BrainHex

By Shamus Posted Wednesday May 18, 2011

Filed under: Video Games 172 comments

By popular demand, I took this test, which aspires to work out what sort of experiences different people value in videogames. First, my results:

seeker_mastermind.png
Your BrainHex Class is Seeker.
Your BrainHex Sub-Class is SeekerMastermind.

You like finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.

Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

» No Mercy: You rarely if ever care about hurting other players’ feelings – mercy is for the weak!
» No Punishment: You dislike struggling to overcome seemingly impossible challenges, and repeating the same task over and over again.

Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

Seeker: 20
Mastermind: 17
Survivor: 12
Achiever: 11
Daredevil: 7
Socialiser: -2
Conqueror: -10

Go to BrainHex.com to learn more about this player model, and the neurobiological research behind it.

It’s an interesting test and worth a look, although I’d like to nitpick it. You know. Like I do.

I don’t know where it got the The “No Mercy” conclusion. I hate PvP because for me it’s a no-win scenario. Either I lose, or the other player loses. Someone has to go home a loser. That doesn’t appeal to me at all. I do enjoy Team Fortress now and again, but I’m usually playing against myself, trying to best my previous accomplishments. (Or fooling around.)

By contrast, the the “No Punishment” one is right on the nose. I have great distaste for scenarios which are designed to be failed at the outset, and eventually overcome through repetition.

The other thing that bugged me about the test were its questions related to survival horror. Questions involving elements like, “Frantically escaping from a terrifying foe.” and such. Reading the questions, it really sounded like a Silent Hill: Homecoming or a Resident Evil 5 QTE button-fest. I like survival games, but I like them for their atmosphere, suspense, and characterization. Guiding an everyman through a twisted dreamworld inhabited by his own fears is good. Piloting an Ex-NAVY SEAL through quick time events and set-piece battles with dodgy controls is the antithesis of this, even if he’s fighting “terrifying” monsters or zombies. All of the survival horror-themed questions in the quiz sounded like they were talking about Resident Evil or Dead Space, and not Silent Hill 2, Thief, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This ambiguity sort of muddled the “Survivor” score for me.

The test doesn’t seem to have anything to say about story and characters. Perhaps it lumps those together with “exploring” in general? I don’t know, but I imagine there are some important differences to be discovered if you were to tease those different aspects apart. Story is exceptionally important to me. I demand a great deal of fidelity from my settings. (Not realism. They can be as fantastic as they like, as long as they are internally consistent.) Plot holes are a game breaker for me, because they gnaw at me.

A single plot hole might be ignored or overlooked, but it sends up a red flag. It’s fine if not all questions are answered. It’s fine if I sometimes get different stories from different people. But if I see too many red flags I drop out of the story and start trying to untangle it in my mind. The more problems I see, the more I examine it, which usually only reveals more problems and leads to a cascading failure. This is why Half-Life 2 works for me and Fallout 3 doesn’t. Half-Life 2 barely has a story. It’s vague and Dr. Freeman’s muteness is vigorously abused to keep the player in the dark. But dangit, people have motivations and it doesn’t contradict itself. Half-Life 2 plays it very safe, but the little bit of story it does contain manages to follow a certain logic. Fallout 3 is, well

Dad killed himself rather than let his broken machine fall into the hands of people trying to fix it. As a result, a water purifier that has no reason to exist released radiation it shouldn't have, thus killing Colonel Autumn, who had no reason to be there. Then later we got through a village of children who fdso gah frrzlmpr blaaa huygggnl asdf;lj so we could enter vault 87 and recover a GECK, a device which would be better put to use in virtually any possible manner besides the one for which we had acquired it. Then Colonel Autumn, who shouldn't be alive, captured us with a flash grenade that shouldn't have worked in a place he shouldn’t have been able to reach, so he could stop us from fixing the machine he wanted fixed. He then tortured us for a code that didn’t matter and which we had no reason to not give him. Then the president set us free to enact his plan which was of no benefit to anyone, ourselves least of all.

At the final battle, everyone in the world had the same goal: Turn on the water purifier. Due to this overwhelming consensus, we were obliged to fight a massive war. Finally, Colonel Autumn gave his life to stop us from turning on the machine he was trying to turn on. At the end, the Enclave defeated themselves by sabotaging the machine they were trying to activate, causing it to explode even though it shouldn’t, and obliging us to enter the purifier and die to radiation that wasn’t actually lethal. At least until the DLC retconned our death and…

Arg.

Still one of the worst stories I’ve ever seen in any AAA game. The fact that it won Game of the Year from multiple sources means that precious few people care about and analyze stories the way that I do.

None of this makes the quiz invalid. It’s still an interesting exercise. It just doesn’t have the resolution to make a few distinctions that are important to me.

 


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172 thoughts on “BrainHex

  1. Sean Riley says:

    Man. I found that test utterly useless.

    Just about every question there is phrased as a superlative, and y’know what? I’ve loved ALL of them at different points. Zooming about in the Druid Plow at high speed, trying to avoid terrifying foes? That was great fun! Exploring Azeroth? I had a blast, and I was role-playing with others too, sometimes co-ordinating to beat tough world elites. (I didn’t raid much.)

    Basically, I spent the whole test going, “Woo! Yeah, I love that!”

    1. Zeta Kai says:

      Yeah, it was hard for me to find any of the test questions repulsive. I agreed with all of the statements to varying degrees, & only found a few somewhat objectionable.

      I guess that I don’t like Socializing, except that my fondest gaming memories are 4-player fragfests in Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Bros. (both the original & Melee), & Goldeneye. I’d love to recreate those moments, but I’d need three friends who have the time & a game that supported one-room multiplayer. Tall order on both counts, so I guess that those days are gone.

      It’s not a bad test, but I agree that some more consideration for story, plotting, & characterization. If I can’t care about the story, then the game is as hollow as Pac-Man; it can be fun, but it won’t be able to hold my imagination.

    2. MrPyro says:

      My main problem with the way the questions are phrased is that everyone of them is about how you feel upon completing a goal of some kind. As a rule, you always feel great when completing a goal; it’s just whether how great you feel is worth the effort that it takes to accomplish it to the person taking the test.

      For example, I would feel pretty good about 100% completing a game (getting all side bits etc.) but that doesn’t mean that I actually like spending hours finding that last collectible.

      I’d feel great if I broke the 100m world record too; doesn’t mean I’m a sportsman.

      1. I think that in order for the test to function, you have to, yourself, put those things in context. You have to, yourself, sit there and think “yeah, I’d feel good accomplishing any goal–but how good would I feel compared to how much work I had to put in to accomplish it?”

        I’m a semi-completist in games because I hate passing up things that will make my character better, but I don’t define that in terms of stuff like in-game achievements or arbitrary “collect-em-all” lists in the game itself. So my scores (below) rate achiever really low, because while I’m willing to go to extreme lengths to get everything that I’ve *decided* I want to get (finding and doing ALL the side-quests, for instance, or leveling ONE CHARACTER from 1 to 20 NINE TIMES), I’m not interested in getting ANYTHING ELSE, even if that stuff is actually “better”.

        Anyway, here are my scores:

        Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

        Mastermind: 17
        Seeker: 16
        Daredevil: 13
        Socialiser: 8
        Conqueror: 6
        Achiever: 4
        Survivor: -2

        My “exception” is “No Fear”, i.e. I don’t like feeling afraid or out of control in a game. Which is 100% accurate, but the funny part of this is that it makes some games (Gothic) really work for me because some sections of the game totally freak me out and make me very cautious–far more cautious than is really warranted. It’s that caution that makes it extra-fun for me when I do finally reach the stage when I can freely saunter through the woods without caring and annihilate all the mobs that were previously causing me trouble. I do not understand, in any way shape or form, the people who complain when a game gets “too easy” toward the end. If I’ve invested 40 hours building this character, I want to freaking DOMINATE by the end of the game.

        Like Shamus, I hate PvP, but largely because I completely suck at it. This is because I find the restrictions of the game distasteful. I don’t care what the “most powerful build” is. I want to build a bow-shooting ranger/monk/favored soul. And I’ll do it well enough that it works. But it’s *not* going to dominate in the PvP arena. I tend to dominate in PvE not because I can instantaneously kill anything and everything in my path, but because my characters are very nearly indestructible. The dominators tend to hit one bump and get fried, whereas mine can recover from setbacks so well that I can kill just about anything, eventually.

        I also have massive distaste for playing anything that *everyone else* is playing, which means that in multiplayer games I’m inevitably not playing any of the truly OP builds because EVERYONE plays those stupid things.

        1. Achiever-Seeker.

          Achiever: 15
          Seeker: 15
          Mastermind: 12
          Socialiser: 9
          Conqueror: 7
          Survivor: 5
          Daredevil: 2

          I think it overstated and understated in places. Rough approximations though.

      2. pinchy says:

        Exactly, apparently I’m a conqueror which doesn’t really seem to fit to me. Yes I really do enjoy defeating a difficult foe which is what the test asked- not so much the time leading up to it. It also comes down to what they mean by difficult- the escription for conqueror at the end made it sound like one enjoys the worst aspects of raiding in MMOs, near-impossible (as the summary at the end described me liking) is not the same as difficult. Challenging, as in yeah I had to think a little bit or not just mash buttons then yeah definitely I enjoy that- repeating the same fight over and over and over again whether I want to or not- not so much. If however said fight was optional then yeah I’m all for it (oh how I missed you world elites in WOW) as I won’t even try it if I’m not in the mood (but when I am actually in the mood it would be fun), if it’s a required part of the main story that’s preventing me from further enjoying the game then no.

        I know it’s hard to make these sort of tests anything other than simplistic or generalist but I think I really need more context to answer most of the questions accurately.

