“I’m just not a playful person.”
We hear this more often than you might expect. Usually, it comes from someone who dislikes competitive games, organised fun or being put on the spot in front of their colleagues.
But that does not mean they are not playful. It may simply mean they have not discovered how they naturally enter play.
After more than 30 years creating team experiences, we have seen the same activity energise one person and make another want to disappear. The difference is not attitude, ability or willingness to participate. Play is deeply personal.
Science now understands play as more than an activity. It is a biological state shaped by freedom, curiosity, absorption and intrinsic motivation. What takes one person into that state may leave someone else completely unmoved.
This individual variation is why the National Institute for Play has evolved its original eight Play Personalities into six more nuanced Play Styles with accompanying subtypes.
As NIFPlay’s exclusive partner across Australia, New Zealand and the wider region, Corporate Challenge Events is helping workplaces understand what this shift means. Not so we can place people into neater boxes, but so more people can find a genuine way into play.
And now, you can discover yours for free.
First, What Do We Mean by Play?
Before Play Styles make sense, we need to separate play from the activities commonly associated with it.
Play is not a game, a sport, a creative exercise or a team-building challenge. Any of these activities can invite play, but none automatically creates it.
NIFPlay describes play as a biological state that arises when we are freely engaged, curious and absorbed in an experience for its own sake. The experience itself feels rewarding. Our attention deepens, effort becomes energising and we may temporarily lose track of time.
Play is defined by the experience happening within the person, not by how the activity looks from the outside.
Two colleagues might complete the same puzzle. One becomes fascinated, experiments with different possibilities and wants to keep going. The other feels pressured, self-conscious and focused only on finishing. Their behaviour may look similar, but only one may have entered a playful state.
Context matters too. An activity that feels playful today may feel like another obligation tomorrow, particularly when choice is removed or the person feels judged.
Understanding what it means to enter a state of play moves the workplace conversation beyond games and “fun” activities. The more useful question is not, “Did we give people something playful to do?”
It is, “Did we create the conditions in which different people could genuinely experience play?”
Why Play Personalities Became Play Styles
Dr Stuart Brown’s original framework identified eight Play Personalities: Joker, Kinesthete, Explorer, Competitor, Director, Collector, Artist/Creator and Storyteller.
It gave people a new way to recognise something they had often felt but could not explain: the experiences that feel playful are not the same for everyone.
NIFPlay has now evolved this framework into six Play Styles: Creator, Explorer, Competitor, Organizer, Dreamer and Mover. Each style also includes more specific subtypes, allowing for greater nuance in how a person’s play nature may appear.
The shift from “personality” to “style” is more than a change in terminology.
The word personality can sound fixed. It can suggest that someone belongs in one category and will think, behave or contribute in a predictable way. Human play is far more fluid than that.
A Play Style describes a preferred pathway into play, not a permanent identity. Most people are a blend of several styles. Those styles can overlap, appear differently across situations and shift in prominence throughout life.
Someone might access play through exploration when solving a workplace problem, through movement on the weekend and through imagination when reading or developing a new idea. None of those expressions cancels out the others.
The updated framework preserves the central insight behind the original Play Personalities while offering a more precise and flexible way to understand how people play.
You can learn about the six NIFPlay Play Styles, but the most important place to begin is with this idea: your Play Style does not define you.
It helps reveal the conditions in which you are most likely to come alive.
Why One-Size-Fits-All Play Falls Flat
Most workplace play is designed around the activity rather than the people taking part.
A game is chosen, an invitation is sent and everyone is expected to find it equally enjoyable. When someone hangs back, the easiest conclusion is that they are not playful, not engaged or simply unwilling to join in.
Often, the activity has only provided one pathway into play.
A challenge built entirely around speed and competition may immediately engage some people while creating pressure for others. An open-ended creative exercise may excite one group and leave another wishing for more structure. Even activities intended to be inclusive can feel forced when choice, context and individual preferences are overlooked.
Workplaces already recognise the value of creating relevant experiences in other areas. For example, behavioural segmentation helps organisations look beyond broad assumptions and pay attention to the ways people actually behave and engage.
