Checking in, also, have some data!

This is an assurance that preliminary concepts for all of the ideas are in the works, and shall be up here shortly- if possible, two of them should be up by the end of this weekend! In any case, I pulled a report of the full data from the survey, in case anyone wants to use it. I may beautify it later if there's any demand.

Edit: Apparently, Blogger doesn't like that size of picture. Working on a workaround now.

 

Edit2: Here's the full image, or if you prefer, have a PDF (Significantly smaller file size).

The results are in!

Well, the survey's pretty much over. We've not had any more entries for quite a while, so we're making an executive decision to call it here, and use the results as they are. So, without any further ado, let's look at the results themselves!

1) In a typical week, how long do you spend playing video games?
The distribution of answers here put the 50:50 split at around 15 hours a week- or in other words, about half of the people who answered played more than 15 hours a week, and about half played less than that. I'll be bearing this in mind with regards to intended playtimes later on in the process (I'll talk about that at a later date).

2) What devices do you regularly game on? (Check all that apply)
The results of this question essentially speak for themselves. In third place, with approximately one third positive response was Android Mobile Device, in second, with around two fifths positive response, was the Xbox 360 (Something that's unlikely to be feasible to cater for, given technical requirements), but with an overwhelming majority, with only 2 negative responses, is PC. There is essentially no doubt of the platform from the responses here (Although there may well be some bias in the statistics due to the relatively small sample size)

3) What genres of video game do you enjoy?
The answers on this one surprised me. Action, Shooter, Sandbox, and Strategy (both realtime and turn-based) all came up equal in second place, however, RPG turned out on top by a small margin. This presents a bit of a quandary, for reasons I'll elaborate on in a later post. For now, suffice it to say that in spite of the response, I'm unlikely to do a full on RPG, although the game may end up having RPG elements, a popular concept in the market at the moment (See ANY RELEASE OF 2012).

4) What settings do you prefer in video games?
Two primary winners on this one, and not the ones I was expecting- though in retrospect, I probably should have seen it coming. High Fantasy and Futuristic Space Age came out on top, with honorable mention going to Historic, Steampunk, and Real World (Modern Times). Surprisingly, Magipunk, in spite of being a blend of Fantasy in general with steampunk, came out very low rated, as did all of the zombies options (less surprisingly, as the setting is a tad overdone at this point).

5) Do you generally play Indie or Triple A video games?
This was a poorly phrased question, and I'm not entirely sure what I hoped to achieve with it. I got almost unanimous answers of Both Equally. So yeah.

6) Do you generally enjoy single player or multiplayer games?
Another bad question here, getting a pretty much even distribution of Single Player, Multiplayer, Hybrid and Don't Care. So I didn't really learn anything useful from this. Ho hum.

7) How much are you generally willing to pay for an Indie video game?
Pretty good bell curve on this question (with the exception of a spike at "Yarr, Harr, Fiddle Dee Dee", an answer I fully expected to get a lot of support), centered around £5 to £7  (that's $8 to $11, for reference). So if the game is going to be sold as a single payment, that looks to be where to put it, pricewise. Or possibly even lower.

8) Do you purchase the Humble Bundles?
The majority answer here was Yes, which I'm taking to mean that people do generally purchase and play indie video games. This is good news, if nothing else.

9) Do you participate in Steam Greenlight?
The majority here said no, with second place being "Steam Greenwhat?", which tells me that steam greenlight might not be the best of ideas for trying to get the concept out there. So more research is needed in that respect.


So! With the results in, it's time to knuckle down and get some concepts out. I'm currently sitting on a High-Fantasy Action-Strategy, a pair of High Fantasy RPGs, a Steampunk/Spaceage RTS and a Space Age Shooter at the moment. Right now, the priority is getting these concepts sorted out, onto paper (or onto the blog) and getting them looked over to see if people would play them. Simple as that.

Here goes nothing...

Having taken in the results from sending out the survey to a few people I know, I reckon the survey is ready to go with a few modifications. Those modifications have been made- specifically, MMO and RPG have been split up (I decided not to split up WRPG and JRPG in the interest of not splitting hairs), questions about setting and singleplayer vs multiplayer being added, and switching to Kwiksurvey over surveymonkey in order that more than 100 responses can be collected- which I hope it will, given this one is being released onto the internet as a whole.

Speaking of which! Hi there, internet-as-a-whole! Hope you like my inane ramblings!

The new survey can be found here. Updates will be posted as they come in.

Preliminary Market Research

I've decided to go about the first stage of this task from two directions. The first direction I'm going to keep a secret for now, but my main direction for now is going to be the survey that follows:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7XMMWKR

This is my preliminary test survey. I'm going to send it out to some gamers I know, in order that I can get an idea of whether it is adequate as a survey, and, assuming it works out okay, I'll release it into the wild. I intend to use the data collected from this to see what genres people enjoy playing, and what they play them ON, so I have an idea whereabouts there may be a market, genre-wise.

I have essentially decided at this point that the software in question is going to be a video game, just for ease. However, everything else is still in flux, so watch this space!

(That said, if "sports", "platformer"  and "shooter" come high up on the list, Contact Sport is DEFINITELY back on the table)

Hold up a second...

Sorry about the radio silence, guys (And “guys” is now valid- I have definite confirmation on at least two readers now!). The reason for the lack of posting is partly lack of free time- doesn't bode well, I admit- but mostly due to a total change of direction in the project. Before somebody starts panicking- there was definitely some panic when I told the team- there is still almost certainly going to be a game made. However, you can probably go ahead and disregard those posts on concepts. The specific reasoning here is that I already know how to code, and, as has been proved already, I know how to structure a concept, and to an extent how to develop it. This would ordinarily be a good thing to see from an indie developer, however, the point of the project is not to do something you already know how to do- it's to learn.

Because of this, there is a new focus to the project, something I don't know about- marketing and psychology. More specifically, rather than focusing on making the game, I'm going to be focusing on the design process, finding a platform (both for playing the game on and for release), and working with the community in order to try and find a gap in the market. So, in other words, everything I was promising I was going to do, but now it's the focus, rather than peripheral. And with this change of focus comes a change in the first steps to be taking. As I said, ignore the concept ideas that are already back in the blog, and wait for upcoming surveys, and other fun things for you to oin in with, if you so wish! A preliminary survey is being drafted at the moment to be sent out to try and nail down what people use to play games, and what people want to play in general, to get a feel for things. You'll know when it comes out, but for now, know that things are going on, and things are still going to happen. They're just more vague than they were last week.

Phillammon out!