Returning Again to My Gamer Profile

I have done the gamer motivation profile thing over at Quantic Foundry a few times at this point.  It is one of those things that comes up every now and then, often part of something like Blaugust.  So you can read about my past runs… and how they differ every time… if you so desire.

• May 2020 – A Flawed Profile in Gamer Motivation
• Aug 2019 – My Gamer Motivation Profile Once Again
• Jun 2015 – Who Says I am Calm, Spontaneous, and Grounded?

However, I received an email from them last week that said they had something new for their profiles now.  They now have an array of nine gamer types to go up against Bartle’s now ancient array of Explorer, Socializer, Achiever, and Killer quadrants.  They are:

The Nine Gamers to oppose the Nine Riders

They are, if you cannot read the chart:

• Acrobat
• Gardener
• Slayer
• Skirmisher
• Gladiator
• Ninja
• Bounty Hunter
• Architect
• Bard

You can read about them in detail over on the page that describes them.

So naturally I wanted to see which type I was.  That meant going back and running through the quiz again, which is always the largest flaw in such and enterprise.  As I have said numerous times, the questions are a bit… squishy.  What I deem important can change depending upon the game or situation.  And, as such, my profile changes every time I re-do the quiz, as it did this time.

If you have an account, as I do, when you re-take the quiz you get to see your previous answers and the fact that I end up changing at least half of them every time is a pretty good indication that the question don’t have hard and fast answers.  At least not for me.

So I am apparently and Architect/Skirmisher this time around.

I am at war with myself

• Architects are solo gamers that enjoy planning, decision-making, and progression. They prefer slow-paced, relaxing gameplay where they can plan and build something grand and enduring.

I guess.  Certainly that describes my Minecraft style.

• Skirmishers want fast-paced team arenas that are accessible and easy to jump into. They are highly spontaneous gamers who dislike games that require thinking and planning.

And that sounds like the polar opposite of architect.  So I like relaxed solo, fast paced team games, and I enjoy planning but dislike thinking and planning.  I am also a by the book cop who is a loose cannon who breaks all the rules or something.

My adjectives this time around were: Aggressive, Spontaneous, Driven, Gregarious, and Immersed.

That is kind of a lot, while my graph, which I have posted with each of these was:

Where my motivations lay

And, as usual, once you have the profile the site tries to recommend games.  My top ten matches (for PC and Nintendo Switch) were:

1. Animal Crossing (series)
2. Starbound
3. Diablo (series)
4. No Man’s Sky
5. Stardew Valley
6. Elite: Dangerous
7. The Sims 3
8. ARK: Survival Evolved
9. Fallout Shelter
10. Borderlands (series)

I own games from half that list, but never really got into them save for Diablo.  The first game I have really invested time in on the list is Minecraft, which made it on page three of the recommendations.

Of course, judging from the Massively OP post where they did their surveys, an MMO player needs to be a Bard.  If I read the description for Bard, that sounds a bit like me too.  Maybe less on the social interaction, but certainly the bit about being a part of a grand story.  So I probably answered the questions badly yet again.  But if you go back and take the quiz knowing what you want the result to be, is it any more or less valid?

I went back and changed very little… slightly more emphasis on one thing, a little less on others, but no answer moved by more than one position… and ended up with Bard/Bounty Hunter.

Bard yes, but a Bounty Hunter?

• Bards are team players who want to chat and interact with other players in game worlds that are rich with lore, stories, discovery, and customization. For them, the game is a grand story that emerges from a community of players.

That is sort of me.  I am less of a chatter and more interested in interacting with the world.  Being part of a grand story that emerges from a community of players pretty much pegs why I play EVE Online the way I do, but not WoW or many other MMORPGs… largely because the grand story is scripted and has little or nothing to do with the community of players in those games.

• Bounty Hunters are solo, action-oriented explorers who want game worlds that they can make their own through customization and discovery. They also enjoy power progression and unleashing mayhem.

