A Trait Model and Scale of Game Playing Preferences | Karina Arrambide & Lennart Nacke
Channel: GRUX SIG
Date: 2021-05-25

The Games User Research (GUR) community has been collectively studying and classifying player preferences to understand what playing styles and game elements are enjoyed by what people. This knowledge can help designers create games better targeted to their audience, so they can offer their players the content they want; marketers segment their player base, so their campaigns can be more effective; and researchers explain the variables that influence the player's experience and enjoyment. This can also lead to the design of more effective games with a purpose, such as educational or health-related games. But despite the efforts of the community and the recent advances, we still lacked a player preferences model that is backed by empirical evidence and a validated measurement instrument. Given these shortcomings of the existing literature, we created and validated a player traits model with an accompanying measurement scale. Our Five-Factor Player Traits model describes the traits that explain what kind of experiences each person prefers when playing games: aesthetic orientation, narrative orientation, goal orientation, social orientation, and challenge orientation. Additionally, we created a 25-item survey that can easily be utilized to determine the trait scores for an individual. This is the first model based on player traits instead of types, which better captures the full range of individual preferences because it recognizes that individual preferences are a combination of multiple traits, rather than a single type. This talk describes the five-player traits and how they can be used in game design, marketing, and research.

Speakers 
Professor Lennart Nacke (HCI Games Group, Univeristy of Waterloo) teaches User Experience, Human-Computer Interaction, and Game Design at the University of Waterloo. As part of the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, the Department of Communication Arts, and the Games Institute, he is researching player experience in video games, immersive VR environments, and gameful applications. As a truly interdisciplinary researcher, he is cross-appointed and supervises graduate students in the Department of Systems Design Engineering, the Department of English Language and Literature, and the Cheriton School of Computer Science. Together with co-researchers, he published the PXI — player experience inventory, gamification user types hexad scale, guidelines for biofeedback and sound design in games, and a book on games user research. Professor Nacke has served on the steering committee of the International Game Developers Association Games Research & User Experience Special Interest Group in the past, and was the chair of the CHI PLAY conference steering committee from 2014–2018. His publications have won Best Paper Awards at the CHI, CSCW, and CHI PLAY conferences. He has published more than 100 scientific papers, which have been cited more than 10,000 times. He strongly believes in understanding users first to build more engaging games and compelling player experiences.

Karina Arrambide (University of Waterloo) is a Ph.D. student pursuing a degree in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, under the supervision of Dr. Lennart Nacke. She holds an MSc in Information Technology with Business and Management from the University of Sussex in the UK, and a BSc in Information Technology from the University of Monterrey in Mexico. Her main interests include understanding player's behaviors and emotions by applying diverse games user research methodologies, specifically biometrics such as electromyography and galvanic skin response. She is also interested in the research of new methodologies and technologies that can help improve player's experience.

Link
hcigames.com/player-traits

About #gamesUR​ Conference
Games User Research focuses on players’ psychology and their behavior via techniques such as playtesting, analytics, expert analysis, and others. Game User Researchers aim to help game developers deliver players the best gaming experience possible.

The #gamesUR​ Conference is a biannual gathering of the world's top professionals in games user research. For more information visit www.gamesurconf.com.