Audience Questionnaire Analysis
As part of my audience research, I decided to create some questionnaires to be sent out and responded to by my relevant audience, to allow me to have the information to create my audience profile, but also so I could improve my work and make it more suited to my audience.
These surveys were sent on the college Facebook group, as well as sent to my project group, and a separate discord server that I'm in, asking for them to be filled out appropriately.
Below, I will be going through the two different questionnaires I had created and sent out, and looking at what questions I asked, and then going through and analysing the results I have obtained.
Questionnaire 1 was aimed at my audience, meaning the responses I was hoping for would consist of those who are aged 7-12 (or at least close to that age).
Questionnaire 2, however, was aimed at parents, as many of the questions were more suited for the parents to answer.
Questionnaire 1:
To being with I wanted to be able to see the ages of the people who were responding to my questionnaire. This being so I could see the relevant responses, but also so I could see how the responses varied between ages.
I felt that knowing the gender of my respondents would be useful because I could then see if the projects concepts/theme would be more appealing to a male or female audience.
I involved a question about the religion of my audience, as depending on one's religion the contents of the game might need to be changed.
Question 5 asked about the hobbies and interests of my audience. This could be useful for my audience profile, but then also to understand my audience more (and maybe even give areas for improvement to our game).
Question 7 asked how my audience receives information. This question was implemented to allow me to see how my audience receives information, which could be useful for the marketing team when it comes to marketing our project/exhibition, as it would give them possible areas to advertise our game/exhibition.
The next questions began to move on to asking my audience about their interests in games, and how they feel about certain concepts that our project will revolve around/include. I thought that this would be necessary to make sure the audience actually liked the concept of our game.
I wanted to ask my audience whether they enjoy fantasy and sci-fi, as that was the project requirements.
Question 9 was asked with the intention of seeing what games my audience enjoy, to allow me to look into those if needed.
Then question 10 asked about characters that are liked by my audience, so I could look into these to get an idea of the characters that are enjoyed by my audience (if I had the time for additional character research).
Questions 11/12 asked how my audience feel about pirates and robots, as these are elements that would be included in the game.
Question 13 asked my audience whether they like adventure games, as this is what we are aiming to create.
Question 14/15 then asked what features my audience like and don't like in games, as depending on the answers our concept could be changed.
Then the final question asked my audience how they feel about happy endings, as I have two concepts for the project, either having a different type of ending.
Questions 11/12 asked how my audience feel about pirates and robots, as these are elements that would be included in the game.
Question 13 asked my audience whether they like adventure games, as this is what we are aiming to create.
Question 14/15 then asked what features my audience like and don't like in games, as depending on the answers our concept could be changed.
Then the final question asked my audience how they feel about happy endings, as I have two concepts for the project, either having a different type of ending. The result of this will help determine the concept I choose.
Areas to the questionnaire I could have done better
I feel as though the majority of the questions themselves were effective for the questionnaire, but there were a few in particular that I could have been better.
I feel as though I should have asked if certain areas/concepts for our game appealed to the audience. I attempted this with questions such as "Do you like robots?" and "Do you like pirates?", although having replies to this doesn't mean that I will necessarily know if the game would appeal to my audience. Looking at this now I could have taken questions like these a step further and asked how my audience feel about my robot/mechanical enemies, or the pirate ships warfare that we had planned for the game, to see if the concepts were effective.
Another one of the main questions I feel as though I should have improved was question 10 (asking about characters my audience enjoy). Although I felt as though this question was useful I had already carried out research into characters, and so I should have used examples of characters (probably the ones I had already researched) to see if the audience knew of/liked said characters. However, my aim of this question was to provide me with additional characters to look into if I was required to need more character research and if I had the remaining time.
A question I feel as though I should have asked is "Do you know of/like (existing game)". I could have then used this question to see if my audience like comparable products (games comparable to ours), which would have allowed me to further understand how my audience would feel about our game/game concept.
Questionnaire 2 Responses:
From my results, I can tell I didn't get as many relevant results as I would have liked. But I did receive a range of ages, most of which being in my target audience, or close to my target audience.
The majority of my respondents to the questionnaire were male. This means that the majority of my responses will be from a male audience, meaning most of the data I obtain will be suited to a male audience (which will probably end up making our game a more male audience focused game).
