The Psychology of the Player & Game Character Design and Representation by Sherry Jones

#Metagame Book Club
“The Psychology of the Player &
Game Character Design and Representation”
Sherry Jones | Games & Psychology Instructor | Fall 2015 | Twitter @autnes |
http://bit.ly/gamepsych3
Roger and Alex from Tekken 2 Lightning (aka Claire Farron) from FF13

1. Noble, Ralph, Kathleen Ruiz, Marc Destefano, and Jonathan Mintz.
Conditions of Engagement in Game Simulation: Contexts of Gender,
Culture and Age. Digra. 2003.
2. Wirth, Richard. Game Studies: The Psychology of the ‘Player’.
Leonardo Online. 2 November 2014.
3. Bartle, Richard. Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit
Muds. 1996.
4. Yee, Nicholas. A Model of Player Motivations. The Daedalus Project.
March 13, 2005.
Texts in Focus 1

5. Yee, Nicholas. Why We Quit. The Daedalus Project. Feb. 11, 2003.
6. Stewart, Bart. Personality and Player Styles: A Unified Model.
Gamasutra. 2015.
7. Steinkuehler, Constance A. and Dmitri Williams. “Where Everybody
Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as Third Places. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(4), 9 October 2006.
8. Yee, Nicholas. Befriending Ogres and Wood Elves: Understanding
Relationship Formation in MMORPG. October 2002.
Texts in Focus 2

9. Yee, Nick and Jeremy Bailenson. The Proteus Effect: The Effect of
Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior. Human
Communication Research. 2007.
10. Taylor, Nicholas, Chris Kampe, and Kristina Bell. Me and Lee:
Identification and the Play of Attraction in The Walking Dead. Game
Studies. July 2015.
11. Madigan, Jamie. The Psychology of Video Game Avatars. Psychology
of Games. Nov. 29, 2013.
12. Warpefelt, Henrik, Magnus Johansson, and Harko Verhagen. The
Believability of Game Character Behavior Using the Game Agent
Matrix. Digra. 2013.
13. Isbister. Katherine. Better Game Characters by Design: A
Psychological Approach. Elsevier. 2006.
Texts in Focus 3

Why Are We Motivated to Play Games?

“New work has dramatically
demonstrated the critical role of
safety in video games, universally
considered to be a ‘low level’ need
of human beings.”
-- Nobel, Ruiz, Destefano, and Mintz
Conditions of Engagement in Game
Simulations (2003)
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs 1

“There’s the feeling of safety that
goes along with the sense of
detachment when a player controls
an on-screen avatar, or even a voice
in a chat room. Players are more
willing to act out their fantasies, and
will often lower the barriers that they
have erected for use in face-to-face
conversation.”
Conditions of Engagement in Game
Simulations (2003)
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs 2

“Digital games have enormous potential for acting like digital Skinner
boxes. The reinforcement model focuses attention on two issues: the
reinforcement structure of the game, the frequency, immediacy, and
schedule of reinforcement; and the sources of reinforcement built into the
game, including opportunities for victory, problem solving, and social
interaction. Extensive research with operant conditioning makes it clear
that the power of [operant] conditioning is the frequency with which
reinforcing events takes place, and the immediacy with which
reinforcement follows the behavioral event” (p. 9).
Conditions of Engagement in Game Simulations (2003)
Operant Conditioning Reinforcement

● Fixed Ratio Schedule - Pluck grass
15 times to find 1 treasure (15
activity level per reward).
● Variable Ratio Schedule - Pluck
grass 15 times for a chance to find
1 treasure (15 activity level per
random reward).
● Extinction - Stop giving rewards
(leads to behavioral contrast).
● Avoidance - Does an activity to
avoid pain.
● Frequency Ratio + Probability
motivate players to keep playing.
Schedules of Reinforcement

“Studies such as Zhong (2011) out of Guangzhou’s Sun Yat-Sen University
have shown that there are several interesting relationships between
online and offline socialization. This and other studies have corroborated
findings that online collective play have highly significant positive effects
on offline civic engagement, and various online social structures can grant
enhanced skills in social bridging and bonding.”
-- Richard Wirth
Game Studies: The Psychology of the Player (2014)
Forming Social Relationships

