Game Player Motivations - by Jon Radoff

I included a simple way to break down the major categories of motivation for any game in my recent book, Game On. This can help you think about the different things that motivate players in almost any game: My goal with the four quadrants of player motivation draw upon prior work by Richard Bartle. Bartle broke player motivations down into explorers, socializers, killers and achievers. Subsequently, he expanded this into eight categories. Nick Yee also developed his own version of player motivations, based on his MMORPG research, identifying three major categories that split into ten subcategories of motivation. My goal is to provide everyone with a new model of player motivations that have the simplicity of Bartle’s original formulation, yet which can apply to nearly any game that exists–not simply MUDs or MMORPGs. Furthermore, I’ve attempted to address some of Yee’s criticisms based on his quantitative analysis of player motivations. In my formulation, there are two axes that define

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• James Rogers