Hi!

We are two students studying video game development at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV), University of Stockholm, Sweden. We are currently writing our bachelor's thesis about choices in role-playing video games and as a part of this we are conducting a survey.

The survey is intended for people who play role-playing video games and consists of 5 general questions and 13 topic specific questions. It is estimated to take about 5-6 minutes to fill out. The results will hopefully give us an overview of your opinions about how choices are implemented in today's role-playing video games. This could in turn be used by developers to better meet your demands when making games. The survey is open until March 31st.

The survey can be reached here:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dHJMXzBvdldhYk9lckNOQ2MtVlZPR3c6MQ#gid=0

We hope that as many as possible will be able to fill out this survey. The more replies we accumulate the more weight our thesis will gain and developers will have more incentive to act on our conclusions.

Thank you for your participation,

Aleksandar Jankovic and Frank Wennerdahl

alek-jan(at)dsv.su.se
fran-wen(at)dsv.su.se

Are you accounting for the selection bias of presenting the study in a role-playing gaming forum in any way? I'll assume you're also putting forth this same survey to other forums, but it seems to me your data will be skewed by presenting the survey to a group of what is primarily RPG enthusiasts.

Done. Hope it helps.

Hello.

We are indeed posting this in several forums, some developer-specific and some general game oriented. Note that we ask respondents where they came across the survey. In this way we hope to identify trends bound to specific forums. We do aim mainly at players who play roleplaying games and I'll try to explain why.

We previously conducted a qualitative report where we identified three main aspects that affected how players view narrative choices in games. These aspects were the motivation of the player (or player type if you so will), the type of game and the implementation of the choice itself.

In our thesis we have chosen to focus how one of these aspects, mainly the implementation of the choices, affects how players view narrative choice. This means that we are not taking player motivation or type of game into consideration. The reason for us to aim our survey at players of roleplaying games is that we want input from people who play games where narrative choices are implemented. In our previous report, almost all examples of games the respondents gave where narrative choices was implemented was roleplaying games (Heavy Rain being the only exception). Thus, players of roleplaying games felt like a natural selection for our thesis.

I hope this answers your question. Thanks for showing interest!

Best regards,
Frank Wennerdahl

Responded. I'd love to see your thesis once its finished

Done :twirl:

Hope it helps.

Done.
The last question required a bit more thorough answer, though.

Done.

Succes with your thesis

5-6 minutes....



Then I spend quite some more time leaving comments explaining my answers.

Interesting survey though.

Done. Interesting questions, looked a lot better than most other gamer's researches. Hope my feedback will be of use to you

i would be glad to help

Good luck with your thesis!

Perhaps you could post it or an abridged version?

Hello everyone!

The initial interest for our survey has been really great, and we would like to thank you for the positive feedback!

We had originally planned to write our thesis in Swedish, but after seeing the amount of interest this topic has generated we are now considering writing it in English instead.

It only seems fair that the people who provides input should be able to take part of the results without learning a foreign language. This would also allow a much greater amount of developers and game researchers to take part of our work. We are discussing it still, but in the very least a summary of the results and conclusions will be posted here once our work is complete.

Thanks again,

Aleksandar and Frank

Have you considered r/gaming on Reddit? You'll have a much larger survey base.

Done.
Good survey, I am intereste in what results show.

Done. Hope it helps.
good luck with your thesis

Done. Good luck with your research!

Done. :toughninja:

Done! I even filled in every comment box quite extensively. Hope it helps.

done.

Interesting survey, really.

I don't know if you're still visiting the forum, but it would be nice if you publicized the results. I know I'm interested in seeing what people at Bioware Social consider C&C vs what people at BGSF consider C&C.

Also, it's too bad you didn't include the Obisidian forums, or sites dedicated to RPGs in general (not a specific company, and not just games in general). Still would like to see the results, though, and good luck.

Done. I may be the youngest one there!
Hope it helps friend

And done!

Ah, Alpha Protocol, why couldn't you get the regular gameplay right...

Ok i've done what you asked, you should post your results or your paper. I'm curious about what you have to right