    3. Someone says:

      My problem was that most of the questions could be answered positively if you added “IF done well/suited for my taste in the game”.

      I hate going at high speed in NFS or Gran Turismo because I know I’ll probably ram into something and lose the race during the next S-turn. But I love accumulating a ridiculous speed in Burnout because it’s that kind of a game.

      I like going up against a stronger opponent in TF2 because the game feels balanced enough for the newcomers to have a reasonable chance against vets (unless those vets are demomen). I hate doing the same in Counter-strike, because it feels like I’d have to practice aiming for five years to have any chance to survive against an experienced player.

      I enjoy a good chase in Thief or System Shock or Assassin’s Creed, but I hate being chased in Hitman because it’s hard to tell whether the AI knows where I am or not.

  2. Zagzag says:

    The odd thing is that the test was almost bang on for me! It said that there was nothing I particularly dislike, but that I prefer defeating tough opponents and helping others. I did find the same problems that the poster above did though, of having enjoyed nearly everything at some time or another. That’s probably why I got what I did, which I consider to be accurate!

    1. Nick says:

      I thought it was very accurate for me too.

      Your BrainHex Class is Mastermind.
      Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Mastermind-Daredevil.

      You like solving puzzles and devising strategies as well as rushing around at heights or high speed while you are still in control.

      Exceptions:

      » No Mercy: You rarely if ever care about hurting other players’ feelings – mercy is for the weak!
      » No Commitment: You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.

      Mastermind: 18
      Daredevil: 14
      Conqueror: 12
      Survivor: 10
      Seeker: 7
      Socialiser: -4
      Achiever: -4

      Also, it appears they have been Slashdotted or Reddited or something, because the brainhex site is down.

      1. decius says:

        Same here…

        Your BrainHex Class is Mastermind.

        Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Mastermind-Conqueror.

        » No Pressure: You dislike being asked to perform under pressure, preferring to take your time so you can make the right decision.

        Mastermind: 20
        Conqueror: 16
        Socialiser: 14
        Achiever: 11
        Seeker: 8
        Survivor: 7
        Daredevil: -1

        I’ve got a 750kb text guide to Final Fantasy 5 saved, and I consult it while playing. I still find little things, like “This boss cannot evade song attacks”. ‘Really, so the bard isn’t completely usel… oh wow that combo is really cheap.’

  3. Sucal says:

    I liked fallout three’s story. I just wish there was a way you could join the enclave. You know, the only guys in that game that actually seem competent, and have all the decent armour and guns.

    1. Michael says:

      You forget that the story to Fallout 3 is completely nonsensical. It takes place after 200 years, and everything is still radiated.

      “Filtering through earth essentially removes all fallout particles and more of the dissolved radioactive material than does boiling – water distillation… In areas of heavy fallout, about 99% of the radioactivity in water could be removed by filtering it through ordinary earth.”
      Nuclear War Survival Skills

      This actually makes Dad’s story moot, as the GECK would be better off being used to create irrigable, fertile farm land.

      If it took place closer to the end of the war, I wouldn’t mind so much… but 200 years? Seriously.

      Though I agree with you. Being forced to join factions is a stupid idea, especially in a game where you create a character.

      1. Soylent Dave says:

        The radioactivity rules in Fallout are very clearly based on the 1950s version of ATOMIC POWER rather than hard science – hence the mutations, radiation persistence, barrels of toxic waste etc.

        Also in the real, hard science, world (putting my lab coat on for a second) it’s not that easy to clean up nuclear contamination – which is why Chernobyl is still pretty contaminated (and will be for at least 100 years, albeit less so each year – and not as badly as we all feared it was going to be beforehand), and why places like Sellafield jump through so many hoops trying to sterilise and manage radioactive waste.

        Most radioactive waste is disposed of by ‘waiting for it to decay’ (Sellafield deals with stuff that has a half-life of 200,000 years+, so that’s not really practical…). If you need to clean a particular area you just move the radioactive stuff somewhere else (this is why we shut down & quarantine places like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; it’s not really practical to move all the radioactive material out, especially as it’s already got into the water)

      2. Johan says:

        Well, Fallout Original and Fallout Zesty were also set decades after the fall of the bombs, by all rights pre-war guns should no longer function, but there you go, 10mm Submachine Guns are more common than wrenches (damn sidequest).

      3. Sucal says:

        I would like to point out Micheal, that they might not actually have information available to them about that, or that it might not work enough to purify several million tonnes of water at once

  4. I got mastermind which was pretty much spot on, and I rarely say that about a personality quiz. Subclass was Mastermind-Achiever.
    “You like solving puzzles and devising strategies as well as collecting anything you can collect or doing everything you possibly can.”
    My results say there are few play experiences I strongly dislike, which is fair enough. I do dislike things, but only if they’re done poorly or they’re the end of the 2006 Prince of Persia game. The icon looks like a bullseye on a stand.

    The numbers:
    Mastermind: 17
    Achiever: 14
    Conqueror: 14
    Seeker: 10
    Daredevil: 8
    Survivor: 7
    Socialiser: 6

    Apparantly if I were an animal I’d be an octopus which I’m OK with because octopi are awesome. Additionally, masterminds tend to like Fallout and Half Life (very yes) as well as chess (sure, why not?) and a bunch of other games I haven’t played.

    Exceptions (I found these on the exceptions page, as opposed to being recommended them, just for the hell of it) appear to be railroading (No commitment) and badly designed puzzles (no problems), so that’s pretty fair.

    1. Santa216 says:

      That’s not the way the exceptions work. They are what you would suffer from if Mastermind and Achiever were your least fitting archetypes. Note how “No Problems” doesn’t say “badly designed”, but rather “non-obvious”. In other words, situations where the question itself must be puzzled out – which is just what Masterminds love. I agree there’s nothing worse than poorly thought out puzzle, but this is not about it.

      The exceptions you are presumed to exhibit are actually “No Mercy” and “No Fear”, according to your score. Make of it what you will.

      …Actually, since none of your scores are negative, it is possible the system decided your case didn’t warrant any exceptions. I, for example, got only one, for my one -6 in Achiever.

  5. Randy Johnson says:

    The no mercy thing is just poor wording, it is actually saying that you hate no mercy, aka that you hate pvp. It’s listed as an exception.
    Also, I took the test aswell, and it nailed me to the T.

    “Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Socialiser-Daredevil.”
    You like hanging around with people you trust and helping people as well as rushing around at heights or high speed while you are still in control.

    Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

    » No Fear: You do not enjoy feeling afraid, preferring to feel safe or in control.
    » No Commitment: You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.

    1. Zukhramm says:

      But then wouldn’t no punishment mean you hate “no punishment”, that you don’t dislike impossible challenges and doing the same thing over and over again?

      1. Randy Johnson says:

        No, my point was that they just poorly worded no mercy. It should have followed the same pattern as no punishment and said “you dislike having to hurt other players”. The no mercy and no punishment tags sound like achievements you would get, no punishment being similar to no pain no gain.

        1. Zukhramm says:

          That’s my point too. Or my point is, if it’s poorly worded, it’s very poorly worded because every other exeption follows the form “No [aspect you dislike]”, not “No [aspect you don’t dislike]”. So I don’t think it’s poorly worded but actually means just that, that the test judges the player as one not liking mercy. Their site seems to agree as it lists the Ne Mercy exception as the opposite of the Socialiser class.

          1. Randy Johnson says:

            Interesting. I just find it inconceivable that a test could label shamus as a no mercy guy and not me.

            1. Zukhramm says:

              It’s because scored high as Socialiser. The test just seems to give the exception oposite to your one or two lowest classes. The test seems to draw the conclusion that if you don’t like to play with other people, you don’t like other people.

              1. Meredith says:

                I got No Mercy as an exception too and I absolutely never PvP in any game. I think it’s because it misinterprets disinterest in pvp or co-op as ruthlessness.

                1. paronomasiac says:

                  From the BrainHex site:
                  No Mercy

                  You rarely if ever care about hurting other players’ feelings ““ mercy is for the weak! Alternatively, you may simply prefer to keep your own company and not enjoy playing with other people.

                  This exception is the opposite of the Socialiser class.

  6. Vegedus says:

    The answer to me, achiever-conqueror, was spot on for me, but also very much a no-brainer. I mentioned that I really like the sense of completion and go for a 100 %, and it labels me an achiever? Duuuh. It’s not subtle enough that you can’t affect it with your pre-conscieved notion of what kinda gamer you are.

  7. Mr. Wizard says:

    The only test like this I ever liked was one where they were determining your philosophy. It just seemed like the best use of a test like this, asking general questions to determine your own perspective in the most general sense. If I find that test again, I will share it, its from one of those “make your own test” websites.

    I tried to take this test, but was immediately turned off by some of the questions. I stop immediately when a test asks to classify myself in the false categories of casual or hardcore.

    1. Mr. Wizard says:

      I decided to finish it anyway:

      Your BrainHex Class is Mastermind.

      Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Mastermind-Socialiser.

      You like solving puzzles and devising strategies as well as hanging around with people you trust and helping people.

      Mastermind: 19
      Socialiser: 11
      Daredevil: 8
      Conqueror: 8
      Achiever: 6
      Survivor: 4
      Seeker: 2

      Yeah, it totally misread me. I like socializing, but the test itself just lumps a bunch of things together under “puzzles”. That is an aspect that really should also be divided up, or at least presented better.

  8. sab says:

    Interesting test indeed. I came out as a Mastermind-Seeker with the exception No Commitment (You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.)
    Which sounds a lot like me.

    One of the first questions was of your MBTI type, another personality test that tends to be ludicrously accurate. I was wondering what you filled in there, if anything at all. Though my guess would be INTP.

