General News - 8 Gamer Archetypes

Gamasutra has a blog where 8 gamer archetypes are described that are needed for break-testing your game.

• The Arse. This is the player who likes to hurt others, the very opposite of me. Very conflict oriented. If it’s possible to attack the Arse will attack. If it’s possible to mess with other players the Arse will mess with them. The Arse will go for the weaker player, going for the maximum hurt rather than trying to beat on the leader. Yeah, nice guy.
• The Coward. Turtler galore. This is the guy who won’t attack even if the enemy’s is sleeping with his pants down and his head up his butt. The Coward doesn’t care. It’s obviously a trap; too risky. The Coward will just huddle in his corner building his defenses, not risking anything, anytime (I’ve had designs where the Coward would win, resoundingly – bad game design).
• The Builder. This is pretty much me. The guy who’ll tech Every. Single. Time. This is the guy who’ll build the resource engine on the expense of everything else. Which works great against the Coward but less so against the Arse. Which is fine, since we’re pitting extremes against each other. And in the instances where the Builder wins over the Arse we know that the building strategy works a lot better than the messing strategy. Time to rebalance.
• Shorty. Mr. short-sighted is short-sighted, always going for the easiest gain in any situation. Strategy? Who needs it. If it’s there and it’s cheap, grab it!
• Mr. Plan. The plan is pretty hard to play. This is the player I have the most trouble with, being rather tactical and short sighted myself. When I play a Mr. Plan I set out a set of objectives at the start of the playtest and write them down. Then I check every action against those objectives. If they don’t take Mr. Plan closer to his objectives I don’t do them, no matter how tempting.
• The Grudge. Grudge is a grudge player. This is the player who starts out as another type and, once provoked, will relentlessly go for revenge. Effectively Grudge is a Coward/Builder/Mr. Plan or Short who in mid game turns into an Arse against one other, specific player. If the Grudge wins, or if the object of the Grudge’s hate loses badly then the game needs some checks and balances.
• The Specialist. The Specialist focuses on a single aspect of the game to the exclusion of all else. It can be combat, it can be massing gold, it can be VP racing. Whichever it is, if there’s a way to break the game with it the Specialist will do it.
• Random Rick. Random Rick plays randomly. Take a look at all the actions available and roll a die. That’s it. Random play. If Random Rick wins your deep strategy game then there’s some major flaw you haven’t seen. Works best with simpler games. Note that Random Rick can be a way to test for age dependency in a game. If Random Rick can win then the game is better suited to be played by small kids.