personality
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Scientists used phone accelerometer data to predict personality traits
Our phones contain a disturbing amount of information about us. While calls, messages, app usage and location logs have all been used to profile users, phone accelerometers contain key information, too. Researchers from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University used the tiny sensors that track phone movement for things like step-counting to predict five key personality traits.
'Pillar' is a personality test and much more in video game form
"When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you instead of just -- " "Instead of just waiting for their turn to speak." This scene from Fight Club encapsulates one of the driving ideas behind Pillar, a video game starring a series of characters with disparate personalities and quirks, each given mysterious puzzles to solve. Indie developer Michael Hicks is interested in how people communicate and the unique way every human perceives the world. Pillar distills these broad observations into just a few characters running around a wintry town, searching for a secret artifact. Each character is different, but their goal is the same -- it's a lot like real life. Hicks wants his game to inspire conversations; he isn't looking to start arguments or incite rants. He'd love for people to truly connect with each other and Pillar might make that happen.
Walter Isaacson on the leadership of Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson, the author who wrote the Steve Jobs biography, penned a recent column for the Harvard Business Review focusing on the traits that made Jobs an excellent business leader. Isaacson spent many hours with the Apple CEO while writing this book and uses the insights he obtained to draw out those traits that helped Jobs re-build Apple into the one of the most powerful companies in the world. Among other traits, Isaacson talks about Jobs's intense focus and his emphasis on simplicity. The entire article is seven pages long and includes 14 different qualities that sets Jobs apart from his peers. It's well worth a read if you have the time to digest all the information packed into this column.
Flameseeker Chronicles: I hope you like PvE stuff
Guild Wars 2 folks: What a week it's been, am I right? After the flood of impressions and videos after the select press embargo lifted, ArenaNet decided to whip fans into a veritable frenzy by accepting beta signups from Wednesday to Friday. Fan response was insane -- over 1,000,000 signups in under 50 hours. While a few cool kids on the internet have tried to scoff at that number, I really can't -- it's just staggering to me. If you were on vacation, sick, or hiding under your pet rock between Wednesday and Friday, I'm sorry -- there was a lot going on. You might consider checking out ArenaNet's blog post to catch up, as there's now a link roundup for your convenience. It's like the team wants you to be able to find out stuff about this game it eventually wants you to buy. Next the devs will be making themselves available for question-pelting on Reddit in an effort to promote clear and rapid comm-- oh wait.
Officers' Quarters: Raiding without characters
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. A question for the readership: How important is it to you that the players you raid with are interesting and engaging people? Is it essential, or merely a bonus? This week, a raid leader complains that his guildmates are boring -- to the point that he's considering leaving the guild altogether. He wants to know what he can do to inject some much-needed personality into the guild. Hi Scott I read your column regularly and find it very insightful. I have implemented various pieces of advice within my guild to varying degrees of success so thank you for this. Now however its my turn to pose a question. How do you create a guild with character? Let me explain this a bit with some history. I have been raid leader for my guild for the last 7-8 months and in the last 2 I inherited the GM tag as he didn't have much time to play. I was practically doing all the work anyway so this wasn't an issue. My issue is two fold, firstly I don't think I really like anyone in the guild apart from one person. And secondly it seems like I play with a bunch of automatons. This isn't to say I dislike anyone but its just they all seem to lack any sort of character and wouldn't say boo to a goose!
Wings Over Atreia: You are what you play
Have you ever noticed how some people just gravitate toward certain archetypes when it comes to choosing a class to play in-game? That some players just seem to really fit their role? It doesn't matter if it is the first class they dive into the moment that character selection screen pops up or the one they always end up with no matter how many times they try something different. Not only have I seen this play out repeatedly in Aion, but I have experienced it firsthand. It's quite fascinating, really -- certain personality traits are simply drawn to certain classes. More so than any other aspect of gaming, character class is a reflection of some of our core traits and beliefs; character creation is rarely just random but rather is guided by conscious and unconscious desires. Don't believe me? Take a look around Atreia -- it is demonstrated time and time again. Warriors, scouts, mages, priests... each has idiosyncrasies that are unique to the archetype and are fitting for the gamers who play them. And don't think others' opinions aren't colored by your class; each also subtly alludes to these specific traits. So what does your class say about you (or your legionmates)? Step past the cut into my office and we can delve into these personality profiles within Aion.
