Tuesday, July 6, 2010

What Team Fortress Character Should You Play?

Everyone loves personality tests. Sometimes they are informative, sometimes they are crap, but we look for some truth in them anyway. (See Horoscopes)  In a conversation with another game developer, he had the idea of using personality tests to help people find their role in a game.  He mentioned a personality test that is commonly used in the corporate world for building teams, called the Belbin Team Roles.  It's been around for 30 years, and isn't comprehensive, BUT after looking at the 9 roles it hit me. What's the greatest team building exercise? Team Fortress 2 baby. It's exactly like the corporate world - your are thrown into a misfit team with weapons ranging from Energy Drinks to Fire Hoses that shoot band-aids. Your team must figure out how to defeat another team to capture arbitrary locations and objects according corporate mandate.

So here are the 9 Belbin Roles:

Shaper - Brings dynamism, challenging, thrives on pressure. The drive and courage to overcome obstacles.
Implementer - Brings discipline and reliability, conservative and efficient. Turns ideas into practical actions.
Completer Finisher - Brings conscientiousness, painstaking, anxious. Searches out errors and omissions. Delivers on time.
Co-ordinator - Brings maturity, confident, a good chairperson. Clarifies goals, promotes decision-making, delegates well.
Teamworker - Brings co-operation, mild, perceptive and diplomatic. Listens, builds, averts friction.
Resource Investigator - Brings enthusiasm, extrovert, communicative. Explores opportunities. Develops contacts.
Plant - Brings creativity, imaginative, unorthodox. Solves difficult problems.
Monitor Evaluator - Brings objective judgment, sober, strategic and discerning. Sees all options. Judges accurately.
Specialist - Brings dedication, single-minded, self-starting. Provides knowledge and skills in rare supply.

Here is my theory on how these match Team Fortress 2 Roles:
Teamworker - Medic, clearly.
Monitor Evaluator - Watches, plans, that's the Engineer.
Resource Investigator - Who is out checking out the situation?  Scout
Specialist - Who is the solo mercenary?  Sniper
Co-ordinator - If Team Fortress had a leader, it would be Solider - bugle and all.
Completer Finisher - Who is painstaking and searching?  Spy
Plant - Unorthodox and a bit messy in problem solving? Pyro
Implementer - Reliable and takes the hits?  Heavy
Shaper - Aggressive and anything to win?  Demoman

So what Belbin Role are you?  Go do a quick test here to see:  123test  It gives you your top two and bottom roles.  Then find out what Team Fortress class you should play.  As bizarre as this is, you probably have more fun playing that role that any other.  No promises if will help you win, but you're definitely qualified.  Fill out the poll on the right to see what the most common classes are!

Disagree on the role matching?  Let me know in the comments.

2 comments:

  1. Very interesting! I did take the test and my main class (Engie) came up first. It looks like I need to play Soldier more.

    For your role matching I would switch spy and pyro. :)

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  2. I am equal parts Demo, Engie, and Pyro. That's very close to my playtimes.

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