socializer

Back To Bartle: A Game For the Socializer, Killer, Explorer, and Achiever In You

Friday, August 22nd, 2008 | Gaming Industry, Market Trends | Comments

A long time ago, in a world with trolls, elves, and chain mail bikinis, it became clear over time that people did not play games for the same reasons. Perfectly nice players would get tossed out of guilds for not raiding enough. Terrific players would not be invited to join guilds because they didn’t talk during their probationary period. And of course, the fault was with the player being bounced. He didn’t play the right way. This being one of the earlier MMOs, people took such philosophical differences very… personally.

By "personally," I mean "threats to drive over to your best friend’s house, hauling your mother from that worthy’s bedchamber, and making her sorry she brought you into this world."

As you can see, very little has changed, when it comes to reasonable discussion between gamers of a certain flavor on the internet.

However, the internet gives as well as takes away, and one of the things the internet gave us back then was the Bartle Test. I won’t go into explanations of it, its strengths, or its weaknesses here. Suffice it to say that while crude, your score broadly reflects your play style, and you are most likely to enjoy running in a pack of other people with a similar score.

Since we at GamerDNA are the hosts of this venerable test, we periodically dip into the data bucket to see what patterns and trends may be forming. Here’s the latest snapshot for your enjoyment.

All data was taken in the last 60 days. Also, please note, being a "killer" means your highest score is in the Killer category, and so forth. Incidentally, I had our data man, Steve, run the numbers a second time, to only include people whose top score was at least 10% higher than their second highest score. In other words, these results show the games played by people who were definitely their primary category. While I’m sure there are people who are equal parts, say, "socializer" and "killer," we’re focusing on people who have a strong preference for one over the other three.

TOP FIVE FOR KILLERS:

(I mention killers first because frankly, everyone else will just read the whole article, but killers are more likely to skip the other sections until they find their own, and we’re all about player convenience here.)

The spread between the bottom three was negligible, with AOC just ahead. There are nearly twice as many WOW players as AOC, and there were five times as many people playing WOW as LOTRO in this category. Still, seeing LOTRO at all in the Killer category is fascinating, given that this title’s PVP is not widely celebrated.

TOP FIVE FOR ACHIEVERS

This category has the biggest spread – WOW was far and away the top game in this category, with six times as many players as the fifth most popular title – and more than four times as many as the second place title. It’s not even close. If you’re a Bartle achiever, you are almost certainly playing World of Warcraft as your primary game.

I find it fascinating that with such a dominant title, you have a lot more room for surprises in the rest of the top five. I’m not surprised POTBS appears here, as it definitely has a lot of elements that would appeal to the achiever mindset. I’m also not surprised to see not one, but two shooters in the top five list. Again, with one incredibly dominant MMO title, many achievers won’t have time to play more than one – and an easy on, easy off game like a shooter scratches a gaming itch when the gamer doesn’t have several hours to spare.

TOP FIVE FOR EXPLORERS

CoH had the smallest number of people playing out of all the games listed in today’s article. The spread was not as dramatic as it was for killers and achievers, with four times as many people playing the top game as playing the fifth place game.

TOP FIVE FOR SOCIALIZERS

Well, if you’re a socializer, your preference simply isn’t as strong for any particular game. In fact, I’d venture to say that you’re playing whatever your friends are playing. SWG doesn’t even appear in the Top 20 of Achiever games, but it made it to fifth place on your list. The spread in this division is not wide at all, with only six percentage points separating WOW from SWG.

The Bartle Test is very popular among MMO players, so the results are a bit skewed toward MMOs.

But just for fun, Steve ran the numbers for Rock Band. And this was the biggest shocker I’ve had all week. You’d expect Socializers to love this game, right? Closely followed by Achievers?

It’s actually Killers who love Rock Band. They are represented in higher numbers than their percentage of the general population would predict. The other three categories were equal to or below their percentage of the population.

Keep that in mind the next time you think about talking trash at the guy holding the plastic guitar…

Tags: achiever, bartle test, killer, psychology, socializer