Assessing Type Agreeability in the Unified Model of Personality and Play Styles

Abstract

Classifying players into well defined groups can be useful when designing games and gamified systems, with many models relating to player or personality ‘type’. The Unified Model of Personality and Play Styles groups together many player and personality taxonomies, but whilst similarities have been noted in previous work, the overlap between models has not been analysed ahead of its use. This study provides evidence both for and against aspects of the Unified Model, with model agreeability assessed through comparison of participant classifications. Results show that representations of types related by the Unified Model do correlate significantly greater than types unrelated by the model, but do so with only weak-to-moderate correlation coefficients. Ranking classifications leads to results better mapping to the Unified Model, but also reduces the overall strength of correla tions between types. The Unified Model is therefore considered fit for purpose as an explanatory tool, but without additional study should be used with caution in further use cases.