8Axes Gameplay Alignment Test (beta)

by **Aumeltopia** » Fri Aug 07, 2020 3:31 pm

Take the 8Axes Gameplay Alignment Test ^(beta)

Take the 8Axes Gameplay Alignment Test ^(beta) | View Results | Comparison Graphs | Superlatives | The Original Gameplay Alignment Test

After retaking a bunch of the RL political quizzes recently (the good old Political Compass, the 8Values quiz, 9Axes, PolitiScales, etc.), I got to thinking about the original Gameplay Alignment Test that floats around from time to time. It's very much the Gameplay equivalent of the Political Compass, with all its positives and negatives: very simple and easily visualized, but also a bit reductive. While any online quiz that attempts to analyze your views is bound to simplify quite a bit, I wondered about one for GP that would go in the other direction: attempting to identify as cleanly as possible the many different traits that manifest themselves in surface forms like "raider" and "defender".

So I thought up a bunch of axes and put together a quiz/plotter. It's currently basically a Google Form linked up with some Google Apps Script to a spreadsheet that generates a bar chart of your results. It's very much in development: I'm releasing it here so that I can get a bunch of people to test it in order to figure out where the flaws are. I've started with a whole bunch of axes and values based on my intuitions about what divides there are in the GP community; based on the data and any feedback I get, I'll almost certainly combine some (if two values are closely correlated), remove some (if a value shows little to no range), add some (if feedback tells me people think there's an axis I'm missing), and/or rewrite questions (if everyone answers them the same way).

Of course, this test isn't a historical record or an icon of NSGP culture like the original test is -- it's mostly just for my own fun and hopefully for some of y'all's fun as well

Please DM/ping me on Discord @Somyrion#8047 (in any server I share with you) with suggestions about how to improve the test. I'm in a bit of a defender bubble, haven't done R/D for a while... all's to say, my intuitions may not be as good as yours, especially not on whether your own results are accurate! Some things to think about:
- are there other questions that should be added? are there ones that are poorly written?
- is it easy enough to access the results? do the results seem accurate?
- do the axes make sense? are there others that you can think of?

Disclaimer:

Credit to Unibot for many of the questions, which were shamelessly stolen from the original Gameplay Alignment Test (at least until I can think up another 30 better ones).

by **Valentine Z** » Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:06 am

This is a pretty neat test, I like it! ^^ No feedback from me as of now, other than... Yeaup, sounds rather much like me NSGP-wise when I got my results.

by **Team Lennox** » Sat Aug 08, 2020 9:58 am

I took the test

by **Unibot III** » Sat Aug 08, 2020 12:47 pm

Cool stuff! Very comprehensive!

Cosmopolitan 66.41%
Inclusive 83.00%
Ideological 63.71%
Contribution 85.87%
Altruism 86.90%
Sentimentalism 94.44%
Moralism 92.74%
Sincerity 52.17%

by **RiderSyl** » Sun Aug 09, 2020 3:12 am

okie, here's my scores

Cosmopolitan 56.25%
Inclusivism 61.00%
Ideologism 60.48%
Commitment 53.95%
Egoism 76.19%
Sentimentalism 52.78%
Moralism 50.00%
Power 53.26%

my only high mark being in egoism makes me feel like this test is calling me out

by **Silver Commonwealth** » Sun Aug 09, 2020 3:15 am

I don't take gameplay particularly seriously, so I might just answer with only strongly disagree or strongly agree for the lulz. (Or perhaps seriously if only serious responses are appreciated)

--------

Anyways, here are the results. I did those mostly in IC matter and just for fun (Answering everything with strongly agree/strongly disagree), so those shouldn't be taken too seriously. I also don't participate in Gameplay myself but love taking tests every time a new one pops up, so...

Cosmopolitan 62.50%
Exclusivism 64.00%
Ideologism 70.97%
Contribution 56.52%
Egoism 66.67%
Productivism 93.55%
Competitivism 93.55%
Power 81.82%

by **United Provinces of Atlantica** » Wed Aug 12, 2020 2:40 pm

I find it fascinating that Wymondham and I are in the opposite superlatives in three metrics: Altruism/Egoism, Sentimentalism/Productivism, and Moralism/Competitivism - especially because we worked well together on the Lazarene court.

