Play-Persona: Modeling Player Behaviour in Computer Games

ARTICLE 3 - WAVING EXPERIENCES: PLAY VALUES, PLAY MODES
AND PLAY PERSONAS
Article accepted by the Australasian conference Interactive Entertainment 2007, due to lack of
funding I could not participate.
Abstract
This paper proposes basic procedures and core concepts with the intent of designing single player
action games that without necessitating expensive adaptive technologies allow players to express
themselves.
The method applied is partly inductive, leaning on empirical observations in the QA department of a
game developer studio and partly deductive, deriving concepts, frameworks and core ideas from
established research in user-generated content and player-enjoyment.
The purpose of this research is to draft guidelines and possible pre-production pipelines for level
designers in order to achieve maximum consistency in scope, production values and artistic
expression, and at the same time provide a focused yet diversified players’ experience.
The ideas presented here stem from a co-operation between the renowned game development
studio, IO Interactive, and the design-oriented research institute, Denmark's School of Design.
Keywords
Game worlds, level design, play-values, play-modes, play-personas, player experience.
1 INTRODUCTION
As Sanders correctly pointed out [10] all efforts aimed at engendering defined experiences are
doomed to failure since experiences and emotional responses alike are too individual, subjective
and rooted in people’s past to be able to scientifically aim at re-producing them. Yet today’s
tendency towards mass customization, as shown by Bozek [1] cannot be disregarded by game
creators. A failure to incorporate means for mass customization could risk alienating the large
majority of people that, thanks to the developments introduced by Web 2.0 [14], are becoming
more and more acquainted with the practice of expressing themselves at almost every occasion:
from Myspace to Wikipedia.
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