Filtering player temperament through game design
-
I tend to design games to encourage a particular playstyle, rather than to repel one. Mostly.
Most of this comes down to the mission statement that defines the whole game design (and gameplay) process. I will be very clear about what the game is and isn’t there, in hopes that people will self-select whether they’ll like the game or not. Policies are the next step, being very clear what will be encouraged and disallowed (PvP rules; alt rules; IC and OOC harassment rules; social contract; plotrunning rules; how real-life prejudices will be handled in a modern, historical, or near-historical setting; etc).
My general workflow is to determine what kind of RP I want to see on the game, how to support and encourage that, spot and remove any roadblocks to it (the waygate system in The Fifth World is my best example of that, we had a multi-planetary game, but didn’t want barriers to casual RP, so we added limited instant travel in so folks could be on whichever planet they wanted), and then let players know what the intended thrust of RP will be.
That being said, most of the choices of what I want to play: PvE, zero-tolerance-for-harassment, collaborative playstyle, combination of action and casual, clear reasons for people to work together (with IC friction), lend themselves toward the type of players that I enjoy playing with.
-
This is more to do with media genres in a broader sense than game design, but I think that if you’re working on a storytelling game, it applies.
—>Also, here is a big fat disclaimer that this describes trends, not individual tastes<—
So the two (commonly measured) personality traits that I personally would care most about in a large/open playerbase are empathy and openness to experience. It doesn’t matter as much in a TTRPG small group of friends, but if you wanted to open a MUD that anyone can join under an anonymous username, you ideally want to cultivate a playerbase that’s prosocial, considerate, and more likely to yes-and than no-but or poo-poo other people’s fun.
There are actually a whole bunch of studies that have looked at the way consuming literature can either develop a reader’s empathy, or may be motivated by high empathy to begin with. For example, this 2013 article demonstrated that when readers feel emotionally transported into the narrative, it had a positive effect on their empathy over time. So in theory if I wanted to design a game that encourages players to experience greater empathy for other players, I might want to consider tools that provide an insight into other characters’ inner workings. For example, I could incentivise in-character journal entries, incorporate IC mind-reading/telepathy/psychic tools that let one character gain insight into another character’s emotional state or thoughts, etc. This study showed something similar, though I’ll note it later had some replication issues that, IMO, could be explained by the way the previous article focused not just on “reading fiction”, but how we read/experience fiction.
More recently in 2025, a study looked at the film genres preferred by college students and found some correlations between genre preference and OCEAN personality traits. The most useful finding for me in this is that mystery correlates with openness to experience, because “mystery” doesn’t have to be a standalone genre, it’s something you can incorporate into any game. And anecdotally I’ve noticed that whenever a game has some big central puzzle theme, a lot of people really hate it and don’t care about it, but they tend not to be players I like playing with anyway. So … good?
There are also a lot of small-scale tools you could incorporate to encourage mystery, and you could even combine them with tools I suggested in the previous paragraph. For instance, if you encouraged characters to write up personal secrets, you could then also add another tool that allows other characters to uncover them in fragments. You could have some kind of psychic power that allows multiple characters to pool together their energy, and then each one has a chance to uncover a different portion of their target’s inner thoughts/feelings/goals etc. Rather than having journal entries be public automatically, you could design a system that both rewards writing them, and rewards uncovering someone else’s journal entries by going through their house or something.
Lastly, and this may be controversial because I know the hobby loves this genre, but I think I would personally avoid horror as a central theme, based on this metastudy. And again, going back to the big fat disclaimer, this isn’t a criticism of individual tastes; I love lots of horror films! Obsession was great. But horror fans trend younger and lower in empathy. So what I would expect to see is that while the majority of players on any horror game are normal and chill, the extreme types of problem-players would probably be a little more extreme.
-
@Kestrel You remind me of the endless disappointment my younger self felt when creating and trying to promote sophisticated RP on Age of Conan, a game with some neat stuff but also with fatalities, PvP and boobies. Looking back I’m surprised how high my hopes were; true, it was based off complex mechanics and the dizzying world building of Robert E. Howard, but on the other hand a lot of people just saw it as a platform for Skinemax horror and power tripping. Guess which player base dominated the game at the end.
So yes, amazing and high quality stuff can come from horror settings, but some people will only see them with the dimmest, most self-serving eyes.
-
@Muscle-Car
I would have been there day one. -
I would have been there skinemax power tripping day one.
-
@Tez is that a game you are designing right now?
-
Maybe. Obviously I’m not ready to announce yet but the question was so fkn well-matched to my FAQ that I couldn’t resist.
-
Something I see a lot is that a game is designed for a certain playstyle but when players turn up who are not well suited for that game, compromises get made. I think some gamerunners overlook how important it is to be able to say “no, that isn’t what this game is meant to focus on”.
-
@Juniper Here lies one of the major differences between community management (porous, vulnerable, compromised, lowest common denominator rule, familiar enough to bad actors to be easily abused) and community curation (protecting the spirit of the game, choosing staff who “get it,” erring on the side of caution, trusting your gut, being willing to reprimand or eject parties who aren’t acting in good faith, cultivating the players you have instead of obsessing over the players you don’t have, saying “no” now so you don’t end up with a Pandora’s box later).
