I'm doing a study on MMORPGs (mainly ESO) for uni!

sparxys

Hi all!
I wanted to ask some ESO players to answer a short survey I created for a university study.

The study is needed for my degree and all results are anonymous.

If anyone has 5 minutes to kill I would greatly appreciate your input and answers!

Here's the link and thanks in advance for anyone responding to the survey!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwXw4_atxuYYlAf1d-J3XPo56xXT5nd7ivVNuVaTnw7WbhMQ/viewform?usp=header

Barovia87

This was very cool - thank you for the opportunity to participate and help with your research! I'd be intrigued to see your results, if you're permitted &/or feel like sharing, come the time! Consider keeping us posted.

sparxys

Barovia87 wrote: »

This was very cool - thank you for the opportunity to participate and help with your research! I'd be intrigued to see your results, if you're permitted &/or feel like sharing, come the time! Consider keeping us posted.

Will try to keep people posted

But first I need to finish it and present it to my uni professors haha

JavaRen

Interesting direction to this, good luck!

Nestor

Submitted my answers

scrappy1342

done! good luck! ^.^

randconfig

Apologies for the trauma dumping, hope it helps lol.

cuddles_with_wroble

I hope you post your finding! Im really interested to see why everyone else is addicted xD

sparxys

thanks all for the answers!

getting close to 100 answers so i really appreciate everyone's submission ^^

DragonRacer

Very cool! Added my two cents.

ChaoticWings3

Put my input in to help with your study. Seems interesting.

amig186

Good luck with your thesis.

sparxys

Thank you so much for all the responses!
Hit over 100 answers and I hugely appreciate everyone who responded!

Nervani

Added my 2 cents as well Good luck with it my dude 😊

johnbonne

I've responded to your survey. Your questions gave me a lot of food for thought, and I hope I did them justice. Good luck with your study! Do let us know how it goes!

Maxitude

Interesting topic. I sent you my answers. I made a suggestion in the open-ended portion of the final COVID question. The suggestion is that you consider not pre-defining the player types when asking people but rather to use data-driven methods (segmentation techniques, e.g. K-means) to create your own player types. Your ability to do this would depend on the statistics you have taken to date so ask your professor about this. If you're able, this might provide you with more insights for your project. Hope the project is instructive and successful!

Syldras

What is the topic of the course about specifically? The questions whether third party tools are used sound more like part of a market survey than questions for, for example, sociology.

robwolf666

Done.

sparxys

Syldras wrote: »

What is the topic of the course about specifically? The questions whether third party tools are used sound more like part of a market survey than questions for, for example, sociology.

so the reason for the third party apps questions is to see if people feel like ingame communication tools are adequate
im interested to see how effective are mmos at fostering communities and at meeting people's socialization needs with the tools that they provide ingame

Desiato

sparxys wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

What is the topic of the course about specifically? The questions whether third party tools are used sound more like part of a market survey than questions for, for example, sociology.

so the reason for the third party apps questions is to see if people feel like ingame communication tools are adequate
im interested to see how effective are mmos at fostering communities and at meeting people's socialization needs with the tools that they provide ingame

From the perspective of someone who has been playing PC games online for more than 30 years, 3rd party communication tools have always been present.

Like in the days of the original Quake, we used IRC (irc.gamesnet.net represent!), ICQ and forums instead of Discord. Discord is pretty much an evolution of IRC which also eliminated the need for instant messengers, standalone voice chat, and forums.

There is no possible way ZOS could compete with Discord in terms of features. A better approach would be integration. Another game I play has started down this path.

You may also consider that ZOS has an extremely restrictive chat policy. Many experienced players simply will not casually chat in this game anymore because of it. It is possible for someone to be banned for things they say to a friend in a private conversation without anyone reporting it. A 3rd party tool is practically required.

Syldras

sparxys wrote: »

so the reason for the third party apps questions is to see if people feel like ingame communication tools are adequate
im interested to see how effective are mmos at fostering communities and at meeting people's socialization needs with the tools that they provide ingame

Thank you for your reply.

How do you define "community"? Without explanation people will have very different ideas of it. There might be people who play group dungeons with random other players regularly, but do not consider themselves to be part of this community, because they see that as helpful, but loose one-time interactions. Or some might generally not have any interest to consider themselves part of any group, regardless of whether they engage with it or not. And then there are people who write on the forum almost daily (or might go to the real-life tavern meetups), but in game, they're always playing solo - are those community members or not? And some other people might decide over their status of being or not being in a community over the fact whether they're a guild member or not. Some people might base their reply on emotional attachment to the game and other players, while others might go from a technical standpoint (like "I've been playing this game regularly for 5 years now, so naturally I'm a part of it's community", regardless of what they're doing in game or whether they interact with anyone or not).

Same thing with: "Do you engage with the community outside the game?" - How exactly that is understood, will also vary. Some people will think of real life (and will probably say "no" although they're in the forums), some of other TES forums or discords, some of the official forum. If people already think of the forum as "yes", then it would be suprising if you didn't get 100% "yes" on that question, having put your questionnaire in the forum, so non-forum users won't even see it (unless you've also distributed it anywhere else, but naturally, that would be ESO community places, no?).

Another thing is the question "How important is communication in MMORPGs?" - is that supposed to include "for you" or a general question? Because if it's meant generally, people might click what they think the average sentiment on the issue is, but not necessarily their own opinion. Same with "Do you or other members of the community feel the need to..." - if people think of the "or other members" part, you'd probably get a higher "yes" quote because almost everyone knows somebody who uses discord, for example.