    1. Shamus says:

      Good guess. Yes, INTP. Arguably, IN?P. The T/F is very close to the middle.

      1. poiumty says:

        INTP here too, but I got a completely different result.

      2. Goodness. All you P types!

        I’m an INFJ. I have a VERY clean office and I know exactly how you feel about it.

        My BrainHex was Seeker-Achiever.

        1. BenD says:

          I’m INTJ. I have a clean office and you better appreciate it!

          1. acronix says:

            I`m an INTJ and have no office!

            1. evileeyore says:

              Hi, I’m an INTJ Mastermind-Seeker, and Fallout 3’s plotline is the bes- hargle blargle toffee hutch persle redrum, redrum, redrum.

      3. Deoxy says:

        Heh – I’m Extroverted on the MB… and not much else. I’ve taken it twice, and I was very extroverted both times, but the other values were all close to the center, with one of them switching sides, one of them so close that it was not useful to say it was on one side of the other, and the third value consistent and leaning, but only a bit. Pretty funny… I’m the only person I know who failed a personality test! Heh.

        But on whole, MB seems pretty good. Haven’t really seen anything better, anyway, though I haven’t looked just a huge amount.

        1. Kacky Snorgle says:

          A girl I knew in college took the Myers-Briggs and came out IXXX: strongly introverted, and *perfectly* balanced on each of the other three axes. She was amused to discover that she didn’t have a personality…. :)

      4. Eärlindor says:

        I remember taking the MBTI a couple years back. I got INFP, but I was dissatisfied. When it came to questions revolving around the “T” and the “P” I agonized over some of them. It feels like I should be juggling those two.

    2. K says:

      I am not sure if “ludicrously accurate” is such a great expression for a test that leads to wildly different results every time I take it.

    3. Epharian says:

      Must not overreact….

      Ah screw it.

      The MBTI is, like this measure* seems to be, a measure designed to place a person in a category. But the truth of the matter is that the MBTI is absolutely WORTHLESS when it comes to predicting actual behavior. You can argue with me about that all you want, but the research literature on the MBTI is pretty clear. As a ‘personality measure’* its only useful for something like determining if two people are categorically similar. My suspicion is that if someone were to bother doing the research they’d find that this measure is worthless for predicting whether or not you like a specific game IF you try to predict it based on the class/sub-class you are placed in. It _might_ predict based on the numbers it generates, but I doubt it somewhat.

      The right way to do this is the way Netflix runs their prediction algorithms for determining what movies to recommend. Sometimes they get it ludicrously wrong, but overall they do a great job, which is why they had their contest a while back, looking for a *very* small improvement when you look at the numbers they were going for, and willing to pay well for that improvement. The scale they use isn’t terrible when it comes to the construction of the measure, but I doubt that it gives full domain coverage.

      *These are by definition NOT tests. A test has objectively correct answer to any given question (or at the VERY LEAST an answer that 3/4 experts will consider correct). These are, instead measures, which attempt to place certain facets of a persons personality, experience or other personal attribute onto a numerical scale. The difference between a test and a measure is one of set/sub-set. A measure is a superset of tests–all tests are measures, not all measures are tests.

      **My qualifications to speak on this are a master’s degree in Psychology and 3 years working in a testing environment. What are yours?

      1. Zukhramm says:

        First of all, is someone using this to make predictions? Because if not I don’t see the point in faulting it for not being able to make predictions.

        Secondly, some words have more than one meaning and just because this is not a test by the academic definition used in psychology does not mean it’s not a test in other senses of the word.

        1. Epharian says:

          It’s not a test. In what sense would it be a test? It doesn’t seek to measure you against some standard. It doesn’t seek to classify you as better at something than another person. It doesn’t try to see how much you know about games. ALL it does is catalog your responses and then attempts to place you in a category. Words have meanings. If we ignore those meanings, we make meaningful communication impossible. In every professional setting that I know of, a test seeks to verify a hypothesis. An academic or IQ test seeks to verify a series of hypotheses about what a person knows.

          And yes, it IS trying to make predictions. No one might use it that way, but the whole point of this classification system is to indicate what kind of games you like. Hence a prediction. If I say someone is a Seeker, then I am making a prediction that they will like certain types of games. My argument is that LIKE the MBTI (which SHOULD NOT be used for prediction for a large number of psychometric reasons), this measure is UNLIKELY to reliably predict what games a person would like. The primary reason that BOTH of these are going to be bad for prediction is the simple use of a classification system that puts people into categories. What that does is toss out the numbers (which have a fair bit of variation), and thereby reduces the amount of variance that have to try to make predictions. When dealing with attempts at prediction, you want to have as much variance as actually exists in the measured system (what games a person likes) as you can realistically collect. Arbitrarily using a categorization scheme to then predict what games a person likes reduce the amount of variability in the predictor variable, and therefore limits the amount of variance in what games a person ACTUALLY likes that you can explain via your prediction algorithm.

          What’s worse, the way some of the class descriptions are worded are CLASSIC horoscope tricks: the vague wording makes it seem like the category applies to you, when in fact it could apply to almost anyone. Example from Shamus’ post: “You like finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.”

          The key word here is “OR”. If I enjoy finding strange and wonderful things, then I’ll say, ‘yep, this applies to me’. BUT if I don’t, but I DO like solving puzzles, I’ll ALSO say, “yep, that works for me.” This is a classic tactic used among hucksters and fake psychics (there probably isn’t any other kind, but I don’t know for sure)–make the wording vague enough or inclusive enough that everyone accepts it as descriptive, and people will believe you have talent that you don’t.

          NOTE: I am not saying that the MBTI does this vague wording thing. It’s problems are mostly psychometric, not sincerity related.

          1. Zukhramm says:

            I’m not suggesting we ignore the meaning of words, what I am saying is that words can have different meanings. You say “test” has a specific meaning in every professional setting you know, and that’s exactly the point. In professional settings it might not be a test, but most people are not in a professional setting and do not use the word that way, and to those people, this thing is a test.

            And from where do you get the impression that this thing is trying to predict what games people like? I’m not objecting to it being bad for predictions, but if the point is not to predict I don’t see how it is relevant.

          2. Aldowyn says:

            That thing with the OR? The first part is Seeker, the second part is Mastermind. That’s not that hard to figure out.

            For example, mine says the following:

            You like defeating impossibly difficult foes, struggling until you eventually achieve victory, and beating other players as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.

            The transition is actually the “as well as”, and you’ll notice mine is the same as Shamus’ – which makes sense, considering I’m Conqueror-Mastermind and he is Seeker-Mastermind.

            1. Bubble181 says:

              You’re misinterpreting. The “as well as” is the transfer from class to sub-class.
              IN the description for SHamus’ class, it reads “You like finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things”…Can you spot the problem? If you enjoy things you know, it fits. If you like finding new things, it fits. As long as you like finding things, you’re set. This applies to about 90% of all players – what, you don’t want to find new things in games?

          3. Tobias says:

            It can’t be measure.
            In every professional setting that I know of, a measure is a mapping of something to a real positive number. The MB does not produce such a number so it is not a measure.

    4. My MBTI type is
      INTJ

      This test labeled me as
      Your BrainHex Class is Mastermind.

      Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Mastermind-Seeker.

      You like solving puzzles and devising strategies as well as finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things.

      Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

      » No Commitment: You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.

      Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

      Mastermind: 20
      Seeker: 12
      Daredevil: 11
      Socialiser: 8
      Survivor: 7
      Conqueror: 2
      Achiever: -4

      Which is fairly accurate…I had the most fun in Arkam Asylum solving Riddler puzzles (though most were too easy)

  9. BvG says:

    Any test that is (or is based on) that Myers-Briggs nonsense is bound to fail horribly at being useful. Maybe funny, but never useful.

    1. Shamus says:

      I find MB to be immensely useful. I guess it depends on that “use” you have in mind for it. It’s not going to give you supernatural insights into other people or predict what they will do in the future. It’s just a handy way of talking about different sorts of people.

      “That guy is a Type A personality.”

      “She’s really impulsive.”

      It’s just as valid as those sorts of comments. Just a bit more formal.

      1. Susie Day says:

        Also, Carl Jung was an INTP and I think it rather appeals to the rest of us.

        I think that might also be why I enjoy your blog so much!

        Hex-wise, I got Mastermind-Daredevil with seeker close behind, and no exceptions.

    2. I’d agree with Shamus – my Myers-Brigg basically confirmed for me what style of jobs I’d be good for and what I wouldn’t be good at. It applies pretty well to me.

    3. poiumty says:

      Myers-Briggs just happened to read my personality almost perfectly. I wouldn’t call it nonsense.

      1. People say the same thing about horoscopes–that aren’t even their horoscope.

        As shorthand for talking about what type of personality someone has, MB is about as useful as saying “I’m a Scorpio” (which I am). For predicting behavior? Nyet.

        1. Antwon says:

          Well, that’s dippily dismissive. “I will use observed traits, analyze responses, and group members with similar natures accordingly” is leagues apart from “I will arbitrarily portion people into classes, then use confirmation bias to verify my preconceived notions”. Hell, your “that aren’t even their horoscope” alludes to as much – folks aren’t as much into arbitrary typing as they are into like-minded members typing.

          Much as Shamus says above, I treat MB typing as slightly more elaborate versions of other shorthand handles one might use – like “party girl” or “class clown” or “strong, silent type”. I mean, if you made a statement like “party girls can really bring stuffed shirts out of their shells”, it’d be parsed as broad but fairly reasonable. It’s not clear to be why replacing “party girl” with “ENTP” (or whatever) would suddenly make the observation null and void.

