“If you know, you know”: Persuading the smartest CLicHe adventurers to join the department they would have joined anyway
D. Scairaway, A. Brute & B. Flye
Abstract
Recent advances in CLicHe Corporation’s governance policy have prompted an urgent need to endear adventurers-for-hire to one of CLicHe's five departments. The present study reveals novel adventurer demographic findings and launches an evidence-based strategy for R&DE's alliance building.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest is conceded by the authors.
Introduction
Over the past six months, CLicHe Corporation’s presence in Nuublandia has become a subject of renewed public discussion. While the factors underlying this increase are far from settled, recent surveys by Jeb & Vance (2023) and Blork et al. (2023) suggest a worrisome trend: favourable opinion of CLicHe is eroding and demand for its adventurers-for-hire at the lowest it has been since 1913. In response to this downturn, CLicHe’s Boss issued a new mandate for the corporation in April of 2023. This mandate required each of its five departments to appeal directly to its licensed adventurers, form alliances with them, and have them complete “Tasks” at the departments’ behest.
With resource constraints comes the question of how to facilitate this process efficiently and effectively. Under ideal circumstances, we would first begin with a comprehensive analysis of available adventurer data and the forming of a research question; however, CLicHe’s own departments responsible for administration and recruitment have collected a concerning lack of data in this area, despite such collection being well within these departments’ purview. (If one were in a position to do so, one might even consider this lack of foresight as the kind of negligence worthy of dissolution.) Consequently, CLicHe’s R&DE Department finds itself in the troubling position of needing to persuade adventurers to ally with it without a clear, evidence-based strategy to do so.
Methodology
Strange waters demand strange guides. To make sense of this uncertainty we employ a mixed-method approach, beginning with a procedure borrowed from our colleagues in the Olde Continente called Watch, Isolate, Neutralize (“WIN”). This method has long been used in marketing research and has substantial evidentiary support as an effective strategy of persuasion. It begins by observing the market (here adventurers) and segmenting it into demographic categories based on testable common factors.
In the initial phase of this study, CLicHe Panoptic Sentry Warlocks performed a twelve-round battery of MinDFLay remote personality assessments on each of CLicHe’s contracted adventurers. Though not often feasible, this method of data collection was preferred as it tends to produce greater validity than random sampling (Fry, Fence & Thievins, 2018; Harpo & Nerffett 2022). After the initial phase, anonymized adventurer profiles were generated from the MinDFLay test results. Of the 19 distinct population features that emerged, the single most dominant feature of every profile was one of just five types (see Figure 1).
97.4% of adventurers profiled demonstrated just one of these five features with statistical significance. Only 12.6% demonstrated two or three of the dominant features with statistical significance, and no profile demonstrated four or five. While we emphasize that these types are features and not discrete categories, of the 12.6% of profiles with more than one significantly dominant feature, none demonstrated a most-prominent feature that was not at least one standard deviation more pronounced than its second most-prominent. Therefore, we refer to these features as categories for the remainder of the study.
Discussion
It is fitting (though entirely coincidental) that the five adventurer categories correspond rather tidily to CLicHe’s five departments. While determining how closely adventurers’ department choice ultimately aligns with the category they best fit is beyond the scope of this study, one cannot help but wonder whether the order of the universe has preordained the outcome.
Will rude adventurers mutually assure their own destruction? Or will the smartest among them know when to jump ship? Can a stubborn adventurer learn to give up their stubbornness? or will the department known for dropping the proverbial ball be given more than it can juggle? Can the tedious see far enough past their own tediousness to know when victory lies elsewhere? Do the self-righteous even care about winning, or are they content with failure?
Conclusion
Time will tell if the cave will be transcended, but to those adventurers who would have joined with R&DE anyway, we offer the following reassurance:
An adventurer who can see that R&DE is to thank for developments in buff support, inventory and bank technology, XP animations, retention of equipment on respawn and the like, will be a happy to know that more developments of this nature are in store if R&DE can count on their support. We are, of course, the department to thank for these inventions.
And as a final note—although The Boss has made it clear we are not allowed to offer special treatment or classified equipment to R&DE-allied adventurers—it goes without saying that without us, no one gets a jet pack.
Funding
This research would not be possible without the generous support of the CLicHe R&DE Commission.
References
Available upon request.