How player and opponent personalities influence cooperative gameplay

TL;DR

This study investigates how matching players and opponents based on Big-5 personality traits affects their experience in cooperative gameplay, highlighting the importance of personality compatibility.

Contribution

It introduces an experiment examining the impact of personality-based matching on player experience in a custom cooperative game.

Findings

Personality matching influences player rapport and engagement

Different personality combinations lead to varied gameplay experiences

Matching based on Big-5 traits can enhance cooperative gameplay dynamics

Abstract

Research has shown that digital game players often feel engagement and rapport with a game hero or character when they can channel their own ambitions and goals through the hero's journey in the game world; in essence, they feel a sense of accomplishment and fulfilment whenever they put the game mechanics to use to help the hero reach a positive ending to the game quests. In the case of cooperative gameplay, rapport also has to do with their perception of their peers' skills, gameplay style and behaviour within the game. In this paper, we describe an experiment to identify whether matching players with different personalities, as characterized by the OCEAN or Big-5 personality model, can influence their player experience with a custom-made, cooperative game.