I stumbled upon a YouTube video about that "what type of gamer are you" quiz that I reblogged yesterday, and while the video was in love and married to the quiz, the comments were more critical. Some of the more interesting observations people had were:
"It's the Myers Briggs test but for gamers" - I agree 100%. It has the same flaws and the same fundamental issues. However, I think it does get a small amount of credit for being focused on motivations rather than just "this is a fundamental identity truth".
"it's missing questions about FEELINGS and emotional responses. E.g. I play horror games to feel scared, I play cozy games to feel happy, etc" - I couldn't figure this out yesterday but I fully agree - there's no space in the quiz for gamers who are motivated by the game making them feel an emotion. And as people pointed out, that is a commonly accepted motivation for engaging with movies and shows! So why isn't it in their quiz?
"whether or not I like something depends on the game - e.g. with collecting all the things: in a platformer where that's the entire point? Absolutely! But in an open world game if there's 500 feathers hidden in random places and the only reward for collecting them all is an achievement? I don't care, I'm ignoring the feathers" - this is the point I was making yesterday. It's hard to identify a single motivation when I play a variety of games for completely different reasons. I would argue that the idea that someone can be driven by one specific core motivation is fundamentally flawed, because even though I would say I'm someone who likes 100%ing a game, I have only ever reached 100% in a tiny proportion of the games I've played.
The video itself showed off some stats that were somewhat interesting, like the survey found completion was the strongest motivator overall. The video then asked the question "is this because people are fundamentally motivated this way, or is it just because games are designed to encourage and reward completion specifically?" And then proceeded to.... Not answer the question.
I only got part way through the video because it started pointing to more and more pseudoscience and bad statistics, and I found the comments far more interesting and well thought out.