You Work How You Play
Renowned author and sociologist Martha Beck once said, “How you do anything is how you do everything”. As a psychotherapist, I learned to relate people’s behaviours across the different realms of their lives. I might find out about someone’s tendency to disengage when they felt they were losing a game and then ask ‘do you disengage when things aren’t going your way at work?’.
While Myers Briggs and countless other models of personality types offer us ways to understand ourselves holistically, certain models exist to specifically teach us about the way we play games. Your tendencies at the gaming table are likely to hint at hidden strengths and vulnerabilities in other walks of life, including within the workplace. What follows is a look at perhaps the most famous of these models.
Gamer Types: A History of Bartle Types
Richard Bartle, a British writer and game researcher, introduced the concept of player types in multiplayer online games in the 1990s. His groundbreaking research identified four primary personality or player types:
1. The Achiever
Achievers thrive on completing objectives, accumulating points and reaching milestones in games. Give them a checklist, and they will want to complete it. Give them a one to five star rating and they will want to get five stars across the board.
2. The Explorer
Explorers want to be creative within a game system. They want to tell their own stories, and do things that haven’t been done before. That might mean achieving something no other has, using a game’s mechanics in interesting, new ways or just achieving a humorous outcome that no-one foresaw.
3. The Socializer
Socializers prioritise building relationships with other players. A game is first and foremost a vehicle to being with other people, maybe even an aid to socialising. They don’t mind losing. They often don’t even care about the game, but will prioritise forming, maintaining and enjoying their connection to others at the table.
4. The Killer
The Killers primary goal is to outdo the next person. And then the next. They thrive on player vs player (PvP) gameplay, and any setting in which they can assert superiority. Doing well doesn’t mean half as much as doing better than another player.
Exploring Gamer Types in the Workplace
You will likely have recognized yourself or someone you work with in the above profiles. Let’s look at how each of these gamer types is likely to conduct themselves in the workplace:
1. Achievers
You want pats on the head. You want to be given measurable tasks and then have the evidence that you succeeded at them. You are a completer, who wants to see projects through to a conclusion and to know that the work was credited to you. Any way of tracking employee achievement, such as a PDP tasks broken down into % chunks, taskboards or checklists are going to appeal to your working style. You can lose sight of the bigger picture in your pursuit of ticking boxes, and miss alternative ways to achieve longer-term success.
2. Explorers
As an explorer you want to tell stories. You want to solve problems and achieve results in new and interesting ways. You will do this by typically learning new skills, approaching new problems or by coming up with creative solutions. As an explorer you don’t take well to repetition, and instead thrive on situations you can seek alternative approaches to. Sometimes your approaches can be new simply for the sake of being new, and you or your line manager will need to develop their skills in making you reflect on the rationale for your approaches.
3. Socializers
If you’re a socializer then your most important goal is keeping the pack together. Doing well, or excelling are only important to you if they are needed in order to ensure your place within the team. You bring a huge amount of energy and fun to the workplace, and are likely to make it an environment that other people want to join and stick with. Your focus on people over tasks can lead to complacency if you’re not reminded of the practical needs of the role.
4. Killers
As a killer, you want to be better than other employees. The closer someone else’s role is to yours, the more excited you are by the prospect of outperforming them. Commission-based pay works extremely well for you, as it can directly tie your desire to beat others with your bank account. Getting you to bring in good results can be a simple question of ensuring your team’s results are made visible to one another. You risk threatening the cohesiveness and teamwork within your department if you’re not allowed sufficient chances to bond and ally with those around you.
Using Gaming Styles at GetQuesting
When I run games with GetQuesting, exposing gaming styles and tendencies is a key part of the work. Due to the life or death mechanics within the games being run, people are able to catch a glimpse of people’s more vulnerable side within a safe environment. They can come to know how they respond to existential threats, or compete with others for limited resources without anything actually being risked. After each game I will debrief, and encourage players to understand their actions through the above lenses. For those team leads that want to go deeper, I can offer a full breakdown of the team, and where I see opportunities or weaknesses within the group.
Conclusion: Embracing Your Gaming Style for Professional Growth
Gaming styles, like any form of psychological categorising, should only ever be used as an indicator of how you act or should act. Not only can they be a poor fit for any one set of behaviours, but most likely our personalities are a blend of more than one style. Nonetheless, next time you play a game of Monopoly at Christmas, get Dobbled by your child or are roped into a rowdy game of Cards Against Humanity at a Party, consider how you conducted yourself. Map it against Bartle’s types, and consider how those tendencies might be playing themselves out in the workplace. Perhaps it will highlight an area you need to monitor, or give you a sense of where or how you might be better placed within your company or career.
If you would like to give your team a hilarious night of gaming and intrigue while developing their collaboration skills, then contact us at GetQuesting, to arrange a Traitors, or Dungeons & Dragons game!
Resources and References:
- Bartle, R. (1996). Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs.
- Yee, N. (2006). The Psychology of Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games: Motivations, Emotional Investment, Relationships and Problematic Usage.
- Beck, M. (2000). Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live.