Taxonomy of Players
Based upon the Bartle Taxonomy of Player Types. Give this personality test a try and see how you rate.
Back in 1996, Richard Bartle, took a crack at describing the phenomenon of the MUD (Multi-User Dungeon). It was online multi-user gaming with roots clear back to the late 1970's and led us to the penoply of MMO games we have available today. Originally all multi-player universes were simply open-worlds.
A researcher of virtual worlds, Bartle wrote many papers on the concept. He wrote one of the first books on the subject. Of interest here is his studies regarding the classification of players in a virtual world of adventure and how game worlds may need to be designed to fit those player personalities.
Later on the Bartles Test became a fun method of classifying player types of multiplayer online games (including MUDs and MMORPGs) into very general categories. His taxonomy developed the concepts of four player types: Achiever, Explorer, Socializer, and Killer. It does not take into account other obvious categories I think should be added such as: Builder, Crafter, Collector, Puzzler, Griefer. But that is probably because those playstyles had not yet been discovered in multiplayer environments. As the game industry turns out new ways for us to play and experience virtual worlds it may in turn help us discover more about ourselves and what makes us happy.
NOTE: I replaced the term "Killer" with "Fighter" just to make the results a little more politically sensitive.
Bartles created a survey to try to identify those four playstyles and what made those players interested in the virtual worlds they were within. I have reproduced it from his dataset below so you can try it out yourself within the scope of his test. Simply answer the 32 multiple choice questions below and press the button on the bottom of the page to tabulate your results.