“By providing spaces for social interaction and relationships beyond the
workplace and home, MMOs have the capacity to function as one form of
a new ‘third place’ for informal sociability much like the pubs, coffee
shops, and other hangouts of old. Moreover, participation in such virtual
‘‘third places’’ appears particularly well suited to the formation of bridging
social capital (Putnam, 2000), social relationships that, while not providing
deep emotional support per se, typically function to expose the individual
to a diversity of worldviews.”
-- Constance A. Steinkeuhler and Dmitri Williams
Where Everyone Knows Your Screen Name (2006)
Virtual Spaces as Third Spaces

“Traditionally, the structures that work to establish and build trust were
found in social institutions and societies at large. According to Giddens
(1991) however, trust today is more a product of personal, individual
interactions and commitments. This is largely due to the removal of
unions, clans, and the concept of the neighborhood, thus leaving people
to fend for themselves in society at large. This is not dissimilar to how
MMORPG socialization functions, as frequently an individual player must
work their way through the online world alone, with the only existing
social structures being guilds and player cliques.”
-- Richard Wirth
Game Studies: The Psychology of the Player (2014)
Building Trust

“While it may come as a surprise to many people, studies have shown
that people are more likely to be honest and forth-coming on personal
issues when asked over a computer-mediated communication channel as
opposed to a face to face setting. When clinical psychologists first began
to use computers as part of the initial screening interview process for new
patients, they noticed that patients were oftentimes more forthcoming
when typing their responses to a computer rather than telling them to the
clinician face to face. In other words, even though the end audience was
the clinician in both cases, patients were more likely to be honest and
revealing when the communication was mediated by a computer
(Walther, 1996).”
-- Nicholas Yee
Befriending Elfs and Woodland Creatures (2002)
Truthfulness, Media, and Relationship 1

“Part of the rationale for why this occurs is that the absence of another
person judging and reacting to the speaker's words as they type makes it
easier to disclose personal issues. Anecdotally, many people who use
instant messaging systems (such as AIM or MSN) are able to talk about
more personal issues even if it is to someone who they know in real-life. In
both cases, the asynchronous nature of the communication channel as
well as the absence of another person who judges the speaker
instantaneously, with a full repertoire of facial expressions, probably
makes the speaker feel more comfortable with disclosing personal
information.
-- Nicholas Yee
Befriending Elfs and Woodland Creatures (2002)
Truthfulness, Media, and Relationship 2

● Feel boredom and repetition in a game.
● Feel that game = work, responsibility, stress, worries.
● Feel that game lacks long term goal.
● Feel frustrated by problems that arose from social relationships.
● Perceive game to lack complexity or “true role-play.”
● Lose interest when game is full of bugs and balancing problems.
● Feel frustrated by bad customer service or company attitude.
● Fear addiction to game.
-- Nicholas Yee
Why We Quit (2003)
When We Quit Playing

● Achievers - “Players give themselves game-related goals, and
vigorously set out to achieve them. This usually means accumulating
and disposing of large quantities of high-value treasure, or cutting a
swathe through hordes of mobiles.”
● Explorers - “Players try to find out as much as they can about the
virtual world.”
● Socializers - “Players use the game's communicative facilities, and
apply the role-playing that these engender, as a context in which to
converse (and otherwise interact) with their fellow players.”
● Killers (Imposers) - “Players use the tools provided by the game to
cause distress to (or, in rare circumstances, to help) other players.”
-- Richard Bartle
Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades (1996)
Bartle’s Player Types