Cosmopolitan 53.13%
Inclusivism 73%
Ideologism 91.13%
Contribution 56.52%
Altruism 88.1%
Sentimentalism 97.22%
Moralism 100%
Sincerity 83.7%

by **Sancta Romana Ecclesia** » Wed Aug 12, 2020 4:59 pm

That was rather cool. It's a nice refresher to take a quiz on NS specific politics, rather than rl ones. Here are my results:

Regionalism vs Cosmo 71.09%/28.91%
Inclusivism vs Exclusivism 68.48%/30.00% (apparently I ate some percentages there, or more likely it's from the neutral answers)
Ideologism vs Networking 80.65%/9.56%
Commitment vs Contribution 34.21%/58.70%
Altruism vs Egoism 8.70%/90.48% (sorreey natives, I gave my heart to ALTRON and I don't have a spare one for you)
Sentimentalism vs Productivism 17.59%/81.45% (although I'm totally a sentimental sap when it comes to rl, it's curious how your perspective changes)
Moralism vs Competitivism 23.44%/75.81%
Sincerity vs Power 43.48%/54.55% (I'm very sincere about wanting power, yes)

All in all, I agree with my score. The axes do make sense, but a legend stating what exactly they signify would be a nice touch.

by **Aumeltopia** » Thu Aug 13, 2020 7:32 pm

Sancta Romana Ecclesia wrote:That was rather cool. It's a nice refresher to take a quiz on NS specific politics, rather than rl ones. Here are my results:

Regionalism vs Cosmo 71.09%/28.91%
Inclusivism vs Exclusivism 68.48%/30.00% (apparently I ate some percentages there, or more likely it's from the neutral answers)
Ideologism vs Networking 80.65%/9.56%
Commitment vs Contribution 34.21%/58.70%
Altruism vs Egoism 8.70%/90.48% (sorreey natives, I gave my heart to ALTRON and I don't have a spare one for you)
Sentimentalism vs Productivism 17.59%/81.45% (although I'm totally a sentimental sap when it comes to rl, it's curious how your perspective changes)
Moralism vs Competitivism 23.44%/75.81%
Sincerity vs Power 43.48%/54.55% (I'm very sincere about wanting power, yes)

All in all, I agree with my score. The axes do make sense, but a legend stating what exactly they signify would be a nice touch.

A couple people have missed this, so I should perhaps make it more clear: there's a legend down at the bottom of your chart!

---------------------

In a couple days, I may have put together some stats to share from this first version.

by **Queen Yuno** » Thu Aug 13, 2020 11:02 pm

Nice work on this, Somie'

by **Aumeltopia** » Fri Aug 14, 2020 12:06 am

So, here’s some analysis of the data gathered from this first version of the test. I’m only looking at pretty basic correlations right now, and I’m not drawing any theoretical conclusions from them à la Unibot, but I encourage others to use the data — it’s openly available here — to examine other things.

A couple notes:

The plots in the images below are labeled in the top right as x axis / y axis.
The sample size here is 201, the number of responses I had received as of 04:00 UTC on 14 August.
There are 16 values divided across 8 axes. While most of the value pairs (e.g. moralism and competitivism) are roughly inverses of each other, they are not always exactly so. This situation arises because some questions on the test change the score of one value more than its opposing pair value.
If I show a plot of one value but not its opposing pair, it can be safely assumed that a plot of that opposing pair would show a similar, but inverse, distribution. I’m not showing the opposing pair simply because it would look almost exactly the same, but flipped around.

Regionalism vs. Cosmopolitanism

These two stats are two ends of a single axis, so they roughly inversely correlate. Most players fall between 25% and 75% on both scales. Yet it is notable that while there are a few extremely Regionalist players (up to 94%), there are no equivalently Cosmopolitan players (up to 76%). It’s quite possible this is due to a skewed question bank. For example, only 11.9% of respondents answered ‘Strongly Agree’ or ‘Somewhat Agree’ to the question ‘I am chiefly a member of the gameplay community, not any one region above all else’, and 49.8% strongly disagreed with the statement (the most strongly-disagreed-with question on the test).

Inclusivism vs. Exclusivism

Players are clustered between about 40% and 85% Inclusivism, with only a few outliers. Unlike with Cosmopolitanism, there are some highly Exclusivist players, but really not that many. Examining the response data by question reveals that although most questions that affect Exclusivism show a reasonably even distribution, a single question received massively lopsided responses, likely creating the skew towards lower Exclusivism. Only 3.0% of respondents disagreed with the statement that ‘Gameplay is better when there is a variety in beliefs, philosophy and culture’ (a supposedly Inclusivist statement), while 90.1% agreed. In a future version, I’ll definitely remove or change that question so it’s not quite so far off the center mark.