Storyboard: Another chance
Character regrets are a tricky thing. To be sure, they're a tricky thing that we've already discussed when it comes to making characters, but that's hardly the end. Then you have to bring your character out of the controlled environment of the character creator and into the madness of actual open play. And if you haven't created a regretful character... odds are you've still seen the problem. Even when you've crafted a character with a dark past and a lot of regrets without falling into maudlin traps... none of that means anything if other players don't know about it. You fall into the trap of telling people you've met not half an hour before about your character's full life history and all her mistakes, and then people get bored and quite possibly wander off. I focus a lot on character creation, but all of the best backstory in the world won't help you if you don't know how to weave it into actual play. So today I'm going to talk about how to take your character's backstory of mistakes and poor choices and bring it into actual play without sounding like you'll confess your innermost secrets to random passersby.
Personality in Guild Wars 2: NPCs will give you pie
Do you like pie? Do you want game NPCs to give you free pie? How about a free jar of bees? (Don't look so surprised, it's an excellent weapon.) It may sound funny, but free goodies from NPCs are all part of the personality system in Guild Wars 2. Way back in May, ArenaNet's Ree Soesbee gave us an exciting overview of how your personal story will work in Guild Wars 2. The whole point of personal story, and dynamic events for that matter, is to make you feel that you're truly in the world and making an impact. However, it's a bit immersion-breaking if you've been tearing around building a reputation as a centaur-slaying hero, and then you enter town to be greeted by blank stares and static dialogue from every NPC. ArenaNet thought of this too. Follow along after the jump to see how the developers have addressed this issue in the latest blog entry: Personality in Guild Wars 2.
Guild Wars 2 unveils the game's lighter side
We've learned a lot of core news about Guild Wars 2 lately -- everything from class reveals to character creation has been served up to eager fans. The latest batch of new information about Guild Wars 2 takes a look at some of the lighter aspects of gameplay. IGN spent some time chatting with the developers and came away with a wealth of new information on events outside the central storyline. Bar brawls, daily achievements, kill counts, and interaction with NPCs were all covered. We even got hints of some possible side games or minigames, such as a shooting gallery. Check out the full interview at IGN.
Storyboard: Everybody starts somewhere
Welcome back to another edition of Storyboard! This week, and for the next couple of weeks, we're going to be talking about generating characters. It's a far cry from building characters in a pen-and-paper game, naturally -- MMOs don't tend to require you to make choices about things like specialization until you've been playing for some time, and the generation system isn't tremendously open. And we're not focused on working out the best possible stat combination in this column, anyway. We're concerned about the actual person behind the (eventual) Sword of Godslaying. So where to start? Let's just assume you're staring at a basic character creation screen and trying to figure out who you're going to be adopting as your newest persona. There are three basic starting points for developing a character that work in nearly every game, and they let you start off with a character who might not be fully realized, but certainly can feel that way. We'll look at each of them in turn today and focus on the specifics in the coming weeks.
All the World's a Stage: We don't need no narration
All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles. Throughout my career as a roleplaying columnist on WoW.com, I've been talking about roleplaying as a way to tell stories, but last week a comment by Zombie, as well as those made by a few others on the same topic, caused me to think about roleplay stories in a new way. Perhaps what we roleplayers do isn't actually storytelling so much as it is character development through interesting and somewhat disjointed anecdotes. There's really no beginning, middle, or end to a roleplayed character in WoW. Instead, what you get is a mishmash of events and experiences, which you may then string together into a story in your mind if you like. But even if you don't, you can see that most of us don't really expect for a narrative to develop from a clear beginning, through various plot developments, and finally lead into an exciting climax. There is something else roleplayers want to get out of their experience, even if many of us have trouble articulating exactly what it is.