A number of respondents stated that they were unsure about their religion. However, half of the responses stated that they are Christian, meaning it might be a good idea to see what is acceptable within the game/if any changes are needed. However, as the only religion that was stated was Christian, I feel as though I can say that the concept of our game would still be acceptable for someone of this religion.
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From the results of this question, I have been able to see that the majority/reoccurring answers are sports and video games. However, most of the results won't be too beneficial in terms of creating the game, but it's still useful to know for my audience profile. But there were some useful areas.
Knowing that my audience like playing video games is a good start because if they didn't, this project would be a complete waste of time.
Question 6 gave me a range of answers. Some of the replies linked to the hobbies/interests that were mentioned in the previous question. These will once again be useful for my audience profile but will be less useful in terms of my own work.
From question 7 I have found that the main source of information is through friends/family. But some do use social media (although being underage), meaning that online marketing may not be a bad idea for my group's marketing team.
All of the respondents have stated that they enjoy the themes of fantasy and sci-fi, which is good as it means the general themes of our game should be enjoyed by our audience. This question alone has helped me determine that the game will be relevant to our audience (although I asked some further questions to make sure).
From question 9 I was able to see some of the game that my audience enjoy. The games that my audience enjoy cover a wide range of different types of games. I have already looked into some as they are PEGI 7, but this gives me some more games to look into to further understand the aspects of games that my audience enjoy if I find the time to carry out further research.
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However, there were some additional responses that are useful, even without out looking further into the games. The first response states how they like the game due to it being tricky and challenging, which is useful to know as we aim for a dynamic of the game to be puzzle focused.
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Additionally, response 5 mentioned how they like the story of the game and how there's 'great combat'. Because of this, I can tell that these are two areas that my audience will also look for in games, and so these are areas of our game that should be looked into developing throughout the project.
Question 10 allowed me to see a number of characters that are liked by my audience.
Some are protagonists from superhero movies, others are from games, and others from other media (tv shows).
I have looked into some of these characters, and some other characters, but now I
know of more characters that are liked by my audience, I can look back to these results and look into these characters if I am required to/if I have the time.
50% of my respondents stated they like pirates and this I know that one of the main themes of the game will be liked by my audience.
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However, the other 50% stated that pirates do not appeal to them, which might mean that
our concept could still be fine, as the protagonist isn't a pirate, but is carrying out activities that could be associated with a pirate (such as following a map and sailing the sea).
75% stated that they like robots, which is good as the enemies are robotic/mechanical, meaning they should be suitable for our audience. There was 25% of the respondents that stated that they dislike robots. This could still be enjoyable for the audience who dislike robots, however, as they'd be fighting against the robots/mechanical enemies.
All of the respondents stated that they like games that allow adventure. This is good because our game is meant to be action-adventure, and also as we plan to make the levels somewhat open world with the levels being able to be ventured around, and all respondents stating that they like adventure means that the game concepts are suitable to our project.
The responses from question 14 have allowed me to see some of the different features in games that appeal to my audience. Some of these features are those which my group and I hope to include in our game, such as challenges (in the form of finding the puzzles and solving them), quests (which would ideally be
in the full game if we were to make it), combat mechanics, and even 'cool battles and fights'.
The responses to question 15 have allowed me to see some of the features that are disliked by my audience.
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Ideally, we'd like to avoid most of these areas where possible, but some of these areas might be apparent in the game and therefore be a problem.
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The levels themselves will
involve the player walking around the islands in search of the ruins/puzzle. "Walking everywhere" was an area that was said to be disliked by a member of my audience, but I think this might be avoided in our game as the area in-between the different levels is navigated via sailing a ship (and so there's no walking in these sections).
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Responses two and eight state that "When I lose" and "Losing my progress" are additional areas that are disliked by my audience. In our game there will be areas where you could lose your progress, however, the impact of this could be lowered by the use of checkpoints (this being something to talk to the level designers about).
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Response four states that crafting is an area that they dislike. This is something that we have concepts for (if we were to make the full game). However, the reason this respondent dislikes crafting is due to recipes being confusing (so probably like the older versions of Minecraft where you had to remember all of the crafting recipes). However, for our game, we could get around this by making the crafting system more like an exchange system (Like Dauntless where you exchange materials for armour/weapons). This would still be a type of crafting, but would also get around the problem of having to remember the recipes.
