someone else I'm gonna tell you how I did this tell you the story about how I learned to player act when I was a young designer way back

when we were making games out of sticks in each other's you know femurs I was working at a large multinational corporation that was very different from the large multinational corporation that I work at now and I attended this this conference in fact and I encountered for the first time in my life several fascinating theories the Bartle types first of all who's familiar you guys familiar with the bobber pipes all yell did did not raise your hand take a picture of this go and look at the web site and read his paper and dig in and learned that hey Bartle types fascinating for different player types right explorers achievers socializers killers I'm not going to go into detail but the problem that I had was killers killers in the Barbic the barbel type are hunting down other players to try and make their experience less fun they're trying to troll you I do not understand I don't get this why why would you ever do such a thing I don't get it I don't

have it in me okay nicole lazzaro stuff guys know nicole is our stuff for fun keys yes again homework for you that's where the reason I put the link on the bottom for fun keys the emotions of play okay this is great stuff this talks about the feelings that we have when we were having fun right I found it incredibly inspiring curiosity relaxation fear oh and amusement people fun Nicole's up there and she's talking about people fun this is the fun that you have with other people I don't understand this I explained this to me I grew up in my you know my basement bedroom making D&D modules for myself so other people make my game less fun why what's I don't get it Mark LeBlanc eight kinds of fun he had this list of different types of fun that he described one of them was called submission game

as a mindless pastime and I knew immediately I was like yes that's really cool but how do I explain this to people because everyone say what works not fun yes it is but no it's not okay so this is my problem how do I learn all this how do I make sense of this and this was in the dark ages so but fortunately I was working at a large multinational corporation and they had this thing called the IRC information this is not an actual photograph of the IRC that is not actually me but it was kind of like that the IRC contained every video game that had been released roughly of Merit over the last ten years and since this was won in 1874 you can imagine that the games were you know there was a lot of them and I was thinking about how I could do this and it just struck me okay how about if I just try it how about if I just play these games as though I were those types that I don't understand what if I just faked it what would happen okay so I picked an

archetype I pretended to play as that archetype for a single session and then the next session I would pick a new archetype now of course given that I am Who I am and I am in the high achiever category I went through the entire library alphabetically and played every game that they had over the course of two and a half years so it's a little extreme it's not actually necessary for you to go that far and I can tell you that if you do this and this is my pitches that you do or something like it play games that you don't like that's really the pitch if you do this you're gonna find this less fun than it sounds okay to get a sense of that imagine going to even zoo you know the game store right and just starting at one end of the shelf and playing all the way through to the other end you're gonna play a lot of games that are not very good that weren't really done and that aren't in your genre right so I had to make a couple of rules for games a week

per minimum had to force myself to play at least four games a minute for four games for a minimum I gave myself one hour of play time was required and if I saw a new thing if I had a new insight while playing I would force myself to play another hour and then I was on my Oberon own recognizance okay so those are the rules one hour and then if you learn something keep going alright well what did I learn well first thing I was a quaint guy okay I really like the the fast type of real shooters and I got to tell you it was World War two shooters pretty cool took me a while to learn that but that's okay because I would play it after the seventh World War two shooter that I played in a row I started to understand that instead of those guns feeling kind of heavy and clunky and kind of baggy bang and weird right I started to realize that it was the same gun I had seen in every game and instead of understanding that that

was a bad thing I began to understand that that familiarity was its own form of fun realism is not boring who knew I had no idea he was a bit of a revelation and now I actually play these games second thing I played everything with Barbie in the title okay and if you only do one thing I recommend that you do that because it's gonna teach you a lot that you did not know about horses okay okay they are a really big deal and they're really cool actually they're pretty it's pretty neat it's no I'm just gonna leave that there and move on but serene does not necessarily mean boring right riding through the forest you know on a wild stallion does not necessarily mean that

the game is not exciting lastly who do the Sims is fun I got badly hooked actually I'm but I would never have played this game because I'm a story guy I'm a D&D I love setting world context all of those things and I saw the Sims and I was like it's a dollhouse why I do I what why would I want to do that well now I get it because it's a dollhouse see it's cool you make your own story right no story does not necessarily mean boring okay so hopefully by now it's all clear that is the technique it's just that player acting for developing accurate empathy that's cool took me two and a half years hopefully it wouldn't take you that long question need to answer is which games which games which motivations right what do we play what's a faster way to do this right fortunately we have this cool map we have a map we have a correlated scientifically validated whoa scientifically validated map that

