There’s no such thing as a single video game for everyone. People have their own playstyles and preferences. That’s why to introduce the new Kwanzoo personality quizzes, we’re debuting the “What kind of gamer are you?” quiz.

 

We wanted something fun, but we wanted something accurate too. I set up the quiz to use four axes to give you a final determination: reflexes vs. strategy, casual vs. hardcore, storytelling vs. gameplay, and solo vs. multiplayer.

Now, obviously this isn’t a hard and fast determination. You can tend towards single-player games but still like a good romp on Xbox Live, and vice versa. The idea is to figure out your preferences, combine them all, and make a recommendation for what else you might enjoy.

Here’s our thinking on the attributes.

Storytelling vs. Gameplay

This is what I was turning over in my head when I wrote this post about games to explore. I think this is probably the biggest split among gamers over what constitutes a good game.

A storytelling-oriented game is all about the experience. Winning or losing isn’t really the important thing. This kind of game wants to introduce you to its world.

RPGs often fall in this game, with their myriad characters and dialog trees. Titles like Bioshock and the new Prince of Persia are good examples, seeing as how they’ve more or less removed any penalty for failure, preferring instead to let you run around their lush worlds.

On the other side of the spectrum, there’s games where the setting is only the barest pretext for the rules of the game. Cliff Bleszinski exemplified this kind of thinking when he talked about the repeating 30-second loop of fun that he strove for in Gears of War, though it’s not devoid of story and characters.

For a more pure gameplay-type game, the first example that leaps to mind is Counterstrike. The terrorists and counterterrorists could practically be replaced with anything and it would still be a fun game.

Lots of the old-school arcade games fall into the gameplay side as well, as do many MMOs where the upper eschalons of players crank out spreadsheets to min-max their characters for whoever the raid boss du jour is.

Reflexes vs. Strategy

There’s a whole strategy genre, of course, but we’ve abstracted it out a little bit. Do you like games that rely on reflexes for success, or do you like to be able to think a little about what you’re doing?

First-person shooters generally fall squarely in the reflex category, as do adventure games like the Zelda series.

Over in strategy, you’ve got all sorts of menu-driven games, like RPGs and genuine strategy games like Advance Wars, as well as lower-key games like The Sims or Nintendogs.

Solo vs. Multiplayer

Some love to play with (or against) other people. Some play games to get away from other people in the first place.

This category is pretty self-explanatory, so I won’t belabor it. It’s interesting to me, though, that developers essentially build two different versions of the game to satisfy both. A solo fan and a multiplayer fan could both buy Call of Duty 4, never experience any of the same content, and both be entirely satisfied.

Casual vs. Hardcore

The “casual” market is a burgeoning one in the video game industry, but there’s a good bit of crossover, so we broke it down by the time commitment and the skills required.

For our purposes, we defined casual games as one you can pick up and play, spend 15 minutes on, and put down again. You don’t have to develop skills to enjoy it. Stuff like Animal Crossing and Wii Sports obviously goes here, but so do grittier games like Diablo II and the Castlevania platformers.

On the hardcore side, we have games where developing skills is the whole point. Guitar Hero and Rock Band go squarely in this category, as do fighting games like Soulcalibur and the serious RTS games like Starcraft.

Obviously there’s some give here. A novice can rock out in Rock Band and someone can spend an awful lot of time at Diablo II, but we called it based on who we thought the bulk of the audience was.

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So, a few sample results you might get with this quiz:

Storytelling/Hardcore/Strategy/Solo - The Dungeon Plumber

Pick every lock, complete every quest, leave no stone unturned. You’re perfectly suited to console and computer RPGs like the recently-released Fallout 3. If you want something even more hardcore, you might try the D&D classics like Planescape: Torment or the Baldur’s Gate series.

Gameplay/Casual/Reflexes/Solo - The Arcade Fan

You like your games simple but intense. The downloadable games on Xbox Live Arcade for the XBox 360 is perfect for you, with games like Assault Heroes 2 and Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. On the Nintendo side, the WarioWare franchise takes the arcade experience to the extreme with intense five-second games. You read that correctly: five seconds.

Gameplay/Hardcore/Strategy/Multi - The Armchair General

For you, it’s all about proving that you can out-scheme, out-sneak and plain out-think all comers. Fortunately, there’s a whole genre for your skills: The real-time strategy game. Starcraft and Age of Empires are the classics of the genre, but newer games like Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 are just waiting to be tried.

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Disagree with the test? Well, soon you’ll get a chance to build your own personality quiz on Kwanzoo and embed it on your own site. Stay tuned.

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