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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lewpuls" data-source="post: 8328413" data-attributes="member: 30518">Some games need active players, others passive. There are many implications for game design.[ATTACH=full]139739[/ATTACH] <a href="https://pixabay.com/illustrations/book-tea-person-read-coffee-5946246/" target="_blank">Picture courtesy of Pixabay.</a><h2>Active and Passive Play Styles</h2>You can in general divide game players into two types (with many somewhere in between, of course), Active and Passive. Definitions from a dictionary give a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Active: “engaged in action characterized by energetic work participation, etc.”</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Passive: “accepting or allowing what happens or what others do without active response or resistance.”</li> </ul>I watched a Werewolf game once amongst a group of quite passive players. Ordinarily Werewolf—which amounts to a kind of guessing game though some logic can be applied—is full of talk and contention as players try to figure out who the werewolves are. (One wag said, the problem with Werewolf is that it's not a game, it's an argument.) But this group said little, generated no enthusiasm, so that it was only a guessing game, not a setting for “yomi (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yomi_(card_game)" target="_blank">reading others' intentions</a>) and contention. Werewolf needs activity, the game I watched was passive.<h2>Game Design Implications</h2>Keep in mind, games are entertainment. Passive entertainment is increasingly popular, perhaps because passive entertainment is so easily accessed. Now we have lots of movies and television and YouTube and Netflix, that's all passive. Reading is more or less in the middle between active and passive because you have to bring something to the activity when you read. But if it leans one way or the other, reading leans toward passive. Playing music (on instruments, not on a stereo) with your friends or family is active. Singing is active. Obviously, people who climb mountains like challenges in their entertainment, and even danger.Passive players tend to want to be told a story, active want to make their own story. Passive want to watch what happens, active want to make things happen.Some games just about require active players, such as two player wargames, and some are designed very much for passive players, such as parallel competitions (sometimes called multiplayer solitaire), where everybody's playing their own game with little reference to others. These are certainly games with low player interaction.<h2>High and Low Player Interaction</h2>When you look at the definitions you can see that they’re closely related to high player interaction and low or no player interaction in tabletop role-playing games.Insofar as RPGs are often negotiations between players and GM (and between the individual players), passive players are more likely to prefer the dice rolling of skill challenges, to role-playing in the direction of the GM.An extremely active player can play a game that's essentially passive, lacking player interaction, but may not enjoy it. An extremely passive player in a game requiring active players, that is, interaction between the players, is unlikely to enjoy it, and may even feel it's unfair. Negotiation for example, requires active players.In general, opposed games tend to attract active players, parallel competitions and puzzles tend to attract passive players. Solo games, in many respects but not all, tend to draw passive players; co-ops and other team games tend to require more action, but that also varies. Team games like American football where 11 players must work together to get something done are quite different from something like Team Fortress, where people are mostly doing things on their own or joining a small group and then cooperating with them.Your turn: Which type of role-playing style do your players prefer?</blockquote>

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