          And of course, between there being a finite number of buckets to sift folks into and nobody being reified True Platonic Ideal Versions of any underlying one underlying type, of course you’re going to have some touchy-feely lash in the system. If I saw anyone veering into THINE TYPE IS INFJ, THINE FATE IS FORETOLD territory, I’d probably have a good eye-roll at their expense myself.

          1. Um, IF you were actually paying attention, you might have noticed that I was simply cautioning against presuming that MB accurately measures or describes ANYTHING simply because one considers the final adjectives to apply closely to one’s own personality type. In other words, don’t be too hasty to adopt something on the basis of personal experience only.

        2. poiumty says:

          The comparison is flawed and dismissive. Psychology is not the same thing as magical mumbo-jumbo horseshit, and I’m not sure I like the gullibility you’re implying. I’m generally very critical and skeptical of these things.

          1. Considering that both of my parents are professional psychologists and I’ve spent approximately 85% of my entire life in and out of therapy, I’m pretty confident in stating that a great deal of psychology IS mumbo-jumbo horseshit. Psychology is not a unified science (yet). It is still in the pre-science stages of gathering and integrating data.

            I am particularly skeptical of MB because the outcome can be radically skewed by the way the test itself is delivered. Part of this is due to the fact that MB presents a false dichotomy. For instance, I get completely different results on E/I depending on how the questions are phrased. If I am asked things like “you find yourself with an open evening, would you rather stay home and read a book or go to a party?” against “you find yourself with an open evening. Would you rather stay home and read a book or socialize with friends?” I DETEST parties, but I much prefer hanging out with my friends (or other social activities like playing an MMO) to reading a book. If the activities are more neutral (or the questions are phrased differently), I show a strong tendency towards extroversion. I LOVE to meet new people–as long as I don’t have to meet them IN PERSON. I’m not introverted–I’m 6 feet tall and 350 pounds and not pretty and usually not well-dressed and I don’t wear makeup and I have very strict ideas about what constitutes my personal space and for some reason most people want to stand so close to me they’re in danger of face-planting into my cleavage if I turn suddenly.

    4. Halfling says:

      I too am a Myers-Briggs believer. Somewhat curious what your type is, as everyone I know with two of the Myers-Briggs personalities hates the test. Certain people hate having their thought process put into a neat box.

      While others enjoy such order.

      1. I actually love personality tests (I’m very faddish), but I’ve learned over the years not to put much stock in them. But it doesn’t prevent me from cheerfully taking every personality test that ever comes along and scrutinizing my results with deep satisfaction. I just recognize this activity for what it is: narcissism. It’s just like how every time I run across a mirror I’ve got to stop and make faces at myself.

    5. Starkos says:

      For me, MB is good for getting a general idea about myself at the time I take it. Right now I’m an ISFP. Back when I was in Hell (read: highschool years), I was an INTJ. Personally it seems to depend on how much pressure I put on myself under.

      This BrainHex test classified me as a seeker-mastermind. I love exploring! Honestly the best moment I’ve had in any game is at the start of Civilization (any of them). You’ve got a settler, a warrior, and you’re surrounded by unknown wilderness.

      1. Dev Null says:

        I agree that your mindset and the amount of pressure on you makes a big difference in how you come out of these sorts of tests.

        My mother used to work in HR and get trained in administering these things; she used to try them out on us kids. There’s about a million different sorts, but one of the ones I remember being the most interesting (without, alas, remembering what its called) essentially said “Imagine yourself relaxed, safe, and at peace. Describe how you would react to the following situations in that relaxed state. *questions* Now imagine yourself in a highly stressful situation. Describe how you would react to the following situations under pressure. *same questions*” It was interesting to see the change, though I suspect that the accuracy of the measurement would depend heavily on the person’s ability to imagine how they’d react under stress when they weren’t. Better to get them to actually take the test while under stress, but holding a gun to their head and shouting “Answer the damn questions!” probably counts as unethical experimentation or something.

        Every time I do a Myers-Briggs it also makes me think of a crystal-loving neo-pagan friend from uni who had a book on how to tell what color your spirit aura was. The questions were almost identical to the MB test. It helps to keep things in perspective.

        1. krellen says:

          Unethical experimentation? Call Philip Zimbardo!

  10. SatansBestBuddy says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Seeker.

    Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Seeker-Conqueror.

    You like finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things as well as defeating impossibly difficult foes, struggling until you eventually achieve victory, and beating other players.

    According to your results, there are few play experiences that you strongly dislike.

    Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

    Seeker: 17
    Conqueror: 15
    Daredevil: 13
    Mastermind: 12
    Socialiser: 10
    Achiever: 9
    Survivor: 5

    So I like basically everything, which is something I already knew.

    Hey, Shamus, send this article on over to the BrainHex guys, I’m sure they’ll appreciate a viewpoint that’s placing priorities on things they didn’t fully elaborate on.

  11. Zukhramm says:

    I got Seeker/Seeker-Mastermind as well, seems fitting.

    Exceptions:

    » No Punishment: You dislike struggling to overcome seemingly impossible challenges, and repeating the same task over and over again.
    » No Fear: You do not enjoy feeling afraid, preferring to feel safe or in control.

    Seeker: 18
    Mastermind: 16
    Socialiser: 12
    Daredevil: 6
    Achiever: 3
    Conqueror: 0
    Survivor: -2

    I’m surprised Socialiser got that high, I guess it depends on if the “talking to other players” question meant “talking to other players while shooting them in the face” or include talking about games while not playing. I took it as the later. Playing games in complete isolation with no discussion of it with other would be a lot less interesting to me.

    1. MrWhales says:

      I am a Shamus as well.. But here are my differences:

      » No Commitment: You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.

      Seeker: 19
      Mastermind: 15
      Survivor: 13
      Daredevil: 11
      Socialiser: 6
      Conqueror: -2
      Achiever: -4

  12. Thomas says:

    I have the same weird bent about stories that you seem to have, which it didn’t really pick up on.

    But my main nitpick was the tense all the questions were asked in. Sure I like to defeat a hard boss, or come up with a winning strategy or experience the thrill of a choice.

    But most of the time I don’t. I give up to easily to find the winning strategy. I end up scraping the boss fight. I find most of the game too creepy to get to the cool running away sequence. I love getting 100% completion but I find that searching for 100 feathers with no clue to where they are ridiculously irritating, same for grinding to defeat the last boss.

    I guess the questions all put my mind in a perspective where I could imagine it happened and now I enjoy it, rather than ask me if it’s something I seek out and enjoy getting to

    1. Dev Null says:

      But most of the time I don't.

      Ditto. I answered the questions they asked, but all the time I was thinking “Did you want to know if I enjoy this when it happens? Or if that enjoyment is an effective motivator to get me to do things in games?” Which are two totally different things.

      1. Aldowyn says:

        Then meta-testing actually comes in useful for getting a more accurate score. Say what you would tend to do, not what you would like to do.

        1. Thomas says:

          Okay I tried again, but this time instead of just answering the question, I turned it into “but do I seek out the sort of game where this appears in” and I got a wildly different result (with a total of 4 exceptions)

          But unfortunately it was doubly useless because 1) It involved me fitting the question into a “what genre do you like” question and then after I tell them they proudly announce that yes, that is the genre I like.

          2) (related to one) They literally repeated back everything I said. “Do you seek thrill at high speeds” Yes. “You like… s well as rushing around at … high speed” “Do you like dangling from heights?” Yes. “You like… heights”

          Then my exceptions were just “Do you like experiencing fear?” No. “You do not enjoy feeling afraid,”

          Personality tests are only interesting when they try to put you in boxes which aren’t directly related to the questions

  13. Zaxares says:

    My result was Achiever/Achiever-Seeker, which was also spot-on for me. It’s also true that I do not enjoy being afraid in games, although it can vary; I enjoyed Doom 3 and Aliens vs Predator, for example.

    You like collecting anything you can collect or doing everything you possibly can as well as finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things.

    Your Exceptions are:

    » No Fear: You do not enjoy feeling afraid, preferring to feel safe or in control.

    Achiever: 20
    Seeker: 16
    Conqueror: 13
    Socialiser: 9
    Mastermind: 9
    Daredevil: 3
    Survivor: -3

  14. Zukhramm says:

    Also, I found the geographical option “Western Europe or UK” weird, as if the UK was not in Europe.

    1. deiseach says:

      I ws thinking that as well. A strange way of looking at it

      1. I dunno. Depends what technicalities you enjoy. Geopolitically, the UK is in Western Europe–but it’s not in the Eurozone. Geographically you could argue it’s in Western Europe, or you could argue that Western Europe is a subcontinent and the UK is on some islands that just happen to be near that subcontinent. Psychologically I suspect many in the UK don’t consider themselves part of Europe. Everyone’s mileage may vary . . .

        1. Zukhramm says:

          Well, if currency is what determines if you’re in Europe or not, half of Europe is not in Europe.

    2. Nick Bell says:

      Probably was originally just Western Europe. Then enough people from the UK asked where their option was, thus necessitating the change. Much simpler than responding to a bunch of emails telling people that yes, the UK is part of Western Europe.

      1. Soylent Dave says:

        I’ve a feeling that most (by which I mean ‘all’) people in the UK know that we’re in Western Europe, even if some of us don’t like it.

        That’s like suggesting some Americans don’t know that the USA is in North America…

        1. krellen says:

          Apparently, you’d be surprised how stupid Americans are.

          1. Soylent Dave says:

            There’s times I could agree with you there – like every time an American tries to explain to me what Imperial measurements are (the clue to which country popularised them is in the title*) – but I still think that would be going a bit far.

            But the ‘UK & Europe’ bit is more likely to be the British devs making an anti-European point.

            *No, not the Holy Roman Empire.

