BrainHex: A Neurobiological Gamer Typology Survey
Lennart Nacke, Chris Bateman, and Regan Mandryk. 2014. BrainHex: A Neurobiological Gamer Typology Survey. In Entertainment Computing 5, 1: 55-62. Elsevier. doi:10.1016/j.entcom.2013.06.002
Abstract
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.