The Dating Sim / VN global survey!

[jack_norton]

I made a small survey (only 10 questions) on this website:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PNFBLD9

it would be cool if you could take some time to answer it (and maybe report some mistakes in my english or suggest other questions/answers).
My goal would be to make the "ultimate survey" so players could let developers know exactly what they want to play. I am not sharing this yet since I think maybe first someone might have to make some suggestions. After some days I'll post it on facebook, twitter, and so on.

Edit: damn looks like I can't make graphs with that site results well I guess even a maxi-poll on this site would work then...

[IceD]

Filled up

I'd like to point out that while most of questions are OK, you should change how the survey works - as for me, it looks fatal and the current choices regarding some of the questions don't make much sense with regard to them. Maybe instead of "I like", "I love!" etc. etc. make a normal poll, when you have to make one, two or three choices max. instead of rating each darn choice in such a manner - some things you noted there can't be rated in a proper manner like that.

Other than this, you could ask more interesting questions, in eg. how much are people willing to pay for different works (normals, downloadable, online), would they like series or single games, would they have interest in additional merchandise and so on. Make it bigger - small polls tend not to become definite. With proper choices, this could become an interesting survey...

[Mirage]

There are plenty choices that fall under "don't care" or "no preference" rather than don't like or like. Should at least have that choice.

I am interested in seeing the result though

[jack_norton]

Yep as I said this is more likely a "mockup". It's not something I want to do to my specific public, and actually if there's anyone who can use this to make a better survey is absolutely welcome. I know sake-bento made some in her blog for example.
My goal would be to collect everyone's ideas about which questions to ask and then I would use all my PR power to spread it as much as possible to know what people think.

edit: about the multiple choice I guess "I don't like" can be considered the same as "I don't care".

[jack_norton]

Filled up

I'd like to point out that while most of questions are OK, you should change how the survey works - as for me, it looks fatal and the current choices regarding some of the questions don't make much sense with regard to them. Maybe instead of "I like", "I love!" etc. etc. make a normal poll, when you have to make one, two or three choices max. instead of rating each darn choice in such a manner - some things you noted there can't be rated in a proper manner like that.

Other than this, you could ask more interesting questions, in eg. how much are people willing to pay for different works (normals, downloadable, online), would they like series or single games, would they have interest in additional merchandise and so on. Make it bigger - small polls tend not to become definite. With proper choices, this could become an interesting survey...

Well I thought about simple multiple choice, but having some rating I believe is better. For example I can love adult manga art and like the cute art (but not love it). I think that way is better at least for some questions.
About your suggestions I think the result might be a bit skewed: pirates would vote for downloadble knowing that they can get the game free for example

[Jake]

about the multiple choice I guess "I don't like" can be considered the same as "I don't care".

I'd disagree - there's a lot of difference in meaning between the two - and it would probably affect my answers to such a survey; if there's questions I don't think I can answer truthfully, then I'll skip and not answer them at all... and if that means I can't submit my results, I'll just not submit my results.

If you're constructing a survey, you want to give users enough choices that nobody feels excluded, and if you only care about certain subsets of the answers then you can group the results yourself in your collected data. For example, a recent employee-satisfaction survey where I work gave everyone the opportunity to grade certain statements on a 1-5 scale; 1 was "absolutely disagree", 2 was "moderately disagree", then "ambivalent", "moderately agree" and "strongly agree". When they collated the answers, they took all the 1s and 2s as negative answers, the 3s as 'undecided' and the 4s and 5s as 'positive answers'. They didn't care about the difference between 'strongly' and 'moderately' disagree, but I guess they thought that if they only gave three options - agree/don't-know/disagree - then some people who only disagreed a little bit would choose the middle one and their results wouldn't be so useful.


(Also, 'Fine' doesn't mean the same thing in English, it's a false friend; you're probably better off with 'Finish' or the more literal translation of 'End'.)

[jack_norton]

Ah "Fine" is because the site automatically detected italian language, but didn't know it was setting also as the default survey language!!!
I think is possible to completely skip the questions: so rather than click "don't like", if for example you don't care about yaoi games you can not pick a choice.

Anyway, as I said if someone want to take this survey as starting point and improve it to make it more complete/detailed, is good to me

[Ren]

I have a problem with the art styles you picked up, to be honest: for you, an adult manga style is... Bleach???
For me that isn't the case at all, I'd describe an adult style with something like "Vagabond".
In my opinion, the art styles should be more generic, and could be divided in:

- cute and heavily stylised manga;
- stylised/manga (more detailed);
- semi-realistic stylised manga;
- American comics style (DC exisists too :P);
- cartoony, more childish style;

I discovered on my own that more than one choice is possible: I'd mention that before the first question, rather than at the end.

I'd still change "I don't like it" to "Not interested", and perhaps consider that some people may actively HATE a genre. As you have it now, you just go from uninterest to love.

