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The Gaming Survey (Now with Completed Results!)

Started by fprefect111 Nov 1, 2008 at 6:43 AM 14 replies 2.7k views

Original Post

Nov 1, 2008 at 6:43 AM

Hey! I'm creating a game for my Major Design Project in my final year at school, and one of the first requirements is for me to investigate my market. This community's part of my market, being game players and all. Just hoping you guys'd be keen and interested in taking part - I'm going to post the results and analysis in around two weeks, it'll be neat to see how age, online community and other factors influence people's answers. Plus over here, I'm sure it would be useful for some guidance in how to approach your own projects. This survey is being posted across a few communities, so there'll hopefully be enough responses that the results will be pretty valid. All it requires is your input... it won't take long, I promise :) So: Take the survey Thanks in advance! UPDATE: For those who were curious, I've got the first set of results ready. More to follow, should have the rest ready tomorrow afternoon after working steadily. For now, it's just the "Important Aspects" section, relative to each group of communities. Personal references consist of about 30% friends and 70% irritating under 16s, for those who are curious as to why they're the biggest fans of violence :P UPDATE 2: I've got the rest of the results up on the blog now, feel free to check them out and let me know what you think. Completed Survey Results [Edited by - fprefect111 on November 21, 2008 7:36:12 PM]

cairon

Nov 1, 2008 at 8:42 AM

hehe just a note :) you might want to change övrigt to other or something :p

it's Swedish for those that didn't know

Geoffrey

Nov 1, 2008 at 9:03 AM

I've just filled out your survey.

Try to remember that game developers often have biased opinions compared to gamers at large. We tend to be more interested in original elements of games, and less likely to be put off by less than fantastic presentation.

Having said that, I'd be very interested if you'd post some of your results here - particularly the parts about prices and genres people play.

Aik

Nov 4, 2008 at 2:10 AM

The options you provided for piracy don't really fit my view of it (I voted 'try before you buy', but really meant 'will pirate things or not depending on a variety of circumstances having no real consistent course of action for all games'). Not enough shades of grey there, or at least the shade of grey you have needs to be more general in scope.

Wavinator

Nov 5, 2008 at 1:08 PM

Nicely done survey, just finished.

I like how you used tick boxes to capture a lot of the data. Do you plan to publish the results once you've finished? I'd be curious as to the responses you've gotten, and especially how they skew with respect to certain websites.

sunandshadow

Nov 5, 2008 at 4:36 PM

Yes I also did the survey and would love to see the results.

fprefect111

Nov 15, 2008 at 9:26 PM

I've got the first set of results ready, see OP! (1,540 people responded overall)

Quote:
Try to remember that game developers often have biased opinions compared to gamers at large. We tend to be more interested in original elements of games, and less likely to be put off by less than fantastic presentation.

Yup, hence the segregation of my results based on their source. It allows for a less-biased view. Soon, I'll be doing weighted results based on the average of these groups, comparing gamers who believe violence is important in a game (14% of respondants) and those who don't, and looking at preferences in genre across different age groups. But all in good time, I've got far too much work bogging me down at the moment. :)

and @aik: yeah, I made a few rushed errors sorting this whole thing out, unfortunately... I only added gender towards the last 30% of entries, but it never really strayed from 89%-91% male.

Geoffrey

Nov 16, 2008 at 3:41 AM

Thanks for posting your first set of results.

It's interesting that 'realism' is so low in people's priorities. I guess this means there's actually quite a small core of players who love their realistic flight sims / war sims etc, while the majority are much more interested in gameplay and story. Perhaps this is why these games seem to be less common than they did in the 90's?

Also, 'player customization' is quite low considering the amount of effort (thousands of man hours) some games go to to let you customize your character. However I expect this figure will score much higher amongst just RPG fans.

sunandshadow

Nov 17, 2008 at 4:58 PM

Given that personal references seems to be way off from the other groups, maybe consider excluding them from averages and final results?

swiftcoder

Nov 17, 2008 at 5:12 PM

Quote:
Original post by Geoffrey
Also, 'player customization' is quite low considering the amount of effort (thousands of man hours) some games go to to let you customize your character. However I expect this figure will score much higher amongst just RPG fans.

I am not sure about that - I have played a fair few RPGs over time, and apart from 10 minutes spent kicking the tyres, I don't recall ever caring much about the character customisation. I do however hate it when the character's appearance is fully customisable, but all that work is then hidden by a helmet, and ruined by still animation (NWN, I am looking at you...).

Geoffrey

Nov 18, 2008 at 1:27 PM

Quote:
Original post by sunandshadow
Given that personal references seems to be way off from the other groups, maybe consider excluding them from averages and final results?

It's also possible it's a much smaller group than the other samples, in which case the apparent differences may be explained by an insufficient sample size. If this is the case, it should be fine to include them in the averages (though they won't make a lot of difference).

sunandshadow

Nov 18, 2008 at 2:51 PM

Quote:
Original post by Geoffrey
Quote:
Original post by sunandshadow
Given that personal references seems to be way off from the other groups, maybe consider excluding them from averages and final results?

It's also possible it's a much smaller group than the other samples, in which case the apparent differences may be explained by an insufficient sample size. If this is the case, it should be fine to include them in the averages (though they won't make a lot of difference).

true

fprefect111

Nov 21, 2008 at 7:35 PM

In the straight averages, they make hardly any difference. Personally I don't think there should be an overall average on most of the charts - there's just too much bias, much better off seperating this information to see it more clearly.

But yeah, I've discounted personal references from the rest of the results, they're just irrelevant. Everything's up now, enjoy :)

thk123

Nov 22, 2008 at 6:24 PM

Great results! I posted my thoughts on my dev blog I must admit, I was very surprised to discover that player customization did not do very well and that story did.

Servant of the Lord

Nov 22, 2008 at 7:09 PM

It's interesting that your survey shows Third-Person shooters are about as favored as RTS's and RPGs. I wasn't aware they were so popular.

thk123

Nov 23, 2008 at 1:21 PM

Quote:
Original post by Servant of the Lord
It's interesting that your survey shows Third-Person shooters are about as favored as RTS's and RPGs. I wasn't aware they were so popular.

I think that Gears of War may have helped that somewhat! But in all seriousness, they are on the rise, think of Dead Space. 3rd Person opens up loads of possibilities. You could, as Dead Space nearly did, chuck out the interface to create a much more immersive experience. Also, in some ways, it is easier to emote with the character as many people view themselves in the 3rd person. Ironic eh?

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