Ideologism vs. Networkism

Out of over 200 respondents, the highest Networkism score was only 57.35%. There’s not much more interesting to say here other than that I seem to have severely underestimated how much NSGPers like to stick to their values. 94.0% of respondents agreed that ‘If a region is clear about what it stands for, others will be more likely to work with it and trust it.’ Other questions that had an effect on this axis received similarly lopsided responses, including 91.6% agreement on one and 79.7% agreement on another.

All the other axes showed a relatively full distribution of scores, though only on Moralism/Competitivism did any players reach a 100% score (one on both ends, actually).

Regionalism vs. Ideologism

There’s a positive correlation here, though only slight (R² = 0.109). It’s not terribly surprising to me that players who see their region as more important than whatever Gameplay has to say also believe that you should stick by your region’s values instead of trying to befriend all of Gameplay. What’s more surprising to me is that it’s actually not a stronger relationship.

Regionalism vs. Commitment

This is similar to the previous one: positive but only medium correlation (R² = 0.215). I’m especially surprised that this isn’t a stronger relationship because these two axes were combined into one Regionalist/Cosmopolitan scale in the original Gameplay Alignment Test. Here’s the explanation of ‘Regionalist’ and ‘Cosmopolitan’ (terms used with slightly different meaning) values on the original test’s website:

For the 8Axes test, I essentially narrowed the Regionalist/Cosmopolitan axis to just the ‘Rejection of Foreign Influences’/‘Interregional Opinion’ values. Commitment versus Contribution I separated out into an independent axis, and conformity and diversity I eliminated. What the graph above reveals is that while, yes, Commitment and Regionalism do correspond as the original test claimed, they don’t correspond closely enough for it to be appropriate to mash them together. There are plenty of Commitment-focused Cosmopolitans (e.g. Honeydewistania) and Contribution-focused Regionalists (e.g. Aquilanion).

Ideologism vs. Productivism, Ideologism vs. Competitivism

This is an interesting one. First, it’s interesting because it’s one of those comparisons that crosses an intra-GP value (traditional reg./cosmo.) with an extra-GP one (traditional raider/defender). But it’s also interesting because there’s a positive correlation (R² = 0.117 and 0.094 respectively), meaning that if someone believes in having a strong viewpoint, they’re also (somewhat) more likely to believe that ‘it’s just a game’ and that communities are only valuable if they’re doing something. Or, more accurately, you can be ideological and either Productivist or Sentimentalist, but if you’re not that ideological, you’re going to be Sentimentalist and care about communities just for being communities. There are practically no raiderist Networkists.

Ideologism vs. Power

These two, somewhat unsurprisingly, also go together (R² = 0.169). After all, they both rely on the “NSGP is politics, not just a social group” mentality.

Altruism vs. Moralism, Altruism vs. Sentimentalism, Sentimentalism vs. Moralism

These are the three typical ‘defender values’, and it’s clear that they’re correlated more than any other axes in the test (R² = 0.765, 0.710, 0.782). I had thought I could separate them out as distinct aspects of defenderism (and perhaps that there might be a mass of players who thought there was real good and bad in NS but didn’t care about inactive communities). But by and large it appears all three mostly come as a single defenderist package. In a future version of the test, I’ll probably combine them into one axis.

Altruism vs. Power, Sentimentalism vs. Power, Moralism vs. Power

This is probably my favorite comparison — ‘defenderism’ (covered by the three component values) and GP powerplay. Respondents’ propensity for conflict and intrigue in GP is moderately determined by the value they place on other communities and whether or not they see NS as having real morals (R² = 0.321, 0.381, 0.367). The Sincerity/Power axis was the last one I added to the test, after getting feedback from some initial respondents, and I was unsure of whether it would reveal anything interesting at first. But it seems to be a distinct — yet related — metric after all.

Miscellaneous

Statement with highest rate of ‘neutral / unsure’ responses:
‘The best part of the Gameplay forum is the controversy and acrimony that gets stirred up at every report or gloatpost.’ (23.8% ‘neutral’)

Statement and option chosen by fewest respondents:
‘Having a strong regional identity is important for any region that wants to be successful.’ Only one respondent chose ‘Strongly Disagree’.

Statement with the smallest standard deviation between responses (i.e. closest to equal numbers of respondents choosing each option):
‘Military gameplay should be focused on the competition between raiders and defenders, each side trying to fight the other for the sake of the challenge, rather than focused on targetting or protecting natives.’ (σ = 1.94%).

Hope this was interesting to you all! Feel free to draw your own theoretical conclusions from the data.

Also let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like to see from the data, because chances are I can pull it up pretty quickly.

by **Silver Commonwealth** » Fri Aug 14, 2020 6:46 am

I wonder - what do the grey bars represent in the charts of alignment for individual nations? Even if I picked only the ''strongly'' opinions, them evening out probably affected the results.