            1. Bubble181 says:

              The Japanese Empire?
              The Third Reich?
              The Napoleontic Empire?

              I’m clueless :'( :-P

              1. Soylent Dave says:

                Obviously it was Xerxes the Great who invented Imperial Measurements.

                Duh…

                (he just had to wait a thousand years for English to be invented so that people could understand what he was on about)

  15. Tony says:

    I got conqueror even though I hate competitive multiplayer because the test made no distinction between competitive multiplayer and co-op.

    1. Aldowyn says:

      Conqueror isn’t always PvP, it’s also just defeating challenges. Say, a conqueror with a low socialiser score would love Demon’s Souls, or a lot of platformers like Super Meat Boy that are extremely difficult and punishing.

  16. Core Xii says:

    This link of yours downloads some “ihobo.com” file from demands0.vicrtorytrip.net that contains a virus; Gen:Variant.Zbot.34 according to F-Secure.

    I expected a web form with a survey. Apparently that site attacks users through some known vulnerability.

    1. Peter H. Coffin says:

      Interestingly, it does NOT do it for me, if I follow Shamus’s link. If I attempt to get to the same place via Google, it sets off alarms.

    2. Core Xii says:

      It also doesn’t do it for me subsequently, only at the first time I clicked the link. Nevertheless, suspicious.

      1. Alexander The 1st says:

        Could be an infected ad over the actual site itself.

  17. Tobias says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Mastermind.

    Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Mastermind-Seeker.

    You like solving puzzles and devising strategies as well as finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things.

    Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

    » No Pressure: You dislike being asked to perform under pressure, preferring to take your time so you can make the right decision.
    » No Mercy: You rarely if ever care about hurting other players’ feelings – mercy is for the weak!

    I also got No Mercy, despite never playing online or even multiplayer at all. No Idea where this comes from. Maybe they are trying to say I don’t like co-op games (which is true).

  18. Chris B Chikin says:

    Conqueror-Mastermind:

    You like defeating impossibly difficult foes, struggling until you eventually achieve victory, and beating other players as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.

    That’s true insofar as I love the feeling after an extended firefight against hordes of enemies in which I survive just by the skin of my teeth. I even enjoy having to do the same battle a few times to figure out the right tactics to get through the room full of enemies. However, I do not enjoy getting one-shotted over and over and over and over again by the same prescient sniper camping half-a kilometre away. Also, PvP multiplayer doesn’t hugely appeal to me either. It’s also right though that there are few play experiences I dislike; I’m not that picky about genres apart from avoiding sports and racing games.

    I was confused by the “outrunning terrifying foes” question as well. I’ve never been a huge fan of survival horror games, which meant the only real examples I could think of similar to this were waaay back in the Crash Bandicoot levels where you had to outrun the boulder Indiana Jones style, or the last level of Halo: Combat Evolved where you’re not so much outrunning a horror as the timer on the nuclear bomb you just activated. I think that made any answers on that subject a bit off the mark.

    1. Aldowyn says:

      Finally, someone else that’s a Conqueror… :P

  19. Tse says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Daredevil.

    Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Daredevil-Mastermind.

    You like rushing around at heights or high speed while you are still in control as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.

    Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

    » No Fear: You do not enjoy feeling afraid, preferring to feel safe or in control.
    » No Commitment: You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.

    Learn more about your classes and exceptions at BrainHex.com.

    Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

    Daredevil: 18
    Mastermind: 14
    Conqueror: 14
    Seeker: 10
    Socialiser: 3
    Survivor: 1
    Achiever: 0

    Sounds about right.

  20. poiumty says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Conqueror.

    Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Conqueror-Daredevil.

    You like defeating impossibly difficult foes, struggling until you eventually achieve victory, and beating other players as well as rushing around at heights or high speed while you are still in control.

    » No Commitment: You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.
    » No Fear: You do not enjoy feeling afraid, preferring to feel safe or in control.

    Well, technically right, the flaw here is I enjoy different things in single player games compared to online games. Pretty spot on in the multiplayer aspect, though I’m sure I chose I like single player better.
    edit: or should I say it nailed both aspects… at the same time. Which just makes neither of them completely accurate. Meh.

  21. deiseach says:

    What I can’t get past is that the test assumes some manner of online/multiplayer use by the gamer. I don’t. Ever*. Gaming is purely single-player experience, so asking me to rate a moment of unity with another player is a pointless exercise

    *Okay, I have done some online gaming, but just to see how it works. Actually playing the game for kicks, no

  22. lurkey says:

    Hey, clicky buttons! Whatever the results, I’m in! 8-)

    Okay, says there “Achiever-Seeker” Duh, eh. Hmmm….I don’t think I’m either…oh, there it is expanded:

    You like collecting anything you can collect or doing everything you possibly can as well as finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things

    So, “Looter-Thief”? You should’ve said so from the beginning!

  23. UtopiaV1 says:

    I got the exact same title as Shamus, Seeker-Mastermind (my scores were a little different –
    Seeker: 16
    Mastermind: 12
    Daredevil: 11
    Conqueror: 10
    Survivor: 5
    Socialiser: 5
    Achiever: -2)

    I play Strategy games, almost exclusively, with only a few FPS’s and RPG’s thrown into the mix. I must have done the test wrong, because I care more about the spectacle than the puzzles (which is why I’m constantly trying to overclock my machine).

    Still, at least the exception was right – No Commitment: You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.

    I have a girlfriend of 4 years and I’ve yet to propose to her! No Commitment indeed…

  24. Mumbles says:

    I got almost identical results with just more points in socializer.

  25. Thadius Girth says:

    I got Mastermind/Mastermind-Seeker. It’s fairly accurate, I suppose. I like forming a successful plan and finding new things.

  26. Bubble181 says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Achiever.
    Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Achiever-Mastermind.

    You like collecting anything you can collect or doing everything you possibly can as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.

    » No Fear: You do not enjoy feeling afraid, preferring to feel safe or in control.
    » No Punishment: You dislike struggling to overcome seemingly impossible challenges, and repeating the same task over and over again.
    » No Mercy: You rarely if ever care about hurting other players’ feelings – mercy is for the weak!

    Achiever: 17
    Mastermind: 17
    Seeker: 12
    Daredevil: 6
    Survivor: 1
    Conqueror: 1
    Socialiser: -8

    Well…Yes. Except that, like Shamus, it’s not liek I have No Mercy – I simply really, really don’t play on line or multiplayer. My game. Mine. My little fantasy, damnit! I want to win and be the bog strong hero! What’s the point of using a game for escapism if you’re just another guy/girl :-P

    1. Kojiro says:

      Same class and subclass here, and even the same scores for those two, and same Seeker scores despite slightly different order, but some other things were different. This was surprisingly accurate for me, though:

      Your BrainHex Class is Achiever.

      Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Achiever-Mastermind.

      You like collecting anything you can collect or doing everything you possibly can as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.

      Your Exceptions are:

      » No Pressure: You dislike being asked to perform under pressure, preferring to take your time so you can make the right decision.

      Achiever: 17
      Mastermind: 17
      Conqueror: 13
      Seeker: 12
      Survivor: 8
      Socialiser: 4
      Daredevil: 0

      I found this… Surprisingly accurate. Especially No Pressure; when faced with a really open game like New Vegas, I want to do everything perfectly and wind up taking a lot of time planning things (although that’s usually done with the game paused or not even on). Dwarf Fortress and the like, I’m practically paralyzed due to all the options and ways to do things wrong.

      So, yeah. This was far closer to the truth than I expected it to be.

      Edit: I find it a bit amusing that I get dopamine as my chemical messenger twice over. Some people would argue that that’s another area that this is accurate.

      1. Bubble181 says:

        Yup, I enjoyed the double-dopamine, too. Strange, though, I’d have expected No Pressure as well, if it’s in there. Much closer than No Mercy, anyway.
        Might be because I do enjoy the very occasional racing game if it’s arcade-y enough…

        Achiever-Masterminds Unite!

        1. Shatterer says:

          Achiever-Masterminds unite? Count me in!

          Achiever: 20
          Mastermind: 12
          Seeker: 11
          Survivor: 9
          Conqueror: 6
          Socialiser: 4
          Daredevil: -6

          Having the negative daredevil gives me No Pressure as well. I really like this result. On the other hand, I wouldn’t use this as a way to play new games.

  27. Max says:

    I think I can shed some light on the “no mercy” thing people are getting. They’ve already had several comments complaining, and they have admitted that its a misnomer. If you score negative on socialiser it assumes you are antisocial and don’t care about other players, when it would be more accurate to say that you don’t really play with other people too much at all. I’m not sure if this makes it more accurate for anyone, but just saying.

    Also I took my test awhile ago so I don’t have exact numbers, but I got Mastermind-Conqueror. With a negative in Socialiser.

    1. Aldowyn says:

      It doesn’t account for introverts. Which is strange, considering that’s about the FIRST thing every other personality test accounts for…

  28. SolkaTruesilver says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Mastermind.
    Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Mastermind-Socialiser.

    You like solving puzzles and devising strategies as well as hanging around with people you trust and helping people.

    According to your results, there are few play experiences that you strongly dislike.

    Mastermind: 18
    Socialiser: 11
    Conqueror: 11
    Survivor: 10
    Seeker: 10
    Achiever: 8
    Daredevil: 3

  29. Mari says:

    Survivor: 17
    Achiever: 15
    Mastermind: 15
    Socialiser: 8
    Seeker: 6
    Daredevil: 2
    Conqueror: 2

    My results were true and yet not the whole story. I’m apparently a survivor-achiever, which is true to a point. I freely admit the achiever part. I border on OCD when it comes to completionism in video games. The survivor part is weird, though, because while I’m an avid addict of the horror genre across all media, I play precious few survival horror games, mostly because of the fact that few survival horror games actually imbue me with the sense of lingering dread, terror, horror, or even decent revulsion that I crave. I actually spend much more of my gaming time playing strategy games, which I love. I adore finding the optimum configuration of an animal enclosure in Zoo Tycoon or experimenting with new “optimum city” configurations in the Civ series or finding the most space efficient layout for maximum evil in minimal space in Dungeon Keeper.

