game-design-granular-player-motivation-audit

Name: game-design-granular-player-motivation-audit
Author: Stanestane

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How to install game-design-granular-player-motivation-audit?

stanestane/game-design-skills-bundle/game-design-granular-player-motivation-audit

$npx -y skills add Stanestane/game-design-skills-bundle --skill game-design-granular-player-motivation-audit

Installs into the current project.

Summary

Audit a game, feature, progression system, social system, live-ops loop, monetization surface, or onboarding flow through a granular player motivation taxonomy. Use when evaluating which player motivation archetypes a design strongly serves, neglects, or actively repels; when com

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SKILL.md

1	# Game Design Granular Player Motivation Audit
2
3	Audit a design by asking which granular motivation segments it serves, excludes, overloads, or misunderstands.
4
5	Use this skill to evaluate how a game, feature, flow, or system lands across a detailed player motivation taxonomy. Treat the archetypes as motivational lenses, not rigid human categories.
6
7	## Core principle
8
9	A feature does not need to serve every motivation profile equally.
10
11	The real question is whether the pattern is intentional, healthy, and appropriate for the feature's role in the product. A narrow feature can be good. An accidentally narrow feature, or one that pretends to be broad while serving only one motivation profile, usually creates confusion, coldness, or churn.
12
13	This taxonomy is especially useful because it gives you two layers at once:
14	- motivation themes explaining what psychological needs the design activates
15	- archetypes predicting who will respond well, who will feel indifferent, and who may be alienated
16
17	## Start with the source notes
18
19	Before auditing, read `references/granular-taxonomy-notes.md`.
20
21	That file contains the source-faithful motivation list, archetype definitions, distinct motivations, anti-motivations, and interpretation rules extracted from the document.
22
23	## Motivation themes in this taxonomy
24
25	Use these 10 themes as the causal layer underneath the archetypes:
26
27	1. Personal Achievement
28	2. In-Game Achievement
29	3. Cognitive
30	4. Emotional Immersion
31	5. Creation + Exploration
32	6. Affiliation
33	7. Independence
34	8. Status + Rank
35	9. Leadership + Power
36	10. Rewards
37
38	When auditing, ask both:
39	- Which archetypes does this design serve?
40	- Which underlying motivation themes are doing the work?
41
42	## Archetypes
43
44	Audit across these nine archetypes:
45
46	- Steady Advancer - wants simple, legible progress and short-burst accomplishment
47	- Curious Solver - wants cognitive stimulation, learning, and mental sharpness
48	- Competitive Achiever - wants rank, skill proof, comparison, and bragging rights
49	- Imaginative Creator - wants expression, control, creation, nurturing, and freeform exploration
50	- Strategic Leader - wants smart play, leadership, team success, prestige, and mastery through coordination
51	- Immersed Storywriter - wants absorption, narrative meaning, emotional connection, and lived identity in a world
52	- Reward Seeker - wants prizes, payouts, currencies, bonuses, and tangible wins
53	- Passionate Belonger - wants friendship, fit, support, team identity, and social belonging
54	- Category Enthusiast - a residual segment defined more by attachment to a game category than by a strong cross-category motivation profile; treat with caution and do not overgeneralize from it
55
56	## Use the doc, not generic intuition
57
58	Do not flatten these archetypes into generic player stereotypes.
59
60	Important distinctions from the source document:
61	- Competitive Achiever is not the same as Strategic Leader. The former centers on earned superiority, rank, and bragging rights; the latter layers in leadership, tactical planning, teaching others, and team success.
62	- Imaginative Creator is not the same as Immersed Storywriter. The former seeks authorship, control, nurture, and expression; the latter seeks absorption, emotional connection, and living inside a meaningful world.
63	- Passionate Belonger is not just "Socializer." They are motivated less by abstract sociability and more by fitting in, support, being part of a team, and belonging to something bigger.
64	- Reward Seeker can produce misleading engagement signals. Frequent claiming and ritualized reward harvesting may indicate reward dependence more than broad emotional appeal.
65	- Category Enthusiast is explicitly a caution segment. The source note says you cannot reliably design for or market to them as a clean cross-category segment.
66
67	## What to produce
68
69	Generate:
70	1. Audit target - what is being reviewed and what it is supposed to do
71	2. Motivation-theme reading - which of the 10 themes the design activates
72	3. Archetype-by-archetype reading - how each player lens experiences the design
73	4. Segment profile - which archetypes are strongly served, weakly served, or activ

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game-design-granular-player-motivation-audit

34stars3forks

View on GitHub

How to install game-design-granular-player-motivation-audit?

stanestane/game-design-skills-bundle/game-design-granular-player-motivation-audit

$npx -y skills add Stanestane/game-design-skills-bundle --skill game-design-granular-player-motivation-audit

Installs into the current project.

