f13.net

Hi all,

First of all, I tried to find a way to ask for permission from administrators if it is ok to post this topic, but somehow I could not. So, admins, please let me know if it is not ok to post this topic here.  

We are part of a game research team at Teachers College, Columbia University, NY. Currently, we are conducting a pilot study on reasons and effects of customization (which is broadly defined) in MMORPGs (especially in terms of enjoyment, engagement and motivation to play). For the pilot study, we are conducting the survey with DDO, WoW, Lotro, and CoX players. The study is approved by Institutional Review Board. This survey is conducted entirely for academic research purposes, and it is not affiliated with Turbine, NCSoft, or Blizzard. If you would like to fill out the survey please click the related link provided below. Also, there is more information and a consent form that you can read before you start to fill out the survey.

Dungeons and Dragons Online:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DDO
Lord of the Rings Online: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7MCWSTK
City of Heroes/Villains:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CoH_CoV
World of Warcraft: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WoW_Customization

Thanks very much for your time!

p.s. I read the forum rules, and I'm almost 100% sure this follows them, since I am not selling anything and I don't work for any corporation, or I am not using any offensive words. If you have any comments, feel free to post them here. I'll be checking back here regularly for a while.

Yea, but how do we know they're really your names?  8-)

I don't believe you did.


Impossible.

Yeah.. I have not thought of a way to prove that part yet.

Any issues with multiple responses from a single respondent who may have played one or more games on your list?

Choosing one to respond is the best. It might be the one you think the best or the most problematic. Up to you.. Thank you!

I really tried to email through my profile - as there is usually an option to send messages to admins. I also did read forum rules before I signed up for the forum, and it does not say you cannot ask for help for an academic research :)

There are rules somewhere? Who knew!

Do you need to be a current player, or have played them for a certain amount of time or...some other criteria?  I want to make sure I am eligible before I submit anything.

PM schild or me next time.

If you don't see your PM options click the little arrow below the top left logo.

You don't need to be a current player. If you remember your character's max level when you quit, and how long you played, what you liked/did not like about the game etc., it makes you eligible to answer the questions. Thank you!

Ok... I will do so. Thank you!

Edit by Trippy: Yeah, don't.

CoH/V survey, page 4, "Annoying other players". Is this that I'm interested to keep playing because I love annoying other players, or that annoying other players turn me off the game? I think it's the latter, but it isn't clear.

Page 5, second set of measures: scale would make more sense if anchored 'agree' and 'disagree'.

You forgot claws brutes.

Done (WoW) but my god - the survey was a grind in itself! I can see people not completing it because it's too long but it was interesting to see the direction you are taking with it.

I'd be interested in seeing the final product of your study :)

Interesting selection of mmo to survey.

I thought it was mob rule.

For the first question, your first guess is right, " I'm interested to keep playing because I love annoying other players" I will think of a way to make it more clear.

For the second, I will change it to make it Disagree 100% to Agree  100%. Thank you for your suggestion.

Thank you!  I will be happy to share the results with you all. Survey is only one part of a larger study which includes play sessions where we will be able to observe players and ask questions while playing etc. But, I will post the survey results once we have enough data to analyze. As you said, it is pretty long and, understandably, people drop out.

Perhaps they should have the survey make an audible "DING!" and show the subject gaining a level each page.  That's certain to keep MMO gamers moving forward.  

Such a great idea! I love it, really. I will look into if I can insert media in a survey.

I wish someone would study SWG on the emu

Or UO emu

Or EQ 1999 emu

THAT would be interesting, instead of "how does Jay Leno stack up against Conan OBrien?" grants

I'm thinking that I should have added the new sarcasm symbol to my last comment.  

I do understand your sarcasm without any symbol. I just commented that i actually like the idea.

Some notes:
- On page 1 of the CoH survey, you're missing the powerset question for the Tanker archetype (a Hero archetype). Unless you did that on purpose.

- Why are you asking if I'm going to quit WoW in the next two months? I didn't get how that fits in with the rest of the survey.

- When I reached p6 of the WoW survey, and saw that I was on the fourth consecutive page of being asked the same bank of questions with a slightly different lead-in, I quit in frustration. I'd stay out of the private sector, if I were you.

