RE: Dueling Taxonomies: How We Create and Consume Comics, Games, and Other Media
For those familiar with the lumper vs splitter distinction, I'm definitely a splitter.
But those are generally the same thing. Guess which I am. ;)
Remember that, above all else here, psychographic profiles are a way of simplifying people, of making them legible.
I was happy to see you make this point. All models lie, some models are useful.
On to your survey.
I first read about Bartle's taxonomy while playing Kingdom of Loathing. They actually refer to the quadrants using playing card suits (for example, an explorer is a spade). I'm about 70% explorer, 15% socializer, 10% achiever, and 5% killer. I particularly enjoy what Will Wright refers to as exploring the 'failure modes' of a game - but in a noncompetitive way. The classic example is seeing how Sims react (the answer is invariably poorly) to sudden changes in their environment.
I haven't reflected as much on McCloud's taxonomy, but I think I definitely skew towards Classicist/Formalist. I know I definitely skew towards formalism when analyzing film.
The two definitely correspond - in both cases, I'm interested in systems, how they work, and fun ways to come up with emergent/unexpected behaviour. It's not a surprise that I'm in a STEM field.
I don't have any real disagreements save my earlier comment about all models being a lie.
Bonus stuff: I'm most fox, with a smidge of hedgehog, and I'm a pretty even split between Mort and Elvis while being very shy of being an Einstein, since in my younger days I wasted so much effort on that.
I actually did a fox/hedgehog post a while back! I'm (unsurprisingly) a fox.
I'd never heard of Mort/Elvis/Einstein, but then, I'm not a coder.