Play Styles invite a similar kind of curiosity, without segmenting employees or predicting their behaviour. Instead of assuming everyone should respond in the same way, leaders can begin noticing the different conditions that help people participate willingly.
At Corporate Challenge Events, we have seen that the strongest team experiences rarely depend on every person doing the same thing in the same way. They create room for different contributions. One person may take the lead, another may solve the puzzle, another may build, observe, encourage, organise or uncover the detail everyone else missed.
The person who avoids the spotlight may still be deeply engaged. The colleague who dislikes competition may come alive when invited to explore. Someone who resists a traditional game may happily spend hours creating, collecting, moving, imagining or connecting people.
Understanding how your people are naturally wired to play does not guarantee that everyone will enjoy every activity.
It gives you a far better place from which to design the invitation.
Six Pathways Into Play, Not Six Boxes
The current framework identifies six broad Play Styles. Each describes a different way a person may naturally access the energy, curiosity and absorption of a playful state.
At their simplest:
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Creator: Finds play through making, expressing and bringing something new into the world.
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Explorer: Finds play through discovery, investigation and new experiences.
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Competitor: Finds play through challenge, fair competition and the pursuit of mastery.
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Organizer: Finds play through creating order, coordinating experiences and connecting people.
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Dreamer: Finds play through imagination, observation and immersion in an internal world.
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Mover: Finds play through physical movement and engagement with the world.
These descriptions are deliberately broad. Within every style are subtypes that capture the different ways it can appear.
Two Creators may express their play very differently. One might enjoy visual design while another creates through storytelling, humour or problem-solving. One Explorer may seek physical adventure while another becomes absorbed in research. A Competitor may enjoy facing an opponent, improving a personal best or mastering a complex skill.
The styles can also work together. A person might explore an idea, create a solution and then organise the people needed to bring it to life. Someone else might combine movement with competition or imagination with creation.
This is why the framework should begin conversations rather than close them.
Knowing someone’s strongest Play Style offers a clue about what may energise them. It does not tell you everything about who they are, what they can do or how they will respond in every situation.
What the Science Tells Us About Play at Work
Play is often promoted as an instant solution for engagement, creativity and workplace culture. The science presents a more useful and more nuanced picture.
Play can support positive emotion, connection, experimentation and flexible thinking, but the outcome depends on the type of play, the context and the motivation of the people involved.
Research from the Australian National University into different types of play at work and their effects on workplace outcomes examines play both as an activity and as an individual tendency towards playfulness. It also considers when workplace play may be helpful, when it may be unhelpful and how psychological and relational factors can influence the experience.
This helps explain why simply adding a game to a meeting does not automatically make it playful.
If participation feels compulsory, embarrassing or disconnected from the people involved, the activity may create resistance rather than curiosity. If the experience offers choice, psychological safety and a genuine invitation to explore, people have a stronger opportunity to enter a playful state.
Play Styles add another layer to this understanding. They help identify why different forms of play may activate different people.
A competitive challenge may create energy for one employee. Another may reach the same state through experimenting with an idea, coordinating a shared experience, imagining possibilities or moving while they think.
The aim is not to engineer a perfect response from every person. Human engagement is far too complex for that.
The aim is to create broader, safer and more varied pathways through which play can emerge.
Discover How You Naturally Play
The most useful way to understand Play Styles is to discover your own.
The free NIFPlay Play Styles quiz takes approximately ten minutes and identifies the pathways most likely to lead you into a playful state.
Your result is not a verdict or a complete description of your personality. Treat it as the beginning of a more interesting conversation.
If your team completes the quiz, explore these questions together:
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Which parts of your result felt immediately familiar?
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What surprised you?
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Where does your Play Style already appear at work?
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What conditions help you become curious, absorbed and energised?
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How could your team create more ways for different styles to contribute?
Through CCE’s exclusive Australasian partnership with NIFPlay, we are also preparing to introduce a new premium Play Styles experience designed specifically for workplace teams.
It will take teams beyond their individual results and help them explore how different Play Styles influence participation, connection, creativity and collaboration. Follow along as we reveal more.
Because you may not have outgrown play.
You may simply have been invited to play in the wrong way.