Summary

Files · 1

View on GitHub

SKILL.md

1	# Game Design Granular Player Motivation Audit
2
3	Audit a design by asking which granular motivation segments it serves, excludes, overloads, or misunderstands.
4
5	Use this skill to evaluate how a game, feature, flow, or system lands across a detailed player motivation taxonomy. Treat the archetypes as motivational lenses, not rigid human categories.
6
7	## Core principle
8
9	A feature does not need to serve every motivation profile equally.
10
11	The real question is whether the pattern is intentional, healthy, and appropriate for the feature's role in the product. A narrow feature can be good. An accidentally narrow feature, or one that pretends to be broad while serving only one motivation profile, usually creates confusion, coldness, or churn.
12
13	This taxonomy is especially useful because it gives you two layers at once:
14	- motivation themes explaining what psychological needs the design activates
15	- archetypes predicting who will respond well, who will feel indifferent, and who may be alienated
16
17	## Start with the source notes
18
19	Before auditing, read `references/granular-taxonomy-notes.md`.
20
21	That file contains the source-faithful motivation list, archetype definitions, distinct motivations, anti-motivations, and interpretation rules extracted from the document.
22
23	## Motivation themes in this taxonomy
24
25	Use these 10 themes as the causal layer underneath the archetypes:
26
27	1. Personal Achievement
28	2. In-Game Achievement
29	3. Cognitive
30	4. Emotional Immersion
31	5. Creation + Exploration
32	6. Affiliation
33	7. Independence
34	8. Status + Rank
35	9. Leadership + Power
36	10. Rewards
37
38	When auditing, ask both:
39	- Which archetypes does this design serve?
40	- Which underlying motivation themes are doing the work?
41
42	## Archetypes
43
44	Audit across these nine archetypes:
45
46	- Steady Advancer - wants simple, legible progress and short-burst accomplishment
47	- Curious Solver - wants cognitive stimulation, learning, and mental sharpness
48	- Competitive Achiever - wants rank, skill proof, comparison, and bragging rights
49	- Imaginative Creator - wants expression, control, creation, nurturing, and freeform exploration
50	- Strategic Leader - wants smart play, leadership, team success, prestige, and mastery through coordination
51	- Immersed Storywriter - wants absorption, narrative meaning, emotional connection, and lived identity in a world
52	- Reward Seeker - wants prizes, payouts, currencies, bonuses, and tangible wins
53	- Passionate Belonger - wants friendship, fit, support, team identity, and social belonging
54	- Category Enthusiast - a residual segment defined more by attachment to a game category than by a strong cross-category motivation profile; treat with caution and do not overgeneralize from it
55
56	## Use the doc, not generic intuition
57
58	Do not flatten these archetypes into generic player stereotypes.
59
60	Important distinctions from the source document:
61	- Competitive Achiever is not the same as Strategic Leader. The former centers on earned superiority, rank, and bragging rights; the latter layers in leadership, tactical planning, teaching others, and team success.
62	- Imaginative Creator is not the same as Immersed Storywriter. The former seeks authorship, control, nurture, and expression; the latter seeks absorption, emotional connection, and living inside a meaningful world.
63	- Passionate Belonger is not just "Socializer." They are motivated less by abstract sociability and more by fitting in, support, being part of a team, and belonging to something bigger.
64	- Reward Seeker can produce misleading engagement signals. Frequent claiming and ritualized reward harvesting may indicate reward dependence more than broad emotional appeal.
65	- Category Enthusiast is explicitly a caution segment. The source note says you cannot reliably design for or market to them as a clean cross-category segment.
66
67	## What to produce
68
69	Generate:
70	1. Audit target - what is being reviewed and what it is supposed to do
71	2. Motivation-theme reading - which of the 10 themes the design activates
72	3. Archetype-by-archetype reading - how each player lens experiences the design
73	4. Segment profile - which archetypes are strongly served, weakly served, or activ

People who liked this also viewed

6 picks

Type