connects game mechanics to player personality type so let's take a look at that map fasten your seat belt this is gonna get a little technical okay that was let's do this alright what I'm gonna do is I'm going to build a grid I'm gonna put novelty the openness factor here I'm gonna put challenge here I'm gonna put stimulate here and I'm gonna put harmony here okay this is what we're gonna do we're gonna build a map these are those four categories that correlate with people's preferences we've left and raw system to the side do this so we're gonna fill these up with information that helps you guys understand and sort of practice the idea of what these all are remember as we're going through this everyone has scores and everyone every game has value in all four categories right this is a four way score okay okay how did I get

here so I had to cross over an important problem I mentioned at the very beginning that each of these domains is actually six individual facets so of course this is a this is exactly what we want we want 24 individual things that you have to measure memorize right isn't that perfect 24 different um no this is not what we want so I spent a good part of last year trying to figure out how to reduce this right and I came along came across the following question I want to ask myself other primary motivations for gaming the question that I would ask in my test is what feature would make you put the controller down what feature will make you stop playing this game right that's an example realism or fantasy people would generally say yes people who like realism tend to not want to play the pendency games people who play the fantasy games tend to not want to play the realism games but if I say artistry artistry beautiful graphics there are a lot people like beautiful graphics

people like you know the technical accomplishment but they don't tend to put the controller down for that you don't tend to buy a game because it's the great graphics genre right so I made that distinction with my with my test subjects and in that process my 24 went to eight it's pretty cool actually yeah pull them right out so now I have two per domain building a map trying to build a tool so here they are realism versus fantasy building versus exploring and if you're interested in how these correlations actually work that was in the talk last year so it's in the vault and it's etc this is what that talk last year was all about so I'm not going to go into too much detail easy versus hard work or grinding or sort of effort to play doing the same thing repetitive versus impulse play chasing thing doing everyone groups versus solo thrilling versus Saran versus serene PvP versus team or group

dynamic we'll talk about that one in a minute and then context versus mechanics so a lot of the thirty facets of the Big Five these appear to be the eight primary motivations that correlate with the following elements of games that mean the most to your players in terms of wanting to be satisfied so this gives us a map to gamers brains maybe now I'm not saying that the other facets don't matter they do and that was the whole point of the previous talk so I'm trying to simplify this to create a tool for to help guide us forward so now we have two facets we have two spectrums per quadrant there and of course me being a designer and a old programmer I know exactly what to do with this we're going to turn them into graphs yes yes Oh glorious Oh so the day that this popped into my head I was like happened in fact

there may be some selection bias here I'm going to admit to that because it's it's a little bit too elegant right it can't possibly be that clean alright so I'm just gonna cop to that okay so I'm gonna go through each one of them quickly novelty fantasy north/south fantasy versus realism and exploration versus building it's weird that exploration and building are opposed to each other but I can tell you in my test they seem to be there are people who want to do both there I'm not saying that the extremes are all that matter in fact each of these are is a bell-shaped curve of distribution across the population okay so most of the people are going to be kind of in the middle but the opinion the people who have a stronger scores like on the real on the sides tend to be more interested in that that has to be really important to them okay so our fantasy Explorer our fantasy Explorer is Alice in Wonderland okay we'll go right down the rabbit hole after anything she will drink anything she comes across right totally sigh to go wherever she goes right she might

kind of complain about it a little bit but you know our realism Explorer is going to be Sherlock Holmes Sherlock who is always after the real truth the actual events right under this 50 fantasy furry know that our realism builder is going to be Samwise Gamgee who after the greatest adventure of all time just really wanted to go home and garden that's really all he wanted to do is go home and then our fantasy builder is going to be Tony Stark or who will who is happy to make everything in the stark tower that doesn't exist that's really his main focus as I mentioned all of the non existing things so what do these people want to play so these are our four archetypes and again I'm giving you a guide do you get that but just to be totally clear these are guides to understanding these people people who have scores in these quadrants tend to identify with these characters that's the idea so what do they play what do

they play what does Alice in Wonderland play play Skyrim right and I gotta tell you if you're going to play Skyrim is Alice in Wonderland you don't get to fight very much okay what you have to do is get off the roads you have to fill up the map you have to go for the found 500 things achievement okay explore the world Sherlock Holmes is a big fan of Phoenix right objection he is on to the truth realism Explorer this is also a way of indicating that exploration does not necessarily only mean going over the hill it can be exploring an idea it can be investigation right those things Sam is a big fan of a no not the 2070 version right the historical version right where you're where you're where you're constructing a real colony and the more realistic it is the better right that's that's what Sam likes to play and then

