Games have no idea who we are. But they try to ask. Often when we start a new game it will ask us would we like to play at Easy, Medium or Hard difficulty levels. But what is it really asking? Typically, the difficulty levels don't come with a description to differentiate between them, as if it’s somehow enough for the player to know that there are three levels available and some are harder than others. It’s all relative.
Easy mode is perhaps for those who wish to complete the game, smoothing out any particularly challenging parts so they can experience the full story. Hard mode is for those who wish to hone their dexterity skills, enjoying the challenge of enhanced enemy AI and strength. Medium mode, though, is more intriguing because it’s often known by another name, Normal. I would expect, and you probably will too, that the majority of players choose this option. Partly, perhaps, because 'Normal' suggests that selecting another option is choosing to play the game in a way that's outside what the designer intended.
Broadly, Easy and Hard modes are an attempt to cater for 'casual' and 'core' players respectively. These terms are often used in the games industry to describe its target audiences. Players are segmented into one of the casual or core groups by primitive measures such as the number of hours they play per week or previous games played. But they completely fail to explain anything about why these gamers play games, or from which gameplay elements they derive their pleasure. Isn’t there a better way to understand players based on their individual characteristics?
Bartle test
In 1990, Richard Bartle asked the players of MUD, the proto MMOG, how they would like to see the game improved. And on analysing their comments found that they broadly fell into four groups: socialisers, killers, achievers and explorers. While each player expressed elements of each playstyle, they would also typically have a dominant style.
The classification Bartle developed is much more meaningful than casual and core, as it is based on players’ actual interests and motivations for playing a game. Incidentally, if you want to know your own style, you can sit an online Bartle test here. However, even if games could analyse our behaviour and identify our playstyle, they have no way of telling our emotions. Or do they?
Emotional advantage
Although identifying what players do is a good starting point in the quest to understanding gamers, behaviour alone is not enough. In many games, the gameplay itself will be exactly the same for all players, but how players react, their emotions, is what differentiates them. In a recent study, we analysed players whilst playing Relentless Software's Buzz! quiz game, and were able to show that Bartle’s gamer classifications also hold true for this social game. Others have found similar results for different games, too.
We were able to identify the four gamer types not by their behaviour, but by their physiological responses to gameplay. By attaching biometric sensors to each pair of players, we could see precisely at which moments they were getting excited, and by interviewing them afterwards gain insights into which gameplay elements gave them a particular emotion.
There were too many findings to discuss here, but as you would expect, the killers gained enjoyment from beating their opponent, while the achievers experienced enjoyment from telling their friends the answers - in effect showing off. In this context, player identification could not have been achieved with traditional metrics that express pure behaviour - we can certainly create a richer picture of the player by using biometrics.
Inside knowledge
But it’s not just us who think that. Sony recently filed a patent for a biometric controller which contains three sensors: galvanic skin response (arousal), heart rate, and muscle movement. The patent even outlines some potential uses for the tech, and what is clear is that Sony seems to imagine the next wave of video games will have access to our physiological state during gameplay in addition to behaviour collected through metrics.
It seems that in a very short time we may be going from a world in which a game knows nothing about us to one in which it may know a lot. But could it be too much? Will we come to yearn for the halycon days of choosing our difficulty level ourselves instead of our biochemical responses?