Towards a Conceptual Framework of Comprehensive Video Game Player Profiles: Player Models, Mental Models, and Behavior Models

Abstract

Current approaches to player profiling are limited in that they typically employ only a single one of numerous of available techniques shown to have utility for categorizing and explaining player behavior. We propose a more comprehensive Video Game Player Profile Framework that considers the demographic, psychographic, mental model, and behavioral modeling approaches shown to be effective for describing gamer populations. We suggest that our proposed approach can improve the efficacy of video game player profiles by grounding data-driven techniques in game analytics with the theoretical backing of demographic, psychometric, and psychographic measurements. We provide an overview of our proposed framework, discuss the usage and relevance of each component technique, and provide a proof-of-concept demonstration with archived data.