Aion: Picking your class by personality, not numbers
MMO players come in all shapes and sizes and boast a variety of personality traits. Picking a race, class, and faction combination in your favorite MMO can sometimes give an insightful look at the player behind the keyboard. At least, Paul Barnett thinks so: "Most of the people I've met who like Dwarfs basically look like Dwarfs."That may be true because I'm a pretty tall and lean person and I hate playing Dwarves. Then again, my MMO history includes playing a number of Kobolds in Dark Age of Camelot and Goblins in Warhammer Online, so I could just be really strange.While browsing the Aion community forums, we came across an interesting post. One of the board members has written up a quick and quirky guide for choosing one of the game's eight classes based on one's personality. Obviously, numbers and stats play a huge factor in making class decisions for many players, but this could be a more healthy approach. At the very least, you will gain a better understanding of the kinds of people playing these classes, which could give you a strategic advantage when you run into them on the battlefield.
Ready Check: Know your raiders
Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we get psychological on your posterior.We're all familiar with caricatures of raiders, from the aggressive aggro-hungry warlock to the placid, gentle priest. Generalising to quite this extent is perhaps a little unfair, but it's certainly true that many raiders share common personality traits; by looking at research into personality and learning types, we can understand our raid force better and perhaps even find out a thing or two about how to manage them.Have you ever wondered what makes your raid group tick? Why people with seemingly conflicting behaviour and goals get on just fine when there are dragons to be slain? Psychology research explains it all.
How your Bartle Type influences your class choice: WoW style
Last week we showed the Massively readers a research report done at gamerDNA regarding MMO players' Bartle Type and how it influences their Warhammer Online class choices. In the comments at their site, and at ours, many asked if this could be done for other games as well, namely World of Warcraft. Well this week they treat us to just that, and the results might surprise you.While not as clearly-defined as the WAR/Bartle results, this report shows some interesting statistics relating to WoW players and their gender, personality, class type and more. Keep in mind though that these results are based on around 45k+ members at gamerDNA who play WoW, not every single player out there. Even so, it's always enlightening to see these things in solid numbers. I mean, who knew there were more Hunters than any other class? /cough One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
The Daily Grind: What's your Bartle quotient?
The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology has long been a staple of the MUD and MMORPG community. We've ever mentioned it here a couple of times.The Bartle Test (developed by -- you guessed it -- Richard Bartle) is a series of questions the answers to which result in the test-taker's Bartle Quotient. In your Bartle Quotient, you're told how closely you identify with each of four types of MMO gamer pychologies -- Achiever, Explorer, Killer, and Socializer. The final figure is a ranking -- from most dominant to least dominant -- of those types in your own gaming personality. For example, this blogger is an ESKA.The test has been criticized over the years as an innacurate or insufficient measurement, but it's remained popular nonetheless. Take the test, and tell us where you stand. Do you feel it's accurate? If not, where did it go wrong?
All the World's a Stage: Character diamonds
All the World's a Stage is your source of roleplaying ideas n' stuff. The usual columnist is grateful to Alex and Matt for covering for him the last couple weeks while he got ready to defend his MA thesis.Getting into character isn't all that easy. First of all, as Matt demonstrated last week, one must have the desire and the gumption to just do it. You can't sit back and say, "But I don't know how to do it right!"or "But what if people don't like my roleplaying?" or any other excuse like that. You have to put your fingers to the keyboard and just start playing your role. Whether people like it more or less depends upon a bunch of things, including your skills and knowledge about how to do it well, but first and foremost it depends on your willingness to go out and try things out -- then look back and learn from your experience. You won't stop having problems and making mistakes, but you will get better over time.Today I'll share with you one idea I found that helped me a lot with a problem I was having: when I found myself having a bit of trouble "logging in" to a particular character's personality, I found the concept of the "Character Diamond" to be extremely valuable in pinning down exactly who this character is, how she would respond, and what it feels like to be inside her head. This concept was originally thought up by a screenwriting teacher named David S. Freeman, but it has gone through a bit of modification to suit the MMORPG world. So, with permission from the folks at Dramatis Personae who first taught me about it, I would like to sum it up for you here as a starter's guide and reference for making character diamonds of your own.