    I got no exceptions because I dislike superlatives and pretty much never answer surveys with the extreme ends of the scale. Whenever I say “I hate X!” my brain automatically supplies exceptions to that. But I really probably should have had “no punishment” and “no pressure” exceptions if I’d taken the survey like a normal person does. I really, really hate DIAS gameplay and I do lousy on timed sections of games to the point where I’ll give in and pull up a walkthrough to beat them. Luckily, I figured out years ago that outside of timers video games like to make you THINK you’re under pressure, but you’re not really. Sure, they yap about “Hurry, your princess is in that castle there!” but does the princess really go away if I take the time to fully explore the area and make sure I picked up all the collectibles, cleared all the fog of war, and completed all the sidequests? Only if she would have been gone anyway.

    Also, this one made me laugh “Wondering what’s behind a locked door.” Well, I like wondering what’s behind it when I’m not busy being focused on how asinine the locked door is in the first place. When there’s a decent reason for it, great. But I despise “plot locks.”

    1. Bret says:

      I like locked doors if they go down to a GEP gun.

      Well, any explosive will do. I’m not too picky.

      Or a fridge. Breaking doors with a fridge would be great.

      (Really looking forward to the new Deus Ex)

  30. Jokerman89 says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Survivor.
    Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Survivor-Seeker.

    Favourite games of Survivors surveyed so far include Bioshock, Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill.

    ———-

    Thats pretty damn spot on for my fav games bar Bioshock.

    1. Jokerman says:

      Did this in 2015 to see if i have changed… seems like i have,

      Your BrainHex Class is Seeker.
      Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Seeker-Daredevil.

      I think i have just got bored of horror games though.

  31. Jokerman89 says:

    Oh yea i had “No Mercy” Im that bastard in horror films who leaves someone to die then gets mangled horribly by the main monster :(

  32. Andrew says:

    Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

    Seeker: 18
    Mastermind: 17
    Conqueror: 13
    Survivor: 11
    Achiever: 11
    Daredevil: 9
    Socialiser: 3

  33. Meredith says:

    I want to play too. :)

    Your BrainHex Class is Mastermind.
    Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Mastermind-Seeker.

    You like solving puzzles and devising strategies as well as finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things.

    Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

    » No Mercy: You rarely if ever care about hurting other players’ feelings – mercy is for the weak!

    Learn more about your classes and exceptions at BrainHex.com.

    Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

    Mastermind: 20
    Seeker: 15
    Achiever: 14
    Survivor: 6
    Conqueror: 4
    Daredevil: 3
    Socialiser: 0

    I’d say this is fairly accurate, or at least what I expected based on their questions. I also have a bad case of gaming OCD and try to collect everything if it’s that sort of game. My exceptions probably should have been no fear and whatever the daredevil one is. No Mercy is definitely broken, it’s really an indicator of not enjoying multiplayer much as far as I can see.

    They could do with another page or two of questions in order to more finely separate some of the categories. Perhaps it could direct people to different pages based on their exceptions and try to dig deeper into what it is they don’t like (or the reverse: find out more about their top two).

    This was interesting, Shamus, thanks for sharing. I’ve got a Masters in Psych and I have to admit I enjoy categorising people (sorry).

    1. Mari says:

      Ha! I defy you to classify me :-D I BREAK those puny psych metrics. No, really, I apparently break them. I was once diagnosed as schizophrenic and heavily medicated with strong psychotropics for a half dozen years based on a suicide attempt and a battery of “fill in the bubble about your feelings” tests before finally being weaned off and going on to live a productive, medication-free life with no hallucinations and a strong sense of the difference between reality and fantasy (though I lament the distinction as often as not).

      1. Bret says:

        You know who else broke psych tests? Do you?

        Richard Feynman. Didn’t get drafted due to his psych test.

        Which is good, since it meant he could focus on picking all the locks at the Manhattan Project.

  34. webrunner says:

    “Brainhex” sounds like something very sinister, like this whole thing is for SkyNet, GLaDOS, SHODAN, and the rest of the Mostly Sisterhood Of Evil Computers to find out our weaknesses. Just sayin’.

  35. Bubble181 says:

    I’m still waiting for someone to break the test and get Hunter-Seeker for a class.

    1. Max says:

      This is the worst trackback I’ve ever seen. Kinda wish it picked a different part of the blog post to show.

  36. Rayen says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Seeker.

    Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Seeker-Mastermind.

    You like finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.

    Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

    » No Fear: You do not enjoy feeling afraid, preferring to feel safe or in control.

    Seeker: 19
    Mastermind: 17
    Daredevil: 12
    Socialiser: 12
    Conqueror: 5
    Achiever: 4
    Survivor: -1

    I dunno how right this is. My tastes in games is very fluid. This is because I’m poor and can only afford maybe 1 or 2 games a year so regardless i better like what i get. also with so few experiences i rarely see mechanics that are repeated. it’s probably like this right now because i’m playing minecraft and my favorite thing is wandering around taking beautiful landscape shots.

    I do like puzzle solving and the whole achievement thing has never really mattered to me. Also it’s true i don’t like horror, movies games, scarehouses, don’t care i’m not big on being scared. it’s not a sensation i find worth the adrenalin rush afterwards. there are much better funner ways (IMO) to get adrenalin pumping. i don’t know why my daredevil score is so high.

    anyway like i said my tastes are very fluid so i’m not sure how accurate this is.

  37. bucaneer says:

    So Project Hex is not returning with a new addition of floating brains as mobs/player models? Well, I guess a test is fine too…

  38. krellen says:

    I’m a Seeker-Mastermind with the No Punishment and No Pressure exceptions. That’s probably pretty accurate.

  39. Jokerman89 says:

    Damn….i got a 3 in mastermind, by far the lowest here :( Im a dumbass

  40. HeadHunter says:

    It gave my primary result as Seeker, which makes sense to me, but the subclass was Daredevil, which does not. I’m more of an Achiever than a Daredevil. No Punishment and No Fear were senible exceptions to my gaming style – after all, I prefer gaming to be fun, not work.

    I think, perhaps, the quiz needs more questions to refine the result, or perhaps better questions. Some were too absolute, others were too vague.

  41. GM says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Seeker.
    Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Seeker-Achiever.

    You like finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things as well as collecting anything you can collect or doing everything you possibly can.

    Seeker: 17
    Achiever: 15
    Survivor: 11
    Conqueror: 7
    Daredevil: 5
    Mastermind: 5
    Socialiser: 2

    sounds like me ,i think might have not done the test perfectly.
    Link to the past,Minecraft and Neverwinter nights are the three games :)

    1. Aldowyn says:

      Minecraft is Seeker/Achiever to a T. And there’s a good chunk of survivor in there, too.

      Just saying.

  42. Cthulhu says:

    Mastermind-Conqueror. Surprised at the conqueror part; it seems to be giving me that based on me liking difficult challenges, but it lumps that in with pvp which I don’t care for. I’m surprised Seeker and Achiever weren’t higher.

  43. Eärlindor says:

    Huh, took the test a couple times and came out with basically the same thing:

    Mastermind-Seeker

    Mastermind: 18
    Seeker: 13
    Socialiser: 12
    Survivor: 7
    Achiever: 7
    Conqueror: 7
    Daredevil: 2

    You like solving puzzles and devising strategies as well as finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things.

    Huh… it doesn’t say what my exceptions are; it only says, “According to your results, there are few play experiences that you strongly dislike.

    I suppose this is mostly accurate. But I think I would take a couple points off “Socialiser” and put them into “Conqueror”–though, I prefer Co-op to competitive play.

  44. BenD says:

    *tears of laughter* “Due to this overwhelming consensus…” HELP CAN’T STOP LAUGHING

  45. BenD says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Seeker.
    Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Seeker-Achiever.

    You like finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things as well as collecting anything you can collect or doing everything you possibly can.

    Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

    » No Mercy: You rarely if ever care about hurting other players’ feelings – mercy is for the weak!
    Learn more about your classes and exceptions at BrainHex.com.

    Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

    Seeker: 20
    Achiever: 18
    Mastermind: 13
    Daredevil: 7
    Survivor: 5
    Conqueror: 5
    Socialiser: 1

    Again with the ‘No Mercy’ just because Socialiser is last. I have plenty of mercy, as is proven by the fact that I don’t force others to socialize with me in video games!

  46. rrgg says:

    [Your BrainHex Class is Mastermind.

    Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Mastermind-Daredevil.

    You like solving puzzles and devising strategies as well as rushing around at heights or high speed while you are still in control.

    Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

    » No Fear: You do not enjoy feeling afraid, preferring to feel safe or in control.

    Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

    Mastermind: 15
    Daredevil: 13
    Conqueror: 9
    Seeker: 8
    Achiever: 4
    Socialiser: 3
    Survivor: -1]

    I suppose it’s right, that’s pretty much what I told it after all. Not really sure why my daredevil score is so high though.

  47. Dev Null says:

    Some comments, as I take the test (I’ll paste scores at the end):

    The test _is_ asking me about story, but doesn’t seem to be going into much fine detail about what aspects of story appeal or ruin a game. Is that what you meant Shamus? Or is it asking me a different set of questions from what it asked you?

    (Oh, and your summary of Fallout III had me in stitches… but I don’t remember almost any of that. Is part of that from expansions / DLC? I never played anything but the base game…)

    Your BrainHex Class is Mastermind.

    Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Mastermind-Seeker.

    I like the idea of listing exceptions to the classification, since that will point out the differences between people in the same class, rather than their similarities. But I didn’t have any, so I guess I’m just generic.

    Mastermind: 20
    Seeker: 17
    Survivor: 13
    Socialiser: 8
    Achiever: 5
    Daredevil: 4
    Conqueror: 2

    1. JPH says:

      I didn’t have any exceptions either. What that means is that you didn’t pick “dislike” for many (if any) of the options.

      I’d like to think I’m not generic…

    2. acronix says:

      Nothing of his Fallout 3 resume includes anything from the DLC. All of that was the main plot.

      1. Dev Null says:

        Really? Wow. Been awhile since I played it, mind, but I don’t remember:

        Colonel Autumn
        a village of children
        being tortured for a code
        the president (except as a voice on the radio), or his plan

        I guess I blocked out a lot of details due to bad story trauma. Or I just didn’t care.

  48. JPH says:

    I did notice that neither the Bartle Test nor the BrainHex test mention story in the slightest. Didn’t bother me though. It’s hard to say why; there are some games that I loved because of their story (Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger spring to mind) but I enjoyed Fallout 3 a lot, so I guess a bad story won’t bother me enough for it to be a game-breaker.

    For me it’s the same as what I said about graphics back in my Deus Ex review. If it’s done well it can add a lot to a game, but if it’s done badly it won’t bother me.

  49. Daimbert says:

    This is what I got:

    Your BrainHex Class is Survivor.
    Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Survivor-Seeker.

    You like pulse-pounding risks and escaping from hideous and scary threats as well as finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things.

    Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

    » No Pressure: You dislike being asked to perform under pressure, preferring to take your time so you can make the right decision.
    » No Commitment: You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.

    Learn more about your classes and exceptions at BrainHex.com.

    Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

    Survivor: 12
    Seeker: 12
    Socialiser: 6
    Mastermind: 5
    Conqueror: 2
    Daredevil: 1
    Achiever: 0

    It’s not all that inaccurate, as the exceptions clearly fit, but it kinda misses the reason why I get Survivor-Seeker, which is that story for me trumps all else, and a good horror story — like Fatal Frame — gives you that feeling. There wasn’t enough in there about following plots, as Shamus said, and it’s really bad for me because that’s primarily what I care about; I seek to advance the story, and I survive to advance the story.

  50. rrgg says:

    I’ve got an idea, how about trying to predict which games someone likes based on their test results?

  51. ben says:

    Class is Seeker.
    Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Seeker-Daredevil.

    You like finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things as well as rushing around at heights or high speed while you are still in control.

    Few dislikes

    Seeker: 13
    Daredevil: 11
    Achiever: 9
    Conqueror: 8
    Socialiser: 7
    Mastermind: 7
    Survivor: 2

    The test seemed pretty spot on for me. Particularly in how it was able to differentiate between between the thrill of a successful escape versus the fear of being chased. Both involve maneuver, but they differ in level of control. (daredevil vs survivor)

  52. Canthros says:

    Socializer. I avoid competitive multiplayer like the plague, prefer to solo an MMO to dealing with people I do not know.

    And, FWIW, I’m INTJ or INTP, IIRC. (Memory says the T was kinda borderline, and that the last two times I took a MBTI test, I got different results on J vs P axis, which is also fairly borderline. Which is most recent, I don’t know.)

    HAND. (I’m out of TLAs and ELTAs which can be crammed in here naturally, now.)

    1. According to MB, I’m an ENTJ. The E/I and J/P could go either way depending on how I feel when I’m taking the test and the precise wording of the questions, but I’m VERY DEFINITELY an N and a T, like in the 80% range.

  53. Jarenth says:

    Hah. Mastermind-Seeker, which is accurate, and ‘According to your results, there are few play experiences that you strongly dislike‘, which is also true – I tend to play little bits of everything. Well played, test.

    1. krellen says:

      You are not my clone. Who are you?!

      1. Jarenth says:

        The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master.

        1. krellen says:

          Strike me down and I shall only become more powerful than you can ever imagine.

          1. Jarenth says:

            But I don’t even like PvP.

            How about, in lieu of murder, we go see if there’s any puzzles to solve over the next hill.

  54. Stefano Marone says:

    And I thought that it was me who didn’t understand the plot of fallout 3 :-D

  55. acronix says:

    Mastermind-Seeker with the exceptions of No-Pressure and No-Commitment. Also, No-Office, but that was not included in the test!

  56. Ramsus says:

    I got Mastermind/Achiever and…I have no idea how. I would have pinned myself as Seeker. Then again through the whole thing I was looking at the questions and wondering in which of several interpretations they meant them and wondered where all the questions I actually wanted to answer were. Though this isn’t really anything new for me. Tests like this almost always leave me feeling like I wanted to give answers to questions that they just didn’t have as options.

  57. Ethan says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Mastermind.
    Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Mastermind-Seeker.

    Your Exceptions are:
    » No Fear:
    » No Mercy:
    » No Punishment:
    » No Pressure:

    My overall profile seems to fall in line with the majority of the comments here. Which begs the question: Which is the more reliable predictor? This test, or the fact that we all follow Shamus’ blog?

    The thing I found most interesting about my score was not the class it assigned, but rather how strongly my results were skewed.

    Mastermind: 19
    Seeker: 17
    Achiever: 14
    Survivor: -2
    Socialiser: -4
    Conqueror: -6
    Daredevil: -10

    1. Aldowyn says:

      … According to this, you hate horror, multiplayer, difficulty, and risks. Wow. This sounds like the kind of person that plays open-world RPGs on easy difficulty.

      So, how often do you go ruin-diving and altar-seeking in Oblivion? :D

      1. Ethan says:

        I appriciate your congenial sense of humor. But the truth is, you’re not that far off the mark. As a gamer, I have certain traits that strongly dictate what I do and do not enjoy.

        The first is: I have the hand-eye coordination of a goldfish. FPS’s, RTS’s, quicktime events or anything else that requires that I press a specific button at a specific time is an absolute non-starter for me.

        The second is: I’m extremely left-brain dominant with a well developed spacial perception ability. So, games with physical puzzles (especially 3D puzzles) stroke the pleasure centers of my brain in a way that few things (that are safe for discussion here) can.

  58. Michael says:

    Mastermind-Seeker.
    No Pressure – Dislike performing under pressure. Prefer to take time.
    No Fear – Dislike being afraid. Prefer to feel safe; in control.

    I’m also seeing a lot of Masterminds and Seekers here. Similar personalities attract, it seems.

    Looking at the favorite games of Masterminds: Animal Crossing, Chess, Chrono Trigger, Fallout, Half-Life, and Zelda.

    Bwahahaha! Ahem. Sorry. Animal Crossing just made me laugh. I never much saw the point to Animal Crossing, though I did buy one of them to see what the fuss was about. Wasn’t as entertaining as I’d’ve hoped.

    Anyway, the Seeker favorite games: Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Grim Fandango, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, and Zelda.

    You know, except for Grim Fandango (another game I hear was fantastic) I own all of these games. Obviously not ALL the Final Fantasy games, but the message is there.

    1. Ethan says:

      I didn’t laugh so much as scratch my head at that list of games for both masterminds and seekers. I have never played any of them at all. I even had to google a few of them because I didn’t even recognize the title.

      My personal favorite game of my entire collection is an old adventure game from ’96 that I found in a discount bin, called “Drowned God”.

      Not to threadjack, but I’d be curious to see what other Mastermind and/or Seekers thought of as their favorite game?

      1. I’m Mastermind/Seeker, and I like Gothic, Dragon Age, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Morrowind (to a point, the clunky interface and the fact that the map was broken and completely useless on my computer got to me after a while). I also like Dungeons and Dragons online, Prince of Persia (the trilogy ones), the old Eye of the Beholder games, Unreal, and Drakkan. I think some of that comes from my high-ish Daredevil score, though. I cannot STAND playing characters in DDO who don’t have pretty high movement speeds, excellent jump, and evasion.

        I’m not sure that the whole “what experiences in games you find most stimulating” necessarily translates directly into “what games you like”, though.

      2. Michael says:

        Favorite game? I get asked that a lot, and I still don’t have an answer.

        I enjoy all the games I play on different merits.

        One game has bland, uninteresting characters, but the gameplay is so enthralling, I don’t care. (Trauma Center, here. Apart from the nurse, who has hilarious facial expressions, the characters could be interchanged, and no one would notice.)

        One game has a complete nonsense story, but beautiful settings and unique [working] mechanics. (Okami – art style was difficult to get used to, but the game was bright, vibrant, and colorful. Too bad I don’t know Japanese Mythology. The game might’ve made more sense)

        One game has no story to speak of, but the characters and dialogue are cleverly written and interesting. (Mass Effect 2. Shamus mentions it could be solved with a big bomb. Then DLC comes out proving him right.)

        I enjoyed all of those games (among others, of course). Those were just examples, but they’re all very different types of games. I can’t really point to one and say “This. This is my favorite game.”

        It probably just depends what type of game I’m in the mood for at the moment.

        Like, for instance, right now I’d love to dig into a JRPG. Right now, I’d enjoy Chrono Trigger, or a Final Fantasy title more than anything else. Maybe a Dragon Warrior/Quest.

        Sorry that I didn’t answer your question.

        1. Ethan says:

          Jennifer:

          I'm not sure that the whole “what experiences in games you find most stimulating” necessarily translates directly into “what games you like”, though.

          Michael:

          I enjoy all the games I play on different merits.

          Both of you are quite correct. I think now that my question was misguided. I was fishing for an informal survey to see if there were any common elements in the games others might suggest, That would steer me towards a game or two I might have overlooked.

