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Original post by Sandman Also - why do we want to psych profile the player? Surely we want to psych profile the character the player wants to play, rather than the player himself? Or do we assume that the player will always play himself, thus defeating the concept of roleplaying?

Assuming that the symbols can be mapped appropriately, is there really a distinction here? Take a casual gamer versus a roleplayer.

The casual gamer is going to play an idealized version of themselves. Given choices, they're going to look for what minimizes the worst in them and exemplifies things that they aspire to.

I think roleplayers are variable. To be a roleplayer, you're not the same rigid personality each time. This is what allows you to switch in and out of different character types. You feel more like one archetype than another at times, and this shift in attitude guides your choices and behaviors.

I think that even if you could develop a close profile of different cross-sections of players and represent it so that everybody funneled themselves into the type of game world they might best like, roleplayers would still stand outside the equation because they'd be "different people" (so to speak) as the mood struck them.

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Original post by Way Walker My main problem with the design is that I'm already playing that game. I play it as I browse video games, books, movies, etc. I choose a game/book/movie/etc. in part because the cover art tells me what I should expect.

You've got a good point here. I'm reminded of the Black & White or Half-Life boxes. There are definitely concrete limits, but I don't think you're giving enough credit to targeted marketing. What if there is no box? What if there are multiple ads that target different demographics? What if there are different presentations of the website based on where a click-through came from?

Some simplified notion of this idea might even be employed in the website design itself.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by sunandshadow I would pick the guy in the leather jacket, because only the last two choices don't have any obvious connotations of violence or black and white morality, and the very last one doesn't have any people. (This is a pretty dubious and unbalanced set of choices.) It's funny that your first response about morality and violence were exactly what I was intending to capture. I'm curious if you felt any visceral negative responses to the other choices? Consider that the choices represent: Humanitarianism / Defense of life Do-gooder / standard hero Law above all else Conversion (even by conquest) Savagery Amoral opportunism Lawlessness Rebel / anti-hero against the system Dispassionate logic These would be personality options, which in turn would impact the game world and possible story vignettes.

I definitely felt visceral positive and negative responses to pretty much all the choices. The first choice I assumed would result in a stupid story about being a pure and honest white knight, probably with religious overtones - a lawful good alignment, as it were.

The second symbol did not indicate a do-gooder to me - because of the black, white, and gray I assumed it would be about playing a neutral-alignment character, perhaps an amoral mercenary who doesn't have any ideals or care about anybody.

The third I recognized as justice - I don't typically like stories about justice because they always involve crimes and/or sacrifices. I prefer win-win creative problem solving and happily ever afters.

The fourth I interpreted as being about flashy angry magical combat, another likely source of stupid stories such as fighting animes. :P

Fifth, death: vengeance or horror, neither of which I like.

Sixth - I might have chosen this one except for the atomic cloud. I like the idea of an attractive powerful character skillfully juggling things, expecially the world, but the $ and the bomb made me suspect that the moral of the story would be about greed and punishment, another type of story I would rather avoid.

Seventh, death again, and guns - what is it with all this death and violence? Vials suggest addiction, which generally results in a tragic story.

Eighth - this is the one I chose. I did not interpret him as a rebel, unless by rebel you mean something like a freethinker not constrained by social acceptability. He's smiling, which suggests the story won't be all about sadness or rage, and the leather jackets and chrome sunglasses are cool and give me hope that there might be flirtation or actual sex in the story. I would be happy to either hear a story about him or roleplay him in a game.

Last - This is abstract, numerical, mechanical, artificial - probably indicating a philosophical hard-sf story. I prefer stories about humans and human relationships.


So I was seeing the symbols not so much as representing a character, but more as representing the tone, theme, and moral of the story the game would tell me, and most of the stories were not what I wanted to hear. So where are all the symbols indicating romance, friendship, dreams, building something great, seeing exotic locales, or anything even remotely humorous?

Taking a game like Civilisation it would be possible to select the type of gameplay scenario you wanted to experience, ie. mostly friendly neighbours, no large enemy threats, based around exploration and trading knowledge.

Another player could go for a war-torn landscape full of burnt out villages, gangs of bandits roaming the land, and intense battles.

Another player could focus on rebuilding a destroyed land and making it a model of peace and prosperity, ie. like above but without many enemies.

Another could play the fantasy story version, with wizards and orcs.

Or another could play the Star Wars theme

And yet another could play the ....

Wavinator,

I don't think anyone mentioned this, but I'd say that nine symbols is too many to choose from, even if you make them less ambiguous. It's not necessarily too many possibilities, just too many choices to present to the player all at once. You might consider reformulating the various possibilities into a longer series of smaller choices -- and perhaps redundant ones, to ensure that a person doesn't end up playing the "wrong" game due to one misinterpreted signal. Also, I think you'd need to match up your abstraction levels more closely -- in your original example, I think my eye would gravitate towards the options represented by people rather than things.

