OSU, GAMA and the Wargamer want to ask you some questions

Industry 17 comments

In the “Do Market Research or Die” sweepstakes, it would seem that someone’s finally chosen the former. Although really this survey is more about “[w]hat motivates continued game play and preferences for types of games,” that can’t help but be useful to the industry. For some reason the online survey is only up until the end of May. Hell, maybe they’re going to take this and somehow interpret out our votes for the Origins awards.

17 comments

  1. You guys rock!
    Thanks for helping us get the word out.
    The survey has to come down by 31 May because we’ve got to start writing results to make deadlines for academic paper submissions. Sadly, the world of academics does not parallel reality – we’d love to have this running through Origins, where people could fill it out on-site.

    Thanks for the exposure.

    Brant
    PhD Student
    Ohio State
    School of Communication

  2. Brant, since you’re here (and if you’re at liberty): how was the breakdown of game types and gaming genres decided upon?

  3. Originally, it was very wargame/boardgame-oriented, but when we went to GAMA to beg for assistance/support, they (a) were thrilled to help someone doing research within the industry and (b) requested that we expand it to cover as much of the industry as possible.
    So the current mix of genres/types was a collaborative effort with GAMA, but they provided us with a lot of the expansion beyond boardgames.

    There’s a lot more detail available in the forums at RPG.net and The Wargamer. I’ve been answering questions over there for the past week, and some of your questions may already have been answered. (Full disclosure: I write for The Wargamer and they are going to run a non-academic wrap-up of the article later this summer.) While I used to write for RPG.net, too, I didn’t start the thread there; I was alerted to it by another survey respondent.

  4. Could you post links? The quickest and easiest way to share that info when we are on a dealine would be wonderful…

  6. I love the RPGnet posters who say they had to stop taking the survey halfway in because some question wasn’t fine-grained enough for them to answer. Only gamers, man. I hope these guys never have to fudge a rule in a game; I picture smoke coming out of their ears, loud pings of machinery, violent outbursts…

  7. Okay Brant… dude… typos…and line shading for the all the tables.
    If you are asking for people to donate time to provide data for you, the least you could do is make it easy on them to actually read the survey.

    But seriously… typos.

  8. The typos are a seemingly endless problem. Every time we think we got them all, another one pops up.
    This thing’s been thru about 6 rounds of checking.

    The line shading was a creation of the underlying HTML from the survey software. Every time I tried to monkey with it, something else went screwy, so I quit messing with it. I’m a decent HTML coder, but not great. I asked several other people to check it for usability, and they thought it was sufficient. Not perfect, mind you, but sufficient.

    Thanks for your feedback.

  9. Just an update –

    We’re over 1200 responses in 8 days. Thanks to everyone who’s helped out so far.

    My goal is still a ridiculously-high 10000. 🙂

  10. I have it posted on my own blog as well as the Gaming Industry ntwork forums. Typos and cell shading aside, I say go get ’em.

  11. Another note (inspired by Chris):

    If you see a link or ad or flyer to the project somewhere, can you pass it along? I’d like to somehow approximate the spread of this thing as best I can. I know we’re now on message boards at The Wargamer , RPG.net, Ogrecave, BGG, ConsimWorld, and The Miniatures Page, and have ads linked from GreenRonin, The Wargamer, and BayonetGames. I’d like to track other appearances, like people’s blogs/homepages, local game store sites, and other news sites.

    Thanks!

    Brant

  12. Then you might also want to post a call over at boardgamegeek.com. Its the largest site for board and (non-CCG) card gaming.

  14. Don’t forget Enworld (in case someone hasn’t posted it there already)

  15. Posted in the news feeds on ENWorld last week. Don’t know about forum activity over there.

    Brant

  17. Just an update:

    As of 30 seconds ago, we’re over 2300 responses!

    Thanks to everyone who’s participated and is helping to spread the word.
    Brant

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