Individual Writeup

What sort of information I think is most useful?: 

Qualitative/Quantitative

I think that Quantitate is more important to the gaming industry. I think this because if you have a big company that want to know if their game is good or not they aren't going to be wanting to sieve through loads of opinions made by people. They just want to see the hard data that is easy to analyse. You can get clear results from graph charts. Also the facts can be used in their favour when advertising the game. You can change the facts manipulate the facts to make it seem like more people enjoyed your game. For example if you had 30 people playing your game and the majority didn't like it you could just make it like 70% of people liked my game. Overall that looks good but if you do the maths you can see that it's actually not that great.

However, I would say that Qualitative data is good to use if you want to look a lot at the opinions that people have. Say for example you've made a beta version of a game and released it to play. Then you would want to look at Qualitative data so you can read in-depth about what people liked and didn't like and make changes accordingly.

Which form of Audience research was most valuable to you?:

Profiling/Focus Groups:

I thought that the focus groups were more valuable to my group. I think this because you can see clearly what their reactions to the game were (because we recorded them whilst playing it.) We asked them questions during the playthrough of the game. This helped us because we got to hear their answers and it was fresh in their mind while they were playing it. Also we got to see their sincere reactions. They couldn't exactly fake it. The Profiling wasn't that useful to my group because we didn't know 100% if the people that we researched online were actually the ones that the game was meant to target. Whereas seeing the people that fit out gamer profile play the game in real life and responding positively we knew for sure that it was definitely targeted at them.


Improvements

Focus Groups:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMmjjAZpFGs - Jack Lee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn-9LY-3yQc - Freddie Poole
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehLl1cbduCs - Aaron Taylor



Summary:

The majority of the participants in the focus group said they enjoyed playing Slender. When asked why they said because it gives them an adrenalin rush. This is a common theme amongst Horror Gamers. We know that the reason Horror games are so popular is because the players get scared when playing it and it's enjoyable to them because of the adrenaline rush given. The majority of the participants in the focus group also said that they graphics of the game didn't bother them. They felt neutral towards them. I can assume this is because they were focusing mainly on the game and not so much on the graphics. From this we can get that as long as a game is immersive enough, like it's really good at getting you immersed in the game (At the start of Slender it tells you to play in a dark room with headphones on so that you are immersed in the game) So as long as a game is good enough to get you to focus on it and only it with no distractions, the graphics become kind of obsolete. Obviously they do have to at least be good but they don't have to be HD movie quality for said players to enjoy the game. Two out of there people said Slender man did not scare them after a while. This was because they had become use to the game. We can gather from this that if a Horror game becomes too repetitive it loses some of it's scare element. The minority in the group who said they did get scared every time Slender popped up, said this because when asked if the game targets him personally, he said 'No I don't like Horror games' But when asked if the game targets him as a Psychographic (Age wise/Gender wise etc) He said yes. We can see from this that the game does target Males aged 15-25+ but you would have to at least have a slight liking for Horror games or just being scared in general.

Overall I would say that the focus group was a success and we learnt a lot from it and got a lot of information backed up by actual proof.

The negatives of the focus group were that we should of gotten more people to play the game maybe a girl just so we could back up the statement made that girls probably wouldn't like this game.

Also we could of asked them to give more detailed responses so that we could write more and have more information. Rather than just getting one word answers from them.

It took them a while to get into the game (to find a page and actually start the bit where Slenderman pops up) so there was a lot of waiting around and people could of gotten

The positives of this focus group are that we found out a lot of information from it and we have a better understanding of how this game targets the audience and evidence to back up our target profile claims.

The bit where Slenderman pops up when you get the page targets the gamer profile. We know this because we know that Horror games are mainly aimed at guys. The dark gloomy atmosphere doesn't really appeal to girls. Girls aren't seen as liking horror games. Out of all the guys we got to play the game when we asked them if they think this game targets them as an age range and gender they all said yes. We know that it targets them as an age range because older people wouldn't really see this as a fun game to play. From searching Youtube things like 'Playthrough of Slender' all of the videos are of men and around the age range that we think is the gamer profile. They all fit the game profile. The socioeconomic scale as well because know that these people who are doing the play throughs aren't exactly rich. We can tell that they are of middle class or lower class. This fits the profile. The game is for free and can be downloaded on a computer, this is how we know it targets the socio economic profile. It's easy and cheap to get a hold of. Most middle class people now have a computer or some access to the internet.

Link: http://www.joystiq.com/2014/02/21/pbs-game-show-asks-what-is-a-gamer/

Summary: We don't need to give labels to what a 'typical' gamer is. And that anyone who plays games is a typical gamer. Even if they aren't playing the typical type of games you would expect to see gamers play.

Which way of describing an audience is more useful in your opinion (demographic, psychographic or socio economic scale)? Why do you think this?

I think that describing the Audience as a demographic is more useful because it helps us get an overview of everything about the Audience. Rather than psychographics or socio-economic scale because this just looks at one aspect of the Audience. Whereas if you look at a demographic you are looking into age, gender, race, psychographics AND socio-economic scale. So you get more information than you would if you were to just look at the psychographics or socio-economic scale.

I think that focus groups are useful to the industry because you can use them to get feedback on how your game is and what you can do to make it better. It's real people giving real opinions so you know that it's basically straight from the 'horses mouth' and nothing has been changed. People can be biased but if you get your right target audience for the group then they are unlikely to be. Focus groups are also easy to conduct and definitely worth it for the amount of stuff you get from it. They can also be cheap as in you wouldn't have to pay the people anything if they definitely want to be there. But even if you would have to pay them it shouldn't be that much. You can record their reactions and see them in real time so you get a better understanding of what people think of your game.