MMOGology: Identity crisis
Ed Norton is a mild mannered claims adjuster. He's a friendly fellow and a model employee. He's never late to work. He keeps his workspace nice and tidy. He always speaks in a pleasant and clear manner during staff meetings and never raises his voice. But underneath the freshly pressed shirt and polished shoes lies something sinister. Mr. Norton has a dark secret. As night falls on the quaint suburbs where Ed resides, a blue-white light flickers in the otherwise dark bedroom of his modest home. Ed hovers in front of his PC's monitor; the glare reflecting eerily off his horn rimmed glasses. He smiles wickedly as World of Warcraft finishes loading. Suddenly, Ed undergoes a hideous transformation. His perfectly shellacked hair becomes a wild jungle of frizz. His eyes sink back into his skull. A demonic, green light leaks from between his pointed teeth. Ed has become Durden, the blood thirsty, undead warlock. Using his epic staff of carnal destruction, Durden reaps the souls of his victims with reckless abandon, laughing at their pathetic pleas for mercy. He is guildmaster and raid leader and wields ultimate power. All shall obey his commands or be forever be exiled from his presence.Does this sound like you? If so, please seek psychiatric help immediately. While most of us don't undergo the dramatic personality change illustrated by Mr. Norton when playing our favorite MMOG, many of us do have an online persona quite different from the one we present to the real world. Akela Talamaska's recent post about the Daedalus Project lead me to a fascinating survey that examined player role reversals. The survey highlights several different scenarios in which the roles of the players are completely inverse from the roles they play in real life. What are some of these roles swaps and how do they tie into our personalities? Why do we chose to act they way we do in our virtual worlds? Find out after the break!
Breakfast Topic: Your WoW personality
I have a friend who doesn't play WoW, but his roommate does. As a psychologist, my friend is a more astute observer of individual behavior than I am. At lunch one day, he theorized that we tend to play World of Warcraft with the same attitude that have in the real world. On this surface this statement seemed to be correct. People in game and in life vary from kind, helpful souls to nasty boorish trolls. I like to think of myself as WYSIWYG (what you see what you get). I try to portray myself online with the same values that I feel define me as a person. I set goals and work hard to achieve them. I consider myself a good friend. Every once in a while I go too far and take on the role of martyr in both game and in life. This is something I'm proud of; on the contrary, I wish I could stop myself from doing it.
Science says: Neurotic AI has a gaming edge
While we're not sure how comfortable we are with our artificial intelligence constructs having human-like personalities attached to them, we are interested to know what affect those personalities would have on our robot overlords' videogame abilities. So we suppose it's a good thing that the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence conducted a study to see what types of AI personalities were best suited to games.The study programmed four artificial intelligence agents to play single-player Age of Mythology with four distinct play styles: aggressive, defensive, normal and neurotic, the last of which was saddled with ostensible drawbacks such as "irrational assessment of resource value" and "tendency to resort to extreme playing styles." Despite these drawbacks, though, the neurotic AI played itself to a perfect 7-0 record and, surprisingly, achieved wins 3-12 minutes faster than its opponent AI, on average. The takeaway from all this? If you see Woody Allen in the Xbox Live lobby, beware!View - Study presentation slides (PDF)Read - Study summary at Mind Hacks
Survey finds Apple users have sense of superiority -- no wait, hear us out
Wait up, hang on here -- you're telling us a personality profiling conducted on 7,500 people at Apple's biggest tub-thumping event of the year, Macworld, yielded results that would suggest Apple users "are more liberal, less modest, and more assured of their own superiority than the population at large." And this so-called survey says Apple users have high indexes for "low modesty," "high perfectionism," and "high superiority," and low indexes for things like "humility," and "self esteem"? Lies and half truths. We don't know a single Apple user that fits anything remotely similar to that profile. Plus, we hear this poll totally had some hanging chads.
