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Week 7

What is the implication of player type on game design?

In his article Richard Bartle discusses his four styles of game play. These styles come from the "inter-relationship of two dimensions of playing style: action versus interaction, and world-orientated versus player-orientated" (pg 1). 

1. Achievers- Interested in acting on the world. Want to be immersed in the game environment. These players believe that the point of the game is to master the game and make it do what you want. Achievers are proud of their status in the game. 

2. Explorers- Interested in having the game surprise them, want to interact with the game. The sense of wonder in the virtual world that makes these players crave playing. They believe scoring points is worthless because it defies the very open-mindedness that makes the virtual world unique. Getting as many points as possible is not a explorers main goal. instead they are more proud of their knowledge of the games smaller details. 

3. Socializers- This player is interested in interacting with other players. They want to figure out people get to know them. Socializers are proud of their friendships and contacts within the game.

4. Killers- Interested in doing things to other players. If something gets in the way of their game they don't care of the consequences to others in the game. They only want to demonstrate their superiority over others in the game. Killers are proud of their reputation and fighting skills.

So taking these in mind we can focus more on our question this week. The biggest idea I got from reading the material this week is we can learn a lot about someone from this player quiz. It was interesting when i looked at my results (mostly explorer) I noticed a lot of similarities between my personal life and the explanation in the article. I am not a competitive person and don't really care about scores, or points. It seems the same as my results from the test. 
With this information I think teachers need to realize that when taking into account students player results it can help a lot with classroom management and students interactions in the classroom. The article by Bartle brought up a lot of good points including how we can balance out the negatives from each style of game play to be more in favor of fair and kind play. 
The author also discussed bringing behavior in a game into real life and player interactions. Since these four different game styles have such drastic end goals it can cause conflict within the game. Bartel did a wonderful job explaining and laying out ideas to help each different style get along with each other. 

Bartle, R. (August 28). Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players who Suit MUDs. Retrieved October 10, 2018, from https://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm








Comments

  1. Hi Erika, yes I like your point about "balance", often in my adult training facilitations I have a diverse group of participants and I am often balancing different group characteristics to create a learning equilibrium of sorts that maximizes the train for every one, this does not always go as planned though and definitely take some effort to wrangle back on topic. I imagine it is the same in the classroom...sometime you have a good understanding of the class based on interactions over time. If not it could be useful to create a quick quiz similar to the Bartel to test for player characteristics to get better collaboration for designing a particular gameified activity.

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  2. Erika, you brought up a really good point about grouping students in a way to keep everything balanced. In my classroom, I have to create groups based on personality. I certainly wouldn't want a group of competitive people working together. It sounds like it would be similar to creating groups for gaming.

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