An idea begins
Back in early February 2024, I got a message on WhatsApp from a friend named Patrii19. She came up with this idea for Valentine's Day to try and bring back a little event from a game called Destiny 2. The event was called "Crimson Days," and it revolved around the day of love and friendship, but with a bit more... blood into it.
So, that whole event stopped happening in Destiny, but we were keen on reviving it somehow with what we had in our bag of tricks. Since adding in-game content was a no-go, we came up with a more practical and fun idea for ourselves: a character compatibility test.
It's a simple concept, but we knew the community was pretty attached to their in-game buddies, with a seriously strong and loyal fanbase. So, we decided to give the people what they were clamoring for.
First off, we brainstormed how to pull off the test and figure out how many characters we could toss into the mix. Luckily, during my time in college, my TFG was all about the psychology of video game characters. That let us categorize them based on their personalities using a popular and straightforward system, The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It's a bit of pseudoscience, but for what we were up to, it fit the bill just right.
MBTI
The MBTI breaks down personality into four different aspects:
Are you outwardly or inwardly focused:
Extraversion (E)
Introversion (I)
How do you prefer to take in information:
Sensing (S)
Intuition (N)
How do you prefer to make decisions:
Thinking (T)
Feeling (F)
How do you prefer to live your outer life:
Judging (J)
Perceiving (P)
This system leaves us with up to 16 different combinations of personality types, meaning there are up to 32 characters to choose from with those personalities or at least close to them. So, after a few cups of coffee and a mix of the game's Wiki and personal lore knowledge, we came up with our candidates:
We decided to double the original 16 types to have more variety and cater to everyone's preferences. This way, we could give people the opportunity to choose the gender they were more attracted to or interested in.
Testing the Test
Now that we had the category system in place, the next puzzle was figuring out how to implement it into code. Fortunately, we had 1on1z3r on the team, a Senior Programmer with several tricks up his sleeve. We divided into three teams:
Patrii took charge of the PR side, choosing images and creating character descriptions for the results and also planing the Promo.
1on1z3r tackled the Back-End, configuring the server and database.
Lastly, I handled the Front-End, armed with basic knowledge of HTML and CSS and a strong desire to learn. Additionally, my game design background came in handy for a clearer vision of what we were about to create.
The system
So, because we're using the MBTI tests, we've kind of sorted each category and boiled it down to a more user-friendly result. The test works by throwing questions at you for each category, and depending on your answers, it tips the scales towards one result or the other.
We cut it down to just 3 questions per category, each with only 2 possible answers. In the code, those answers would be like a "+1" or "-1" and we'd add them up. If the total is positive, you're one personality type; if it's negative, you're the other. Because there are only 3 questions per category, the resul will never be 0 so, no neutral results.
This goes for all 4 MBTI categories. In the end, we crunch the numbers per category, combine the results, and check our database for the character that matches your personality type. Easy peasy!
Results
Also, since all the calculations were going to happen on the client's side, the server just needs to send back the personality ID result and the chosen gender (if there's no preference, pick a random one). It'll send the character's name, a description of why they'd be a good match, and an image of the character.
We also wanted to add some excitement, and we knew people would be proud of their crimson companions. So, we gave them the chance to share the result on Twitter/X and even run a contest for those who shared using the hashtag #compatibilidadEscarlata and a link to their character's wiki.
D-Day
After some coffee-fueled nights of HTML programming, dealing with error codes, fixing CSS, and last-minute realizing it had to be mobile-friendly, we had everything ready. We even made a trailer to hype up the page.
Come February 14th, we launched the page onto the internet, hoping for the best. We didn't expect much traffic since it was a really simple test, but boy, were we wrong. We initially thought maybe 100 people would check it out, but within hours, we hit over 300. People started sharing their results, and it went viral to the point where the official Destiny 2 page in Spanish shared our test, and the interactions just kept growing
Looking Back
This adventure was a blast, and I learned a ton about Servers, PHP, improved my HTML and CSS skills. Now, looking back, I've learned from my mistakes and refined my programming methods so that next time, it'll be even better—more optimized and cleaner.
I'm proud to have worked with such awesome friends like Patri and 1on1z3r on this little project. Despite all the hiccups, it turned out to be a big success.
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