Survey analysis

Purpose

In order to define our user target and have a better idea of what gamers would expect, we decided to create a survey that we would send to our friends and acquaintances.

The survey was created with Google docs using a form, this really complete tool allow to create a simple but efficient survey and also provides a nice summary of all responses received.

The survey was available for a period of 2 weeks after which it was not accessible anymore and all the data were gathered and analysed. In total, 56 persons took this survey.

Analysis

It was completed by a majority of male (68% to be precise) which more or less represent the gaming community all over the world where we can assume that out of 3 gamers only one is a girl.

We could also argue that the survey was well representative of the gaming community in terms of age range as 84% of the interviewees were between 21 and 30 years old, with 7% being less than 21 years old and 9% aged between 31 and 40 years old.

The majority of the interviewees play games less than 2 hours a week (38%), while 25% would play between 2 and 5 hours a week, 16% between 5 and 10 hours a week, 18% between 10 and 20 hours a week and only 4% would play more than 30 hours a week.

When ask to rate how much they enjoy video games on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 being not at all and 5 being a lot), 9% of the interviews gave a rate of 1 or 2. While 79% gave a rate of 4 or 5.

It is also interesting to look at the platforms the interviewees are playing on as 70% of them play on PC, 48% on smartphone, 39% on PlayStation 3, 34% on Xbox 360, 30% on Nintendo Wii, 23% on Nintendo DS or 3DS, 20% on Social Networks and only 5% on PlayStation Vita.

To summarize it means that the majority will play games on their PC rather than on a console or portable device.

In terms of favourite genre, 25% of the interviewees will prefer to play an Action/Adventure game and 23% a RPG, while 14% would play a FPS, the rest being divided amongst the several other genres.

We have also asked our population to rate the importance of the story to their gaming experience and 71% of them deemed the story very important to their gaming experience.

We also wanted to know if gamers enjoy watching/reading cutscenes and character dialogues and 75% of the interviewees stated that they do.

However when asked more precisely what kind of cutscenes they enjoy the most, 36% mentioned that they would prefer short but frequent cutscenes, 21% said preferring long but less frequent cutscenes, 18% would prefer a lot of movie-like cutscenes and 5% said that they would prefer no cutscenes at all while 20% mentioned that they actually don’t mind either way.

In order to have a better image of our population, we wanted to know if they played any game of the Devil May Cry franchise as it is one of the games we are getting our inspiration from. It is important to note that Devil May Cry is a game where the player is not able to move the camera as such the freedom of movement is reduced and the general experience of this game can be impacted.

Unfortunately for us, 52% of our population actually never played a Devil May Cry game, however from the remaining 48%, 29% did not deem the lack of liberty an issue and probably enjoyed the game.

As the gameplay of the game we are developing is based on the music, it was also important to know our population’s feelings towards music in general.

From the survey, 86% of the interviewees considered themselves music enthusiast.

We also asked them to rate the involvement of music in their life on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 being a little and 5 a huge involvement), and 71% of the population gave a rate of 4 or 5, while 7% gave a rate of 1 or 2.

In order to quantify the importance of the music in a video game to a user, we asked our interviewees if they were paying attention to the soundtrack while playing games and 37% of them replied that they always do, 30% said often and the rest said that sometimes they do.

As the game we are planning to develop is based on music, other inspirational games are RockBand and Guitar Hero; therefore we asked our population if they ever played such games and thankfully 75% of them actually did.

So we asked these candidates what was the element they enjoy the most about these games, as such we found out that the soundtrack is the element they enjoy the most followed closely by the gameplay.

We ended this survey with an open question to know if the interviewees would play an adventure game where the music plays an important role and is inherent to the gameplay to find out the interest they could have towards the game we are developing.

We found out that most of the interviewees are really interested in the concept but are concerned how well this gameplay will work.

Conclusion

From this survey, we came up with several conclusions that will help us design our game and hopefully go to the right direction in order to satisfy our users and provide them with a more enjoyable experience.

First of all, we have to keep in mind that video games are also popular amongst girls; as such the design and gameplay should be appealing to them as well.

Also according to the population of our survey, but also according to nowadays technology, we have decided to develop the game for PC beforehand, however we will use the Xbox 360 controller as gamepad as it is used in almost every PC games and suits the type of game we are willing to create. It means that we could also release a Xbox 360 version of the game later on and probably a PlayStation 3 version as well.

Our population also confirmed that Action/Adventure is a very popular genre, if not the most popular. This fact will give our game the edge and play in favour to its notoriety and success.

Regarding the experience, the interviewees clearly showed that the story is an important factor in regards to enjoying a video game and that it should definitely not be neglected; however the story should be conveyed nicely and the cutscenes should not be too heavy or too long. Our population is in favour of frequent but short cutscenes.

Our comparison with Devil May Cry also helped us decide of a better design solution, the issue encountered in the Devil May Cry franchise is that it is a 3D game where the user cannot control the camera; however the camera gets the action most of the time from a ¾ perspective allowing the user to see the character, the enemies but also the ground, which is very important for platforming sections. The fact that the camera is fixed can make it difficult for the users to see enemies that will be in specific areas of the stage and impact the experience.

However from the survey, the interviewees did not see this factor as an issue, meaning that for our game we could decide to give total control of the camera to the user or cleverly place the camera like in Devil May Cry.

Furthermore, we were able to gauge the interest people had in music but also the importance they gave to video games’ soundtrack, which also confirm the viability of our idea.

Most of our interviewees had already played a game such as Guitar Hero or Rockband, games where the user has to follow the rhythm of the music in order to get a better score and trigger new events.

Finally through our open final question, we realized that people could definitely be interested in our idea; however we would have to make sure that the soundtrack is of quality but also that the gameplay makes sense but would not be too difficult so any player could give it a try.

The interviewees also mentioned their concern regarding the repetitiveness of such gameplay, as they hope that the game could be played smoothly without having to be overly concentrated on the music.