And then there's the problem of subjective interpretations, of course. Does saying "no" to "In times of crisis (example COVID-19), did MMORPGs help with your need to socialize?" mean that the person had no need to socialize (or it's already fully met by talking to family or coworkers), or does it mean that the person finds online games as insufficient for that? Big difference. I would have to reply no, because ESO didn't "help" me in any way - since I had no interest in talking to anyone in first place. But if I clicked "no", you might interpret it as "the game does not provide tools good enough for player communication", which would be absolutly not what I meant. But without asking for "why"s, you don't get a clear picture.

I'm not criticizing you (if this was just about being negative, I wouldn't have taken the time to write a long and detailed reply); just saying that without clear wording, and by relying too much on yes/no questions but not asking for an explanation in most cases, the data you get will be very washy (which your professor might not be happy with, depending on how strict they are; I have an academic background and am familiar with scientific writing myself).

Madarc

In gaming forums, there are always different ways to conduct surveys for university studies.
An example of this are gaming forums such as this one, where you can very often see surveys on specific topics such as
"Advertising in computer and video games".
And that's exactly what this survey seems to me to be, rather than a study or survey in which you are looking for participants for your own research projects or surveys.
It would have been more convincing if the survey had been designed in a scientifically correct way. (and of course, if the terms of use of the forum had been adhered to). For example, where is the information about the responsible university and professor as well as the reference to the end of the survey with the date?

Syldras

Madarc wrote: »

In gaming forums, there are always different ways to conduct surveys for university studies.
An example of this are gaming forums such as this one, where you can very often see surveys on specific topics such as
"Advertising in computer and video games".
And that's exactly what this survey seems to me to be, rather than a study or survey in which you are looking for participants for your own research projects or surveys.
It would have been more convincing if the survey had been designed in a scientifically correct way. (and of course, if the terms of use of the forum had been adhered to). For example, where is the information about the responsible university and professor as well as the reference to the end of the survey with the date?

The main question I was asking myself was whether this is a market survey in disguise or really someone who does a study for uni (or maybe more likely: school) but still has to learn. What I'm missing in any way is transparency.

Madarc

Syldras wrote: »

What I'm missing in any way is transparency.

I actually always feel the same way when I see questionnaires/surveys designed like this in gaming forums.
Either way, I found your analysis, as well as your questioning of the points in the survey, very insightful.

frogthroat

Pixiepumpkin

frogthroat wrote: »

This. Very much this.

OP. Hope your study goes well and your report is well received.

LootAllTheStuff

Syldras wrote: »

Madarc wrote: »

In gaming forums, there are always different ways to conduct surveys for university studies.
An example of this are gaming forums such as this one, where you can very often see surveys on specific topics such as
"Advertising in computer and video games".
And that's exactly what this survey seems to me to be, rather than a study or survey in which you are looking for participants for your own research projects or surveys.
It would have been more convincing if the survey had been designed in a scientifically correct way. (and of course, if the terms of use of the forum had been adhered to). For example, where is the information about the responsible university and professor as well as the reference to the end of the survey with the date?

The main question I was asking myself was whether this is a market survey in disguise or really someone who does a study for uni (or maybe more likely: school) but still has to learn. What I'm missing in any way is transparency.

In my part of the world, such a survey would need a full disclosure statement covering how the data was being stored/disseminated, what would happen to the data once the study was complete, the right of participants to have their data removed from the study, and a link to the relevant Ethics Review Board and study number. Not including that (and having the ERB approval) could get the institution into trouble with funding agencies if they found out. Of course, it's equally common for profs setting research projects as part of a course to either not know this requirement or not think it really matters.

I didn't complete the survey because none of the options really fit how I play the games. Writing GOOD questionnaires that capture a full range or possibilities is really hard though. Most market surveys are worse than this example, and the ones you get after any customer service interaction (especially an on-line one) are absolutely terrible (and completely useless).

Syldras

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

In my part of the world, such a survey would need a full disclosure statement covering how the data was being stored/disseminated, what would happen to the data once the study was complete, the right of participants to have their data removed from the study, and a link to the relevant Ethics Review Board and study number. Not including that (and having the ERB approval) could get the institution into trouble with funding agencies if they found out. Of course, it's equally common for profs setting research projects as part of a course to either not know this requirement or not think it really matters.

Where I live, information about data processing and protection are required too - in both cases, no matter if the questionnaire is commercial or scientific. For scientific surveys, you'd of course have the name of the student and the university, too.

But shady companies do exist, as well as clueless students (both university and school). Knowing how some of my fellow students were, the line of thought "Let's just scribble down some questions and throw them into the forum of the game I play anyway" lies in the realm of what I deem possible. Is it scientific? No. Some realize that the moment they get their paper back and see the grade.

Stx

This is interesting because I am older now and a lot of my answers would have been VERY different 10-20 years ago when I first started or in my MMO “prime”

AusarViled

I can answer here since survey has no real room to reply openly. In our world, we all have to be "good" to others all the time, we have to smile, shake their hands, put on a false smile while behind all of that we just want to bite them on the neck for treating us poorly, for not valuating us, and for treating us like disposable garbage.

In a game, the rules of this world are diminished, there is no money, or privileges', you are not a certain height, weight, color, race, gender, economic status. Your success or failure is entirely based on the concept of equality of outcomes. As RNG is introduced it ruins the experience of games since it emulates the real world where some are lucky and others are not.

An ideal game, then empowers this, and communication really does go a long way. There is only so much you can power trip via a text chat prompt. This vacuum really allows you to sell the above, and lets you defuse power in a way you can not do in the real world. So the ideal game is one with strong verbal communication tools, and one that encourages skill at the cost of all rng.

Why a lot of people liked New World. The ability to curse out your opponent in live as you did pvp was amazing feature.