What Kind of Gamer Are You?
Do you play League of Legends, World of Warcraft, Battlefield Hardline (PC), or Battlefield 4 (PC)? Ever wondered what that says about you?
A new project called the Game and Mind Research (GAMR) is designed to explore if how someone performs in virtual worlds such as video games corresponds to their cognitive traits and behavior in everyday life. Are extraverts as social when playing video games as they are at a party? Do creative folks tend to be as imaginative in game play as in their artistic endeavors?
It’s probably true, but to confirm with actual research data, a joint study is being conducted by the Playful Systems group at the MIT Media Lab and the Games Group at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. The GAMR project attempts to measure cognitive traits such as personality, brain type (if your mind is more specialized in empathizing or systematizing), and “GAMR” type, a classification of gaming motivations.
According to the parameters of the study provided on the website, one major game from each popular online game genre was chosen. To examine similar data and since League of Legands and World of Warcraft are only available on the PC, the research only includes PC players.
What are the practical uses of the study? By profiling players’ personality traits and motivation as they play a game, the research could be used to adapt game play to potential players. Marketing 101 suggests using market research to understand and define your potential customer and according to the GAMR fact sheet, data will be shared with game developers anonymously.
However, the research suggests educational and therapeutic potential as well. With gaming increasingly being used as an educational tool, games could be adapted to the learning style and cognitive traits of individual players to make the games more effective and enjoyable. Gamification may be a buzzword, but it’s also a way to make learning fun.
Interested? Fill out the survey and find out your GAMR profile on projectgamr.com. The project is still in the data collection phase, but eventually GAMR results in scientific publications will be listed here.
