Collector
There has always been an inherent need in my game style to collect everything and see every bit of content a game has to offer me. Sometimes this need is so overwhelming that I will push through a game I'm not enjoying because I need to check it off my mental to do list. Sometimes I know I won't be able to find everything by myself, so I resort to cheating (I played Assassin's Creed with a map of all flag locations up so I could get them all). I never feel good about that, but it means I won't be bothered at the end of the game when I have 99/100 of something and there's no way to know where it is. The lack of free time that comes with being an adult has gotten me to be able to override the Collector. If I start losing interest in a game, I may be able to ignore side quests and just finish the game because unfinished games are an even bigger problem to me than a beaten, but not completed game. The Collector loves any game with unlockables.
Explorer
I like to go into every nook and cranny of a game and see what hidden goodies I can find. Partly this goes hand in hand with the Collector, but it doesn't always. The Explorer in me likes to get to places I'm not supposed to get to just because I want to see where I can go. This need to explore is precisely why open world games like Skyrim and Dead Island are so dangerous to me. Those worlds are so gigantic that it would take hundreds of hours to explore everywhere, but not exploring somewhere means not seeing an interesting view or getting a bonus item of some sort. The Explorer is also why I never beat Baldur's Gate. I fully explored every single area in the outside world in that game, finally got to Baldur's Gate, and found out it was yet another giant grid of areas to explore...The Explorer loves non-linear games and secret areas.
Strategist
I love being able to take time to assess a situation and figure out the optimal way through this. Min-Maxing (making choices in a game in order to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses) is a crucial part of strategizing. This is another reason I have to do all side quests before I complete any main quests in a game. By the time I get to the main game, I am so powerful that nothing can stop me. In the game, Blue Dragon, the final boss didn't even get to attack my players a single time before I killed him. The Strategist loves turned based RPGs and tactics games most, but strategy can be found many action games as well (do I kill the large, powerful enemy first or all the little weak ones? Which attack works best in this situation?).
Button Masher
I've never been any good at fighting games because when I start to panic (like when my brother has me trapped in a corner in Street Fighter II), I start to wildly push buttons and hope something happens. I also love to just push buttons to see what happens (which is why I think explaining what buttons do in a game is pointless). The Button Masher WILL ALWAYS push the red button that says Do Not Push. The Button Masher works best when the Strategist has had time to analyze the situation because he can direct the Button Masher towards the correct buttons. For example, with nearly any third person action game like God of War or X-Men Origins: Wolverine there are heavy and light attack buttons. The Button Masher will begin mashing these buttons arbitrarily when he sees his first enemy. After a few fights, the Strategist will be able to see patterns of button presses achieve what result and will direct the Button Masher to repeat that button combination in the future. The Button Masher loves any game with combos or interactables.
Problem Solver
I have always had a huge fondness for puzzles. One of the reasons I love programming is the deductive part of code debugging. Trying to figure out what caused a crash, following the trail, and analyzing the data is amazingly fun. The Problem Solver combines with the other parts in interesting ways. Seeing a floating object to collect, the Problem Solver goes in to action to figure out how to get the item so the Collector is appeased. When the aforementioned button combo stops being effective, the Problem Solver goes into action to figure out why this enemy is different from the others and figure out how to stop him. The Problem Solver loves puzzle games and any game situation that makes him stop and think.
Problem Maker
I've always been good at breaking programs. I love doing things that I shouldn't in them to see how it deals with that. The Problem Maker is precisely why I was so good at being a tester for Atari and it's why at work, my co-worker will ask me to break his new system he implemented once he thinks it's complete. The Strategist likes the Problem Maker because he'll find exploits that give the Strategist a bigger advantage. Much like the Explorer, the Problem Maker likes to go places he shouldn't, but mostly because he wants to fall through the world. The Problem Solver and Problem Maker go hand in hand when coding since the Problem Maker gives the Problem Solver something to solve. The Problem Maker is the game designer's worst enemy and his happiness is usually mutually exclusive to the game designer.
I'm sure there are many other categories of gamers (i.e. reasons you play games and you play them how you do) and as noted, these categories tend to go together, so this exercise isn't about pigeonholing your players (a.k.a. customers), but more about assessing their motivations so that you can include something to appease all the different aspects in your games. For me, the ideal combination would be an item that let me jump extra high so I could get to weird locations, hidden down a side path, blocked by a door that has a puzzle involving buttons to solve, followed by a wave of enemies of different types (support, combat, etc.).
"...the Problem Maker likes to go places he shouldn't, but mostly because he wants to fall through the world."
ReplyDeleteHeh. That's exactly what we did in Daggerfall (one of Skyrim's precursors). Occasionally there'd be cracks in the levels that would let you fall through. Usually this was bad (you fell forever and had to reload), but we discovered that with judicious use of the Levitation spell, you could explore the level in safety.
Unfortunately, we never figured out how to get back in the map once we fell out. So the exploit was incomplete.
I have two favorite falling through the world stories. In Mario Kart 64, on Yoshi's Canyon I jumped off the track, under a bridge, and then Lakitu held me under the starting line and wouldn't let go.
DeleteThe other was in an FPS game I was testing at Atari where we were testing a patch of a released game, so there were customers on the servers we were playing against. We got bored, so we jumped under the level like only game testers know how to do, and then kept killing them from beneath where they couldn't get us.