Multiple Typographies and Demographics in Puzzle Pirates

John Michael Courson

Puzzle Pirates is an extremely interesting Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) that is significantly different from many other MMOGs. Players take control of pirate avatars and must play various puzzles in order to crew ships, explore new islands, and craft materials for sale in shops. Every aspect of the game focuses around these puzzles, whether it be of a competitive or cooperative nature. Puzzle Pirates also happens to offer something for everyone under Richard Bartle’s typologies, i.e. the achievers, explorers, socialisers, and killers. The nature of gameplay also lends itself to a broad demographic spanning many generations including a large number of female players.

The first thing that struck me after reading Bartle’s paper, was how simple it is to imagine players fitting into one of his four typologies in Puzzle Pirates. Explorers have several opportunities in the game. They can explore the towns on various islands or take to the high seas in search of uncharted territory. Each player begins with a map that is filled in as the player travels to various islands. Explorers are limited however by needing a ship to travel on and the various blockades that may be in effect. The number of islands to travel to seems rather large, and I must admit I’m not entirely sure of the scope of this game, primarily because exploration is not my dominant form of gameplay. Achievers have much to look forward in this game, whether it be to become ranked on one of the many puzzles or to obtain a large amount of gold. I generally consider myself to be an achiever more than anything else and two of my personal goals are to become an Ultimate shipwright and to make enough money to buy a sloop so that I can learn to captain a ship.

Socialisers also have many opportunities within the game. It is almost always possible to chat whether you are playing a puzzle, relaxing in the inn, or walking around town. Once you become a member of a crew, you are able to chat with them no matter what you are doing. Unfortunately, I found that without a crew, chatting is few and far between. Most players tend to be too focused on doing well on their respective puzzles to chat too much. The exception was during parlor games in the inn. People tended to be very chatty during a game of cards. Finally, there is a place for killers as well. Killers can go pillaging and eventually declare war on other flags (guilds). There goals would be to pillage other ships or in the case of war to destroy other ships and to create blockades on certain shipping routes. There are many ways in which killers can frustrate other players, especially achievers who may just want to make some money.

Bartle also mentions distinctions between making a game player centric versus world centric and focusing on acting versus interacting. Personally, I feel that Puzzle Pirates is a bit unbalanced in certain situations. Everything about the game is supposed to be pirate related, and I believe the puzzles fit into this world quite well, but I was personally expecting more players to role play as pirates. Instead I found players talking about normal things and just playing puzzles to pass time. There were exceptions of course. I found many captains to play their role very well, but this might be out of necessity of keeping the ship’s resources safe more than anything else. Overall though, Puzzle Pirates provides a relatively immersive world that also has a large focus on players whether it be competitive or cooperative.

Finally, I would like to talk about the demographics in Puzzle Pirates. I was pleasantly surprised to see a large number of female pirates in the game, and after some discussion during several games of Hearts I realized that many of the people I was playing with were married and had children. I’m not entirely sure that these people were Baby Boomers, but they were older than me and are closer to that generation than I am. According to Celia Pearce’s study on Baby Boomers, 78% like to help new players and 77% like to solve puzzles. Both opportunities are readily available in this game. The study also indicated that Baby Boomers like to play games alone, however they are also “highly community-oriented and social”. I did find that most of the people that I had lengthy conversations were married and/or had children. This also coincides with Nick Yee’s studies on MMORPG demographics in which he found that 50% of players work full-time. Another interesting point that I’d like to conclude with is that despite the fact that pirates in particular are a male-oriented genre, there was a large number of female players. It seemed to me close to 50% if not more at times. Taylor mentions that women gamers are finding more “fascinating and complicated pleasures in online games” and that they “play despite the game”. I found this particularly true in a game focused on pirates. Pirate ships have always been chock full of male pirates, where the female pirate is always the exception to the norm, however in Puzzle Pirates, it seems to me at least that females are close to becoming the norm.

References:

Bartle, R. (1996). “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs.” Self-published white paper. http://www.brandeis.edu/pubs/jove/HTML/v1/bartle.html

Nick Yee, the Daedalus Project http://www.nickyee.com/daedaulus

Pearce, C. (2008). “The Truth About Baby Boomer Gamers.” Games & Culture, Vol 3, Issue 2. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/BoomerGamersPreview.pdf

Taylor, T.L. (2003). “Multiple Pleasures: Women and Online Gaming,” Convergence, Vol. 9, No. 1, 21-46, Spring 2003. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/CourseReadings/TaylorMultiplePleasures.pdf

Comments

[Daniel James]

Hey there! Thanks for the write-up. There's no doubt that I had an eye to the Bartle types when I was designing Puzzle Pirates, although a lot of the catering to different play styles just fell out of the overall design.

You're right that PP's demographics are very broad -- if anything we are heavy in the younger demographic and the older one, and thinner in the middle. I hear about grandparents playing with grandchildren, etc. And yes, we're about 50/50 male/female, maybe slightly skewed female. Gotta watch those lady pirates! Arrr!

- Daniel / Cleaver

[drug test passing]

Thanks For Such A Nice Post