Designing for mobile devices is hard and platform specific challenges need to be taken into consideration on the design. Knowing the forms of pleasure is crucial, but so is knowing your audience. Most trending and top grossing games on mo-bile marketplaces can be associated with a casual tag, but even amongst the cas-ual games, there are numerous differences and nuances. Some games are harder and designed for more of a competing audience while some games are designed all around being social within the game. Different players want different things, which is something that Richard Bartle, a famous games scholar emphasises with his four player archetypes. These archetypes are:
Killers enjoy the gameplay because they want to kill other players or other vice cause havoc and terror. They are competitive and strive towards their personal goals. Killers are proud of their reputation. (Bartle, 1996). In mobile games this could be trying to get high up in the leaderboards or simply enjoying player ver-sus player games.
Achievers enjoy cumulative points, gathering levels or collecting various things in the game. Progression is key for them and this can lead to playing games that incorporate such things well. (Bartle, 1996). In mobile games this is often fulfilled with achievements, rare drops and missions. Making these achievements and
missions require multiple play sessions should be one way of increasing day one retention.
Socializers are playing the game because they can do it with other people. Get-ting to hang out with people and interacGet-ting with them is the most important part and the game is just a way to express that. (Bartle, 1996). In mobile games they tend to like features that allow playing with friends and comparing or shar-ing the experience. Mobile games are expandshar-ing the ways they can interact on social media pages with share buttons that allow players to show off something cool or otherwise interesting.
Explorers like to find new things and exploring the game throughout.
Knowledge of the games intricate systems makes them proud. Knowledge is cu-mulated for the player during the play session and the is the key thing driving these players. (Bartle, 1996). In mobile games this is often troublesome because these players may want to change the game often if they feel like they have al-ready figured it out. This is of course a challenge for the design team to keep these players satisfied with a deep game.
These four archetypes are not hard defined, and most players can be categorized as at least two of these types. The interactions of these types are explored in Fig-ure 7.
Figure 7. Four Bartle archetypes (1996)
To understand the figure, one must look at the archetypes and the adjacent con-cepts of the game. On the horizontal axis there is players and world, and on the vertical one acting and interacting. (Bartle 2005). Most multiplayer games can be described as PvP (Player versus Player) or PvE (Player versus Enemy) and that reflects on the horizontal axis where players and enemies who belong in the world are separated. Acting and interacting are different from each other in a sense that acting is more about doing to rather that doing with. Killer act on play-ers and socializplay-ers interact with playplay-ers. Achievplay-ers are also acting on the game but differently than killers, instead of griefing and causing havoc, they tend to focus mostly on getting good and winning.
Bartle’s original categorization into four archetypes is flawed in some ways and while it can be used as a base for understanding players, Bartle has expanded it in 2005. One of the biggest flaws are the subtypes that emerge. The model was fixed to accommodate this by adding a third axis, Implicit and Explicit. The need emerges from the realization that some action and interaction are done on pur-pose (Explicit) and other are done by not thinking about it through (Implicit).
Figure 8 explains the new archetypes.
Figure 8. Eight Bartle archetypes (2005)
Now there are eight archetypes in the model. The figure works like the previous one (Figure 7), looking at the archetype and the surrounding elements of play the model explains how, why and to who the player is acting on. The four original archetypes have been divided into implicit or explicit sides (Bartle, 2005).
Griefers (Implicit killers) Exploit other players and cause havoc for their own fun.
Often want a bad reputation.
Politicians (Explicit killers) Try to get power over the gameworld. Act with plan-ning and subtly try to exploit other players. Want a good reputation.
Friends (Implicit socialisers) Hang out with people they already know. Often don’t care about the fellow players minor issues.
Networkers (Explicit socialisers) Make effort to getting to interact with new play-ers. Try to get to know fellow players and asses who is worth their time.
Hackers (Implicit explorers) Experiment to solve meaning. Seek new phenomena and mechanics.
Scientists (Explicit explorers) Want to understand how a game works. Do exper-iments to solve mechanics.
Opportunists (Implicit achievers) Try numerous things. Often give up on obsta-cles but try to take chances when given.
Planners (Explicit achievers) Set goals for themselves and aim to reach them. Try to play optimally for set goals.
One of the biggest problems with this model is that most people don’t align with any singe of these archetypes. People change playstyles with changing games and even within the same game given opportunities and different mood. This is a problem for the older division too, but not as substantial. For this reason and because of the scope of the work, the study mostly uses the original four arche-types while acknowledging the other archearche-types within.