Play-Persona: Modeling Player Behaviour in Computer Games

In order to be able to take action based on this data it is necessary first to present it in ways that
humans can understand, and that is the role fulfilled by visualization. Afterwards, it is necessary to
apply some semiotic lens capable of making sense of the data as a whole and to synthesize it in a
report. The beauty of a heat map is that it both provides an understandable visualization of the
data and a lens to extract meaning from it, but in order to turn that knowledge into action it still
requires analysis. My contribution to this scenario is a possible way to give meaning to metrics data
by grouping similar types of recorded play-behaviours. These groups individuate existing play-
patterns, they can be planned and wanted by the designers or emerge accidentally due to the
affordances provided by the game. I call these patterns Play-Personas and they constitute the core
of a theoretical framework that can both guide designers in the selection of interesting variables to
monitor (a priori metaphor) and provide ways to make sense of the gathered metrics (a posteriori
lens).
In the domain of Human-Computer Interaction, Alan Cooper defines personas as: “detailed,
composite user archetypes that represent distinct groupings of behaviors, attitudes, aptitudes,
goals and motivations observed and identified during the research phase [of product design]” and
they often take the form of narrative description of user types.
Play-personas are both theoretical models of ideal users and data-driven representations of player
behaviours.
3 Persona as metaphor
A metaphor is a rhetorical device that allows to describe something unknown by transferring
attributes from a known entity. Metaphors are utilized before the accumulation of experience, in a
similar way personas allow designers to “imply” unknown player behavior in the process of creating
digital games, i.e. by pre-defining the ideal play-patterns possible in the game in question and
design to accommodate these. It is the case in Hitman: Blood Money, where players can choose
between different identically optimal strategies to progress in the game. Play-personas as design
tools represent an expectance of how players would like to create their experience.
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