Bartle types - from game players to game makers

Very early on in the PhD project, it became clear that participants were approaching game making in very different ways. Some planned carefully, others experimented freely, and some seemed to take particular pleasure in disrupting the expected behaviour of the game itself.

In discussion with fellow PhD candidate John Lean, whose research focused on game playing styles¹, I began to ask whether these differences could be made more visible. Could surfacing maker types (in a similar way to player types) encourage awareness and help celebrate the emerging practices within the community?

This led me to design activities that might help participants reflect on their own identities as game makers, or more broadly as digital designers. I saw potential value here in addressing the risk of internal bias about what a computer programmer should be, echoing the call for pluralism in approaches².

Exploring player types in the room

I introduced a warm-up activity trialled in P2 where participants took part in a physical version of the Bartle Player Test, a framework used to categorise players of multiplayer games based on their preferred play style³. It identifies four main player types: Achievers (motivated by goals and rewards), Explorers (interested in discovery), Socialisers (driven by interaction with others), and Griefers (focused on disruption of other people’s game experience). The test helps game designers understand what motivates different players.

Surfacing identities through play

The process was adapted so players moved to a different quadrant of the room based on their response to the question. The process allowed young people to see how their response differed from that of their parents.

This process celebrated different game playing types and allowed a public sharing of previously hidden gaming preferences, although for some non-gaming parents and children I had to ask them to use their imagination.

Several parents noted that this process gave them great insight into how their child identified within the cultures of the games they played. The process of exploring identity in this way surfaced the pleasure some young people took in demonstrating their playful mischievousness. I began to make journal notes on this subject and to ask whether surfacing maker types (as per player types) could encourage awareness and celebrate the emerging practices that the community was producing.

From player types to maker types

After the results were revealed, I then proposed as facilitator that my observations were that there were different game maker types. I read out the different types and asked them to place themselves in a two-dimensional grid based on their self evaluation of what kind of game maker they were. Other family members were then invited to comment to see if they agreed with this interpretation. This process further highlighted the different ways participants approached making, often revealing a playful and sometimes mischievous relationship to the tools and outcomes.

Glitching, disruption, and dark play

In particular, linking griefing in digital play with similar disruptive practices in digital making, in this case the process of messing with game play conventions in other people’s creations. As an example some players created impossible or overly easy game levels. They appeared aware of implications for game balance but took pleasure in this seeming destruction of the key challenge of the game as an act of disruptive play. Going against this convention is a type of playful destruction in this context. The process mirrors play theory concepts of playing against the game or dark play⁴.

Emerging game maker types

I translated player types to maker types based on notes in my observation journal and extracts from screen capture data. The following list of Game Maker types:

• Social makers: form relationships with other game makers and players by finding out more about their work and telling stories in their game
• Planners: like to study to get a full knowledge of the tools and what is possible before they build up their game step-by-step
• Magpie makers: like trying out lots of different things and are happy to borrow code, images and sound from anywhere for quick results
• Glitchers: mess around with the code trying to see if they can break it in interesting ways and cause a bit of havoc for other users

Participants, particularly older ones, used playtesting as a way of showing support for fellow game makers. Example behaviours included praising graphical content, making links with home interests of participants through questioning, and building rapport.

Maker types as reflective tools

It is worth stating that the reflections on game maker types or styles above are not proposed as exclusive or fixed. This addresses concerns around learning styles models, such as VARK, where there is limited evidence of improved outcomes or stable learner types. Instead, these categories are used as reflective tools and prompts for exploratory activity within the learning design.

Footnotes