Understanding Gamer’s Psyche

Video games always give phenomenal experience to the gamers who play it. Those who are a part of gaming fraternity will always be proud of it.

Most gamers abide to rules, traditions, and a set of standards. The gamers will fall into certain types.

Whether by choice or circumstance; they are going to be in one of them.

The gamer population can be vastly classified into four major types based on their game play style.

Achievers

These gamers prefer to improve on levels, points or equipment to succeed in a game. They will go to great lengths to strengthen their character as they progress in-game.

A game that can be finished or completed, gives an achiever motivation to complete it and encourages his style of play.

Any game that can be completed 100% or that offer extra scenes that give us clues about how to complete the game have a high rating amongst achievers.

These gamers were attracted to the MMORPG genre of games. Successful MMOs always offer something to achieve.

Explorers

Explorers have a tendency to dig around and are hence called “Spades”. Map creation, exploring new areas and finding hidden places are areas of interest to these gamers.

Games that are time restrictive are not games that they enjoy. Discovering unknown glitches or hidden things are what they are after.

Explorers can enjoy restrictive games as well as permissive ones. Gamers who share a high Explorer and Achiever percentage are the ones who try to set unusual goals for themselves to put to use the tricks they’ve gathered.

MMORPGs are more engaging to explorers. This will bore them eventually too as they will feel that it is a chore to play.

Almost all gamer are like that in at least one way. Explorers are a lot more fussy than the regular gamer.

Socializers

Many gamers play because everyone is playing the game. Call it socializing. The main source of enjoyment for them is when they have a player with personality or when they interact with other players.

The game just serves as a tool to interact with others either inside or outside the game.

Killers / Destroyers / Grievers

Destruction is the middle name of these gamers. Games that are high in carnage, action, and violence are definitely their preference.

Moving from playing the usual good guy to playing the bad guys is what Killers enjoy. Also, sandbox games will appeal to them as they can take a direct hand in building (or destroying) a virtual society.

On another note, the Destroyers also look at destroying the game’s systems. Functionality, Game design, gameplay etc.

In case of online games, these gamers also troll and sometimes cause grief to the remaining community. Hence, these type of gamers are referred to as grievers in certain circles.

There is a reason to explain the types of gamers in the above section. These types also help the Game Testing team in understanding the requirements of the games.

How is this useful to the Game Testing team?

A video game tester should not only execute the battery of checklists assigned, but they also have to ascertain which class of gamer psyche they belong to.

The Ad-hoc section of testing is where the game testers will first play the game according to their personalities. In addition, they have to figure out the other personality types who would probably play the game.

This skillset develops over a period of time as a game tester starts their career. They might run out of test scenarios when they create it according to their own personalities. Thinking from another perspective will provide more test coverage.

An effective yet tenuous method would be to jot down the scenarios created. These can be added to the gameplay/functionality checklists later.

This will help towards building trust between the game producers and Game Testing team.

The games producers will in turn gain confidence on the game testing service provider, since they know that the Game Testing team is covering all type of possibilities in the game with high test efficiency.

So, which type of gamer are you???? Comment below