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Jdawg445

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Need your help for a videogame study

Total Posts: 5

Joined 2013-06-18

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Hello everyone !

I am currently working on my Masters thesis about video game franchises and their future. My colleague and I launched a survey to complete our work with precise data on gamers perceptions.

This survey is strictly anonymous and will not ask for any personal information.

If you want to help us, we would be glad to have your wise opinion about the subjects approached in this survey. It will take you no more than 5 minutes of your time to complete it.

If the survey is a success, we will of course share the results with you.

Please, feel free to share your feedback below.

Here is the link to begin the survey : http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/game-franchises

Thank you in advance Smile

     
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Total Posts: 932

Joined 2004-03-23

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Done! Interesting survey Smile

One thing though: you ask about how many games one buys a year - does this also mean even tiny (at least costwise tiny) indie games, or just more “retail” games? Especially since later you separately ask about indie games…

     
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Total Posts: 8471

Joined 2011-10-21

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Done!
Pretty interesting survey.

Only the last question was rather hard to quantify, since the amount of mods you can find for a game can vary greatly. Some shooters have hundreds of user-generated maps, some games have an all-encompassing mod (that adds a lot of different content all at once), etc.
It depends on the mods and on the games, imo…
But I mentioned that on the form…

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

Total Posts: 1891

Joined 2010-11-16

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the interesting thing about this survey, is it did make me realize probably the most influential factor for me when deciding to purchase a game is the track record of the developer. For example, i bought the night of the rabbit recently (before it came out actually), without reading any reviews, or watching trailers, or hearing any opinions or summaries. I bought it simply because of how much i’ve enjoyed daedalic games. The same goes with atlus. If atlus develops a game i usually buy it without any further investigation… but if atlus publishes a game, i will pause to investigate some more.. because i dont trust the developer more just because of who is publishing it. I want to play games with good stories, but i dont really buy a game because of its story.. because id rather not know anything about it until i play it.

     
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Joined 2011-10-21

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zane - 18 June 2013 08:26 PM

it did make me realize probably the most influential factor for me when deciding to purchase a game is the track record of the developer.

That’s usually true in all arts.
Your favourite writer / musician / film director / game designer is more likely to produce something to your liking than an unknown or someone with a not-so-great track record would. That’s not to say that every new thing they produce is going to be a masterpiece, but it’s just so that every new thing they produce will be mediocre or even good at worst. That makes them more of a safe bet than most others, and they earned that through their track record.

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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Total Posts: 932

Joined 2004-03-23

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Funny thing, personally I don’t actually pay so much attention to developers (and especially publishers) in games, though. I mean, I know a couple of my favorite developers, but other than that they don’t mean so much to me - I mean, I know the names but I don’t know their track record so well…

     

Total Posts: 5

Joined 2013-06-18

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One thing though: you ask about how many games one buys a year - does this also mean even tiny (at least costwise tiny) indie games, or just more “retail” games? Especially since later you separately ask about indie games…

That’s a good question. Actually we encompass all kind of games in that question from tiny indie games to big retail games.

Only the last question was rather hard to quantify, since the amount of mods you can find for a game can vary greatly. Some shooters have hundreds of user-generated maps, some games have an all-encompassing mod (that adds a lot of different content all at once), etc.
It depends on the mods and on the games, imo…
But I mentioned that on the form…

Yes, you are not the first one to mention it. Unfortunatly it is difficult to change the question without introducing a bias as regards previous answers. Thanks for your precisions in your answer. It will be of great help to complement the analysis of this question.

Funny thing, personally I don’t actually pay so much attention to developers (and especially publishers) in games, though. I mean, I know a couple of my favorite developers, but other than that they don’t mean so much to me - I mean, I know the names but I don’t know their track record so well…

What I can tell you since there is that, on average, the studio and the publisher criteria come last in gamer answers. However for about 8% of the gamers who answered the survey, the publisher which released the game is the first or second choice, and for 6% the studio comes first or second.

By the way, thank you so much for your participation ! We are about to reach the goal of 500 answers in about 20 answers. If you did not answer yet the survey, and are interested in giving us your opinion, feel free to do so Smile.

 

 

     
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Total Posts: 8998

Joined 2004-01-05

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I did the survey, the most interesting thing to me is realizing that I simply don’t care about DLC, thinking about it I only bought it twice.

     

Total Posts: 5

Joined 2013-06-18

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Hello there.

I should have shared the results of this survey before but better late than never Smile.

I am going to give you the main trends we noticed thanks to the +700 answers we received. In the interest of being interesting I am only mentioning figures I have found interesting. If you want more details about anything, please let me know.

