Using the responses I have collected from this survey I will be able to use the information to aid how I will develop my game. The survey I conducted consisted of the following questions:
To help interpretting the data, I have created a demographic to better lay out the results:
Q1: What is your gender?
From general knowledge, I know the industry is very balanced regarding gender, and swings back and forth very close to 50/50 constantly. However, my survey is very male dominated – 70.83% male to 29.17% female. This could be due to the lack of responses. As the majority will have been answers from classmates or colleagues, it is to be expected as in both environments the vast majority of people are male.
Q2: What is your age?
Following a similar trend to the previous question, the results are very close to what I would expect, given who the respondents were. 62.5% of the respondents were aged 15 to 16, and 37.5% were aged 17 to 18. This shows how young people currently dominate the gaming scene, and how my games main focus should be on younger people.
Q3: Do you play games?
100% of the people surveyed play games. This is a big statistic as it shows how much reach the gaming industry has now. Almost everyone now plays games, even if they don’t consider themselves to. This is a big statistic and shows just how vast the market is.
Q4: How often do you play games?
Regarding playtime, 58.33% of people play games multiple times a day. In my opinion, this is no longer too surprising due to the amount of people with mobile smart phones. The average smartphone user has around 26 apps downloaded on their phone, a percentage of this being games. This means that a lot of games will be opened daily, making it understandable that a large number of people play game multiple times a day. 29.17% answered that they would play games once or twice a day, emphasising this point. The other 12.5% play games once or twice a month, or even less.
Q5: How long do you spend on games per session?
This question had a gradual increase regarding answers. Very few people (4.17%) spent under 10 minutes on a game in one session, and a massive 75% play over 1 hour on a game per session. This shows how important it is to have an addictive factor in my game, as the player expects to be able to play them for long periods of time.
Q6: Where do you play mobile games typically? (eg. On the toilet)
From the results collected, I can see that the majority of people play mobile games either on a mode of transport, before they go to sleep, or on the toilet. This means that my game will truly have to be mobile so it fits with the current trend with where people are playing mobile games. It needs to be able to allow the player to leave then pick up where they left off.
Q7: What genres do you like?
By quite a margin, most respondents prefer Action or Adventure games (62.5% and 50%), followed by Strategy (37.5%), then dipping down to MMO, Role-play, Simulation or other (25% or below). This is good as my game will be Action and Adventure, and may include some Strategy.
Q8: What is your opinion on single player games?
The responses for this question were very mixed. They varied from “boring at times” to “brilliant”. The general feedback I have pulled away from this is that they are good if they are made correctly with unique gameplay or a good storyline, so that is what I will set out to do.
Q9: On average, how much money do you spend on games every month?
The answers to this question were very varied, spanning across all but one category. The majority of respondents said they would spend £6-£10 on games monthly (20.83%). This was closely followed by Under £5, £11-£20 and £21-£30 (all 16.67%). The rest varied from not spending any money to over £60 being spent monthly, all sharing a similar percentage.
Q10: What art style do you prefer?
37.5% of the respondents said that they would prefer a “Realistic” style. The style I am looking to adopt, Pixel Art, only shared 8.33% of results. However, as this was only to see what the user prefered, I am going to stick with this style. The results were pretty evenly spread excluding realistic, which can still justify my decision.
Q11: How big of an influence does the storyline have on you?
For this question the most common answer by far was that story has a “major” influence when considering what game to play. This is great as I am aiming for my game to be story driven, so story will be a large factor when playing.
Q12: Do you like cut scenes in games?
65.38% of respondents do enjoy cut scenes in games, which puts my game idea in good-stead as the majority enjoy them. A better statistic to look at from this is that 84.62% either enjoy cut scenes or have no preference, only leaving a small amount of people (15.38%) disliking them.
Q13: Do you prefer games to have a twist at the end?
65.38% prefer twists in a game, and 34.62% have no preference. This means that 0% of the respondents wouldn’t prefer a twist in the game. As my game includes a twist, the information collected from this surveys completely supports the idea to do so.
Q14: Do you prefer a storyline to be linear (point A to B) or non-linear (open world – anywhere between point A and B)?
Unfortunately for me the majority of respondents (73.08%) prefered to have a non-linear game/storyline. I can still however justify my decision to make a linear game as it is for mobile, and being made to follow the storyline so close justifies this. The results to this question have made me consider adding bonus levels, or incentives like quests with rewards while playing.
Q15: What genres do you least like to play and why?
For this question the majority of answers I received were that “Simulators” are the least liked genre as they are “boring”, but a small minority of respondents did mention “FPS” or “MMO”. This is good as the genre for my game has not appeared, meaning that the genre may be liked for the most part.