Research on your video game preferences!

winmik

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Hello everyone,

for the last two months I have been working on my master thesis, doing research on digital game distribution and its impact on the video game industry. For a specific part of my thesis, I need to assess which video game characteristics are important for gamers and how much. Basically I need it to show that gamer preferences constantly evolve, and how digitally distributed games, mobile games and browser / social games have introduced new types of "value". I would really appreciate if you could dedicate 10-15 minutes of your time to complete my questionnaire:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JeX-6xS_8Yfsb-cINuNc7nMhUZC_5Tsrfo0jCfArcn0/viewform

Please note that since I am researching on all types of games (console, handhelds, computer-online, browser/social, mobile) I believe everyone can participate. The structure of the questionnaire is on purpose like this (at first sight it might appear that some questions repeat / are redundant, but they are not...)

Thanks a lot - WinMik
 

FAST6191

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Basically I need it to show that gamer preferences constantly evolve, and how digitally distributed games, mobile games and browser / social games have introduced new types of "value".

Now I can certainly appreciate something may have been lost in translation but if you phrase it like that it looks like you have started out with a conclusion and are trying to fit the evidence to it. If I am examining your thesis and I think you have done that it is very bad indeed and you could get in serious trouble (as in failed thesis and worse) for it.

The questions

On the preferred platform are there not others (ouya being a fairly poor example, granted it probably falls under custom android at this point) and many of the facebook/mobile games cross pollinate with each other. Where does http://www.illyriad.co.uk/ fit? You kind of get into it later on in the questions.

After this we probably get to discuss survey theory; by and large if you have an odd number of rankings things may tend towards the neutral or extremes, if you must then I suggest jumbling the order up. That said your choices are not a spectrum of choices (I enjoy it and I expect it are not necessarily the same thing and expect it probably rates higher than enjoy in most spectra if you can make one with the terms in question), by all means have it but expect that you might be questioned on it.

The questions themselves
"If the game variety is high, meaning that there is a wide range of available games to enjoy, how do you feel?"
This might well be what is called a leading question. Spinning it slightly when people say things like "but it had so much shovelware" even ignoring how hard it is to define such a term the main obvious response is "so do not play it, buy it or recall that it exists".

Piracy is a loaded term.

The frequent updates things -- "oh a new update" is one thing on a console but in the mobile/microprice world it is a way of life and those that do not frequently fail.

control accuracy
Surely it varies between game type.

"If it is possible to play with, or compete against friends and random players, how do you feel? *"
No local play?

"If a gaming system offers functions and services"
Offering is one thing, if it sucks compared to my PC or indeed costs where my PC is free.....

"initial expenditure" is an odd one -- games have been stuck on DirectX 9 thanks to the consoles which means even a modest PC will do OK. However the "need a good PC" mentality is somewhat pervasive.

"and then features “microtransactions” "
Are these pay to win, pay to boost, pay because you feel like being nice to the developers (that illyriad game I mentioned earlier is a good example).

Still a pretty good survey and on the face of things I can see it being masters grade but there are some issues that could be raised.
 

winmik

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Thank you for your very detailed feedback FAST6191, and obviously for the amount of time you spend on it!

I thought a lot about your first point, also another forum member raised a similar concern. I understand how it might look a lot like "forcing" / "leading" towards the desired results, at least to someone that is not familiar with the exact scope of my thesis and my research hypotheses. The sentence

"Basically I need it to show that gamer preferences constantly evolve, and how digitally distributed games, mobile games and browser / social games have introduced new types of "value"."

probably should have been left out, but this is not my hypothesis (it is perhaps a conclusion I expect to reach eventually, but after company interviews and other supporting data). In any case I showed the exact same message to my professor during a lab meeting when me were discussing the questionnaire and no objections were raised.

Regarding your comment on survey theory, it is valid for the second part where I am asking about the relevant importance of characteristics. There is a considerable amount of academic discussion on odd vs even scales, I decided to go with odd and give the option of "neutrality". However in the first part it is not a scale, this format of questions including wording follows a specific questionnaire model. I prefer not to go into specifics, how it works, it is better if the respondents are not aware.

For the other questions, I am afraid there is no right or wrong approach. Video games "characteristics" are inherently subjective and prone to different interpretations, which is what makes this part of my research so challenging. Of course I could go into more detail in some of the questions, but being extremely specific would appeal to more advanced-core gamers and scare away the occasional-casual ones (I think, without being sure, that I would sacrifice respondent spectrum to capture accuracy). Long story short, those are limitations of my research that troubled me when designing the questionnaire, I hope I can support my decisions in my defense :-)

Once again thank you for your very constructive feedback!
 
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winmik

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Thank you for helping me and participating in my research. You can see an automated summary of the responses I have collected so far in the following link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JeX-6xS_8Yfsb-cINuNc7nMhUZC_5Tsrfo0jCfArcn0/viewanalytics

Of course I will perform my own data analysis in due time. I need all the responses I can get, so if there are more people who want to participate, please do so!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JeX-6xS_8Yfsb-cINuNc7nMhUZC_5Tsrfo0jCfArcn0/viewform

Thanks again,
WinMik
 

Satangel

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You should specify to your first post it doesn't take that much time to fill in the survey, else people won't click it.

I'll fill it in today, wish you all the best with your thesis!
 

Pleng

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"Basically I need it to show that gamer preferences constantly evolve, and how digitally distributed games, mobile games and browser / social games have introduced new types of "value"."

probably should have been left out, but this is not my hypothesis (it is perhaps a conclusion I expect to reach eventually, but after company interviews and other supporting data). In any case I showed the exact same message to my professor during a lab meeting when me were discussing the questionnaire and no objections were raised.

Haven't read the thread in much detail but something like this could quite easily be re-worded as:

"Basically I need investigate if gamer preferences constantly evolve, and how digitally distributed games, mobile games and browser / social games have introduced new types of "value", if any."
 
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