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The third response states 'scary creatures'. Our game does have enemies that could be considered scary to some, mainly the shark (although this won't be in the demo-like game that we're making for the exhibition, but would be in the full game). However, the enemies shouldn't be too scary, as the creatures they're based on are sea creatures, so the audience would have likely seen them before.
Response six states that guns are disliked. Our concept includes cannons, which is pretty much guns. However, while on the island the main combat is with bladed weapons (well, handheld weapons), and so this disliking towards guns will hopefully be avoided.
From the responses of question 16, I have been able to decide on my story concept for the game.
Now I know that all of the respondents prefer happy endings, I know that using my concept with the more depressing ending would likely be a bad idea. And so I decided to use my concept with the happy ending, where the protagonist finds his father.
The questions of Questionnaire 2 are shown below. The questions listed on this questionnaire were primarily created with the intention of being able to fill out the audience profile.
Questionnaire 2 Responses:
From the responses, I have been able to see that my audience consists of those with a range of personalities. The only reoccurring response was 'quiet'. However, there are still a range of other personality traits, but either way, this will allow me to develop my audience profile.
The most common answer is that my audience find valuable to them/important is friends/family. This could actually be an element that could be implemented into games (in the form on online/ local multiplayer to allow the game to be played with others), although I don't think this would work too well for our game.
This question was added in the questionnaire mainly for the marketing team, so we could see how much our audience have to spend on games. From the responses, I can tell that my audience either receive no income/pocket money or receive £0-£10.
The game we were aiming to create is comparable to a
game demo, so it wouldn't have a cost anyway, but it would still be interesting to plan for.
The main motivation of my audience, that I can tell from these responses, is rewards.
This is something that could be implemented into the game, as a concept was for there to be side quests. However, the motivation for completing these quests could be in the
form of a reward, such as a new weapon or item.
Most of the other motivations are areas that couldn't really be shown/used within the game, but once again, they are useful for understanding my audience, and will also be useful for my audience profile.
From the responses of this question, I have been able to see that the main concerns of my audience are to do with their lives. The most common answers were bullying and progression through school.
Our game won't include anything like this, so hopefully the game will be more enjoyable, and not remind the
players of problems that they're concerned about in real life.
This was a question that was required for the audience profile. From the results, most of the families were married or single parent families, with multiple children. Also, I knew that my audience would live with a family, as they are still children.
The life style of my audience is a mix of both passive and active. This means there are people in my audience who play games (although just because someone has an active lifestyle, it doesn't mean they wouldn't play games).
Evaluation of Questionnaires
I am somewhat happy with the questionnaires and the responses obtained, as each question and the respective answers will help me in some way, shape, or form.
After receiving responses for these two surveys I have been able to fill out my audience profile, as there were a number of sections to the profile that required information on my audience that I didn't already know, but with my results, I was at least able to fill these sections out.
However, I only received 8 responses on the first survey, with two of the responses being five or more years older than my audience. And then the second survey only received 7 responses.
I expected to receive more responses than this, as the first questionnaire was sent the college courses Facebook group page, as well as to my group (in our discord server), and also to a separate discord server. And then the second questionnaire was sent to both discord servers.
Even though I didn't expect to get all 49 members of the Facebook group to respond, I expected to have more than 1 response (which is all I had after two days of waiting). This was slightly annoying, as I knew there were people with relevant connections, but had not spent the time to help out. Because of this, I was required to continue to send my questionnaires out, in hopes of obtaining enough results in time for the audience profile deadline.
This being why I was required to send the questionnaire to my group, and to some out of college friends to share with their family.
Thankfully, I was able to obtain a few responses because of my later used methods.
Although there weren't many results, there was still just about enough to be able to have a better understanding of my audience, but I still would have preferred to have had more responses.
If I'm to carry out any more questionnaires, I will need to try and find more places to send them out, with an audience that will actually answer them. Additionally, it might be a good idea to make the questions a little more specific, while also wording the questions in a more simple way. This being so the information I obtain will be more detailed and relevant.
However, all in all, I have learned more about my audience than I knew before carrying out my questionnaire, so I therefore believe that they were at least somewhat successful.