It is difficult to examine what I see in games regarding Richard Bartle’s player types and Nicole Lazzaro’s keys to emotion without first looking at my own biases. I tend to fall into Bartle’s Achiever and Explorer player types. While I often say that I love to play games for the story, I probably do enjoy achieving above all else. I play games to relax and enjoy myself; I love escaping into another world where the objectives are concrete. My favorite types of games provide a challenge, but reward hard work. For example, single-player RPGs like those in the Final Fantasy series often reward the time you put in fighting small monsters by allowing your characters to level up. This makes the boss fights much easier, and I have rarely had difficulty getting past bosses.
Often in pursuit of achievements, such as acquiring hidden items, I will go exploring. I used to depend on strategy guides to tell me where to find hidden items, but, if the world is beautiful enough, exploring can be a reward on its own. While I do not play games specifically to explore their worlds, the escapism factor does make me curious. Also, I found that I test the limits of games much more due to the time I spent in Quality Assurance this past summer. While playing the Eternal Sonata demo, for example, I found two bugs in less than half an hour. This did not prevent me from buying the game, but it seems that testing encourages you to explore the game and push limits with an Explorer mentality.
As far as the other player types, I can’t really see myself as much of a Killer or a Socializer. I don’t like living in fear of being killed in games and dislike killing other players. As for the social aspects of games, I played World of Warcraft for the 10-day trial period and found myself avoiding human contact. Many people are surprised that I did not become addicted to the game, but I had no friends from the real world playing with me. Even so, I appreciate controlling my own experiences in the game world. Also, I was hoping I would not become addicted to an endless game, as I wanted to retain control over my own life as well.
However, I am not opposed to playing games with other people. Co-op games like LEGO Star Wars can be a lot of fun. I played the demo of Viva Pinata: Party Animals with a friend and had fun. What surprised me the most about Party Animals is how competitive the scoring system is. I won but didn’t enjoy winning because I like games better where we can play on the same team. I lost a lot of board games as a child and winning to me is always met with great sympathy for the loser, so it’s not much fun.
Online games that require social contact are not that fun for me. Toon Town’s required friend-making quest felt forced and silly. Puzzle Pirates and Club Penguin seem to have a much more casual social interaction, which I found to be more natural. I tend to avoid games with obligatory interaction with other people, as I often play games to unwind alone.
As for Lazzaro’s four keys to unlocking emotion, they seem to make a lot of sense. Her comments about multiplayer games being much more lively are right on the mark. Our game of Werewolf was very noisy and fun. A lot of it had to do with Easy Fun and The People Factor. The multiplayer game SET did not play off the fact that there were other people there; even the card game Speed has a much stronger social factor due to the players’ inevitable interactions with each other (unlike SET).
Lazzaro’s first three keys, Hard Fun, Easy Fun, and Altered States, are the reasons why I love RPGs so much. I recently began playing Eternal Sonata, which has a combat system that gives you time to think and strategize. Overall, the game is linear and fairly easy if you fight in most of the readily available battles. Most of all, I enjoy playing this game because of he Altered States factor. I can play without having to think too much and the world in an incredible place to spend a few hours at a time. It is quite lovely and a wonderful escape.