Tony Stark likes to you know play Starcraft 2 Starcraft 2 only single-player however only single player because multiplayer is a completely different experience the fantasy builder and the Starcraft experience is I sit on my base and I collect all the heart and I build all the way through the whole tech tree and then I explore that area but it's the same kind of map right I'm really not going anywhere I'm building I'm not exploring that's what Starcraft attracts those kinds of players a couple of more example just to give you an idea that not everything goes on the on the top if you were just to talk about pure fantasy games but with exploration and building in it minecraft is a great example of that and for the exploration side realism is gonna be Madden right realism is a game that both Sherlock and Sam can agree on okay so so I'm gonna put that

there okay that's quadrant one done and you can see where this is going so I told you this fashion you seatbelts okay quadrant two challenge which deals with our ability to control our impulses okay so a skilled skilled play is our north/south axis less skilled plays on the bottom and I say less skill because I don't mean suck okay that's that's not what I mean ah I forgot to do something I'm gonna go back for just a minute I forgot an important step here we over we skipped an important step I want to do okay quick test fantasy versus realism fantasy excellent realism look around look around the population of the human race is evenly distributed games industry is not that's important information for you

exploration versus building explorers wood this is explorers you want to go over the hill first not that you don't want to build but you want to go over the hill first builders I would rather stay and build my farm first more evenly distributed not surprising yeah we tend to agree on that and we don't criticize the builders versus the exploration game do we we sure do criticize the realistic ones though that's my little guilt trip for those okay and I'm gonna roll forward onto oh okay so we're gonna do it again skill to play versus less skilled play so hard players hard and normal if you hit a hard spot you're gonna keep pushing through you like the challenge of playing a difficult game you nicely done all right okay let's skilled players you're gonna try it but you know if it gets too hard you're gonna move on find something more fun a little bit evenly distributed okay but more hit hard more hard players why because working in the games industry is hard

okay that's why don't forget that work play on one side this is grinding I'm happy to do that it's the quest in the Barrens where you like please go find 300 boar tusks that one Hey work play impulse play is I want to do this thing and this is fun I'm over here right okay so work players work players for players grinders no it's okay okay okay impulse impulse players slight misbalance they're just gonna point that one out and what else do we criticize grinding we hate it we don't understand it do we we don't get why people would ever do it that's why we don't understand okay alright so skilled play worked who's our skilled work player this is Hermione Granger the master err hey Rob G of obvious reason she's the one we always go to when we need a plan we need to get something done she's the only one who knows anything any of these

spells be less skilled to play but still persistent grinder you're not very good at it but you're willing to do the work and continue and persist up or roll for Ron it's really oh it's brutal persever r is not a word by the way I just made that up if anyone has a better idea I will take care advice after the talk um the less skilled play impulse player right this is someone who is not very good at games and really just wants to keep this is bad mo the guy who's downloading all the demos and just trying to pound right that's the dude okay okay if it fits doesn't it yeah he's just he's just on the PSN network downloading everything and trying him for 30 minutes and I was like oh good it and then play something else it's very satisfied with his life though he's happy with that right okay and then the impulse player who the the player who comes in with a high degree of skill

and talent but doesn't want to work very hard to get it right just wants to keep going after that well that's gonna be Harry bill Harry the talent now I actually had a version of this slide where all four characters were Harry Potter characters and I there was a protest so but Arry Potter is the one okay so what are these what are these guys play what are these guys play Hermione as it turns out as a big fan of Dark Souls yes yes oh yes the harder the better n+ plunder game + + in fact has all the weapons whereas Ron is really more of a farm bill guy because you don't have to be very good at games to play farm bill right now that is not a criticism I am level 68 in farm bill yeah I want that time with my life back ok the dude are our less skilled player is a big fan of the sins and if you're