(Also, this was fun taking it, and I will definitely keenly wait for next version.)

by **Aumeltopia** » Fri Aug 14, 2020 9:35 am

Silver Commonwealth wrote:I wonder - what do the grey bars represent in the charts of alignment for individual nations? Even if I picked only the ''strongly'' opinions, them evening out probably affected the results.

(Also, this was fun taking it, and I will definitely keenly wait for next version.)

As I said, the two ends of the axis aren't always exactly opposites of each other. If Moralism is 57%, Competitivism isn't necessarily exactly 43%. It might be 45% (if a question added to Competitivism but didn't subtract from Moralism) or it might be 40% (vice-versa). The grey area is the overlap or the space in between.

by **Guaylandia** » Fri Aug 14, 2020 1:08 pm

I answered as someone who doesn't care very much about gameplay, especially R/D, outside of being an RO, so I responded with mostly Somewhat Agree and Somewhat Disagree. The only times I answered "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree" were statements related to non-gameplay communities, and the statement that founderless regions have no right to complain about being raided (because it's not my fault that my region's founder left).

My results were therefore somewhat moderate:
62.5% Cosmopolitan
57.61% Inclusivist
48.39% Ideological
68.48% Contribution
61.9% Altruist
69.35% Sentimentalist
59.38% Moralist
67.39% Sincere

by **Sancta Romana Ecclesia** » Mon Aug 17, 2020 6:38 am

Aumeltopia wrote:A couple people have missed this, so I should perhaps make it more clear: there's a legend down at the bottom of your chart!

(Image)

Ohhh! Well that just shows how unattentive I am. Thanks!

Yeah this seems to represent my views rather accurately.

by **Waldoven** » Mon Aug 17, 2020 7:18 am

You have made a good test, well done! Here are my results
Gameplay Alignment Values
Waldoven

33.59% Regionalism
6.25%
60.16% Cosmopolitanism
51.09% Inclusivism
1.91%
47.00% Exclusivism
42.74% Ideologism
2.11%
55.15% Networkism
32.89% Commitment
6.24%
60.87% Contribution
61.96% Altruism
1.14%
36.90% Egoism
75.81% Sentimentalism
1.05%
23.15% Productivism
75.78% Moralism
0.83%
23.39% Competitivism
75.00% Sincerity
2.27%
22.73% Power

by **Unibot III** » Mon Aug 17, 2020 7:58 am

Excellent research!

When I defined regionalism I saw it as more than just isolationism, it was also a citizenship values set that in its extreme led to tribalism and authoritarianism. Different conceptions of citizenship lead to different views of the region in relation to the world and a different rights framework.

This was the point I made in Polysemes of Nativeness when I initially introduced the terms, regionalism and cosmopolitanism.

One of the things I noticed for instance, was that very isolationist regions also tended to proclaim they were meritocracies (and crap on democracies) — I found this contradictory because you can’t be both a commitment-based society and meritocratic — rewarding people for doing nothing but sticking around isn’t a meritocracy, it’s the opposite of a meritocracy!

Only open regions with strong rights frameworks can facilitate true meritocracies, otherwise your society won’t value contribution enough and it won’t be open enough to accepting talent in spite of the risk of entryism or differing views.

I think sometimes people take the test without recognizing this own contradiction, they want to believe that they’re all about merit but they also think they need to close their region off to achieve that and inevitably in a pseudo-authoritarian society you have to value allegiance before anything other factor, including contribution.

I also think people’s concept of “the international world” has changed since the test was originally written. At the time, questions regarding international opinion meant IC stuff like “couping is bad” now I think it may be widely interpreted as international opinion regarding OOC stuff like blacklisting players and the popularity of individual players. Therefore the test’s cosmopolitanism may unintentionally be evaluating people’s opinion on the changes in Gameplay and its “Discordization” for lack of a better word. This was not how I had conceived of the term, it was IC concept, not an OOC one.

In general, I fear that regionalism has been popularized over the past few years to the detriment of the rights and freedoms of residents; everyone talks about the advantages of regionalism and no one talks about its disadvantages. I also think there’s a tremendous amount of hypocrisy in this neo-regionalism — it’s presented by its proponents as a way to secure rights and freedoms by taking them away, a way to nurture talent internally while closing the doors on many others, and these ideas are promoted by, essentially, narcissists who care very little about the regions they lead. Their focus is primarily to cultivate their social status in the wider gameplay and collect Discord rooms like a Rolodex.

8Axes Gameplay Alignment Test (beta)

8Axes Gameplay Alignment Test (beta)

Who is online