The ACE2 model: Refining bartle’s player taxonomy for creation play

This paper proposes a new taxonomy of video-game players: the ACE2 model. Building upon related work in player taxonomies, the ACE2 model sets out to refine the established Bartle’s taxonomy of player types by incorporating the aspect of creation play (e.g., as exhibited in modern games such as Minecraft), thereby rendering the refined model more generally applicable to present-day video games. The paper considers the model part of an ongoing investigation into the relationship between aesthetics and mechanics in games. As such, the contribution of this paper lies not in proposing a definitive answer to taxonomic demarcation, it foremost attempts to highlight a creative play dimension that could be considered under-explored in classic player taxonomies. A model-validation method to this end, is to allow human participants to identify the subjective demarcation of creation play in a user study, in which the aesthetic / mechanics expressiveness of games is assessed by participants. The paper reports on the results of a first user study, set to obtain an early indication of the model’s validity, prior to extensive validation experiments. These first studies that compare Bartle’s model with the ACE2 model indicate that (1) the ACE2 model allows for a more articulate labelling of single-player video games, and that (2) even though creation play does not feature often, when it does it is a defining feature in modern games. As such, the paper concludes by suggesting that (a) the descriptive expressiveness of the ACE2 model provides a substantial and functional refinement of Bartle’s taxonomy of player types, and (b) further investigation of the interplay of aesthetics and mechanics – as experienced by game players – may yield important insight in (the taxonomic understanding of) creation play in games.