going to play the sims in this way in order to understand this character you have to play with the all money cheat ok no effort you just this is where you get you've give yourself a billion simoleons and you just do whatever in the hell you want to into your board with that ok it is that style of play it is not all of the quests and the goals and all of that stuff that satisfies the other side and specifically what we're talking about and then Harry with his impulse killed play he really just wants to be Dante double make reigai wow I'm awesome they both agree on Super Meat Boy though cuz that someone's hard right you can kind of go as you like and then if you want to play a game that is just about you know lows low skill play please a little startling Star Wars it's fantastic fantastic game really really great ok ok so I'm gonna put that one there those guys like those games that's to stimulation stimulation deals

with um stimulation so it deals with two factors north-south is multiplayer versus solo play at the high end of the score this is people who enjoy raids you know forty or forty person groups are okay and prefer to play with four or five people that's usually the the kinds of numbers that you get for the people with high score in that and solo of course are like people why are there people in my game so multiplayer multiplayer group flares people who like other people I would have a few ads there weren't there yeah you guys are in the middle you guys this course solo players me to look around boy there's a lot you know why yes you know why because we didn't have any friends okay but this is why we're trying to solve this problem why it's hard for us to understand multiplayer okay excitement versus serenity it's exactly that it's boom

crap [Music] excitement players excitement players you like the thrill the roller coaster serenity serenity players what more evenly split but still as missing once again not surprising it fits our expectation yeah we like excitement because being in the games industry is really hard okay so our multiplayer excitement player okay likes lots of people and loves having a good time yeah that's gonna be awesome powers uh yeah baby okay for obvious reasons our excitement solo player that the person who loves to have a great time but really wants to just go alone well we know this guy that's the lone wolf that is uh that is Wolverine that is Wolverine absolutely the solo serenity player the player who wants to just play quietly by themself alone on their own swamp planet is Yoda Yoda midday I'm not gonna finish

it okay I'm done done with that serenity serenity multiplayer I like to play with people I love people people the most important thing but I really just wish we could all just have a peaceful environment that's gonna be professor and professor X right now I point out that this I use this as an example to say that serenity does not necessarily mean won't kick your ass right just means that he would prefer to not kick your ass first right okay so what games are these guys play turns out Austin Powers is big Cody then multiplayer only multiplayer only right but he's also a big fan of a whole other genre which also it come fits completely in the excitement in the excitement category which is just dance oh yeah oh yeah party game perfect so he's he split on those right Wolverine also a big fan of Call of Duty single-player only okay and

if he ever tries the multiplayer mode he's playing alone right he sees maybe Johnny bad okay uh Yoda a big fan of flour it's perfect gentle serene single-player experience the words in the B's serenity multiplayer a gentle calm game that involves other people that's a tough one second life maybe but it's kind of I mean I don't mean that it's a bad way I'm you know I'm all for it but still maybe animal crossing okay maybe if you're playing with friends and so if you want to learn how to play you want to learn how Professor Xavier likes to play you got to play Animal Crossing but you got to play with your friends man you got to get a set it up so y'all living in one town or something okay I often them people often mentioned journey and this one right and journey is right in the middle it's really out

it's between solo and multiplayer and it's only ever two people okay so don't don't don't confuse co-op for multiplayer they're different they're actually different things okay so I'm gonna put that there those guys like that game one more to go do pretty good harmony harmony harmony deals with social interaction how do we interact with each other the rules of engagement is so to speak so team and PvP team actually is not always it's not just team deathmatch although it is team deathmatch I find that people who like to play multiplayer competitive games will play this game and team deathmatch but it's also I just want to feel that my contribution is part of a larger contribution working with other people whereas PvP people want you to lose okay once you win that way so team team players I love you you're my people pvp pvp oh yeah okay steve maretskiy is a pvp player I'm not surprised okay PvP players alright it was a fewer of

those than is often common it must be because of the psychology interest I don't know maybe you're a nicer bunch unis that's my bias coming out by the way I think team is important context versus mechanics this one is really this was really hard to find effect this is this is the difference between I want to understand how the game and what's important to me is that we're playing the rules and that's all I care about I care that I win or lose and I care about the way that that system works context is I care about why what's the world what's the people what's happening right what's at stake right it's tough this is a tough one it's tough one okay so the question and the question to ask you ask yourself is is if if the if your favorite game that has a story I'm not going to go through that anyway you guys are going to figure it out context context people mechanics people pretty evenly split not