Sticking with the strategy-leader game.
Story?
Goals?
Gameplay?
Scenario status?

Using the Civilisation example, I can see that you could change the state of the land and surrounding neighbours to fit whether they want to start off in prosperity or wartorn chaos.

Likewise, you can have the player suggest their long-term goals, ie. they'd like to reunite the country or rule the world with an iron fist.

The state of the country would also change their short term goals.

But what about fluidity, ie. if they want to change their long-term goals, would this conflict with changing the initial scenario.

Depending on what needs the characters have, the first set of goals will change.

Personally I'd rather see a more explicit choice of goals,
ie. click on clenched fist for conquering style gameplay.

Click on flames for evil greedy motivation to conquer.
Choose the white shield and flowers for a Braveheart style character to do it for a seemingly more noble reason.
Select the isolated figure in a fortified tower to play as an isolationist state trying to rely on power and to build prosperity.

Click on difficulty level / pacing of the game.


This way the initial events and scenario set up are chosen to reflect the kind of character and "story" that the player wants to play as.

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Original post by Logodae Wavinator, I don't think anyone mentioned this, but I'd say that nine symbols is too many to choose from, even if you make them less ambiguous.

Yes, I think you're right. Maybe only two or three to start out with, and redundancy to make sure that you really mean to choose a symbol (like retyping your password when creating an online account.)

btw, probably harder to do, but animated little windows like Michalson's infamous avatars might convey more information than a static icon could.

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Original post by Ketchaval Taking a game like Civilisation it would be possible to select the type of gameplay scenario you wanted to experience, ie. mostly friendly neighbours, no large enemy threats, based around exploration and trading knowledge.

The idea of "alternate realities" (branches off the default game's settings) works well here, and I'd like to incorporate some of that. Maybe you would have a choice of animated avatars showing war, or construction, or trade; and different images of galaxies, one filled with connecting starlanes, another ghostly empty.

You highlight some of the trouble I'm having with this idea, though: If symbols were used, should they be grossly representative of what you'll experience, or specifically representative. If they're too specific, the universe holds no surprise (which is key in a more RPG-like game, but not so desired in a pure Civ game because you're racing against the environment).

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Original post by sunandshadow So I was seeing the symbols not so much as representing a character, but more as representing the tone, theme, and moral of the story the game would tell me, and most of the stories were not what I wanted to hear. So where are all the symbols indicating romance, friendship, dreams, building something great, seeing exotic locales, or anything even remotely humorous?

That's a fair critique. FWIW, I really didn't expand on the idea enough by way of examples (should have given two or more). Logically, you'd have found these choices under the more sunny character types, such as humanitarian or the "freethinker / rebel against the system" anti-hero type you chose.

The philosophy I was thinking about was that you'd choose your character, and the world and story would have to flow from that choice: Piratical lawless types are going to be bored in a highly structured, lawful society. Humanitarians, OTOH, are probably not going to enjoy a universe of clashing empires.

The process for choosing symbols does need a lot more psych work if I do use it.

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Original post by adventuredesign I think that symbols (as a general rule) are going to be meaningful to a significant enough degree to influence the choices in UI I/O, and like a god game type of thematic influence, the type of symbol you choose can have an motif influence factor built into it. The reason symbols don't seem influential is because they penetrate the consciousness and go right at subconscious programming, like the way advertizers brand. Ever done one of those tests where the lettering for the product was removed from it's logo brand and you could in most cases still guess what product is was? Granted, that test is for consumer response, but symbolic response has a wide array of response types, such as emotional, fantasy, etc., and can have just as potent, yet consciously indiscernable effect.

You highlight another potential weakness: What if you're drawn to certain symbols because of the subconscious appeal but can't correlate that with the game type you get. A simple branding trick like having lettering go up and to the right (never left or down because that goes against "progress") might be so subtle that it's appealing but you don't know why. This would make it harder to make a conscious choice the next time.

Maybe the entire premise is flawed. What you're attracted to may not be what you want to experience, which is why you may need more than just symbols.

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Original post by TechnoGoth I can see what you’re trying to achieve with the bubble system but I think some text might serve to better anchor the player to what is happening. A simple question that explains the choice you are making would be enough I have always thought of personality development as a sort of life journey and it might be more effective to portray the choices in this manor. Consider this example:

I thought the example was very interesting. Maybe combined with yapposai's idea of mystery questions, you could create a mythic feel, which would certainly have mystery.

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What would be interesting idea was to have the profile shape other aspects of the game in subtle ways, such skills names. What if the profile determined the names of skills? So speech skill could – be conversation, integration, coercion, or diplomacy based on the player profile. That’s just an example but those sorts of small details are what could really make this an interesting game aspect and go along way towards tailoring the player’s experience to them personally.

This makes sense. The more peaceful builder demographic probably wants nothing to do with a skill called "coercion." (Of course, everything depends on sussing this person out via symbols.)