Why Don't People Play Games - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 62

Let's go through them in a little more detail:
• Conquerors: People who want to win and beat the game.
• Managers: Looking for strategic or tactical challenges.
• Wanderers: Looking for a fun experience.
• Participants: Participating, joining in, very story - oriented.
Of these by far the most common type are wanderers, followed by managers, con-
querors, and participants, in that order. International Hobo's methodology is described
in some detail in the article as are the player types and their genre and game choices.
Interestingly, participants are the most common type in the population at large
but the smallest in not only International Hobo's research but also that of Richard
Bartle. People who did not play games were excluded from both surveys, deliber-
ately in the case of the former. Putting this together with XEODesign's four emo-
tional keys we can see that participants may well be the people who enjoy people
fun and serious fun and want their fun—and their gameplay—rooted in the real
world. If the game industry is to attract far more of the potential audience it needs
to attract participants in great numbers, which seems to have been achieved with the
nongamer-friendly technologies of the Nintendo Wii and DS, not to mention quiz
style games such as Buzz on the Xbox 360.
The largest group in the International Hobo survey, wanderers, are people who
“want a game to dream with.” They aren 't interested in fi nishing a game for the sake
of it and will stop playing a game if they stop liking it. Games shouldn't be too hard
or challenging and relaxation is important; a balance of easy and serious fun with a
dash of hard fun here and there, in XEODesign's terminology. They want to accom-
plish something but don't want to have to work too hard for it. These people are
“More interested in Toyplay rather than Gameplay” (International Hobo); “The Sims
almost certainly succeeds because of C3s [casual wanderers].”
The survey should lead us to ask some searching questions about the very nature
of the game industry and its aims and objectives:
• Are there enough games for the majority of the game playing public,
wanderers?
• Why is the most common player type, participants, so little represented in the
survey?
• Are Second Life players also computer game players? Or, are almost all the
participants and many of the wanderers quite happily satisfying themselves
as citizens of an alternative world such as Second Life and not at all interested
in playing video games?
Second Life and its various kindred virtual worlds are in many ways the successors
to MUDs in which you can create a place of your own to live in; can create objects,
such as clothes, furniture, and houses; and can live out a life of your choosing. You
are not driven by the dictates of the game.
No doubt for the majority of participants, social networking in all its many
variant forms and combinations is far more attractive than any game or virtual world