surprising not surprising that's consistent games industry okay so who are our people team versus context a team context player someone who wants to know why right and someone who's all about the team and positive that's gonna be Mickey Mouse okay Mickey is always interested to hear what's going on with you it's all good and I'm specifically talking about the Kingdom Hearts - Mickey Mouse by the way who's a badass I don't know if you've played that game but King Mickey man I would not want to cross that guy but he'll come roaring to your defense context PvP one versus one players who want to make sure that the other guy goes down but cares very much about what's at stake and why that's gonna be the Jedi there are many Jedi that could fit this slot but of course I picked qui-gon jinn because he wears his hair the same way that I do it makes him instantly more noble yes he's actually the gray side of the forest qui gonn that's why I like it uh

PvP and just mechanics don't care why don't care why I just want to beat you up really I just want an excuse to kill you call me snake snake Plissken who in order to care about a single human being had to have explosives planted in his neck tied to that person's heartbeat and it was a President of the United States I would remind you snake listen he still him at the end right oops I swore in the States okay [Applause] this guy's plays Far Cry 3 mechanics mechanics team team players who just want to get the job done and don't actually care that much about why they really decided that's gonna be Nick Fury hi who is all about the team all about the world all about what we're doing right but actually what's at stake it's good to know and he knows it but really it's all about getting it done executions soldier sport night killer soldier so what do they play man so Mickey's a tough one and at the end of the day here is that here is what I

have learned team context people tend to fall in two categories but that's really the same game with or without real human beings RPGs and then RPGs in an MMO setting and you can look at the extraversion the stuff I remember multiplayer versus solo to find out which one of these are going to fall into right but in an RPG we are doing a thing generally right and if you don't like other people you have all these fake people that we are doing things with which is great I love them this is why I played them all um okay context PvP I want to hunt you down and kill you but I want to understand why that's gonna be Eve online okay great setting can you imagine qui gonn playing Eve it's really easy for me I really can I really it's not it's not much of a stretch PvP mechanics on PvP versus mechanics it's gonna be quick quick 3 arena ryeol deathmatch not team

deathmatch real deathmatch right 1v1 one winner that style of deathmatch that is all snake plays and that's right that's awesome what he does and then team where the mechanics are really the whole thing and really just playing the game it's gonna be League of Legends Nick is a gigantic League of Legends fan he's you know he's level 30 and he's moving up in the leaderboards and but he does curse a lot he really is getting downloaded a great deal okay top sort of context sort of team games LittleBigPlanet pvp pure PvP games is gonna be like Street Fighter he's a kind of example that they could agree on okay I'm gonna put that there okay that's it that's my chart that's what I've done that's the work last year of my frickin life um that in the game that I'm working on okay so Dan hey remember Dan hey I'm Dan hey hey I'm Dan hey I love Dan it by the way I'm he's gonna murder me if he sees this talk but I do love him I love you

Dan please don't kill me uh what's a good bore well Dan we all have these in bethey blind spots you see we have these spots in our brain where we don't naturally understand other human beings and because we're designers that's not okay we're not allowed to live our life that way it's just not cool so we have this map it shows us about all the different types of humanity and that the book it's specifically what they care about the most in games as a place to start it's a place to get sorted there's more detail in here and you can use other psychological systems and right there's lots of it but this is you know I'm trying to boil it down to a place to start so as an example if I were to take my scores this is me I am a I am a twenty Stark Hermione Granger Wolverine Mickey Mouse I'm kind of a badass

right and the thing is it's actually really true it's really I when I see these cards I'm like yeah actually that's really how I play I play like those people I really do so that's me that's me that is the reduction of the most important facets of the big five into a single four by four chart that indicates 16 player archetypes so that if Tim Schafer ever decided to make a game for me and I sure hope he does he's hey does yes he will understand me help me develop accurate empathy the important part in that little grid are not the colors to the blank spots the blank spots are your guide to your homework should you choose to accept it please do make us a better industry so those games play those games like those people remember player acting play those games like you were those people play

