Magic:The Gathering is a major touchstone for many Netrunner players because it has been in continuous development for the longest period of time and is by far the most popularly played collectable card game. As such, many pieces of terminology used in Magic have been inherited for use in Netrunner. One set of terminology that is important to be familiar with are the psychographic profiles used by the designers and players of Magic. These profile some of the reasons players are attracted to different cards. There is an excellent article from Magic’s head designer Mark Goldwater that defines and describes the three major psychographic profiles used by Wizards of the Coast’s development team:

Timmys like powerful cards that have impactful effects.



like powerful cards that have impactful effects. Johnnys like cards that can showcase their creativity and personality.



like cards that can showcase their creativity and personality. Spikes like to play cards that gives them the best chance of winning.

These profiles are useful categories and can generally apply to Netrunner players as they have done with Magic players for many years. There are, however, some crucial distinctions between Netrunner and Magic that require a slightly different perspective. Netrunner has a significantly smaller card pool than most legal sets of Magic and the fact that the Netrunner cardpool is practically cut in half (half for corps and the other half for runners) means that decklists are going to have more overlap in Netrunner regardless of the different players’ motivations. Netrunner is also different from Magic in that individual player choices that dictate the flow of a Netrunner game are more numerous than similar choices in Magic. The choice and order of each click a Netrunner player uses dictates the flow of the game just as much as the cards they choose to put into their decks. The psychographic profiles, when applied to Netrunner, should be geared towards how each type of player understands and utilizes the game’s complex mechanics as much as what cards they like to play in order to harness those mechanics.

As I wrote in the introduction to ANR Damage Control, damage has an effect at all levels of the game of Netrunner, from the lowest level of individual gameplay choices to the broadest and most abstract conditions of the game itself. Psychographic profiles fall under this former category since it is an overarching condition of what brings players to the Netrunner table and what they walk away with once the game is over. Grounding this broad conversation on how different types of players view and utilize damage can give us a way into thinking about psychographic profiles in general without becoming too vague or cliched. Here are my views on these three profiles and how they understand and utilize Netrunner’s damage mechaincs.

Timmy likes fireworks. Displays of majesty, power, and surprise bring an element of excitement and pleasure that Timmy desires in everything, especially in their card games. In Netrunner, these fireworks are often provided by damage cards that threaten to blow up the runner and all their stuff. Whether it’s unleashing the fury of a Scorched Earth or nimbly dodging the corporation’s Punitive Counterstrike, it’s these thrilling moments in Netrunner that keeps Timmy playing game after game.

The immediate appeal of flatlining the runner can motivate Timmy to bring decks specialized in kill strategies even if they lose repeatedly in search of that elusive killshot. The promise in a card like Project Junebug is the sudden reversal of fortune from one careless move, and cards that support it like Mushin no Shin and big agendas like The Future Perfect can create gamestates that force a climatic situation. There will surely be games where a lucky or astute player will foil Timmy’s attempts at the kill, but for Timmy spectacular losses are just as important as spectacular wins and it’s better to go down in a fireworks display than to win in a slow middling fashion.

Even when Timmy isn’t going for a kill strategy, there’s something appealing to the act of dealing damage to the runner. Discarding a card at random from the runner’s grip can sometimes have disastrous results, and for Timmy every card trashed from damage could be that disaster. When playing on the other side, Timmy enjoys seeing their least valuable cards get trashed while the key pieces avoid destruction. Each piece of damage is pregnant with possibilities, and even though dozens of cards may be trashed to damage without much effect, Timmy will remember that one time, when they were down to the wire against a Kate deck, that they sniped the Levy AR Lab Access from their last piece of damage. It’s moments like these which Timmy cherishes the most.



However exciting these moments may be, there will be plenty of unexciting moments. This becomes especially true during tournament play, when many players set aside their homebrewed decks and settle in for several hours of math homework. There are plenty of thrills to be had during tournaments, but they are more often in closer margins and with fewer spectacular swings (READ: smaller fireworks). Even during meet-ups Timmy can find themselves losing (or winning) from a single Shock! or a runner forgetting to draw in their last clicks, and for Timmy these are very dissatisfying conclusions. Subtle strategies are also not in Timmy’s wheelhouse, and so the potential for threatening damage to change the runner’s behavior may simply be lost on a Timmy who is in search of something splashy.



