How Mark Rosewater Makes You Better At Game Design

[Rayne Aven]

How Mark Rosewater Makes You Better At Game Design
By: Rayne Aven

This tutorial article will be my attempt to extrapolate Mark Rosewater’s theory of the psychographic player profile to the video game design world.

For those of you who don’t know, Mark Rosewater is the Head Designer of the popular trading card game Magic: the Gathering, and, as one of their most prolific writers and designers, released a series of articles pertaining to what he called the “psychographic player profiles,â€

 

[Despain]

yay mark rosewater. this is one of those guys that i both love AND hate. and hopefully he'll by my boss in a few years.

his original articles:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr258 (timmy, johnny and spike revisited)
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr311 (melvin and vorthos)

pretty much any serious magic player already knows this stuff, but it's useful to anybody else i guess. it's VERY MUCH centered around mtg specifically, and card games in general, but it could -- by a stretch at least -- be applied to rpg maker games

i think FAR more important about MaRo's approach, and mtg design in general, is his understanding of the color-wheel. but i supposed that one couldn't really be applied to rpg maker games no matter how you stretch it

you really could have applied this a bit more to rpg maker games, which are NOT multiplayer games, and two of your profiles therefore have no real purpose.

my explanation of timmy/johnny/spike in RPGs:

Timmy (experience): he wants to simply have fun playing the game. he'll be turned off by level-grinding. he cares a lot about epic storylines and flashy characters. he likes a big world to explore.
Johnny (express): he likes versatility in games. crafting systems, different classes, different character/skill combinations. he wants to be able to experience the game in a different way each time he plays.
Spike (prove): they're level-grinders and they don't care about the story or the systems of the game. they won't be bothered by sidequests and will want to tear straight through to the ending

 

[Rayne Aven]

I think the specific subgroupsare very much centered around Magic, but the actual psychographics themselves are very applicable to game design in general. They just mean different things for different genres of games. Take (American) football for instance, which caters to all three: Timmies love the aspect of the adrenalin rush in players as they tackle and run; Johnnies love how the plays are set up; and Spikes will look at stats and really get into predicting which team will win or, if they're the player, training hard. I really think Rosewater was on to something of much greater importance with the psychographic profiles than just Magic: the Gathering.

I know RPG Maker games aren't catered to multiplayer, but I do see a few MMORPG projects, and I put more than just multiplayer in the explanation for Timmy and Spike.

Also, Spikes are the hardcore gamers, who most definitely play through every part of a game.

 

[Despain]

Also, Spikes are the hardcore gamers, who most definitely play through every part of a game.

To a true spike, the side-quests wouldn't be a part of the core game to begin with (the only expection being if it was the only way to get a big weapon).

Most side quests would fall in Timmy's area, where they exist for the purpose of fleshing out the world and setting. As a whole, though, it depends on the side quest itself (or more accurately, the end result or reward of it).