MentalGame: Predicting Personality-Job Fitness for Software Developers Using Multi-Genre Games and Machine Learning Approaches

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multi-genre game-based framework combined with machine learning to predict software developer suitability, achieving high accuracy and revealing behavioral patterns indicative of candidate quality.

Contribution

It presents a novel multi-genre serious-game approach with machine learning for implicit personality assessment in software developers, bypassing traditional questionnaires.

Findings

Model achieved up to 97% precision and 94% accuracy.

Distinct gameplay patterns correlate with candidate suitability.

Game-based behavioral signals effectively predict software development fit.

Abstract

Personality assessment in career guidance and personnel selection traditionally relies on self-report questionnaires, which are susceptible to response bias, fatigue, and intentional distortion. Game-based assessment offers a promising alternative by capturing implicit behavioral signals during gameplay. This study proposes a multi-genre serious-game framework combined with machine-learning techniques to predict suitability for software development roles. Developer-relevant personality and behavioral traits were identified through a systematic literature review and an empirical study of professional software engineers. A custom mobile game was designed to elicit behaviors related to problem solving, planning, adaptability, persistence, time management, and information seeking. Fine-grained gameplay event data were collected and analyzed using a two-phase modeling strategy where suitability was predicted exclusively from gameplay-derived behavioral features. Results show that our model achieved up to 97% precision and 94% accuracy. Behavioral analysis revealed that proper candidates exhibited distinct gameplay patterns, such as more wins in puzzle-based games, more side challenges, navigating menus more frequently, and exhibiting fewer pauses, retries, and surrender actions. These findings demonstrate that implicit behavioral traces captured during gameplay is promising in predicting software-development suitability without explicit personality testing, supporting serious games as a scalable, engaging, and less biased alternative for career assessment.