“1. Proposed components of each Type may not be related. For example,
Bartle proposes that role-playing and socialization both fall under the
same Type, but they may not be highly-correlated.
2. Proposed Types may overlap with each other. For example, aren't
members of raid-oriented guilds both Achievers and Socializers? But in
Bartle's Types, they are on opposite corners of the model.
3. The purely theoretical model provides no means to assess players as to
what Type they are. But more importantly, without resolving the problem
in (1), any attempted assessment of players based on this model might be
creating player types rather than measuring them.”
-- Nicholas Yee
A Model of Player Motivation (2005)
Limitations of Bartle’s Theoretical Model

-- Nicholas Yee
A Model of Player Motivation (2005)
Measurement of Player Types

-- Bart Stewart
(2015)
Bartle’s Player Types Chart

● “Artisan (Sensing + Perceiving): realistic, tactical, manipulative (of
things or people), pragmatic, impulsive, action-focused, sensation-
seeking.
● Guardian (Sensing + Judging): practical, logistical, hierarchical,
organized, detail-oriented, possessive, process-focused, security-
seeking.
● Rational (iNtuition + Thinking): innovative, strategic, logical,
scientific/technological, future-oriented, result-focused, knowledge-
seeking.
● Idealist (iNtuition + Feeling): imaginative, diplomatic, emotional,
relationship-oriented, dramatic, person-focused, identity-seeking.”
-- Bart Stewart
Personality and Player Types (2015)
Keirsey’s Temperaments Model

-- Bart Stewart
(2015)
Keirsey’s Temperament Types Chart

-- Bart Stewart
(2015)
Unified Model of Player Types - Bartle’s +
Keirsey’s + Bateman’s DGD1

Game Character Representation and Player
Identity Affordance

“The Greek God Proteus is notable for being the origin of the adjective
‘protean’—the ability to take on many different self representations. And
although extreme self-transformations are expensive (e.g., cosmetic
surgery) or difficult to perform (e.g., gender reassignment surgery) on our
physical bodies, nowhere is self-representation more flexible and easy to
transform than in virtual environments where users can choose or
customize their own avatars—digital representations of themselves.”
-- Nicholas Yee and Jeremy Bailenson
“The Proteus Effect” (2007)
Greek God Proteus and Avatars

“The avatar is not simply a uniform that is worn, the avatar is our entire
self representation. Although the uniform is one of many identity cues …
the avatar is the primary identity cue in online environments. Thus, we
might expect that our avatars have a significant impact on how we
behave online. Users who are deindividuated in online environments may
adhere to a new identity that is inferred from their avatars. And in the
same way that subjects in black uniforms conform to a more aggressive
identity, users in online environments may conform to the expectations
and stereotypes of the identity of their avatars. Or more precisely, in line
with self-perception theory, they conform to the behavior that they believe
others would expect them to have. We term this the Proteus Effect.”
-- Nicholas Yee and Jeremy Bailenson
“The Proteus Effect” (2007)
The Proteus Effect (Self-Perception Theory)

Avatar Creation as Creation of Self

“Researchers have found that the ability to create idealized versions of
ourselves is strongly connected to how much we enjoy the game, how
immersed we become, and how much we identify with the avatar.
Assistant professor Seung-A ‘Annie’ Jin, who works at Emerson College’s
Marketing Communication Department, did a series of experiments with
Nintendo Miis and Wii Fit.1
She found that players who were able to
create a Mii that was approximately their ideal body shape generally felt
more connected to that avatar and also felt more capable of changing
their virtual self’s behavior – a fancy way of saying that the game felt
more interactive and immersive.”
-- Jamie Madigan
“The Psychology of Video Game Avatars” (2013)
Player/Avatar Creation and Immersion

“Our analysis [attempts] to articulate processes of player/avatar affiliation
according to the factors—more accurately, the Deleuzian “attractors”
(DeLanda, 2011)—that influence these processes. Attractors represent
particular tendencies sedimented over time rather than concrete things
(DeLanda, 2011); beginning from the recognition that affiliation is a
dynamic performance rather than a singular state of identification with an
avatar (Giddings and Kennedy, 2008; Linderoth, 2005), our framework
allows us to better understand how this performance is influenced at
different times by different forces.”
-- Taylor, Kempe, and Bell
“Me and Lee” (2015)
Player Identity as Dynamic Performance of
Affiliation