Not on purpose, I think I just missed it. I will add it. Thank you.
Each page is on different topic - more specifically on player motivations, their enjoyment and engagement.These are different although they may overlap. But features are left almost the same on purpose.  I am working on how to make it less work for participants. As this is pilot study,it is being revised based on participants' reactions and suggestions.
To find out relationships between player persistence of playing the game and the rest of the things we are asking.

Please, just a single quote and response. We can follow along, really.

And I did google the names given, my god you've spammed this survey across the entire intarweb it seems, "p.s. I read the forum rules, and I'm almost 100% sure this follows them" obviously without spending any time on said sites, or reading the rules. By simple search, this is the third iteration of your survey at least.

Ok.
Why would I change the p.s. quote if it is true for the forums. I do read the rules by the way. There are rules in every site before you register and some has additional regulations. The survey has changed through time. This is more focused than the previous ones and it is the pilot for the actual study which will turn into a thesis in a 1,5 years. 
Thank you!

Sarcasm noted, but this list is too good to not post

http://www.dorkclub.com/ding (click on the embedded flash lines or listen to them all)

New sarcasm symbol?  See, there's one of those forum rules in play again!

Anyone that does gets a ban (outside of the sarcasm thread).  We like you, so it would probably be a pretty short one.

Teenage suicide, don't do it.

I was just pointing out (to the new guy) that my comment was meant to be sarcastic and that (around here) we don't require labels to recognize such things (most of the time).  Apparently my sarcastic  comment about adding a sarcasm symbol was missed sarcasm.  

On topic: I tried to take this survey and failed to complete it.  I would bet my life that it was written by undergrads early in their academic careers.  

Thanks for clearing that up. I didn't understand at all what you were doing there.

 :awesome_for_real:

Sarcasm is fun!

How did survey guy survive the attack dogs?  I'm flabbergasted.

I'm genuinely impressed.  I don't get the feeling that he was over-medicated or anything either.  An almost super-human ability to erect an "I can't hear you being a self-important jackass because it doesn't serve my purpose" filter.  Most impressive.

Too bad you didn't see the edited post.

Survey 'girl' is actually pretty brave. When I changed my fields from math to instructional technology, nobody told me that I needed to deal with people so much in order to get anything done in this area (if you design a game, you need to get play testers. if you need to do a research, you need people to answer question. etc.) . I think it is just natural ability, although it is sometimes challenging in a second language.

Yeah, it is sometimes a challenge for me to catch English sarcasm, getting used to it though, thanks to many gamers.

There is no magic potion for creating surveys. It is one of the most challenging methods for research actually. You cannot clarify things for the survey taker because you are not there, you cannot make every questions required, because it is cruel... well. as always, you cannot satisfy everybody. But, i do appreciate your constructive criticism... 

See?  That's just fantastic.  While (imo) Nebu is generally one of the more thoughtful and helpful posters on this forum, this time, not so much.  Not only doesn't he complete the survey he follows it up by calling you a noob.... and yet you manage to come back with "I do appreciate your constructive criticism" - ideally motivating other posters to give you a break and take the survey.  Well done.

You're welcome to comment constructively on the survey.  Matter of fact, I encourage you to.  I don't have the time and should have just passed on this thread rather than commenting.  I do apologize.  

I will say that the survey needs a strong and experienced editing hand.  While I appreciate that you're interested in discovering many things, a good experiment (survey) will attempt to look at the issues individually.  The survey asks a lot of the subject in terms of time and repetition.   

I should have warned people on the actual posting that the survey is long. By the way, it is somewhat OK to not to complete the survey as it also says something about it to the researcher (although not very cheerful things). The reason it is that long is because I have to get my pilot study done and I don't have time to conduct separate surveys (on enjoyment, on motivation, and on engagement) which would be the best so that it would not take so much time of the participants.  After I analyze the surveys results, I need to design a lab study, find participants, which is more difficult than finding participant to surveys, and get it done, have results, write it down, and all has to be done by the end of May. Panicking even while i am tying down these.

Re-reading my post I was way more of a dick then I intended to be, sorry Nebu (only meant to be a little bit of a dick, for teh funny).

I took the CoX and WoW surveys.  They were long, but I didn't see anything specifically wrong with them.  That said, I don't/haven't ever had to create a survey so I don't know what I'm talking about.  I will say that I didn't fill out any of the parts that required typing because that was more effort than I was willing to expend (there! feedback!  :)  ).