Johnny likes attention. That’s not to say they are vain or needy, but whether it’s attention they’re paying to the game’s inner workings or it’s attention others are paying to their outlandish deckbuilding choices, Johnny gets a lot of pleasure from the kinds of attention the game of Netrunner creates. Whether damage serves this purpose intrinsically (because of the special dangers that attend damage) or extrinsically (for instance if no one else is currently playing damage decks in their meta), Johnny will find a use for damage if it strikes their fancy.

Kill strategies can be very popular with Johnnys, although for Johnny it’s less about the result and more about the path to achieving it. Anyone with a core set can slap together SEA Source and Scorched Earth to make a killer combo, but Johnny prefers a more circuitous route. Maybe a Haarpsichord deck that uses Explod-a-palooza to swing the credit differential first? Maybe a Titan Transnational deck that uses Project Atlas counters and Archived Memories to chain Scorched Earths? Developing the specific combination of cards and adding the cards to support these combinations pull double-duty for Johnny: not only can it surprise and bewilder their opponent, but it also leaves their games with a personal signature. When the combo falls apart, Johnny is similarly left with more sources of pleasure than sources of frustration; now the combo can be further developed with the lessons from this recent game, or it can be abandoned to search for a new combo, and all the while Johnny has created an experience in the game of Netrunner that few even imagined possible.

It’s not Johnny’s intention to make a deck that doesn’t work well, in fact the opposite is generally the case. A deck that doesn’t work well will leave both players with the sense that the deckbuilder simply has no idea what they’re doing. Instead Johnny wants to build a deck that works in a way that no one else had thought of, whether because it seems too unorthodox, it hits upon an aspect of Netrunner that people generally haven’t considered, or because it uses cards that Johnny has a personal interest in. That being said, winning and losing bears less weight on the minds of Johnnys than winning and losing with their personal creations. The deck building portion of the game is a great source of pleasure for Johnnys, who get to imagine all the possibilities of all the different cards and their various interactions taking place at once; when they finally do go to play with their strange new deck, it’s an opportunity to share the attention they’ve paid to the game and get some attention for the work they’ve done. Where damage fits into these decks is a matter of personal choice for Johnny, whether there’s something unexpected that damage can create (in the case of Chronos Protocal decks that snipe fractors) or cards that seems undervalued by the community consensus (in the case of brain damage decks).

Despite the pleasures, the frustrations are very real for Johnny. When a deck is a personal creation, it’s not always feasible that other people will appreciate its finer details, and Johnny is very particular about the details that go into their decks. Many other players, Johnnys and non-Johnnys alike, will give Johnny loads of unsolicited advice on deckbuilding, which can be disturbing when your favorite cards are selected to be cut for more popularly played ones. Netdecking takes on the aspect of a cardinal sin, and it adds insult to injury to lose to a deck someone pulled unchanged from Netrunnerdb. Taking personal investment in the game of Netrunner is a double edge sword for Johnnys because failure becomes just as personal as the successes.



Spike likes to win. Seems easy enough. Honestly, who doesn’t like to win? Is there someone out there playing Netrunner right now who isn’t trying to win? In order to win consistently, you should assume that everyone you’re playing against is also trying to win. If Spike seems cold or callous because they want to win at Netrunner, it’s not exactly their fault. It’s because they take seriously the premise that one plays a game in order to have fun, and winning is almost always more fun than losing. Essentially, Spike should assume, in order to get the most out of the game, that everyone else is a Spike.



Damage mechanics for Spike are simply a part of the game, something that must be considered only as much as necessary. Kill strategies have the benefit of winning games quickly and suddenly at the cost of spending resources (deckslots, influence &c.) that may only be situationally useful. Damage prevention cards have a similar cost-benefit relationship (the cost of resources against the benefit of avoiding sudden losses), and the decision to focus on kill strategies often hinge on whether it can be expected that runner decks will have damage prevention slotted at a ratio that beats the frequency of killshot situations. Spike will look at this dynamic, consider their expectations of the meta, and decide how to construct their deck accordingly. If there’s a way to include kill strategies without expending too many resources (like playing Scorched Earth in Weyland with only 1 SEA Source) or if spending more resources will greatly increase the chance of winning by flatline (like x3 Scorched Earth and x3 Traffic Accident in Near Earth Hub), all the better for Spike. Expectations for a flatline need to be well-tempered and damage production should either (1) focus on killshots or (2) get as much benefit as possible from either their disruptive effects on the runner’s gameplan or adversely effect the runner’s play choices. If there is some other strategy that affords Spike a better chance of winning, then Spike will abandon damage strategies until they become “viable” again.



