The Dating Sim / VN global survey!

[LordShiranai]

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...

Well, I don't know who else you're directing at this survey to know if you're getting a biased sample or not. While I would not surprised to discover that otome games outrank bishoujo games amongst "Western" gamers even with a large sample size, a lot of the WIPs on this site seem to have the GxB tag on them.

[Aleema]

Well, I don't know who else you're directing at this survey to know if you're getting a biased sample or not. While I would not surprised to discover that otome games outrank bishoujo games amongst "Western" gamers even with a large sample size, a lot of the WIPs on this site seem to have the GxB tag on them.

That's an illusion. All of the GxB games in existence get bumped by a single interested person, bringing them all to the forefront. I assure you that they are dwarfed in number by the ones that are not marked GxB, if someone counted.

[jack_norton]

Yes I started posting it on several more forums/sites, on my twitter and so on. Since there's no time limit I think I might eventually reach 1000, especially when I'll put the link to my newsletter.

[Topagae]

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[LordShiranai]

I'm definitely interested in what the end results are, regardless, mainly out of pure curiosity. If I am to believe mainstream gaming blogs and magazines, VNs are considered a pretty niche genre. I always wonder what kind of market research has been done on them.

[jack_norton]

You're getting different sample groups of folk from every place.

Well, that was my idea. What benefit I get from getting samples from the same place? I want to know what everyone knows... beside those online survey aren't really accurate by sample groups. You can't know if people who reply are male, female, which age, what job they have, what is their salary, and so on
Plus being a niche thing (only people who KNOWS what VN/Dating Sim are will take it) it will be still quite targeted IMHO.

[Topagae]

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[Wintermoon]

Consider the following hypothetical situation. Forum A is a bishoujo game forum, so everyone from forum A prefers bishoujo games over otome games. Forum B is an otome game forum, so everybody from forum B prefers otome games over bishoujo games. 20 people from forum A vote for bishoujo games and 50 people from forum B vote for otome games. What does this tell you about the relative popularity of bishoujo games versus otome games?

Absolutely nothing!

All you know is that more people from forum B than from forum A took your survey. This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe forum B is more active than forum A. Maybe your reputation is better in forum B than in forum A. Maybe forum A had a lot of surveys posted recently so people are getting sick of them. Maybe your survey received a lot of criticism in forum B, continually bumping your thread and paradoxically increasing the popularity of your survey.

And this assumes you know which votes came from which forum. If you're not tracking that, you know even less.

Collecting meaningful statistics is hard.

[Topagae]

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[papillon]

http://xkcd.com/552/

(Not *strictly* following but I just like linking to that. )

[Topagae]

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[IceD]

You can't know if people who reply are male, female, which age, what job they have, what is their salary, and so on Plus being a niche thing (only people who KNOWS what VN/Dating Sim are will take it) it will be still quite targeted IMHO.

Well... You could ask a few questions regarding people first, such as average age (for eg. 10-12, 13-16, 17-21, 22-25, 26+), what jobs do they have, how much time do they spend beside the PC etc. If you won't require any important personal information from them, and none of remaining will be used to any means other than this survey, most people interested will fill it without no more doubts. That way, you could get a more accurate analysis on certain groups of players interested in visual novels and dating sims. This could prove really useful in the future, and while everything changes from time to time, we would have at least a vague idea to whom we could aim our games and we wouldn't have to do this blindly. VN's are still so niche, it would be great to invest a little more time and effort into a way to understand our surroundings; it's important for every developer, who want's to start a professional career and sell his/her works...

[jack_norton]

I understood Well, I honestly think that MOST surveys are totally irrelevant.
Following Wintermoon example, even if we could know FOR SURE that the TOTAL VN players in the world are 50,000 even if I get 5,000 replies, the result could still quite skewed (I remember several situation here in politics with the "exit polls" that often were completely wrong).

Still, some statistics MUST have some relevance!
While for most questions the difference percentage is small, there's a very interesting stat:
Of about 60 answers so far, 36 don't like voiceovers and 15 don't care. It means that almost nobody (so far) care about voicevoers, and if I can get to 1000 answers and the percentage is still this one for me could be relevant (I had already decided to give up on voices in games and this somewhat reassures me).

[Topagae]

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[DaFool]

Most male bishoujo game players are elitists that wouldn't be caught playing an OEL. Besides , their market is already cornered. Going strictly otome is a wise move.