I think the questions about explosives and being an agent of chaos are more influential than one might suspect.  That is the only thing I can imagine would get me on the Bounty Hunter type.  I am not really at “action oriented” explorer by my own measure.  Look how low my action score is both times.

At the root those small changes altered my motivations a lot more significantly than I would have guessed.

Are my motivations a lie?

That also changed my adjectives to:  Aggressive, Spontaneous, Completionist, Gregarious, Deeply Immersed, and Creative.

You can see my current profile in detail here.

With the change of profile, my game recommendations changed… a bit.

1. City of Heroes
2. Slime Rancher
3. Animal Crossing (series)
4. Star Wars: The Old Republic
5. The Elder Scrolls Online
6. Fallout Shelter
7. The Sims 3
8. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
9. The Elder Scrolls (series)
10. Dragon Age (series)

I guess I should be happy some MMORPGs made the first page this time, though I have to question City of Heroes being a recommendation.  You cannot legally play it currently, as it is only available via private/pirate servers.  Also, like the other MMORPGs that made the top ten, it was never a game I could get into really.  Not my thing.  And, of course, WoW and EVE Online appear nowhere on either recommendation list.

So there we go.  Am I what the first pass through the quiz said I was or the second?  Should I go take it again until it gets me right?

My Gamer Motivation Profile Once Again

I was tagged for something for Blaugust, and right at the last minute too, so I am going to have to squeeze in just one more post in the month.

Angie at Backlog Crusader did the Quantic Foundry Gamer Motivation Profile survey and then tagged some other bloggers to give it a try.  I’m game… so to speak… but here is the thing.  I’ve done this before, back in 2015 when the survey was new.  Still, I figured I could go through the questions again.  The test itself is built around some assumptions about gamer behavior.

The Motivation Model Overview

As I said previously, it reminds me of the Bartle model, with a few more dimensions.  It does rely on the common personality test dynamic of paired behaviors that are placed as poles in a given motivation.

I had even made a profile back in 2015, so was able to log in and go through the test again.  It remembered my answers from back then, though a couple more questions had been added.  I also changed some of my answers, ending up with a chart that looks like this:

My profile summary graph – 2019

You can compare that to the last time around.

My profile summary graph – 2015

In 2015 there were only five factors, now there are six.  If you want to see how the test has changed you can compare my 2015 post, where I wrote about each of the factors, and my 2019 results available here.

In 2015 I was “Calm, Spontaneous, and Grounded.”

In 2019 I am “Calm, Driven, Gregarious, and Grounded.”

The problem I have with this sort of test is the somewhat generic set of questions asking how important certain things are to me.  I sit there and read the question and think, “Well, this is important to me under specific circumstances, but at other times I could care less.”  So the strength of my answers is not very strong at all.  I went through and changed a good chunk of them as I passed through the quiz once again, but never by more than one notch either direction.

Basically, my mood at the moment could alter many of my answers at least somewhat, to the point that I am pretty sure if you wiped all my answers and had me take the survey again in a week, the results would change some.

But for an afternoon in August, that was how I was feeling.

And at the end of the survey the site offers up some games that might appeal to you based on what other people taking it who scored similarly to you ranked as their favorite games.  My top game was No Man’s Sky.

Seems appropriate.  I actually own it, having picked it up in a Steam sale.  Couldn’t get past the forever loading screens though.  Maybe that has gotten better.

The game recommendations come in three levels.  To get an MMO result I had to select “niche” as a parameter, because MMOs remain a niche genre.

Anyway, if you want to take the survey as well, you can find it here on the Quantic Lab site.

Who Says I am Calm, Spontaneous, and Grounded?

Nick Yee says that about me… sort of.

Nick Yee, famous… for specific, internet definitions of fame… getting a Reddit AMA counts for something… his studies of gamers, and MMO gamers in particular, through such ventures as the The Daedalus Project and PARC PlayOn Group (as well as that WoW guild name generator) has a new research venture going on.  A note in my inbox yesterday included this announcement:

I’ve got some exciting news to share! Our game analytics consulting practice is now officially “Quantic Foundry”. And the gamer research project is now officially “The Quantic Lab”. Apart from running surveys and sharing the findings, we have also created a Gamer Motivation Profile that produces a customized report of your gaming motivations.

