Taste Maps – The lenses of fun, Part 2

by Niklas Borglund · May 5, 2019

8 min read

This blog post is part of a series of posts regarding different ways of breaking down the word ‘fun’. Click here part one and part three.

In the last post, I wrote about the 8 kinds of fun outlined in the MDA framework. These definitions can be extremely beneficial when analysing a feature or a game, even if it just expands your vocabulary. Sentences like “this feature enhances the expression fun” puts you in an endlessly better position than just saying “this is more fun”.

Because fun is not universal. What is fun for you might not be fun for me.

The market has shown us this over and over again now when we have game engines like Unity3D, Game Maker and Unreal that are available to anyone with enough passion and interest. We are seing games being commercially successful that no one could have thought would sell before.
The people behind Steam realized this when they had Steam Greenlight. They were unable to predict what games would sell vs the ones that wouldn’t, so they opened it up and created Steam Direct instead.

This forces us to look at player psychology and who the game you are playing or making is made primarily for. That brings us to the next lens of fun – The Engines of Play and specifically for this post: Taste Maps.

The Engines of Play and Taste Maps

Not too long ago, I was looking for a good way to define a target audience that would actually be useful during production. I remembered listening to a very interesting presentation by Jason VandenBerghe when I was studying Game Design and Programming at Gotland University back in 2012 talking about player types. I found it, rewatched the video and absolutely devoured all the other talks and articles he had made. As it turned out, these videos and posts were exactly what I was looking for.

I would recommend you to stop reading this post if you are knowledge hungry and want the long in-depth version. Watch all of the following videos instead. He’s a great speaker. You will not be disappointed.

If you don’t have the time or just want a recap – don’t worry, I got you covered. Just keep on reading. The full Engines of Play is a framework too big and interesting for one post, so I’ll focus mainly on Taste Maps right now.

The Big Five / O.C.E.A.N

However, before we discuss game related matters, we need to talk about psychology and personality. The OCEAN model has been around and researched on for a long time. It is a taxonomy for personality traits, divided into five different factors – mapping people into categories of characteristics of who they are.

The five different factors are (source: Wikipedia) :

Openness to Experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious)
Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless)
Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved)
Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. challenging/detached)
Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident)

Each of these are divided into 6 different sub-categories (facets) and you can take a test in order to see how high your score is in each of these factors to see where you are.

So what does this have to do with Game Development?

Armed with an hypothesis about a correlation between personality and game preference, Jason VandenBerghe had lots of people take the OCEAN test and asked them questions about their favorite games.

As it turned out, the hypothesis seemed highly plausible and more research strengthened the claim. People with the same personality type tend to like the same games! Strong correlations was found in all factors except neuroticism.

All the 30 different facets could be directly mapped to specific Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics. To me, this is super exciting. If we know who we are making a game for, we can cater to a specific crowd and with some certainty get relevant feedback. It can help us understand people who play games that you yourself would never play and “Develop Accurate Empathy”. In addition, we can create tools around this theory and make decisions from a new perspective. The possibilities are endless.

The five factors of OCEAN was mapped into The Five Domains of Play containing game traits (source: darklorde.com) :

Openness to Experience -> Novelty (“[…] the presence or lack of new, interesting, dramatic, or beautiful things in the game.”)
Conscientiousness -> Challenge (“[…] overcoming obstacles, work, avoiding danger, and (literally) collecting achievements.”)
Extraversion -> Stimulation (“[…] the part of the game that excites, be that through direct thrill-rides or through social interactions.”)
Agreeableness -> Harmony (“[…] the part of the game where the player behaves in a particular way towards other people or characters. Do you shoot them? Or help them?”)
Neuroticism -> Threat (” […] the negative tone of the game that can evoke negative emotions in the player, such as addiction, anxiety, anger, or sadness.”)

The Primary Motivating Facets

In order to create a tool, he found 8 of the 30 facets of the OCEAN test to be primary motivators of wanting to play or purchase a game. Two in each factor with a proven correlation. I will start by briefly explain those eight, starting with Novelty.

Novelty

The Novelty axes consists of Fantasy vs. Realism and Builds vs Exploration.

For instance, let’s say you are really into fantasy and score high in the imagination facet. It’s not unlikely that you could probably buy a game solely on the fact that a game is played out in a well written fantasy world (e.g. Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, The Witcher). Consequently, you would probably not buy a game that markets itself on their ability to be as realistic as possible (e.g. Farming Simulator, NHL Series, Fishing Games).
High scorers in Builds does not necessarily dislike Exploration, but they prefer to build up their base before they do it.