I'd also say that games that are balanced aren't middle way in the difficulty scale, they're just well constructed (may start easy and get harder, for example, or may offer more than one difficulty level to choose from, so that it's possible to replay it again once one difficulty level has been mastered).

Regarding playing games online... it seems to me that just having two options is a bit harsh. I haven't a defined idea myself, since I've not tried until now, but I wouldn't like to say "Definitely not" just because of that.


I had to skip quite a few questions...

[LordShiranai]

I have a problem with the art styles you picked up, to be honest: for you, an adult manga style is... Bleach???

I think this may be due to cultural differences.

It is easy to see how a casual observer may interpret Bleach as being a more "mature" title. The characters are not drawn in a "cute" fashion, and there is a good amount of violence presented. In the US, at least, Bleach is marketed as being a Teenager / Young Adult series. In Japan, the target audience is younger, if memory serves correctly. I'm not sure how it is in Europe.

[jack_norton]

Ren: I picked Bleach as example... TBH I am not familiar with the recent manga/anime since I have no time anymore to watch them
I don't think your categories are complete too... for example cartoon doesn't always mean childish. But I don't want to be picky with every possible choice, just to get the general idea.
I might change don't like with "not interested" and then have only "like" and "don't like".
About difficulty that's probably a useless question I just realized it now, since difficulty is something so subjective that's hard to quantify!!! lol
For online games can add "haven't tried".

[Jake]

I think this may be due to cultural differences.

Interesting you suggest that, since Ren and Jack Norton come from the same country. :3

It is easy to see how a casual observer may interpret Bleach as being a more "mature" title. The characters are not drawn in a "cute" fashion, and there is a good amount of violence presented.

Sure it's aimed at an older audience than some manga, and the visual style mirrors this, but it's still obviously a less mature title than something like Vagabond. Bleach at a glance oozes Shonen-Jump-esque mid-teen-target-audience. It has the same kind of stereotypical-manga visuals that have caused most uninterested observers to dismiss all of manga as "big-eyes-small-mouth childish rubbish" and the like. One would hope that someone who makes games with manga-styled art would at least be aware that this statement isn't really true!


Maybe those are the only art styles Jack Norton is interested in having in his games, and that's fine - but again, the question seems to discount the mere existence of other forms of manga-styled art. And again, I wouldn't be able to answer "I love it" to any of those questions, but there's plenty of manga-styled stuff I do love.

I don't think your categories are complete too... for example cartoon doesn't always mean childish. But I don't want to be picky with every possible choice, just to get the general idea.

Heavily-stylised cute stuff is also 'cartoon', though, by a strict definition; Ren's final option specifies childish cartoons. And I think you're going to get a far better 'general idea' with her spread than you are with your own, which might just as well be labelled "generic manga", "generic western comics" and "disney"; compared to the spread of styles used in even mainstream manga, Sailor Moon and Bleach are pretty similar!

[jack_norton]

Ok I've updated it based on various suggestion and used Ren art style categorization since makes more sense. Also removed the one about game difficulty since was pointless and instead added a question about game series. Now looks almost like a serious survey I suppose I should reset it though since previous votes might be invalid... or maybe I'll wait a bit more to get more feedback and then repost it in a new thread once I have the "final build" of the survey!

[LordShiranai]

I think this may be due to cultural differences.

Interesting you suggest that, since Ren and Jack Norton come from the same country. :3

I was not aware of that fact. :D Probably because I'm a noob here.

It is easy to see how a casual observer may interpret Bleach as being a more "mature" title. The characters are not drawn in a "cute" fashion, and there is a good amount of violence presented.

Sure it's aimed at an older audience than some manga, and the visual style mirrors this, but it's still obviously a less mature title than something like Vagabond. Bleach at a glance oozes Shonen-Jump-esque mid-teen-target-audience. It has the same kind of stereotypical-manga visuals that have caused most uninterested observers to dismiss all of manga as "big-eyes-small-mouth childish rubbish" and the like. One would hope that someone who makes games with manga-styled art would at least be aware that this statement isn't really true!

I definitely agree with your sentiment, since Bleach is pretty much a standard shounen action title. It may deal with slightly more mature themes than other titles, but in the end it is all about having way too many characters who all inexplicably explain their attacks to each other for no discernible reason other than to drag the series out.

Either way, it looks like Jack refined the survey, which I agree will probably help him get more useful answers either way.

[jack_norton]

Some interesting stats so far. Almost nobody likes Yaoi, while otome and bishojo are almost on parity which surprises me, based on my sales data seems that the percentage of people that buys bishojo is much smaller. Maybe most males likes to play but they...manage to play the games for free using "alternative methods" problem is that by acting that way, they reduce the chances of future games of that kind (all my next games in production are otome).
Also is interesting that fantasy and sci-fi are almost on parity! I would have expected much higher percentage of fantasy. Seems also that people don't like minigames and prefer just to read the story.
Well, until there are at least 100 answers probably it's not much relevant...

[Topagae]

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