Play-Persona: Modeling Player Behaviour in Computer Games

Independently on the identity of each player (who), their reasons (why) and the context (how)
behind the choice of using the gun “Desert Eagle” in a game, designers can reasonably expect a
certain set of behavioral responses: due to its range, its reload time and scarcity of ammunitions
among other factors, the behaviour of players will be dictated in large part by the choice of
weapon.
It is exactly through these inscribed affordances that designers can realistically imply players and
provide them with the tools for expressivity that can be used to paint on the canvas of their
experience. Affordances allow a representation of elements not based on the phenomenology of
physical properties but on action-based set of properties [81, 74, 75]. For example “a basketball is
not represented by the features round, orange and rubber, but instead is viewed for its
throwability, its rollability, or its bounceability” [101] since, as Gibson maintained, “all necessary
information exists in the environment” [46].
Inscription is the process that allows artifacts to embody patterns of use. In this acceptation,
artifact can stand for a game object, a rule or a mechanic. It suggests that action is inscribed,
grafted or hard-wired into an artifact.
“Balancing the tight-rope between an objectivistic stance (where artefacts determine the use) and a
subjectivistic stance (an artefact is always interpreted and appropriated flexibly), the notion of an
inscription may be used to describe how concrete anticipations and restrictions of future patterns of
use are involved in the development and use of an artefact.” [4]
Play-personas are clusters of preferential interaction (what) and navigation (where) attitudes,
temporally expressed (when), that coalesce around different kinds of inscribed affordances in the
artifacts provided by designers.
The semiotic gap does not allow designers to try and read player-behaviour as a language to infer
the motivation behind the choices. There is no code, intended as a local rule of correspondence
between two independent worlds, which links players’ in-game behaviour with players’ inner
motivations, emotional states or moods.
Nevertheless Personas, as coherent sets of in-game behaviours and patterns of interaction and
navigation, can be probes used to both design game worlds allowing for a higher degree of
expressive potential and tools to evaluate level of consistency of the game as a system of rules
supported by an appropriate aesthetic canvas.
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