These game related facets correspond to the following ones in the OCEAN test:

Fantasy vs. Realism = Imagination
Builds vs. Exploration = Adventurousness

Challenge

The Challenge axes consists of Skilled vs. Less Skilled and Not Work vs. Work.

Doing the same thing over and over again to achieve a goal is probably the best way to describe the Work axis. It’s basically grinding. The other axis, we ask ourselves it it requires skill or not.
A game that could be suitable for high scorers in skill and work is Dark Souls. In contrast, as Vandenberghe explains it, a suitable game for low scorers in both is The Sims, but with cheat codes enabled. That person wants all the fun without working for it.

These game related facets correspond to the following ones in the OCEAN test:

Skilled vs. Less Skilled = Self-Efficacy
Not Work vs. Work = Self-Discipline

Stimulation

The Stimulation axes consists of Multiplayer vs. Solo and Calm vs. Thrill.

The stimulation chart is quite self explanatory. A person with high Thrill and Multiplayer probably enjoys games like Left 4 Dead 2 when a Solo Thrill player would gravitate towards the likes of Resident Evil 7.

These game related facets correspond to the following ones in the OCEAN test:

Multiplayer vs. Solo = Gregariousness
Calm vs. Thrill = Excitement-Seeking

Harmony

The Harmony axes consists of Cooperation vs. Conflict and Mechanics vs. Context.

High scorers in Context wants a reason to what they are doing. They want some sort of meaning, usually in the form of a story. I usually see this as asking Why?(Context) vs. How? (Mechanics).

Cooperation people tend to want to work in teams(NPCs included) as a part of a larger entity, when conflict oriented individuals just “[…] want you to lose”.

These game related facets correspond to the following ones in the OCEAN test:

Cooperation vs. Conflict = Cooperation
Mechanics vs. Context = Sympathy

Population Distribution and Investment

In the video, he states that we can use the fact that a hundred percent of the population is represented on a single axis. If you take the test, you will get a score in each and every one of them. Furthermore, we as a population tend to distribute ourselves in a bell shaped curve manner around the middle. In other words, the majority of the population will hang out in the middle.

If we use this information, and apply it to the spectrum grids, we get an idea where the population lies in relation to the facets.

Eventhough the majority of the population lies near the middle, it’s important to realize that they are low scorers in both of the spectrums. They won’t buy a game just because it’s a fantasy game and tend to need something more. They need persusasion.

On the other hand, the people that lies in the edges are highly invested. They seek these experiences actively and deeply care about that specific component in games. They are the connoisseurs that will persuade the indecisive middle if they deem it to be good enough. “The edges generally satisfy the middle”

VandenBerghe points out that we should see this as investment layers. The population is lower at the edges, but they care a lot more.

Taste Maps

In conclusion, if we add all this knowledge together, we get this wonderful tool called Taste Maps shown in the image below.

To use this for your game or a game that you are analyzing, ask yourself these questions when filling the boxes (and be honest with yourself):

For the 60% investment layer – “Does my game have this feature?”
For the 15% investment layer – “Is this part of the game good? Will people like the game for this specific feature? Does this feature matter?”
For the 5% investment layer – “Is this experience among the best in the world?“

There you have it. Taste maps! Go through box by box and ask these questions for each and every one of them. Doing that will give you a map over what type of person this game would appeal to.
If you are a game developer, this tool can not only improve communication to what you are creating, but also help with defining scope according to budget very early on in the process.

Conclusion

Taste maps as a development tool is a game changer in my opinion. Working in a team, it remarkably improves communication as you are able to tell someone exactly who a game is created for. It also enables you to quickly prioritize the importance of a set of features opposed to another. You can map out the primary appeal of a game.

However, when all is said, knowing on a spectrum (or several in combination) where your preferences are as opposed to a target audience is a massive advantage. It enables you in a methodic way to challenge your assumptions and become a better designer as you understand what makes games fun for someone other than you.

As it turns out, why you start to play a game is not the same as why you continue to play. To understand that, we need to delve into Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and the next ‘engine’ in the Engines of Play in the next post.

Have you used Taste Maps before? If so, what are your experiences with it? Are there any other tools like this you’ve come across?

Thank you for reading! If you liked this type of post, please let me know! That way I can get a sense if I should do more of them. Also, If you have any comments, observations or perspectives about this – please talk to me on twitter!

Taste Maps – The lenses of fun, Part 2