Achiever

“I can do it.”

You like collecting anything you can collect, and doing everything you possibly can.

Your behaviour works towards the satisfaction of completing tasks and collections, and the intense reward of overcoming impossibly distant goals – about which you can become obsessive.

Your major brain region is the nucleus accumbens, the “pleasure centre”, which is triggered whenever you collect something or complete a task – the bigger the achievement, the bigger the reward!

Your chemical messenger is dopamine, which is chemically similar to cocaine, and which has been linked to good habit formation and obsessive behaviour.

If you were an animal, it would be a beaver.

Favourite games of Achievers surveyed so far include Final Fantasy, Mario, Monopoly, Monster Hunter, Pokémon, and World of Warcraft.

Your BrainHex class is named after the Achiever (Bartle Type), which is related to Achievement-Advancement and Immersion-Discovery motivations (Yee), and Logistical play (Temperament theory).

Your BrainHex Icon depicts the nucleus accumbens ("pleasure centre"), representing that completing tasks and collections brings you pleasure. The pleasure centre has double lines to indicate that it is highly stimulated by your play style.

Feel free to take a copy of your BrainHex icon and display it anywhere you wish! Simply right click and choose "save as". All we ask is you provide a link to BrainHex.com anywhere you use our images.

Comments

[rhose]

and now that I do

understand the response

and now, where I

[jay]

Hey guys,

Interesting test - and a good effort at trying to categorize something that is, for lack of a better word, intangible.

I'm just a little concerned that not all game types are covered here - specifically on the third page, where you have the subject order his/her preferences. This section posed some difficulty, as none of the categories really pinpointed what I enjoy most about games. They seemed slanted more toward the modern games of today (which is natural, of course), but neglect some of the design sensibilities of old.

[J Lawson]

There's a terrible joke in there somewhere about gamers and beavers.

[Freddie]

Haha as a girl gamer and getting this result, I couldn't help but think the joke too

[Fever]

I am this so much. And I love Pokémon and World Warcraft.

[Confidential]

I actually dislike most Final Fantasies because of their nature of immense items, so I purposely avoid even starting playing them. They have a flaw in their design in that if you skip a certain section of the game, you cannot go back and get it. Which reinforces that idea of trying to get everything and trying new to complete everything you bring to the table. So if I do miss an item which I cannot get because for X reason, I stop playing as it is incredibly off putting.

Take a look at Legend of Zelda games, they can also be wholesome in the sense of all the things you can collect and do, however, you cannot do no "wrong" in the sense you cannot screw yourself over, let's say you opened the wrong door in a dungeon and you have no more keys. There is no need to fret because the game was carefully design that most likely the door you just opened does contain a key inside that new room.

This research lacks some important options like the previous posters mentioned, but it is a step into the right direction into understanding our psyche how it works with videogames.

[Tsukaji]

Spot on. :D I like getting all those Achievements on my games and collecting everything.

[Epoch]

I guess this comes from my days playing D&D, get everything you can because you never know when the evil DM will demand you solve a puzzle with some item you thought was useless and threw away like an idiot. There's always some catch in rpgs, some mundane trinket turns out to be a family heirloom which nets you something amazing, a broken axe is magically enchanted to kill the big evil boss, etc. So you end up grabbing everything you can fit in your bags hoping it will be useful someday.

[gia]

I believe the "completeness" moment should be reworded. I didn't get the meaning of 100% game completion, I understood it as personal completeness or some weird thing like that and put it straight last :P

[Ria Maria]

i got this in the test.

LOL. beaver.

[Jamie The D]

Yeah, this pretty much pegged me. I'm not sure whether I answered all the questions truthfully, but it's pretty darn accurate. Might explain why I'm both attracted to, *and* repelled by the L4D2 demo. On the one hand, exploration aspect rocks. On the other, I'm just not a people person.

Nice one Brainhex!

[Chris (BrainHex Admin)]

gia: Yes, the "Completeness" question has caused some confusion. Would you believe we reworded it about six times before ending up with the one we got! :)

There will be a version 2.0 test, and we hope to fix these kinds of problems with it.

Thanks for the comments everyone!