          But, my gaming tastes are a bit more outside the curve than I realized. Other than the very occasional JRPG, I don’t play any character based games on my machine. (I Hate grinding.) I grew up at Gygax’s and Arneson’s knee; and prefer to get my RP fix with dice and friends.

          I guess I’m just impatient for the next “World of Goo”.

          I was overstimulated for weeks, waiting for Portal 2. But the PSN blueballed me.

      3. Jarenth says:

        If I have to return one singular game as my all-time favourite, it would be Legend Of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. Largely due to the content — a heavy focus on exploration and puzzling, with some combat thrown in, and a quite well-written story — but also due to the fact that it’s one of the first video games I ever played that managed to actually grip me as a person, emotionally and immersively.

        In fact, I’d go as far as saying that Link’s Awakening is the game that made me the exploration-and-puzzling-but-also-combat-and-challenges games I am today.

        1. Michael says:

          This was actually my first Zelda game, and one of the first games I got for my new Gameboy Color.

          I still have the cartridge, but, like some of my other old Gameboy games, the save battery has gone kaput.

          Then, to add insult to injury, the game now refuses to even start past the intro screen. I get the big egg, the title drop, I hit start, and…. blank screen.

          The sad thing here? I never actually beat the end boss. I got up to him, couldn’t figure out how to beat him, and left the game alone for a while. When I finally came back to it, the save battery had died.

          Also: “In fact, I'd go as far as saying that Link's Awakening is the game that made me the exploration-and-puzzling-but-also-combat-and-challenges games I am today.”

          JARENTH IS A GAMES. RUN AWAY! HIDE!

          1. Jarenth says:

            Well played.

  59. porschecm2 says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Achiever.

    Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Achiever-Socialiser.

    You like collecting anything you can collect or doing everything you possibly can as well as hanging around with people you trust and helping people.

    Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

    » No Punishment: You dislike struggling to overcome seemingly impossible challenges, and repeating the same task over and over again.

    Learn more about your classes and exceptions at BrainHex.com.

    Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

    Achiever: 17
    Socialiser: 14
    Seeker: 14
    Mastermind: 10
    Daredevil: 6
    Survivor: 2
    Conqueror: -4

    That’s…not altogether accurate. I don’t think the test makes a lot of distinction between collecting in-game loot, and meta-game things like achievements and trophies. I’m obsessed with loot–if there’s a box or a crate I can open, I’ll empty it. I spent countless hours in Oblivion carting loads of junk back to my base (where I kept it, and never sold any of it!) And I won’t progress to the next section of the game until I have wandered down every hallway, and tried every door. But on the other hand, I don’t give a hoot about achievements, Steam or otherwise. Meta-gaming achievements are generally worthless nonsense that break my immersion.
    I’m a bit surprised that I scored so high on socializing, also. I play very, very few multiplayer games, but I do thoroughly enjoy them. But 80% of my gaming is single-player. Having a LAN party with friends is awesome, but getting on XBL? No thanks.
    And frankly I’m shocked that I scored so low on Seeker. Honestly I would have put that as my #1. Give me a game in which exploration rules, with a beautiful game-world, and I’ll be happy for a long time. Thank you, Minecraft.

    1. I don’t care so much about the loot, but I HATE there being parts of the game I can’t access. I’m the person who always, no matter HOW it screws the rest of my build, has maxed-out ability to open locks in a classless game, and in a game with classes, I almost always play whatever class it’s necessary to play in order to open all the damn boxes.

      Dragon Age 2 is the ONLY exception to this, because I preferred the mage class. In Origins, I downloaded a mod (and I usually hate mods) that let me bash locks with my mage. Or I played a rogue. Never played the warrior class in either game. In DA2, I either took one of the rogues with me EVERYWHERE, or suffered through numerous moments of GRRR CAN’T OPEN STUPID BOX!!!!!

      It doesn’t matter one bit what’s IN the box. I JUST WANT TO OPEN IT.

      1. krellen says:

        I think the “I want to know what’s in that stupid box” is a Seeker trait, better represented by the “locked door” question.

        1. Jarenth says:

          In Echo Bazaar, there’s certain content and dialogue options that are warded with Fate, which you have to pay real money for.

          I am finding it increasingly hard to ignore these. I want to know what this Storylet does, damnit!

  60. I didn’t really like the initial questions about what is your favorite gaming experience, because they really need to let you pick multiples of those. I really enjoy single player, multiplayer online in the same room (LAN play), and multiplayer Online not-in-the-same-room (an MMO). I’d be hard-pressed to say which is my favorite, however, because it depends on the game. I would NOT like to play Dragon Age multiplayer. Likewise I don’t much like soloing in an MMO because it gets BORING and takes FOREVER compared to anything but the most inept groups.

    I wish they’d had a question about “do you like competitive play” and “do you like cooperative play”. I don’t like competitive play much. I can put up with it if that’s the only real way to play the game, but I’m not a competitive-with-other-people kind of person. I’m competitive with myself, which means I want to be constantly improving over what I was doing before. The only type of competitive play I’ve ever enjoyed is when something ridiculously unexpected happens, and I don’t *really* care much whether I’m the beneficiary or the loser in that case, just as long as it was interesting. Once the results cease being interesting to me, I want to do something else.

  61. Ranneko says:

    I got Conqueror-Mastermind.

    You like defeating impossibly difficult foes, struggling until you eventually achieve victory, and beating other players as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.

    My Exception was No Commitment: You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.
    Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

    Conqueror: 18
    Mastermind: 15
    Daredevil: 14
    Socialiser: 9
    Seeker: 8
    Survivor: 6
    Achiever: 0

    I do rarely bother with 100% completion of anything, I have waaay too many games that I would like to play.

    As for appropriateness, well here is my girlfriend’s comment on the subject:
    why does it not surprise me that Ranneko “I killed more zombies than you” LastName got “Conqueror”? :P

  62. Aldowyn says:

    Your BrainHex Class is Conqueror.

    Your BrainHex Class Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Conqueror-Mastermind.

    You like defeating impossibly difficult foes, struggling until you eventually achieve victory, and beating other players as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.

    Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

    » No Fear: You do not enjoy feeling afraid, preferring to feel safe or in control.

    Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

    Conqueror: 19
    Mastermind: 17
    Daredevil: 14
    Seeker: 9
    Socialiser: 7
    Achiever: 2
    Survivor: 1

    Makes sense, except I would make my achiever points higher. I finish most of what I start, and I like to get achievements. (Also, the more meta kind of achievements that go with socialiser – respect kind of thing.) The seeker is pretty specific – I do every quest, every hallway, every chest, but I don’t go looking for collectibles, and I don’t just wander, even in a game like Oblivion or Fallout.

    Congueror is weird, because of that “beating other players”. I don’t especially like PvP (Well, it’s cool, but I don’t do much), but the challenges thing, definitely. I masochistically play N – I can spend an hour on a single level. Got the first 50 episodes, and about half of the rest done, too!

    Oh, and I hate survival horror games, so it’s good there.

    Lastly… where the HECK does story go in this test? I honestly have no clue.

  63. RariowunIrskand says:

    As Shamus says, it’s extremely dissapointing that there’s no story involved in the test. I myself mostly play extremely story-oriented games, or at least writting-oriented. I don’t really care that much about gameplay (Though I won’t play a game with bad gameplay independently of how great the story is), and none of the “Profiles” really fitted me that well – I got Seeker-Mastermind, which I guess is the closest that the test allows. But seriously, I’ve never played a game because of the factors that Seeker-Masterminds are supposed to love, the factors where just nice additions. Like if you have a cake, and the cake has a cherry on it, the cherry’s nice, but you’re still there for the cake.

    I think the test would be a lot more accurate if they had a “Scholar” class-profile-thing(or something along those lines). Still, fun test to do.

  64. Drejer says:

    A thing that bugged me with this test is
    “Geographical Territory:”
    Western Europe or “UK”

    So what? You think your better than all us other west Europeans is that it UK?

    I don’t know, I just find it weird.

  65. Cybron says:

    Seeker: 18
    Conqueror: 18
    Mastermind: 13
    Daredevil: 10
    Achiever: 9
    Survivor: 3
    Socialiser: 0

    Seems mostly accurate. The questions were way too superlative though.

  66. Laura says:

    All the things I love most about games weren’t listed as options.

    Story, as you noted – especially the emotional impact of a good story. I guess “the despair at realizing exactly how evil my past self was to someone who loved him” from Planescape:Torment is sort of like jaw-dropping wonder, but I expect it thinks I meant the scenery.

    Puzzle-solving – but getting good at Tetris was about honing a skill, not about a sudden epiphany of solving “Oh, the L shaped piece must go *there*!”

    Humor – Psychonauts, Portal, Monkey Island – things that are clever about making me laugh win my heart.

  67. somecrazyfan says:

    seeker and seeker-survivor
    Seeker: 20
    Survivor: 17
    Achiever: 14
    Conqueror: 6
    Daredevil: 5
    Mastermind: 5
    Socialiser: -2

  68. Caylex says:

    Somebody wanted to get their results, and they were going to get them no matter how nonsensical and vague they had to make the test.

    It makes several erroneous judgements based on very little information. First of all, I was expecting a much longer quiz with more specific questions, and what I did have a chance to answer I had to choose between honesty and what I thought the test would shoehorn me into. In the end I chose honesty, and it turned out to right on the mark. That is, totally off.

    I can’t say they got me wrong, but that’s only because of how strangely worded and confusing all the results were. I should know better by now than to try these tests… it was kind of fun, I guess. It made me think more about what I value in a “fun” game verus an “unfun” one, like withholding content until I finish some complicated skill test or complete an easter egg hunt.

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