Play-Persona: Modeling Player Behaviour in Computer Games

the roof section, where he/she will find out that it becomes impossible to progress in the game and
finish the level unless he/she changes the course of action.
8 Conclusions
The full scope and significance of the planning operated until now becomes visible only when the
four type-curves described previously are overlaid (figure 9).
FIGURE 9 Synthetic flow
It is in fact in the movement of the player from one type to the other, playing the same game but
in different modes, that the role of the designer becomes clear: he/she is not a mere dealer of
rewards and punishments disseminating challenges and skills for a general undistinguished
“audience” but a crafter, an orchestrator of experiences, a weaver of playing modes.
The player can in fact choose to play other roles, change mode of play and approach whenever the
current line of actions becomes more tedious (or frustrating) than he/she is willing to accept.
I should mention that I exaggerated on purpose the four curves including for each one of them a
segment in the forbidden zone; this was just to show the possibility of forcing the player to change
to a different type and playing mode. It is not necessary to break the flow in such an abrupt way.
This methodology applies independently from the set of past experiences that generated the
subpersonalities since its only concern is the end result. The flow diagram is no longer just a tool
used to evaluate a posteriori the experience of players, but a precious tool in the design phase and
an even sharper, more granular one when comparing goals set in the planning phase and results
achieved by the player in terms of enjoyment.
Nevertheless this model can never substitute the iterative process intrinsic to any successful level
design as it cannot substitute players testing. I feel it is important to stress how this method does
not claim to make accurate predictions on players’ behaviour, but it provides more than an
inspiration or an error proofing tool: it provides a way to plan and design levels thinking concretely
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