[Joshua]

Interesting. I ended up being an Achiever-Seeker, with a strong Mastermind component as well (scores of 16, 15, and 12 respectively). Generally, I agree with your descriptions, though they do seem to be at odds with some of the other personality theories... (I'm an INFP, and I end up Explorer-Socializer on Bartle's test).

Personally, speaking as an INFP, I'm guessing that this model may not fully take into account introverted feelers... that is to say, players who don't like to socialise with others (hence not Socializers), yet want to have positive/benevolent social interactions with characters and in-game entities. I know my style of play and the games I like tend to be pacifistic and perfectionist. I love to build up things rather than destroy, invariably play "good" in RPGs, and minimise violence in games (I have completed every goal of Civilization except Conquest). I can't stand most FPSes or hack&slash RPGs that require me to do violence up close and personal. If I do play those, I tend to prefer violence-at-a-distance... archer or summoner classes, or a huge party of NPCs. Finesse play, or letting other people do the dirty work.

I also agree with the comments in the posts above... the sentences that we were asked to rank in order of preference don't seem to have what I like best about games, or what I find most compelling. Which, as best as I can put it, would be "having the perfect set-up for what I want" (of character build, of equipment, of complicated system of trade or architecture or defence). It's not really a solution to a difficult puzzle, nor is it completeness that I have strived for. "Perfection" and "completeness" are very different semantically to me. I don't need to have everything to have a perfectly-tuned instrument to my needs.

Thinking about the Achiever-Seeker subclass, what I find is that I like collecting new experiences, not so much new things. I mean, admittedly it's nice to have a perfect character build and a good collection of items, but I can and have spent time re-playing the same conversation dialogue trees over and over again through every possible variation, just to see what they would say with each response. Or trying every combination of traits in The Sims 3 and Heroes of Might and Magic to see if they offer new actions and things to do. I want to fully experience the story and wonder and variety of the game, not really to complete it or prove my mastery. I'm perfectly happy even watching a movie of the whole game if it shows me every bit of story (like what happened for FF-X).

It seems to me that's why my favourite class of games is the "life" or "raising" sim, even though it's so rare in the Western market. I can and have played games like Princess Maker 2, Cute Knight and Idolcraft until I've sucked every possible story segment or randomly-occuring event out of them. They offer the combination of a few, easily-manipulable statistics to achieve larger goals, with experiential rewards that are primarily social and story-driven in nature, and require multiple playthroughs with varied combinations (Mastermind) to see them all. The major difference between them and something like The Sims is that the characters are distinct, with discrete story content, rather than procedurally-generated stuff which is nice but more generic and bland. Admittedly, the gameplay of the Sims is very very good, but it sacrifices some of the richness of meaning in story-based games for greater longevity through abstraction.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough. I still think the work you're doing is very valuable, though, and well worth looking at. Keep it up!

[Mark]

I've only ever really played Pokemon games, but I've dabbled a bit in FF every once in a great while. Is there a larger list of games I might be interested in?

[Rafael Pablo Alexander Scrosoppi Chaparro]

I have liked of this result... I loved Pokémon games and never let it be to play an little time, for remember how capture "X" Pokémon in the "Z" área. Or hunting the legendaries in the gameplay...

[Ugne]

This is my sub class but fits mw quite well. I enjoy gathering things, be it pokemon or Items. I get a bit silly and happy when I collect items though. This is what goes through my mind when I'm battling monsters and expecting drops: "Stuff! stuff! STUFFS STUFFFS!~" ...great great pleasure from gathering items xD I'm not much of a "do everything that can be done" person. I am curious, and if the main storyline requires me do do it, I like doing it... but the extra badges, mini games ect... that are there to just... make the game more difficult, challenging, confusing... they put me off and are distracting. In all honesty, they sometimes aggravate me. I think perhaps "achiever" of challenges, quests ect. and "gatherer" of items, collectibles ect. should be two different sections. But it's just my opinion.

[Kay]

Tried WoW and hated it. Love Guild Wars though

[Chelle]

So I tied 18-18 Achiever/Mastermind with Seeker in third I guess at 16. I do not disagree with of it, those are my play styles. I hate that nowadays everything is flashy and fast, you can not just sit back relax and lose yourself in the game anymore. Everything is so rushed you miss the little secrets.

