Play-Persona: Modeling Player Behaviour in Computer Games

esearch that dealt with categorizing people starts already with a limited sample: expert MUD users
or MMORPG players. One of the few game-oriented typology systems that seem to adopt a much
broader framework is International Hobo’s Demographic Game Design [5]. Using the widely
supported Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, it truly widens the potential types to the whole mass
market. International Hobo’s next step has been the translation of the MBTI into a more relevant
audience model shrinking the 16 types into 4 types: Conquerors, Managers, Wanderers and
Participants. As Bateman points out this is not the only way the patterns could have been
reordered: according to the perspective adopted they could have been grouped focusing on play
style or skills instead of motivations.
The methodology I propose for this paper is open, deductive, top-bottom: instead of starting with
empirical evidence I have combed what Maslow called “the four forces of psychology” [17] looking
for a theory of personality that can best accommodate for the dynamic aspects of the emotional,
rational and behavioural patterns that contribute creating the personality compound.
This change in the approach is not meant to deny the value of empirical methods; on the contrary,
it is my intention to capitalize on decades of cognitive and personality studies and back up inductive
studies with evidence coming from psychology research conducted on man, the self and
behaviours. Subsequently I will try to evaluate whether any of their findings can be applied to study
player’s behaviour in a game environment: towards a theory of the player.
4.1 Humanistic psychology
It was co-founded in the 1950s by Abraham Maslow as a reaction to the previous two forces:
psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Its focus from the beginning has been man as a whole and not
just his pathologies; subjective experiences of persons have been preferred to forced, definitive
factors that determine behaviour. Free will and self-determination were its key concepts. Maslow
was initially interested in motivation: he noticed how people seemed to be motivated by the same
universal needs even though they find very different strategies and behaviours to gratify them.
According to Maslow "ends in themselves are far more universal than the roads taken to achieve
those ends, for these roads are determined locally in the specific culture. Human beings are more
alike than one would think at first" [22].
Maslow individuated five basic, universal needs: bio/physiological needs, safety needs, social needs,
ego needs, and the needs to find a purpose and actualize the self. In line with the premises set
forth by humanistic psychology he transcended the shortcomings of both psychoanalysis and
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