those games as though you were those people play these games as though you were those people if you want to understand stimulation if you want understand harmony play these games as those people there are other games I recommend you play good and bad ones in fact I learned more from the bad ones I do from the good ones ok so I have 256 player types for you memorize all thing is it doesn't actually matter player types it so it's a mnemonic for us to kind of begin to memorize right and the point is that number 256 it begins it begins to feel right to me as an estimation for the kind of variety that I see in this room and the kind of variety that I understand in my daily life and the kind of variety I see in the human species okay it isn't enough for us to be designing our games from from small selections and large divisions it's it works I'm not saying don't do it I'm not I put those other

models in there because they Revere the people who have who have done them right they are also useful because they are talking about things that divide nicely into four things but if you want to understand human being as a grace as a species right if you want to understand that you need to have a number kind of like that hundred more than a hundred types because we are an incredibly varied group there are things we agree on and this is where I'm going to be going in the future there are things that we agree on self-determination theory is a great example of the kinds of motivations that we all have mastery we all want to get better autonomy we all want to be free cetera relatedness we want to know where we are but that's for later so this is a map to help you develop accurate empathy so that you can make good gains so that I can play them okay so what's next what's next for me more focused quantitative study the studies the numbers that I gave you were done at the at the domain level the studies that we

did was just a rough shot to see if there was any validity to the theory there is validity to the theory so I'm gonna continue to do to drill down and create tests that validate more more deeply and the other one remember this question what's it good for I've started hitting this new question because now people I think I'm excited because I get positive feedback people are starting to use it they're excited about it but I start getting asked this other new weird question well are you using it on your game are you using it on your game yes I am I am going to use this on my game but here's the thing so are you everyone's doing this we all use this every day this is not a checklist it's not a tool psychology will not be that it's not going to be something that's going to be proven ok I'm not going to give you a tool that you can just say yep I should use the big five and my sales will go up not gonna happen doesn't work that way psychology human psychology developing empathy is a way of improving you as a designer and you

as a better designer will naturally make your game better does it work of course it works of course it works you can do what I've done with any psychological theory of Merit ok it's they all count my message is develop your cuz it's your job yuge you took the entertainer's covenant you owe it to your audience to understand them and you can choose to not I will preempt the first question that I know I'm going to be asked which is well isn't this just a checklist in order to make sure that you can cover the whole basis make every game the same no it's not I'm giving you the tools to choose who you want to make your game for so that you're not making that choice accidentally you're randomly which is the danger that's when you fail is when you accidentally make a game for a different group than you wanted to

that's my talk thanks for coming we've got about 10 minutes for Q&A please fill out your your reviews for the thing I please that you're gonna get an email throw it up you know stuff please tell them that I was terrible and then you know I won't come back and you should turn off all your cell phones because it'll mess with my microphone I should have said that before that was uh dang okay so Q&A go right in the mic thank you yes thank you so much this is really informative I loved all the list of games you had I have a feeling there's about 10 billion more games and you just listed yes do you have like a more extensive list or have you thought about crowdsourcing out like hey help me identify all these games because I don't have time you don't so that is actually in fact I asked my Twitter I'm trying to figure out Twitter and Brian Greene said

said actually um it was Brian his wife Koster he said he said you know what you should do is you should ask Twitter about games for all of your types so yes I think it's a brilliant idea this is my initial list I just wanted to have a template to get you guys started but I would love to to see it go wider get about longer lists okay thank you for the talk was amazing um have you done any research into the proportions of players that fit into those different categories so it the proportions of humanity that fits into those categories is that it's 25% in each category because that's how the Big Five was built the big five was built to be a standard distribution across all people across all populations which is why I'm so excited about using it as a foundation for this research right because we know right from the get-go that that's humanity as far as players go don't have any data on that right now I would love to that would be a really cool study right literally super neat yeah so we're that would be cool like you could do that in fact we do you have

any tips for turning off the designer portion of your brain in order to do this research because I've every time I play a game I sit down and go I can't beat this puzzle and I go wait think like a designer up there it is and so drink okay play drunk yeah okay actually not kidding so hey and just distract yourself in a variety of ways play with the radio on I don't know yeah and practice practice practice practice you just get better at it as you do it I thought I was hard at first and it gets easier it's a skill it's actually a skill and it's a skill that I continue to do I continue to practice so it's a it's a long-term study yeah but drinking first it's a great place to start absolutely I I advocate that thoroughly okay we're good thank you all take care [Applause]