[ysabelkid]

I actually redid the test because initially I came out as a Conqueror, which seemed way off base to what I enjoy and my playing style. Although Conqueror still comes in second here, I am definitely an Achiever-style player and - on the rare occasions that I LAN - I drive my friends to distraction picking up every. last. item. And if a section/boss defeats me, that just makes me more determined to overcome, no matter how long it takes! "Achiever" should have the word "stubborn" in its traits ...

[FireStorm162]

This didn't really fit for me, because i hated World of Warcraft and i got horribly bored after i clocked Pokemon Pearl, so i haven't played it since. Also the only Mario game i like is Mario Kart, so my test was way off, because i like playing fighting games like Tekken, Soul Calibur and Kingdom Hearts more, but this was still a kind of good indicator anyway, so i guess good job....

[Kojiro Hiragumi]

This is pretty much me. I've more or less been conditioned to play this way. I've always been a single player playin gamer since my sister doesn't play games and ever since getting into RPGs when i was a kid most where single player and I'd eventually just try to get or do everything. beat every boss, collect every item, etc etc. Now I'm 23 and I still pretty much game that way. I like multiplayer stuff of course but I play mostly single player games still. To me, beating the final boss isn't the end all coup de grace for a game. To get all my money's worth i do everything I possibly can haha. Most of the games there aren't my faves but I understand why some Achievers fave them
My kinda games are Disgaea series, Touhou series, Smash Bros, many RPGs and Ninja Gaiden. Just to name a few.

[Kate]

I wonder if "Achiever" would be better named "Completionist." I think that word more accurately describes the gaming behavior of myself and others in the group, in that it's really about collecting...and taken to the extreme, about having a *complete* collection.

I thought of this word due to having encountered the phrase "completist mentality" in comics, which describes the mentality that causes people to buy every variant cover just to have a complete run of a series, or will continue to buy a series that's gone downhill only because they have every issue starting with #1 and don't want a gap in their collection if the series gets good again.

When there are things to collect -- such as flags in Assassin's Creed -- I don't collect them because the act of collecting them is fun (sometimes its extremely tedious in fact, such as those damn flags in Assassin's Creed)...it's about wanting to complete 100% of the game. And a game doesn't feel 100% completed until I've got all the achievements. If a game says I have 800/1000 achievements, in my brain its saying that game is only 80% finished. And until it's finished, I don't feel like I'm really done with the game.

This results in me attempting things in games that I normally wouldn't bother with, such as beating the game on the most difficult setting. I can't tell you how much I hate that recurring achievement in games, because my "Exception" is Conqueror. And yet I'll attempt it sometimes if its the last achievement I need. But usually I give up and move onto another game, and that previous game is left eternally unfinished because of those damn difficulty achievements.

Also, I should add that I disagree with the bit in the description above about "the intense reward of overcoming impossibly distant goals"...if it seems impossibly distant, I will sometimes give up on the game entirely (not just whatever I was collecting, but stop playing the game itself). Particularly if collecting would involve starting the game over...when I discovered there were missable items in Metroid Prime when I was already partway through, I lost interest in playing at the time. I still haven't finished Assassin's Creed, when one of the flags in an area glitched on me and now seems impossible to complete.

However, I'm not as extreme as those people who will only buy a game if they know they can get 1000/1000, and will refrain from buying or renting a game if getting all the achievements seems too difficult, or if some are known to glitch. There were people who got angry about Game Room, when they downloaded it only to discover they couldn't remove the achievements page from their profile once they started it, and getting 1000/1000 would cost literally hundreds of dollars.

[Holy Shit]

You like collecting anything you can collect, and doing everything you possibly can.

do u know what is to colletct everithing in zelda and CT my favorite games hahhaahah
wow are u kidding me right?
never played lol ahaauaha x)
have u ever played bully and gta theres a lot of things to collect especelly trying to put the medals in the drive school in 100% xD

[PodMeister]

It certainly sounds like me, it does. =)

[Eidolon Sniper]

I do love a lot of Final Fantasy games, they were my first love I guess? LOL then again my first RPG WAS Beyond the Beyond, and started to appreciate RPGs in general when I played and finished the first Suikoden game. Then Final Fantasy VII.