Check out the blog posts, take the new surveys, and try the Gamer Motivation Profile at: https://apps.quanticfoundry.com

A new survey!

Gamer Motivation Profile sounds suspiciously like the whole Bartle Test thing I suppose.  However, this new survey is at least functionally a bit different.  Where as the Bartle Test asks the taker to choose between pairs of behaviors to determine if you were an explorer, achiever, socializer, or killer, the Gamer Motivation Profile asks the taker to rank the importance to them of a series of aspects of gaming that range from “Blowing stuff up” to knowing the game’s story.

Different, but not necessarily better.  It is much easier to make choices between two behaviors than it is to rank the importance of a given aspect of gaming… at least it was for me.  You have to be a lot more in touch with what is important to you.

Anyway, once you take it you get your results and, if you sign up for an account, you also get a profile you can share with others.  Mine is here.  My basic summary is the title of this post, and the top level graph shows:

My profile summary graph

Nothing really dominates on that graph… not like Tipa’s graph, where immersion was sticking out prominently.  The results are percentiles, where I rank against other gamers.  Basically, 88% of gamers are more action oriented than I.

This probably results from me not pressing on things being at the “extremely important” end of the spectrum.  I picked that answer only once.

So Achievement and Social dominate, Immersion and Strategy are on par, and Action is way down the ladder for me.

Each of the groups is then broken out into sub-categories.  For Action there is Destruction and Excitement.

Action sub-categories

See, I do like to blow things up, I’m just not big on excitement.  I think my wife can confirm that.

For Strategy there is Mastery and Planning.

Strategy sub-categories

About equal on both of those.

For Achievement it is Completion and Power.

Achievement sub-categories

I could have told you I am far more about “doing all the things” than I am about power.

For Social there is Competition and Community.

Social sub-categories

I have been known to go on about community, right?  If somebody asks why, in EVE Online, I am in The Imperium with those horrible Goons, community is the answer.  For all you can say about them, they are pretty much dedicated to community and organizing groups that allow the individual to feel like a contributing part of that community.  My home is in Reavers, a group small enough that showing up really matters but large enough that I can’t really screw things up for the team, and I enjoy my time playing with that group.

And then, finally, there is that most illogical and fractious of terms, a word that has as many meanings as there are people who utter it, Immersion.  That actually breaks out into three, Customization, Fantasy, and Story.

Immersion cub-categories

Customization and Story… not so important to me I guess.  I actually have a half-finished post in my drafts folder about why story is important in MMORPGs, but how it shouldn’t override your own story.

And while I have shown some interest in customization… I use cosmetic gear slots all the time, I painted up all my cars in Need for Speed World, and I just spent a bunch of ISK on ship skins the other day in EVE Online… I tend to view that as a luxury as opposed to a necessity I suppose.

Fantasy, on the other hand… there things suddenly get important.  I will quote the summary for that sub-category:

Gamers who score high on Fantasy want their gaming experiences to allow them to become someone else, somewhere else. They enjoy the sense of being immersed in an alter ego in a believable alternate world, and enjoy exploring a game world just for the sake of exploring it. These gamers enjoy games like Skyrim, Fallout, and Mass Effect for their fully imagined alternate settings.

Except that I don’t enjoy those titles all that much… well, I only own Skyrim, but I would put Mass Effect in as a placehold for “BioWare games”  in general… because they lack the social and community aspect.  Online games have ruined me forever on a lot of solo games.

So there I am, a completionist and community (or at least group) focused player that wants to get lost in the games I play.

And while I suspect that my results might vary if I took the survey again in a few months… or next week… or tomorrow… or right now… I think that the same key points would likely shine through still.

Anyway, if you want to take the survey you can find the starting link over the Quantic Foundry Lab page.

Addendum: There is also a blog post on the site about how they created the survey.