How video game player types help define target brand audiences
Game designers have been defining audiences by behavior for decades, and brands can borrow their tools. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl introduces Richard Bartle’s four player types (achievers, explorers, socializers, and killers) and connects them to the brand archetypes and psychographic personas Parliament uses with clients. He then explains emergent narrative, the nonlinear way people discover both game worlds and brands, with examples from Skyrim’s in-game books to the riddles under Rainier Beer bottle caps. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on worldbuilding, Stop Brand Building, Start Worldbuilding.
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Outline
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl traces worldbuilding back to Richard Bartle, whose book Designing Virtual Worlds treated games as social environments and developed the first psychographic personas for gaming. Bartle split players into achievers, who like goals; explorers, who seek discovery and secrets; socializers, who want community; and killers, who seek competition and conflict. The strongest game worlds support several types but focus heavily on one.
Calvin connects this to the 12 brand archetypes, like Nike as the hero and Harley as the outlaw, and to the psychographic personas Parliament develops for every client. Focusing on a specific niche lets people build an identity within a brand’s world, the way they adopt personas in a game.
He then explains emergent narrative, where the story unfolds naturally as people interact with a world. That’s how brands are discovered now, through disconnected touchpoints rather than linear funnels. Skyrim’s optional lore books, the riddles under Rainier Beer and Snapple caps, and playful moments in app onboarding all build worlds through small, self-discovered surprises.
Highlights
Richard Bartle created the first psychographic personas for gaming.
Bartle’s four player types are achievers, explorers, socializers, and killers.
Player types map closely to brand archetypes.
The internet has blown up linear marketing funnels.
Self-discovered details are a brand’s most memorable moments.
Key insights
Behavior beats demographics
Bartle’s types and psychographic personas describe what motivates people, which is more useful than who they are on paper.
Focus creates identity
Choosing a primary audience, whether achievers or outlaws, gives fans a clear role to step into.
Brands already tell emergent stories
Advertising, social, and packaging reach people in no particular order, so every touchpoint is a chance to share a piece of the story.
Surprise builds worlds quietly
A riddle under a bottle cap isn’t essential to the brand, but it creates a moment of joy that deepens the world without anyone noticing.
Detailed analysis
The clip gives brand teams a borrowed framework with a long track record. Bartle’s model was built to understand online worlds, and Calvin shows how directly it maps onto archetypes and personas. A viewer’s note about Blizzard’s cohesive worlds, from Diablo to Warcraft, reinforces how consistency supports that kind of focus.
The emergent narrative section challenges a common marketing instinct. Rather than forcing people through a funnel, brands can scatter small pieces of lore across touchpoints and trust audiences to assemble the story, which makes those discoveries feel personal.
Conclusion
Player types help brands decide who they’re for, and emergent storytelling helps them reach those people. When fans discover a small nuance themselves, Calvin says, it’s the most impactful moment a brand can have.
Transcript
Okay. So worldbuilding comes from this idea that was originally established by this guy named Richard Bartle. Richard Bartle wrote a book called Designing Virtual Worlds, which established video games not just as games but as social environments inhabited by people. He wrote a lot about MMO games, like Warcraft and early versions of that, and he defined a lot of the language that we use now for games when you talk about targeting audiences. He was a game designer and writer who was one of the first to start looking at games through a sociological lens, and he developed the first psychographic personas for gaming. At Parliament, we develop psychographic personas for every client we work with. Those are personas that are less about demographics and more about emotional behaviors and things like that.
So he came up with these, which I feel are a really helpful lens to look at game worlds through, and they can translate to brands. He broke players down into four different types. There are achievers: people who like goals and achievements and things of that sort. Explorers are into discovery and uncovering secrets. Socializers are people who are really just seeking community and friendship and relationships in their games. And then killers are people who seek competition, and specifically conflict with others. So those are the four types. And the strongest game worlds tend to support multiple aspects of these but usually focus in on one heavily.
And this really corresponds to the way we think about brand archetypes in branding. Brand archetypes are our similar way of approaching this bucketing of people, a little bit more focused. There are 12 brand archetypes that we usually align with: the idea that Nike is the hero, Harley’s always the outlaw, things like that. Those give us a language to know who we’re targeting and who we’re not targeting.
And the really important thing about focusing on those, especially in worldbuilding, is when you really know, okay, this game is for achievers, or this brand archetype is for heroes, or it’s for outlaws. Let’s talk about outlaws. Outlaws are much more fun. It’s really for outlaws. That’s because by focusing in on all of these really specific niches—or niches, whatever you prefer to say—it allows players and audiences to create an identity within your world. And identity is really important when playing a game, or when giving yourself over to a brand and falling in love with it, because people develop different personas when they’re in a game or when they’re using a product that they really like.
Oh, Sarah says, “I love the branding for all the Blizzard games and how cohesive they are, even with different styles.” Yeah, Blizzard are absolute masters at creating game worlds. They did Diablo, they did Warcraft, all of those kinds of things, where everything is super consistent, really over the top, and they’re great at storytelling.
So, speaking of being great at storytelling: that’s where Richard Bartle created all that stuff about here’s how to look at games and target specific players. And one thing he also talks about is that worldbuilding all relies on emergent narrative and storytelling. Emergent narrative is what we do with brands all the time. We just don’t think of it that way. Emergent narrative is a storytelling approach where the plot isn’t linear, the lore isn’t linear, and the story unfolds naturally as you interact with the world you’ve created. And this is how brands communicate all the time when we think about advertising, social, all of these different little things, where nobody approaches your brand like, I start here and I go here. A lot of marketing people, I feel like, often try to funnel people in those ways, but now the internet has just blown all of that up. Now everyone discovers brands, products, and everything through these incredibly disconnected ways, and those are all chances to communicate a little bit of storytelling. And it doesn’t have to be linear.
So all worldbuilding relies on emergent narrative and storytelling. Some really simple examples of that: when you’re playing Skyrim, a big, beautiful role-playing video game, you walk around these worlds and you just pick up a book. You open and read the book in the game, and it tells you all this lore about some historical event that happened hundreds of years ago. That’s not necessary for the linear plot, but it gives you something to explore and go deeper into.
Or one that I love on the brand side, a chance to discover lore that’s not important to understanding the core identity of the brand, is Rainier Beer. I love that when Rainier Beer has 12-ounce bottles, when you pop the top, on the underside of the cap there’s a little riddle. Snapple was also known for doing this. Those were just such a little moment of surprise under every cap that it builds this world without you even realizing it, because it’s just a little moment of joy in an unexpected place. You also see this in digital product design, where, say, you’re using some website or an app and there’s some onboarding, and rather than just giving you the boring do this, then do this, then do this, they insert some small moment of joy that’s unexpected and fun.
So this emergent storytelling really matches the way that we approach brands in general now. Everything’s disconnected. And the reason emergent storytelling is so powerful is because these become the most memorable moments a brand can have, because we discovered them ourselves. When you’re interacting in a game, or when you’re interacting with a brand or a product, and you discover some small nuance about that thing yourself, that is the most impactful moment you can have. It’s great.