The Product I thought of while thinking about Indie RPG products

[TwoCrows]

[Paul Czege]

Hi,

I'd be very curious what you think the surveyors are truly after from this:

http://www.gamesurvey.org/

To me it seems rather skewed at finding ways for companies to make more money from gamers, rather than at understanding their psychology or values.

How would your vision of a survey for the indie community differ?

Paul

[TwoCrows]

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[TwoCrows]

I'd be very curious what you think the surveyors are truly after from this:

http://www.gamesurvey.org/

[Paul Czege]

Rather than data that might empower me to tweak the purchasing habits of gamers, I'd personally be interested in data that would help me recruit creative folks to gaming, via game design or social means, or provoke greater enthusiasm from creatively marginalized, nearly-lapsed gamers.

Paul

[TwoCrows]

[Ian Mclean]

If I could get a hundred people in a room, made up of gamers (Video, Table Top RPG, LARP, and otherwise), Game Managers (Game masters, Storytellers, Narrators, etc), game spectators (siblings, romantic interests, parents, friends, etc), game developers (designers, producers, publishers, etc), and game researchers (scholars, marketers, writters, etc) what I would want to ask them is fourfold.

What are the ten most important aspects of a game, in your opinion?

From the first question, I would like to compile a comprehensive list of the ten most mentioned and then request that they:

Rank these ten attributes of a good game from most important, to least important.
What are your interests, mark all that apply:
Player
Manager
Spectator
Developer
Research

Then I would ask them to name three games that they feel are the best.

At conclusion I would ask them to list the interests they hold that lie outside of games. Weather they are employed, what conventions/events do they attend or would like to attend, and what organizations are they involved in outside of their gaming activities. (such as the Society for Creative Anachronism)

Now that I actually started thinking about it, there is more information that I would want to know, but I need time to gather my thoughts and express them succintly.

[TwoCrows]

quote author=Ian Mclean link=topic=23958.msg234632#msg234632 date=1179882900]
Rank these ten attributes of a good game from most important, to least important.
What are your interests, mark all that apply:
Player
Manager
Spectator
Developer
Research

[Callan S.]

Hi, Two Crows (I guess you can't use your normal name),

What if gamers can't really, actually tell you what they want? They can only demonstrate it through play? For example - do you know how your liver works? Or your eyes? All the chemicals and stuff and what each organ needs? I can't - but I can demonstrate them in action, to various extents.

Lets say gamers are using an organ in their brain/a particular part of their brain. That doesn't mean they know how it works, just like I don't really know how my liver works. So they can't really answer questions for it.

Perhaps a survey that asks for actual play accounts, snippets of play in relation to X, Y or Z, might yield more. Then look for the patterns in those actual play accounts.

[Ian Mclean]

I meant interest in the capacity of categorizing, or grouping individuals by their invested interest in the realm of gaming. So it would be player [of a game], manager (Game Master, Narrator, Storyteller) [of a game], etc.

The purpose of the two questions, that of ranking and that of background game is to support or disprove a hypothesis that I have. I think that the outcome of the ranking would be that players will rank things highly and that those who run games (manage) will rank the same things lowly.

In reply to Callan. The assumption is that gamers know what they like in a game. They maybe less then technical about it, and they may give misleading information intentionally or unintentional, but they none the less reveal portions of the territory. It is up to those analysizing the statistics to discearn signal from noise.

What you purpose, Callan, is as I understand it playtesting. Which is similar though distinct from marketing. Playtesting accounts can supplement a marketing survey, but will inevitably have more information than is necessary. Just some thoughts, and as always I might be wrong but this is how I understand it to generally work.

[TwoCrows]

[TwoCrows]

[pells]

Very interesting ... Two things :

I would be very interested in the perception of games. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but I get a feeling that if someone says he likes X in a game, he might not even be playing a game that does X, but still might have the perception that the game does. Or maybe that's something else, in fact, that he likes. Maybe my game does X, but is mostly perceived as doing Y (let's say because it has the indie tag on it).
Anyway, sure, it would be a great, useful ressource.

Cost to You the Game Designer = Perhaps Nil or LESS! Otherwise on barter for web space, link hosting, and word of mouth legwork.

If I understand you well, we (as a community I guess) could build this specific survey maybe like http://www.gamesurvey.org/, where people would come and take it. This would mean :
- finding a webhosting, a domain name (maybe)
- building the webpage and the database
- building the survey in itself (with the help of people who know exactly what they are doing)
- attract people to the site to take survey after taking it ourself (people here at the forge, for instance)
- analyse the data (we'll need people for that as it seems a whole job in itself)

That's a lot of work.
For those of us (let's say so called designer) who have a website, it would be in our interest to add a link toward this survey.
And I like the "mecanic" of screening. I would see a designer as a "client" of this survey who might want to ask some specific questions to some specific population (I'm thinking of LARP project for instance, or wargame).

Do I get you right ?

[TwoCrows]

quote author=pells link=topic=23958.msg234688#msg234688 date=1179940946]
If I understand you well, we (as a [i]community[/i] I guess) could build this specific survey maybe like http://www.gamesurvey.org/, where people would come and take it. This would mean :
- finding a webhosting, a domain name (maybe)
- building the webpage and the database
- building the survey in itself (with the help of people who know exactly what they are doing)
- attract people to the site to take survey after taking it ourself (people here at the forge, for instance)
- analyse the data (we'll need people for that as it seems a whole job in itself)
community I guess) could build this specific survey maybe like http://www.gamesurvey.org/, where people would come and take it. This would mean :
- finding a webhosting, a domain name (maybe)
- building the webpage and the database
- building the survey in itself (with the help of people who know exactly what they are doing)
- attract people to the site to take survey after taking it ourself (people here at the forge, for instance)
- analyse the data (we'll need people for that as it seems a whole job in itself)

[Callan S.]

In reply to Callan. The assumption is that gamers know what they like in a game.

I understand that's the assumption the marketing structure is working from. I'm asking if there's any other structures available, as I think that assumption isn't adequate for my purposes.

What you purpose, Callan, is as I understand it playtesting. Which is similar though distinct from marketing. Playtesting accounts can supplement a marketing survey, but will inevitably have more information than is necessary. Just some thoughts, and as always I might be wrong but this is how I understand it to generally work.

I think your trying to help me out, but haven't asked about the overall process first.