• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
HCI Games Group

HCI Games Group

Researching Affective Systems and Engaging Interactions

  • Home
  • Blog
  • People
  • Opportunities
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • Teaching
  • Contact
  • CLICK ME!!!

User Types Hexad

You are here: Home / User Types Hexad

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.

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:

  • The Hexad User Types Scale – English (validated)
  • La Escala Hexad de Tipos de Usuario – Español (validada)
  • Die Nutzertypen Hexadskala – Deutsch (* see validation information below)
  • A Escala Hexad de Tipos de Usuário – Português (** see validation information below)
  • L’Escala Hexad de Tipus de Usuari – Català
  • L’Échelle Hexad des Types d’Utilisateurs – Français
  • Felhasználótípusok hatfaktoros skálája – Magyar
  • La Scala Hexad dei Tipi di Utente – Italiano
  • Sex-faktors skalan av användartyper – Svenska
  • 游戏化用户类型六进制量表 – 中文
  • 게임 화 사용자 유형 Hexad 규모 – 한국어
  • مقیاس أنماط المستخدمین السداسي – اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ

(*) 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.

(**) The Brazilian Portuguese translation of the scale was validated in: Ana Cláudia Guimarães Santos, Wilk Oliveira, Maximilian Altmeyer, Juho Hamari, and Seiji Isotani. Psychometric investigation of the gamification Hexad user types scale in Brazilian Portuguese. Scientific Reports 12, 4920 (2022). doi:10.1038/s41598-022-08820-x

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).

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2023 · HCI Games Group · All Rights Reserved. We acknowledge that we live and work on the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabeg, and Haudenosaunee peoples. The University of Waterloo is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land promised to the Six Nations that includes six miles on each side of the Grand River. We wish to honour the ancestral guardians of this land and its waterways: the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Wendat, and the Neutrals. Many Indigenous peoples continue to call this land home and act as its stewards, and this responsibility extends to all peoples, to share and care for this land for generations to come.