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During his GDC talk “Interesting Decisions,” Firaxis Games’ Sid Meier spoke about how boiling games down into a series of decisions can be a useful approach for developers to improve their work. One of the highlights of this session was Meier’s gamer archetypes from a designer’s perspective:
- Mr. Kick-Butt: winning matters more than anything else
- Ms. Genre: feels that any deviations from genre conventions are bad
- Mr. MinMax: seeks to understand all algorithms
- Ms. Paranoid: is absolutely convinced that the computer is cheating
- Mr. History: cares deeply about inaccuracies, no matter how seemingly insignificant
- Mr. Bubble-Boy: remembers the one bad moment in an otherwise good game
- Mr. Designer: has another game in mind that they wish the developers were making instead
A great PowerPoint slide with Will Wright was used for that last one. Which type are you, if any? Considering how frequently I put blame on the game itself rather than my own inability, I’ve got to go with “Paranoid.”
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