What's Your Player Type and How Does TS4 Serve and/or Underserve Your Style?
Since I'm currently on break from school, I've been catching up on some gaming and binge watching some Extra Credits videos. Granted, it's been a while, so I started watching a little earlier back from where I last left off...which led me to re-watching some of my favorite episodes. One in particular got me thinking about the Sims player base and how TS4 has been for the different types of players over the last few years. This one, in fact:
https://youtu.be/yxpW2ltDNow
This video describes the four types of players that Richard Bartle, creator of of the first Multi-User Dungeon (or MUD, which is sort of like a text-based MMORPG), discovered after years of research involving interviews with players of his games as to why they played.
Although Bartle's work is discussed here and in the follow-up video in the context of multi-player online games, I find that this also applies to us Simmers as well. There are players who love doing challenge runs, maxing out all of their sims' skills, making incredible stuff in-game, and getting those in-game achievements, all of which fits Bartle's Achiever type. There are the people who enjoy tormenting and killing their sims or having their sims torment and kill other sims in novel and interesting ways, those people remind me of the Killer type. There are players who enjoy sharing their sims' stories, cool builds, and in-game screen shots with others and are more interested in the social dynamics within their sim worlds (between family members, between friends, between enemies, etc.), which remind me of the Socializer type. Finally, there are the players who love investigating and playing with the game's systems themselves, seeing how far and deep they go, traveling around and exploring the game world itself--the Explorers.
So, it got me thinking, "How many of my fellow Simmers on the forums are which type, and how do they feel the game has catered to and/or shortchanged their playstyle?" I encourage you to watch the video I posted above (it's really interesting, like all of the Extra Credits crew's work), answer the poll, and comment in this thread about how the game has done (both good and bad) in terms of serving your simming expectations and needs so far.
Thanks for reading this long-winded post, and I look forward to seeing what you all have to say. ^_^
This video describes the four types of players that Richard Bartle, creator of of the first Multi-User Dungeon (or MUD, which is sort of like a text-based MMORPG), discovered after years of research involving interviews with players of his games as to why they played.
Although Bartle's work is discussed here and in the follow-up video in the context of multi-player online games, I find that this also applies to us Simmers as well. There are players who love doing challenge runs, maxing out all of their sims' skills, making incredible stuff in-game, and getting those in-game achievements, all of which fits Bartle's Achiever type. There are the people who enjoy tormenting and killing their sims or having their sims torment and kill other sims in novel and interesting ways, those people remind me of the Killer type. There are players who enjoy sharing their sims' stories, cool builds, and in-game screen shots with others and are more interested in the social dynamics within their sim worlds (between family members, between friends, between enemies, etc.), which remind me of the Socializer type. Finally, there are the players who love investigating and playing with the game's systems themselves, seeing how far and deep they go, traveling around and exploring the game world itself--the Explorers.
So, it got me thinking, "How many of my fellow Simmers on the forums are which type, and how do they feel the game has catered to and/or shortchanged their playstyle?" I encourage you to watch the video I posted above (it's really interesting, like all of the Extra Credits crew's work), answer the poll, and comment in this thread about how the game has done (both good and bad) in terms of serving your simming expectations and needs so far.
Thanks for reading this long-winded post, and I look forward to seeing what you all have to say. ^_^
