According to Bartle, players can be classified into four categories when it comes to gaming;
- Killers – These are the kind of players that like player vs player competitions and thrives on destruction and causing havoc. They also like to be recognized even if it’s in bad form which is why trolls also fall under this category. Simply put, they enjoy beating and taking out other players more than actually winning a game.
- Achievers – These are the type of players that love goals and challenges (can be set by themselves or the game). They are interested in winning the game and receive rewards, points or accomplishments.
- Socializers – These are the type of players that prefer socializing with other players rather than playing the game. They are there for the community and constantly seek player interaction through game forums, clans and/or guilds and they simply love to meet other new players.
- Explorers – Explorers love discovery. They like to get to places where no other or only a few people have been before. They like easter eggs and trying out different ways and means to progress through the game. They are in my opinion the what if players, because they are always coming up with the what if question on how to do things differently in the game and these are the players who find glitches, shortcuts and tricks in the game.
In this week we had to analyze a team mate we were paired up with and list down the player-type personality that the player had while playing the game “Politicks” in relation to Bartle’s player taxonomy. During the game, I took down notes of Paul’s (my team mate) actions of play. They were as follows:
- At first, Paul was mostly interested into getting to know the game better by carefully studying the cards in his hand, which is why he decided to pass twice before making his move.
- Then I noticed that he had a card where he could easily punish any player he liked, which he then decided to use on the player that was winning the round.
- While the round was being played, a player from the group which was at that time in second place, played a card which was going to give him a huge advantage over the group and so Paul used a reaction card to deny him from doing so to disable this from happening, and Paul had the grandest smile. He felt proud and recognized after he achieved an ovation from the others.
- During one of the plays, a player from the group played an event card that undermined Paul’s politician influence points, but soon after, Paul got back his revenge and eventually finished winning the game.
In this case, I would consider Paul to be a killer. Although he ended up winning the game, he was more focused on beating opponents head to head and even at times, while he was playing the game and made a mistake which hindered him from winning, his reactions were : “uwijja mhux xorta”, meaning that he didn’t make a big deal out of it which is not from my perspective an achiever’s way of thinking.
References
Tomek, Jordan (2017). Gamification 101: Richard Bartle Player Types [online] repignite. Available at: https://repignite.com/2014/07/richard-bartle-player-types/ [Accessed 01 May. 2018].
Kyatric (2013). Bartle’s Taxonomy of Player Types [online] envatotuts+. Available at: https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/bartles-taxonomy-of-player-types-and-why-it-doesnt-apply-to-everything–gamedev-4173 [Accessed 01 May. 2018].
Melvin Magro 