The Gamification User Types Hexad is a model created by Andrzej Marczewski to help designers understand the type of people that use gameful systems. They represent different types of motivations and interaction styles of users. However, they should not be used as a simple user categorization because each user typically displays a combination of motivations in varying degrees.
This is an excerpt of Marczewski’s description of the user types:
- Socialisers are motivated by Relatedness. They want to interact with others and create social connections.
- Free Spirits are motivated by Autonomy and self-expression. They want to create and explore.
- Achievers are motivated by Mastery. They are looking to learn new things and improve themselves. They want challenges to overcome.
- Philanthropists are motivated by Purpose and Meaning. This group are altruistic, wanting to give to other people and enrich the lives of others in some way with no expectation of reward.
- Players are motivated by Rewards. They will do what is needed of them to collect rewards from a system. They are in it for themselves.
- Disruptors are motivated by Change. In general, they want to disrupt your system, either directly or through other users to force positive or negative change.
For a longer description of the user types, please see Marczewski’s original publication.
Take the test!
Would you like to know your user types profile? Take the Hexad user types test!
Publications
The Gamification user types Hexad was originally published by Andrzej Marczewski:
- Andrzej Marczewski. 2015. Hexad: A player type framework for gamification design. Gamified UK.
- Andrzej Marczewski. 2015. User Types. In Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Gamification, Game Thinking and Motivational Design (1st ed., pp. 65-80). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
The following publications present our user types research focused on the creation and validation of a measurement scale:
Empirical Validation of the Gamification User Types Hexad Scale in English and Spanish
Gustavo F. Tondello, Alberto Mora, Andrzej Marczewski, and Lennart E. Nacke. 2019. Empirical Validation of the Gamification User Types Hexad Scale in English and Spanish. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 127: 95-111. Elsevier. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2018.10.002
The Gamification User Types Hexad Scale
Gustavo F. Tondello, Rina R. Wehbe, Lisa Diamond, Marc Busch, Andrzej Marczewski, and Lennart E. Nacke. 2016. The Gamification User Types Hexad Scale. In Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play – CHI PLAY ’16. Austin, TX, USA. ACM. doi:10.1145/2967934.2968082
HexArcade: Predicting Hexad User Types By Using Gameful Applications
Maximilian Altmeyer, Gustavo F. Tondello, Antonio Krüger, and Lennart E. Nacke. 2020. HexArcade: Predicting Hexad User Types By Using Gameful Applications. In Proceedings of the 2020 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play – CHI PLAY ’20. ACM. doi:10.1145/3410404.3414232
The HEXAD Gamification User Types Questionnaire : Background and Development Process
Lisa Diamond, Gustavo F. Tondello, Andrzej Marczewski, Lennart E. Nacke, and Manfred Tscheligi. 2015. The HEXAD Gamification User Types Questionnaire : Background and Development Process. In Workshop on Personalization in Serious and Persuasive Games and Gamified Interactions. London, UK. ACM.
Hexad-12: Developing and Validating a Short Version of the Gamification User Types Hexad Scale
Jeanine Krath, Maximilian Altmeyer, Gustavo F. Tondello, and Lennart E. Nacke. 2023. Hexad-12: Developing and Validating a Short Version of the Gamification User Types Hexad Scale. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 677, 1–18. doi:10.1145/3544548.3580968
Use the scale in your research
Please see these summarized instructions to use the Hexad scale in your research project. The scale and instructions are available in several languages:
(*) For a validated German version of the scale, see Jeanine Krath and Harald F. O. von Korflesch. 2021. Player Types and Game Element Preferences: Investigating the Relationship with the Gamification User Types HEXAD Scale. In Fang X. (eds) HCI in Games: Experience Design and Game Mechanics. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12789. Springer, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-77277-2_18. Their version is slightly different than our version linked above. For future projects, it may be better to use their validated version than our original, non-validated version.
For a Dutch version of the scale, see Jeroen Ooge, Robin De Croon, Katrien Verbert, and Vero Vanden Abeele. 2020. Tailoring Gamification for Adolescents: a Validation Study of Big Five and Hexad in Dutch. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY ’20). ACM, 206–218. doi:10.1145/3410404.3414267
For a Turkish version of the scale, see Özcan Erkan Akgün and Murat Topal. 2018. The Turkish Adaptation Study of the Gamification User Types Hexad Scale. International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education 5: 3, 389–402. doi:10.21449/ijate.379139
The Gamification user types Hexad is licenced under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence by Andrzej Marczewski. For the scale or other published research articles, please check the licences of each publisher (Elsevier or ACM).