Edit: I thought of something else.  Both surveys that I took assumed that I was currently playing those games.  I'm not, but I played them in the past.  I assumed that this was ok, but maybe it's not the demographic that you're looking for (yes, bad sentence, sorry).  If it is ok, the questions could be modified to "while you were playing the most, did you...".  If it's not ok, add a question "are you currently playing X", and use this yes/no to quickly include/exclude survey takers that are/aren't in the target demographic.

I know that filling out the open ended questions would require more time and effort, but there is usually a lot good and interesting thoughts on these writings as they don't restrict answers.

In terms of playing the games, I should have clarified it, you are right there. you don't have to be playing the games at the moment. So, i will try edit questions accordingly. Thank you! 

Nebu scores again!

Games are appropriate tools for learning and this is pretty well established in the literature.   I assume that you're trying to ascertain which elements in MMOs contain those features.  I'm fairly certain that this is established knowledge as well.  Take a deep look through both the educational and sociological literature related to MMO's.  The volume of papers in that arena seems to be growing rapidly.

I stick by my earlier suggestion in that you should select fewer measurements to make at a time.  Gamers will be happy to take your survey providing that it is to the point.  Unfortunately, I don't believe surveys of this type are possible without many obvious biases.  What audience are you looking to hear most from?  What do you hope to learn from that audience?  Do you need random sampling or are you interested in the veteran, jaded gamers such as you're likely to find here?  Choose your measurement criteria.  Choose your population type (or random).  Edit.   

I believe you'd also benefit from knowing a bit about the culture at the forums where you've been posting your survey.  Perhaps you could start with a local survey at your university first.  Then edit, fine tune, and develop a hypothesis for outcomes at other popular gaming sites.  It would be interesting to see what types of outcomes you get from places with radically different visitor types. 

All these years we lived in the dark. I guess its time to clean up and start new rule-following life.

Thank you for you suggestions Nebu. I will definitely consider them for my future studies.

Every survey has bias. Any researcher using survey methodology assumes that the participant is telling the truth. I am looking for random sampling as I am interested in demographics information and player choices. Doing surveys on the internet allows for random sampling although it is still biased towards participants who visit the forums - and the researcher must point this out on her/his paper/presentation.

In terms of game features that make games engaging, there are several pieces written by game developers, gamers and some by researchers. There is very very few empirical research exist. I like empirical research where i can point out numbers. And there is no research that I have found on the area of customization of different features. If anybody stumbles upon an academic paper on games and customization in MMOs (not written by us :) ) send me the link. I will be very very very happy.

Hah!  Squirrel Girl.

Its a damn FURRY! BURN HER!

nooooo.... that is just cruel :(

So, I don't know if you want our options outside of our survey answers, so I'll put this post in spoiler tags.

Hi Malakili,

Yes, I would love to see how people are thinking about customization. The way I am looking at customization is very broad.  very simply, I can say how players have control over their game. So, I am looking into individual features - from control in the game that what your character can do (abilities and skills) ,how she/he can do(animation), crafting, how your game interface look like etc. There might be different reasons for all these customizations or not. Patterns emerge as I get answers for the survey. I may find things that I have not thought of like the "the collective" customization you suggested here. I may quote you somewhere if it is ok for you. Thank you!

Sure.

Thank you Malakili! I will let you know when I do.

i will be collecting data for 10 more days then I will close the survey and start analyzing data. I will be happy to share with you guys whatever I find out from surveys.

cheers!

On the WoW survey, when you ask how much time we spend on WoW forums, do you mean the official forums or any WoW related forums?

Any forum. It does not matter if it is official or not. Probably for me, it is like 15-20 hours for a few weeks :P

Hi all,

Thank you so much for you help so far - both for filling out the survey and for giving me feedback on it. My research cannot happen without your help. I just wanted to announce that I will be collecting data until February 7th (including Feb 7th). I appreciate your help if you have 15 minutes or so to spare to fill out  the survey.  I define customization quite broadly, but I would like to hear how others think about customization in games....

Thanks again!

cheers,
Selen

Hi all,

I just wanted to let you know that I can still need responses to be able to run analysis :(  Especially for DDO, CoX and Lotro. If you know people who play any of these games, please feel free to forward them the link to this thread. Thank you so much for your help!