Facts about Players - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 83

quantify and identify individuals, so you don't waste resources design-
ing for folks who aren't going to like what you're selling anyway. They
will be different for every game project, but rest assured, there is a
game out there you will simply not like based on your personal predi-
lections, no matter how mechanically perfect it might be.
Finally, the last letter of the MBTI deals with how individuals
guide their lifestyle. This section is divided into judging or perceiving .
This determines how people deal with individuals in the outside
world. More important to multiplayer games, this key difference in
individuals determines whether people are more likely to expose
their problem-solving skill or their data-gathering skill. It is some-
what complicated, but individuals who are judgers will show their
problem-solving skills to others in an attempt to resolve interper-
sonal conflicts, whereas those who are perceivers will show the world
their information-gathering skills in order to solve such problems. If
you had to negotiate a raise with your boss, which would you show?
Would you illustrate all the industry data you have gathered on what
your job ought to be worth, or would you show all of the concrete
things you have added to the company? Why does this matter to game
design? This is a tough one and only relates to multiplayer, but the
takeaway is that individuals need to be considered when designing
multiplayer games. World of Warcraft and other MMOs do a great
job of this by allowing users to segment themselves into user roles.
Everyone adds to the team in the way that he or she is personally most
comfortable. This is one of the many secrets to the success of online
multiplayer RPGs.
Every individual player has a whole host of differences. Psychometric
tests like the MBTI allow us to quantify those differences. If you
work for a company, does your company's user research and business
analytics team pre-test its volunteers for what kind of MBTI they
might be? If not, how can they be sure they are not filling a room with
only ENTPs and getting useless data? This is but one of many things
we can do to triangulate our data methods and change our teaching
accordingly. I think this chapter is going to show you that a lot of
difference really does exist between different game players and, as a
result, we are fortunate to have entertained as many people as we have
without considering it.