Gaming profiles

Psychology, among other fields, is deeply interested in human personality. Knowing one’s personality type can be valuable for various purposes, including career choices or personal development. Similarly, in video games, player typologies serve a comparable role. They reveal what kind of player a person is, their gaming motivations, and their preferred play style. This information is especially useful for game developers and designers, who can use it to tailor games and improve the gaming experience for target audiences.

Many models focus either on player types or gaming motivations, but not all of them are publicly available, and many target specific game genres. Moreover, most lack empirical validation and remain theoretical constructs. For this reason, typological questionnaires are seldom applied in cognitive research related to gaming.

Existing research on the impact of gaming on cognition often relies on questionnaires that focus primarily on playtime, game genres, or platforms. These tools usually miss important aspects such as players’ motivations for gaming, which represent a significant gap in the research. Typological models, by contrast, can provide complementary insights into gaming experience, offering a richer and more nuanced understanding of how gaming relates to cognitive functions and behavior.

One of the earliest and most influential player typologies was created in 1996 by British researcher Richard Bartle, who categorized players of multi-user dungeons (MUDs) into four types: Socializer, Explorer, Achiever, and Killer. Our questionnaire is based on Bartle’s model but adapted for online games in general, translated into Czech, and updated for modern contexts. Another well-known model, BrainHex, developed in 2010, builds on neurobiological insights and emotion research to identify seven player types based on motivations. While promising, BrainHex remains hypothetical, lacks empirical validation, and has not been translated into Czech. We are currently refining and testing our own version to verify these player types and better reflect real gaming behavior.

By focusing on typologies, we aim to create robust models that can fill existing gaps and potentially reveal new insights about the influence of gaming on the human mind. This project is part of a larger initiative within the broader Gaming Experience research, which explores various aspects of video game engagement and its effects.