Motivations Do Not Suppress Each Other

Bartle argues that players have a primary motivation and typically fall clearly into one of the 4 Types. The 2 underlying axes of his model suggest that an Achiever cannot be a Socializer. More importantly, this assumes that motivations suppress each other. The more of an Achiever you are, the less of a Socializer (or Explorer or Killer) you can be.

If this were the case, then we would expect that the 3 main components (Achievement, Social and Immersion) to be highly negatively correlated. In other words, if you score high on Achievement, then you should score low on the Social component (and Immersion component). This is not the case. The 3 main components are largely uncorrelated (r's ~ .10). The following scatterplot with the Achievement and Social components show that motivations are largely independent of each other rather than following an inverse pattern. Your score in Achievement has nothing to do with your score in the Social component.