Play-Persona: Modeling Player Behaviour in Computer Games

3.3 Play-persona as a metaphor (a priori)
“Games are facilitators that structure player behaviour and whose main purpose is enjoyment.” [3]
In order to structure play behaviour it is necessary to envision it a priori; play-personas can
represent tools used to carve attractors of behaviour in the game field without forcing a single line
of action (figure 7).
Figure 7: abstract representation of the behaviours a game level can afford; if a hypothetical ball is dropped
on the field it will come to rest in lower areas (pits and valleys). This is the concept of attractors of behaviour:
inner structural consistencies that guide players’ actions without enforcing them.
Players’ behaviour is not structured because the designers were able to predict and describe how all
the many different (and subjective) kinds of empirical players will behave in-game, but because if
the game provides consistent patterns of aesthetic and ludic elements, there is a chance that
players will likely decide to behave consistently, donning one of the masks provided by the game.
Certainly there will be players exerting their right to behave subversively, trying to escape the rule
of designers; but a large number will abide to the cognitive and evolutionary imperative to make
sense of their experience by telling themselves stories about it [99]. In order to cater for a wider
array of player preferences, it is ideal to populate the game with a number of these sense-making
structures by planning a set of consistent but diverse play-personas that not only inform the
selection of the mechanics to include in a game, but also the shape of the game world itself. For
example in the game “Tomb Raider: Underworld” (TRU) [93] designers decided to sharpen and
expand the iconic mechanics of the franchise. Traditionally in fact players were required to develop
considerable navigation skills to reach improbable locations and retrieve treasures. Of course gun
play was part of the equation and the locations were peppered with environmental puzzles, but the
41