Refection - Bartle types- from game players to game makers

Appendix.bartle - Summary of interactive Bartle test

In discussion with at the time fellow PhD candidate John Lean on his research on game playing styles [@bartle1996hearts], I began to ask the question can the surfacing maker types (as per player types) encourage awareness and celebrate the emerging practices that the community was producing.

As part of attempts to try to build into the program, activities which help build the participants sense of their own identities of game makers or more generally digital designers. I saw potential value here to address the danger internal bias about the kind of process that a computer programmer should adopt, echoing the call for pluralism in approaches [@papert_epistemological_1990].

I introduce a warm-up activity trialled in P2 where participants took part in an physical version of the Bartle Player Test, a framework used to categorise players of multiplayer games based on their preferred play style [@hamari_player_2014]. It identifies four main player types: Achievers (motivated by goals and rewards), Explorers (interested in discovery), Socialisers (driven by interaction with others), and Griefers (focused on disruption of other people’s game experience). The test helps game designers understand what motivates different players.

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The process was adapted so players moved to a different quadrant of the room based on their response to the question. The process allowed young people to see how their response differed from that of their parents.

This process celebrated different game playing types and allowed a public sharing of previously hidden gaming preferences, although for some non-gaming parents and children I had to ask them to use their imagination.

Several parents noted that this process gave them great insight into how their child identified within the cultures of the games they played. The process of exploring identity in this way surfaced the and the pleasure some young people took in demonstrating their playful mischievousness. I began to make journal notes on this subject. I began to ask the question can the surfacing maker types (as per player types) encourage awareness and celebrate the emerging practices that the community was producing.

After the results were revealed, I then proposed as facilitator that my observations were that there different game maker types. I read out the different types and asked them to place themselves in a two-dimensional grid based on their self evaluation of what kind of game maker they were. Other family members were then invited to comment to see if they agreed with this interpretation. The process of exploring identity in this way surfaced the cheekiness of some young people and the pleasure they took in demonstrating their playful mischievousness. I began to make journal notes on this subject, reflection on the potential value of surfacing maker types (from player types) to encourage awareness and celebrate the emerging practices that the community was producing. In particular, linking griefing in digital play with similar disruptive practices in digital making, in this case the process of messing with game play conventions other people’s creations. As an example some players created impossible or overly easy game levels. They appeared aware of implications for game balance but is taking pleasure in this seeming destruction of the key challenge of the game as an act of disruptive play. They seem to take pleasure from ignoring concepts of what should be done to maintain game balance and from the sense of shock from their current audience her parent. Going against this convention is a type of playful destruction in this context. The process mirrors play theory concept of playing against the game or dark play [@sutton-smith_ambiguity_2001].

I translated player types to maker types based on notes in my observation journal and extracts from screen capture data. The following list of Game Maker types:

• Social makers: form relationships with other game makers and players by finding out more about their work and telling stories in their game -
• Planners: like to study to get a full knowledge of the tools and what is possible before they build up their game step-by-step
• Magpie makers: like trying out lots of different things and happy to borrow code, images and sound from anywhere for quick results
• Glitchers: mess around with the code trying to see if they can break it interesting ways and cause a bit of havoc for other users

Participants, particularly older ones, used playtesting as a way of showing support for fellow game makers. Example behaviours included: praising graphical content; making links with home interests of participants through questioning; and building rapport. Madiha in particular used playtesting to show her appreciation of the graphical work of others especially in the creation of cute animal characters. In response to one game which featured an image of a dog, other participants asked: Do you like dogs? Do you have a dog at home?.

It is worth stating that, the reflections on game maker types or styles above are not imagined or proposed as an exclusive or unchangeable styles. This statement addresses concerns on learning styles advanced by Fleming. The main problem with Fleming’s learning styles (VARK) is that there is little scientific evidence of improved outcomes or even for set styles in learners. Instead the styles are advanced as a reflective tool and as a prompt for exploratory activities in the learning design as explored in the following section.