Ah, some good stuff here.
alpan wrote:There are two schools of thought on why exactly N's are far more common than S's in all kinds of Internet communities (and yes, they are), particularly relating to typology.
i) Sensing types, being apparently more practical than abstract, do not really bother with forums to the extent that N types do. Similarly, they don't bother with these sorts of tests unless they have to -- a situation reflecting the original application in MBTI in schools and workplaces, rather than the leisurely comforts of one's Internet-connected home.
ii) Being Intuitive -- and the manner in which tests present their questions wrt being classified Intuitive -- is cooler than being Sensing. It's empowering to hear that one is focused on the big picture, transcendental thinking, and almost-mystical intuitive revelations (plus, we all have shower thoughts). As such test-takers are more likely to fall in the confirmation bias trap, particularly the kind of test-takers that are suspectible to the ever-validating nature of MBTI (compare with the more sober approach of Socionics).
I favor "both of the above" as my response... up to a point.
To rephrase slightly: The proportion of Sensors on a game forum is related to both the proportion of Sensors who have entered the "gamer" culture as well as to the type of game that forum serves.
Myers-Briggs data for the U.S. population (the only one I know of for which there are large datasets; there may be others) indicates that Sensors constitute a majority. In the early days of gaming, though, they were a distinct minority; playing games was considered to be "childish" and was not peer-approved. Since then, as more people (including Sensors) have grown up gaming, gaming has gone mainstream.
Complicating this analysis is the way that developers of AAA design games to appeal to mass numbers. As more Sensors play computer games, to the point that I'm pretty sure they now constitute a majority of gamers, they become very vocal about the kind of the things they want and don't want in games. (Once they feel they have the numbers, Sensors start to feel more free to express their opinions as a way of obtaining validation for those ideas.)
As they speak up, game developers listen (which is just good customer service), and they start delivering more of the content forms that the Sensors ask for. (And when I say, "ask for," I mean "demand as though anything else would be stupid."
) Since about 2000, the kinds of games that get made have been increasingly about servicing Sensor preferences. In fact, the kinds of games that
can get made, because AAA development is so insanely expensive that making one whose content appeals to anyone but the proven masses is nearly impossible, and Sensors are now the masses in gaming.
And complicating
that somewhat is the reality that it's just plain easier to imagine and implement concrete content -- vehicles, weapons, armor, even forms of money -- than more abstract content like "knowledge" and "belonging" and similar intrinsic rewards that iNtuitives prefer. That's another force that has driven game development more toward Sensor-fun.
The result of these forces has been a decade+ of Sensors showing up, looking for the kinds of fun they prefer, developers creating more of those kinds of games, and that supply in turn attracting more Sensors to gaming. This most definitely includes Facebook and mobile gaming, which are additional conduits for mainstreaming gaming for more people. Until gamer penetration into the mainstream levels off (and we might be close to that, although I suspect there's probably another decade left on that clock), pretty much all the momentum is away from the post-arcade, worldy, thinking-and-feeling-focused, pre-2000 (pre-console) games that iNtuitives made for themselves and shared, and toward Sensor games... and Sensor-rich game forums.
So those are the external reasons why it's become unusual to see few Sensors on a game forum. The other reason is internal: the kind of game itself.
To the extent that actual Sensors play a particular game, they'll frequent the most popular forum for that game -- usually the official one, if there is one. So the numbers of Sensors you can reasonably expect to see on a forum also depends in part on the kind of game that forum is about. If it's got certain features, such as competition, action, and an emphasis on collecting and/or manipulating concrete objects, that's much more likely to attract Sensors.