Curated communities are inevitably smaller but because staff and players have relationships instead of businesslike interactions, they’re more like a friend group than a job. Because there isn’t a rush of newcomers or a draining backlog of jobs, there is room for intuition to lead to inspiration and the development of an accord between the the various people in the game regardless of their status.
This very watershed (and the post-mortem examination of my past MUSHing experiences) is what led me to join this forum.
-
Lastly, and this may be controversial because I know the hobby loves this genre, but I think I would personally avoid horror as a central theme, based on this metastudy. And again, going back to the big fat disclaimer, this isn’t a criticism of individual tastes
I want to pick at the metastudy, though. It seems like most of the studies it references had fewer than 200 participants. No study that includes ‘The Unholy Trinity’ (Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)) should be generalised because the cultural response to those was just too damn weird. They don’t seem to consider horror sub-genres or the places where horror becomes ‘thriller’ and that bloodiest of genres, ‘action.’
From the MU angle, it may not track well because horror movie lovers and horror readers may not be the same group. Also, superficially horror themes might really be something else – WoD MUs are, like Twilight, romances with superheroes.
They did suggest that it’s a superhero-like power-fantasy + bloodshed that’s appealing to the younger and lower empathy sorts.
I do say no PC antagonists of the sort who are just going to rush into to-the-death PvP. No “I am a murderous murderer who likes to murder” character concepts, and I absolutely will GM-engineer terrible consequences to the careless murder of NPC goons.
-
Just one thing springs to mind that I don’t think anyone else already mentioned (although I’m pre-coffee, so don’t kill me if I’m wrong): Competitiveness.
A pure PVE environment where there is little to be gained from competing against other player characters does a lot to weed out some of the more toxic aspects of PVP and competitive games. Of course, it also takes away some of the excitement, so you need to decide whether the trade-off is worth it.
-
@L.-B.-Heuschkel Yes, but…
A pure PvE environment without titles to gain or any “real” PvP… will still have people competing over something, even if it’s just “having the most-referenced posts in the community journal” or “getting in the pants of the new hottie” or “winning the quarterly basketball game.”
But you’re very right that designing away from PvP and toward PvE will limit some of the toxic aspects of PvP and competitiveness.
Formerly known as Seraphim73 (he/him)
-
@Roadspike Agreed. In my experience, I’ve witnessed plenty of people get competitive over who gets to resolve the big plots and stuff, and get just as toxic as direct PVP can get. Some people live in a permanent state of “If I’m not winning, I’m not having fun, and if I’m not having fun, nobody else can.”
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
-
But you’re very right that designing away from PvP and toward PvE will limit some of the toxic aspects of PvP and competitiveness.
It also has the added benefit that one can more easily establish and enforce rules against the more insidious PVP and competitiveness toxicity, and will build the kind of community (ideally) where such things are more likely to be reported or commented upon.
-
@Roadspike Agreed. In my experience, I’ve witnessed plenty of people get competitive over who gets to resolve the big plots and stuff, and get just as toxic as direct PVP can get. Some people live in a permanent state of “If I’m not winning, I’m not having fun, and if I’m not having fun, nobody else can.”
Main character syndrome.
-
Yep. Main character syndrome all the way.
-
But you’re very right that designing away from PvP and toward PvE will limit some of the toxic aspects of PvP and competitiveness.
Yeah, it’s true that you can’t prevent people from being competitive, but discouraging it works pretty well.
-
Fighting main character syndrome seems like another kettle of fish entirely – one that cannot be solved by limiting competition. People like that will indeed find something to compete over because that’s what they’re looking for, and to hell with what anyone else thinks.
Any pronouns. Come to Chincoteague. We have ponies. http://keys.aresmush.com
-
@L.-B.-Heuschkel Is there a way to filter these people out purely through game design or community design, or is it a case of finding them and plucking them out like stray hairs with the tweezers of fuckoffitude?
-
I think the “I need to be winning” mindset isn’t discouraged by PvE at all, tbh.
There are toxic reasons why some players prefer PvP, but I also think there are toxic reasons why some players prefer PvE. Like, is it because they want to collaborate with other players? Or is it because their persistently obnoxious behaviour tends to invite challenge, and they’d prefer an environment where they won’t be, and the person doing that is the bad guy?
The type of toxic player I see on a PvP game is someone who needs to prove they can take out other players.
The type of toxic player I see on PvE games is a self-insert power fantasy who acts like if you don’t agree with everything their character says/does, and stroke their ego, you’re being rude.
The chill type of player I see on a PvP game is someone who separates themselves from their character, intentionally wrote in flaws and exploitable secrets, and looks forward to other players using those pressure points to drive the story forward.
The chill type of player I see on a PvE game is someone who enjoys being part of an ensemble cast working together to solve the main story’s problem.
But I just don’t really buy into the idea that PvP/PvE inherently inspires a higher calibre of players.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login