Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Game design - 4x and card game survey results

In this post I will summarize last post's survey results

It was an amazing experience and find so much support from many people around the world is really interesting! Thank you!

This post is together a post mortem on how create a survey on this topic and about actual results.



Audience

 

 

In this first part of the survey, we have some audience informations:



Pro: In our audience, most of people are between 18-40 years, perfect target for our purposes.
Cons: This result seems are heavily influenced from online communities we selected for the survey. Better results could be achieved with a mix between different sources, for example social networks and online advertisement.




Pro: too many men!
Cons: We suggest to find some better sources for intercept females preferences on card, board and video games, because are an interesting potential market for any kind of games! 



Disclaimer: we do not clean data and aggregate answers, because are interesting per-se. Many persons answer on this question using country name (Italy, Germany, USA), but also city name (Trento, Bristol, others...). Some funny results are omitted, like “Hell”.

Pro: a lot of answers not only from Europe and USA, but also from other part of the world (New Zealand, Australia, Brazil)
Cons: next time we must consider a closed list of nations and find a way to extend survey using different languages, because with English we forced ourselves in a limited list of countries, forgetting of all east countries like Japan, China or Spanish countries like Mexico, Argentina, etc… 


Video games

 

 

In this part of the survey, we analyze how much time people dedicate to play videogames:




Pro: many people dedicate a decent amount of time in playing videogames
Cons: 4x games requires generally a lot of time, so playing same game for many days seems reasonable, in next survey this is something to consider

  

Board games

 

 

This part of the survey analyze board game preferences of our audience:



Pro: a lot of people like Risk and Settlers of Catan, but also don’t play board games
Cons: this question could be improved adding a simple “why you don’t play board games”? Today there are a lot of possibility to find amazing board games in local groups or using online groups, for us something to validate is to find what kind of barrier there is for new players.




Pro: people dedicate not too much time
Cons: most of the people seems do not want to dedicate too much time playing board games. Next surveys must investigate about reasons behind it. Does it need too much time? Need to gather with friend in same place?


Card games

 




Pro: Heartstone is right now the leading card games. This is not a surprise for me, but follow the trend of Magic the gathering and surprising… Poker!
Cons: many people do not play card games and this could be a problem in a 4x/card game mix




Pro:  there is a solid base (39%) of our audience, which play card games more than 2 hours in a month
Cons: more than board game, most of the people do not play card games too much and for future survey must take into consideration reason behind this choice

  

4x games

 

 

This part of the survey try to understand how much people know about 4x games. In original survey there was one key question “do you know what 4x means?” and more than 80% of audience know what does it mean.




Pro: my assumption, now validated, is that many people hate micro management in 4x games, followed by lack of personalization
Cons: there is a lot of data and ideas behind and find one “single” hate point in 4x games is really difficult





Pro: many people are interested in space based 4x settings and games like new Master of Orion reboot or Stellaris are on the right direction!
Cons: many, many ideas for settings in 4x games, force audience in choose only one is a limitation. Should be better to set this question as open question ?


Core question

 

 

Main objective of this survey was to answer to a simple question:



Pro:  few people are not interested in a mix between 4x and card game
Cons: with a question like that, is difficult to say what kind of mix people will like more: more board/video game than a card game, or more a card game ?


Conclusion

My idea to mix together 4x games and card game in an unique experience could be interesting for other people than me. Key question is : how ? I have to think about it and I'm working a paper prototype following ideas from this survey and talking with friends.
I'd like to have more comments below and more feedback as possible, so feel free to ask!


Download raw data here

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