MISC :

- First and it’s not really related to our topic, we noticed gamers can get very serious when they talk about something they care about. We’ve spotted only 5 trolls among all the answers and I found these guys cute because they took the pain of going through all the questions to let us know at the final one that “this survey was a waste of time”. I have no doubt about that for them and especially for this guy who answered “penis” wherever he could. ^_^

- Gamers are vocal ! About 3/5 of answers included comments for open questions. That is a lot more than traditional surveys get as far as I remember from intelligence marketing classes.

AVERAGE AGE :

- 24 years old

SCHOOLING :

- Only 9% of answers had not completed any form of schooling but for a good reason : they are too young ! These 9% are only 17 yo in average.

- 46% of answers had completed at least a bachelor degree. 2% are Phd holders.

AVERAGE WEEKLY GAMING TIME :

- is 17.4 hours per week.

- The older you get, the less you play :-/

- DLC buyers play longer than any other “group”.

AVERAGE NUMBER OF GAMES PURCHASED PER YEAR :

- 10 ! But I feel a little bit “meh” about this question. Games come in so many different forms nowadays. We should have asked in the mean time what money they spend for them.

- Still, top 10% buyers buy a whooping 32 games per year.

- Bottom 10% only buy less than one (0.7). Interestingly these guys are the less likely to complete entirely the survey.

PREORDERERS & ASSOCIATED BONUS :

- Only 48% of answers admit having preordered a game. Same ratio as those who do not care about preorder bonus.

- Only 13% of answers found theses bonuses important or very important.

DLCs :

- 35% of answers never buy DLCs while 2% buy them for every single game they have.

SEQUELs, SPIN-OFFs, REBOOTs and REMAKEs :

- These figure do not change much depending on the group we isolated.

- 90% bought a sequel, 68% a spin-off, 51% a reboot and 31% a remake

FACTORS WHEN BUYING A GAME :

- Gameplay comes first (44%) then story/background (31%). Only 3% care first about graphics, 5% about the lasting appeal.

- The least important factor for 48% is the publisher.

STORIES OVER MULTIPLE GAMES :

- 64% like it, only 6% do not like, the others just do not care.

eSports :

- 38% of answers follow eSports. The younger you are the most likely you are to do so.

INDIE GAMES :

- 69% of gamers have already bought an indie game but only 20% have financially supported a project on platforms like Kickstarter.

UGC :

- 15% declare having already created content for games and 62% actually use contents created by other gamers.

I hope this was interesting !

Thanks again to all those who took the time to answer our survey. If you have questions please let me know.

     
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Total Posts: 523

Joined 2010-02-08

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Cool results, thanks for sharing.

Quasar - 07 September 2013 05:55 AM

AVERAGE WEEKLY GAMING TIME :

- The older you get, the less you play :-/

Do you have this one in a chart? This result doesn’t surprise me at all and is something I’ve been interested in for awhile, since I think it helps explain some of the success of Wargaming.Net, Kixeye, Telltale, and other companies whose games are designed to assume their players may not have a lot of time.

But I’d be curious to see how sharp is the drop-off with age on the X axis and average weekly gaming time on the Y axis.

 

     

Total Posts: 5

Joined 2013-06-18

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I made this for you. I think the curve speaks for itself Smile

     
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Total Posts: 8471

Joined 2011-10-21

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Interesting results, Quasar. A lot of them are rather evident (the age-related decline in game time, for instance), but some of those results do jump out.

I found this one particularly compelling:

Quasar - 07 September 2013 05:55 AM

- DLC buyers play longer than any other “group”.

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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Total Posts: 523

Joined 2010-02-08

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Quasar - 07 September 2013 05:14 PM

I made this for you. I think the curve speaks for itself Smile

Thanks, I appreciate it. That gamers get older and have less time is, of course, pretty plausible common sense; still, I hadn’t seen how sharp the curve might be, so that’s interesting to see. While some online game companies collect metrics like this, it’s only for their own games. And I can’t recall offhand having seen broad survey data on this subject from, say, an EEDAR study or something on Gamasutra, but quite possibly it’s out there and I just haven’t seen it.

Out of curiosity, did you do anything in your survey to account for sampling bias? It seems like with an online survey advertised only to certain people, you won’t have a random sampling of the gaming population.

     

Total Posts: 5

Joined 2013-06-18

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Out of curiosity, did you do anything in your survey to account for sampling bias? It seems like with an online survey advertised only to certain people, you won’t have a random sampling of the gaming population.

You are absolutly right. It is rather difficult to avoid all possible sampling bias in an online survey. We tried to have a sample composed of people from the most active gaming communities around the Western world (especially USA, UK, France, Germany, Spain, etc.). With 700 answers (and very few trolls), I think we manage to minize possible sampling bias. Our survey is certainly not representative of the global gaming community ; on the contrary we have chosen to focus on hardcore gamers as our subjet dealt with franchises and communities.

     
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Total Posts: 523

Joined 2010-02-08

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That makes sense; thanks for clarifying. Smile

     

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