“The player/avatar relationship [is one] in terms of flux and
indeterminacy—arising from the “push-pull” of agency across an
assemblage of human and non-human actors (Giddings and Kennedy,
2008)—rather than as a fixed state.”
-- Taylor, Kempe, and Bell
“Me and Lee” (2015)
Player/Avatar Relationship

Game Character Design through Psychology

● “Dominance or submissiveness (patterns
of holding or avoiding direct eye contact),
● where a person’s attention is at the
moment,
● flirtation,
● interest in beginning a conversation (or
desire to avoid one),
● an invitation for one’s conversation
partner to take a turn in the dialogue,
● active listening, and
● pondering of a point” (p. 145).
-- Katherine Isbister
“Better Game Characters by Design” (2006)
Face - Timing and Direction of the Gaze

“As people scan others’ faces for emotional expressions, their own faces
involuntarily respond. Mirroring the expression on another’s face with your
own helps establish connection and demonstrates empathy” (p. 149).
“Curiously, this mirroring can have an impact on our own emotions (see
Figure 5.9). Making a face seems to trigger the emotion that is ‘faked.’
The facial feedback hypothesis, first proposed by Darwin, has been tested
in modern times with a rather ingenious study” (p. 149).
Face - Empathy and Emotional Feedback

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

“Social scientists refer to the information that is not conveyed by the
words in speech as paralinguistic cues. A large proportion of the meaning
in everyday conversation emerges through paralinguistic cues—shifts in
voice quality while speaking, pauses, grunts, and other nonlinguistic
utterances. Paralinguistic cues play an even bigger role in communication
between people who already know each other well—a well-placed sigh or
lack of a heartfelt tone conveys volumes. To make characters seem richly
human in their communication, then, a designer should have a solid
understanding of what they are conveying with how they say things” (p.
184).
Voice and Paralinguistic Cues

“For example, gender and age come across in voice because of physical
qualities of the person’s vocal equipment itself (which can be a problem
for people whose voices fall outside the usual range for their gender or
age group). Mood and emotion are signalled involuntarily (at least in part)
because of changes in vocal production as the person’s nervous system
reacts—for example, the dry mouth and speedier heart rate of anxiety
also have effects on the muscles in the larynx and on breathing itself.
However, a person can also mold the tone of his or her voice in some
ways, adopting a pacifying, pleading, arrogant, or neutral tone of voice
using intonation and rhythm (referred to as prosody by researchers).
Failing to adopt the proper social tone of voice is a communication in and
of itself.” (p. 184). --
Katherine Isbister
Voice and Prosody

● “Anger (hot). Tense voice, faster speech rate, higher pitch, broader
pitch range.
● Anger (cold). Tense voice, faster speech rate, higher fundamental
frequency and intensity, tendency toward downward-directed
intonation contours.
● Joy. Faster speech rate, raised pitch, broader pitch range, rising pitch
pattern
● Fear. Raised pitch, faster speech rate, broadened range, high-
frequency energy” (p. 186).
Voice and Emotional Expressions 1

● “Boredom. Slower speech rate, additional lengthening of stressed
syllables, lowered pitch, reduced pitch range and variability.
● Sadness (crying despair). Slower speech rate, raised pitch, narrowed
pitch range, narrowed variability.
● Sadness (quiet sorrow). Slower speech rate, lowered pitch, narrower
pitch range, narrower variability, downward-directed contours, lower
mean intensity, less precision of articulation.
● Depression. Lower intensity and dynamic range, downward contours”
(p. 186).
Voice and Emotional Expressions 2

Game Character Design and
The Uncanny Valley

The Uncanny Valley Model
The Uncanny Valley Model by Masahiro Mori

Lecture By:
Sherry Jones
Philosophy | Rhetoric | Game Studies | Game Design & Psychology
@autnes
Writings & Webcasts
Link to Slides: http://bit.ly/gamepsych3

The Psychology of the Player & Game Character Design and Representation by Sherry Jones

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