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There are plenty of attempts to subdivide gamers into smaller, more descriptive groups—"hardcore," "casual," "retro," and the like—but these terms all rely on imprecise definitions and self-assessments. These groupings are often more about declaring an affiliation than about identifying specific types of games someone likes.

The folks at Quantic Foundry seem to have developed a more detailed way of breaking down different gaming subgroups. The "game behavior analytics" consultancy has developed a five-minute online quiz intended to narrow down a person's gaming tastes to a "gamer motivation profile." Participants are rated on a percentile basis along six different axes identifying what game design elements they find interesting:

Action: "Gamers with high Action scores are aggressive and like to jump in the fray and be surrounded by dramatic visuals and effects"

"Gamers with high Action scores are aggressive and like to jump in the fray and be surrounded by dramatic visuals and effects" Mastery: "Gamers with high Mastery scores like challenging gaming experiences with strategic depth and complexity."

"Gamers with high Mastery scores like challenging gaming experiences with strategic depth and complexity." Achievement: "Gamers with high Achievement scores are driven to accrue power, rare items, and collectibles, even if this means grinding for a while."

"Gamers with high Achievement scores are driven to accrue power, rare items, and collectibles, even if this means grinding for a while." Social: "Gamers with high Social scores enjoy interacting with other players, often regardless of whether they are collaborating or competing with them."

"Gamers with high Social scores enjoy interacting with other players, often regardless of whether they are collaborating or competing with them." Immersion: "Gamers with high Immersion scores want games with interesting narratives, characters, and settings so they can be deeply immersed in the alternate worlds created by games."

"Gamers with high Immersion scores want games with interesting narratives, characters, and settings so they can be deeply immersed in the alternate worlds created by games." Creativity: "Gamers with high Creativity scores are constantly experimenting with their game worlds and tailoring them with their own designs and customizations."

The quick quiz doesn't do a perfect job of capturing the wide variety of gaming motivations; as Ars' Sam Machkovech put it, the quiz "asked a lot of questions that didn't match up with my preferences, particularly puzzle and couch multiplayer stuff." That said, the six-pronged matrix of scores does seem to do a decent job breaking down a participant's tastes and how they might overlap with other gamers. Through this quiz, for instance, we learned that Gaming Editor Kyle Orland and Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson have pretty much diametrically opposite tastes in games (OK ,we already knew that... but it's nice to have some standardized, objective-looking confirmation).

After seeing this quiz pop up quite a bit on our social media feeds over the weekend, we decided to put the Ars editorship through the ringer to find out what makes us tick as gamers. You can see those results above, along with our favorite games of all time for context. Please feel free to take the quiz yourself and share your own gamer motivation profile in the comments so we know what types of games you want to see covered most here on Ars.