Designing the Designer

"Designing the Designer" examines whether the personality profiles and player preferences of game design and production students and professionals reveal meaningful patterns about who becomes a designer and how those tendencies shape the games they make. Its central concern is whether the selection and self-selection of people into design roles produces a narrow creative base. The work draws on job-market data from the game industry, a cohort of 135 students at NHTV's IGAD program between 2008 and 2011, and a smaller follow-up survey of 29 students in the same program.

Industry data show design and production roles accounting for 24.9% of game job postings in 2009, down from 28.3% in 2008, while the share of design and producer staff on top-selling titles grew from 11.1% for Donkey Kong Country (1994) to 38.9% for Modern Warfare 2 (2009). Comparing IGAD students against a random sample of more than 6,000 MBTI respondents, the study found strong overrepresentation of INTJ, ENTJ, ENFJ, and ISTJ types and a pronounced Judging bias. However, no statistically significant relationship emerged between personality type and performance in design coursework, so the hypothesis that INTJs make better designers was not supported, though the small design and production samples limited firm conclusions.

The authors' follow-up survey found Role-Playing and Shooter genres dominant among students' preferences, with World of Warcraft the most cited title and the Brainhex "Conqueror" type most common. While the sample was too small for statistical confidence, a possible link between personality type and genre taste suggests developers may design primarily for their own preferences, potentially narrowing the games offered to broader player populations. The study therefore advocates larger, more rigorous research to test these observations.