Chris Bateman

What can we learn about play by examining it from a historical perspective? Using Foucault’s archaeological methods to examine the history of player practices in terms of their artefacts, a series of cross-sections through five millennia of play are developed around the key props (in Walton’s representational sense of this term) that have been deployed in games. The specific patterns considered are the contract, the die, the board, the pawn, the set, and the coin. In each case except the first, a material object serves a prescribed role in play, requiring players to imagine specific things that make certain kinds of games possible. The changes in the representational aspects of these props demonstrate both the continuity of player practices over time, and the significant changes that have emerged over the last few centuries.

What limitations are we willing to accept on our development of new technologies? The shared sense among a great many of the idealistic supporters of our ever-growing range of tools and abilities is that the acquisition of knowledge is always a positive gain for the entirety of humanity, and that therefore there should be no (or few) restrictions on continued technology research. This mythology, which descends from the arrival of exclusive Humanism from the Enlightenment onwards, has become one of the greatest moral and prudential threats to human existence because it removes the possibility of accurately assessing the moral implications of our technology. Against this prevailing ethos of unbounded technological incrementalism, this essay uses the pejorative term cyberfetish to mark our dependence upon, and inability to accurately assess, our technology

This paper briefly presents a player satisfaction model called BrainHex, which was based on insights from neurobiological findings as well as the results from earlier demographic game design models (DGD1 and DGD2). The model presents seven different archetypes of players: Seeker, Survivor, Daredevil, Mastermind, Conqueror, Socialiser, and Achiever. We explain how each of these player archetypes relates to older player typologies (such as Myers-Briggs), and how each archetype characterizes a specific playing style. We conducted a survey among more than 50,000 players using the BrainHex model as a personality type motivator to gather and compare demographic data to the different BrainHex archetypes. We discuss some results from this survey with a focus on psychometric orientation of respondents, to establish relationships between personality types and BrainHex archetypes.

Player satisfaction modeling depends in part upon quantitative or qualitative typologies of playing preferences, although such approaches require scrutiny. Examination of psychometric typologies reveal that type theories have—except in rare cases—proven inadequate and have made way for alternative trait theories. This suggests any future player typology that will be sufficiently robust will need foundations in the form of a trait theory of playing preferences. This paper tracks the development of a sequence of player typologies developing from psychometric type theory roots towards an independently validated trait theory of play, albeit one yet to be fully developed. Statistical analysis of the results of one survey in this lineage is presented, along with a discussion of theoretical and practical ways in which the surveys and their implied typological instruments have evolved.

A large volume of neurobiological research has been conducted in recent years, almost all of which has been considered solely from the perspective of biology. However, most of the insights gained through this research are also valuable for the game research field. This paper discusses the implications of existing research in neurobiology to the play of games (including, but not restricted to digital games), and connects neurobiological perspectives with models of play aiming to construct superior player satisfaction models built upon biological foundations. Connections are presented between already recognized patterns of play and recent research on the brain (in particular, the limbic system). By providing a framework for understanding how the brain responds to recurrent patterns inherent to play, we aim to provide a platform for future experimental player-game interaction research (for which possible directions are briefly explored), and a propaedeutic to biologically-grounded player satisfaction models.