Spikes aren’t mean people, rather they are especially devoted to a style of play that emphasizes player skill. The pleasure Spike gets from winning is tied to winning well, which for Spike means winning based on the skill in their decision making against a challenging opponent. Spike plays in order to take their knowledge of Netrunner and their instincts for playing it and pitting these against someone else who will use all their knowledge and skill to win. Losing may be the opposite of winning, but for a Spike losing may not be the biggest source of frustration. If their opponent is more skillful in their play, or if their opponent made choices in the deck build that creates a major weakness for Spike, they will at least take some pride in giving the game their best effort and accept the loss. It’s a part of the common imagination to imagine Spike yelling at another player because of a game loss, but poor sportsmanship isn’t a trademark of Spikes: in my experience Spikes are more likely to make a special point about good sportsmanship when they’re feeling frustrated. Besides, getting upset will only hamper Spike’s ability to win in future games.



Where Spike meets the most frustration are games where they make mistakes, games where something seems unfair, or games against opponents that don’t take the game as seriously as they do. A loss at a superior opponent’s hands is to be expected, and as long as they are playing their best Spike can except these losses. But if they made a bad move, it’s reflective of their lack of skill, not their opponent’s accumulation of it. Similarly, losing to some freakish agenda flood or to a bad string of psi games doesn’t represent two players challenging eachother’s skill but the random distribution of the game’s elements that simply fall against their favor. Perhaps worst of all is going into a competitive environment and playing against someone who treats the prospect of winning and losing the game as not important, or who treats player skill as something not particularly important to cultivate. These players, while easily dismissed in Spike’s mind, undermine the whole premise that justifies Spike playing Netrunner in the first place.



Most players will not fall strictly into one of these categories but will be motivated in ways that intersect these profiles. Personally, I find myself balanced between all three of these profiles, enjoying the spectacular, inventive, and competitive potential of Netrunner. I often shift into Johnny mode after a tournament so I can come up with new ideas, then shift into Spike mode once a tournament is announced in order to prepare for the competitive environment. Player motivation will change over time. Many players begin playing Netrunner as a Timmy, excited by all the spectacular situations created in the game, and as they get more familiar with it become Spikes or Johnnys. Reflecting on these profiles can help understand what kinds of pleasure you get from playing Netrunner and steer you towards the styles of play that satisfy you. It can also guide you towards a style of play you’ve never tried before. Understanding what motivates you and other players can help you enjoy the game of Netrunner more.

It’s also worth understanding these psychographic profiles because it can help you understand the other players with which you will be sharing the game of Netrunner. There was a recent article from The Winning Agenda by Brian Holland about competitive and casual players and how there’s more to be gained in a united community than a community that sees itself as fractured over this divide. It’s easy to look at the Spike profile and think “this is the profile of a competitive player,” but the divide between casual and competitive players is a little more complicated. For instance many Johnnys I’ve met have been just as competitive as a Spike, but they want to play at the highest levels with decks they’ve constructed themselves whereas a Spike doesn’t get an exceptional amount of pleasure from the deck build being a sign of their personal creativity. I’ve also met competitive Timmys (who insist that playing the strongest cards and getting spectacular wins is the best decision competitively) and casual Spikes (who play for the sake of challenging player skills but without much interest in investing in the current cardpool). Even in competitive environments like Store Championships I’ve met a lot of new players who are there for the experience of meeting a lot of Netrunner players and collecting alt-art prizes.



By understanding what motivates players who are different that you, our communities of players can find ways to keep the game enjoyable for everyone and find pleasures that many different players have in common. Some competitive players may shake their heads at a casual player slotting in a bad card, and some casual players may groan and roll their eyes when they see Near Earth Hub hit the table once again, but so long as the spirit of fun prevails between players these different perspectives can coexist and garner benefits from their interactions. I hope this article can be a part of the larger conversation that’s been going on about how casual and competitive players can see value in eachother, remaining an open and sharing community.

Please leave your comments here, on the reddit thread, or at my email rumirumirumirumi@gmail.com.