This is the origin of both my views about who's on the LT forum: that there aren't many Sensors yet because LT has mostly been about abstract features, and that there will be more once more concrete features -- including an actual, shipping game -- are publicized.
alpan wrote:Anyway, Josh is an INTJ-type IMO. He's expressed having many conceptual breakthroughts, aha-moments and fundamentally transformative insights during the development of the game, and his description of them would point to the dominance of Introverted Intuition. Contrast with someone like ThymineC (he's the most immediate example I am able to give, nothing personal) who is all about the big, detailed, relentlessly enumerated Idea (recall his suggestiions) with little regard to actual Implementation and the picture of an INTP-type -- and dominant Introverted Thinking -- compared to an INTJ-type should become more clear.
Thymine as an INTJ I might give you... especially since that's how he's self-identified here.
Working out the details of concepts so that they can be implemented is what INTJs do.
Josh, though... I question considering him an INTJ. (Sorry for speaking of you in the third person here, Josh; feel free to tell me to knock it off if this feels inappropriate to you.)
The fact that he's
actually making a game is a point in favor of INTJ-ness. INTPs frequently have a lot more fun creating the initial high-level design for a system than actually implementing it. (This leads to INTPs being labeled as "lazy," despite the effort no one could see that went into conceptualizing a highly coherent design.)
But the kind of game that LT is trying to be is a point in favor of INTP-ness. By that I don't just mean the content; I mean the form of the game and the high-level vision and strategy that determine its form. "Something for everybody" is a common INTP goal. Thinking in terms of foundational systems first, and banging out concrete content later, is very definitely a behavior that's highly localized to INTPs. Conceiving and (to a lesser extent) constructing a complete system as a multi-dimensional graph of interacting sub-systems... that's an INTP all the way.
I suspect it is all of those things that has made LT catnip to the many self-identified INTPs in this forum. (Of whom I guess I should allow I'm one. I don't think that's colored my analysis much; I've done this long enough to be intimately familiar with both the benefits and drawbacks of the INTP style, as well as the gifts and typical difficulties of the other styles. I don't think I play favorites where personality typing is concerned, but I suppose I should lay my own cards on the table just in case.)
alpan wrote:I don't want to reduce anyone to their types, preferring to consider it a small facet of the gems they are/were/can be, but have seen it occur many times to my dismay. I believe that MBTI has the potential to turn into a tool for stereotypes, particularly as wounded people try to reclaim some sense of self from its ever-welcoming arms. I had the most involvement with MBTI and typology in 2007-2008 and witnessed many a fight and argument by people with differing types, coming to threads with preconceptions, suspicions about how they should or should not act, how they are or are not "true representatives of their type" (for lack of a better description). It's not really a tool for the Internet age, I fear.
This goes back to "any tool can be misused," but there's a larger point you're making here that I agree with, which is that it can be easy -- especially for people new to this stuff -- to misunderstand how it is correctly applied.
Specifically, it is wrong to look at some random individual and conclude they must "be" some particular type. A functional typology (and I would say MB is one of those, as is the Keirsey temperament model) doesn't work that way. A working system of type is about broad patterns in large aggregates of people. I think there are a few patterns of basic motivation that can be reliably observed in large groups... but the variation in motivation that any individual person can express swamps the variation among those large-scale patterns.
I happen to be a nearly stereotypical INTP. But not everyone fits so neatly into any style, and it's a mistake to try to force anyone into one style. If they're close to one, awesome; if not, they're not broken... and, importantly, that doesn't mean a typology is necessarily broken, either. Big patterns can exist without every/any individual person fitting neatly into one of those patterns.
So while I don't bother much with trying to "type" individuals (and guessing about Josh's or Thymine's or anyone else's type is just having a bit of fun), I do argue that some typing systems are very useful for game developers to know about. The more people you want your game to reach, the more important it is to understand the basic patterns of motivation -- what people want -- that will predispose one group to enjoy some game feature and another group to find that feature irrelevant, undesirable, or actively interfering with the gameplay they do enjoy.
Having some understanding of the basic human motivations doesn't guarantee you can make a game that anyone or everyone will enjoy. It just improves the odds a bit... and that's not nothing.
Why, yes, I could talk about this at some length -- why do you ask?
