Research Techniques LO1

Dan Bell

Primary Research• Definition: Primary research is research you will do that is all your own work. This will include interviewing

people asking for their opinions on your idea, preferably this will be your target audience so for example I am aiming my game at 16-19 year olds therefore I would be asking people around that age for feedback. Primary research covers various methods, these include interviews, online surveys and questionnaires.

• Advantages. The advantages are that it is entirely your own work. It also works to your advantage because the feedback you receive can help you in what features to include in your game. I also know that the information I find will be completely correct and is tailored around what I need/would like in my game.

• Disadvantages. Its main disadvantage is the time it could take you to do it. It is also a disadvantage because it can be quite hard to find the right people for your surveys. Some people may not specify what they would or would not like to see in the game if they don’t think my question is specific enough.

• Example of use to gather research and impact on your game• A way of doing some primary research would be to make a questionnaire. It would be aimed at 16-19 year

olds. It could make a difference to my game because it could help me produce my game around what people actually want to see. For example if they wanted a female character option in Stop Mr. Franks I would include a female character.

Secondary Research• Definition. Secondary research is the research that somebody has already done for you. This is

using existing products such as magazines and the internet. Sometimes it is free and available for the world to use and other times someone may charge you for using it.

• Advantages. The main advantage is that you do not have to find things out for yourself as it is already done for you. Also there is a wide range of sources available. If a professional has done it, it could be a bigger sample than what you’re able to do yourself.

• Disadvantages. Some of the research can be quite difficult to find, it might also not be exactly what you were looking for and some of the information won’t necessarily be true. Sometimes people may charge you in order for you to use their work for your own benefit.

• Example of use to gather research and impact on your game. For Stop Mr. Franks I could use some existing products similar to my game to generate ideas for it. Somebody may have done some research into what sort of games 16-19 year olds like to play which will help you in producing your own game. I could play Contra as it is the closest game to my game. By playing this game I could work out how I could make my own game work but not make overly similar to Contra.

Quantitative Research• Definition. Is expressed as a quantity, this is research that is usually done in

numbers so you can make measurements. This could be used in the sale of a video game, box office figures, website hits and ratings.

• Advantages. This could work in your favour because it can give you an accurate summary of what people would like to see in your video game.

• Disadvantages. This may also not be so useful because it can take quite a long time to get a large number. It also may not specify exactly what people will want to see. Sometimes opinions are very necessary.

• Example of use to gather research and impact on your game. I could do an internet search for the price of similar games on the market and decide what price to make my game when it is released. For example I could compare the price of Contra to a Mario game and see how much I should charge for my game in comparison.

Qualitative Research• Definition. Is more in depth than quantitative so basically the answers will be a lot

more in depth so you would ask a question then want to know why they think that.

• Advantages. It can give you a wider range of ideas based around peoples in depth opinions. Any ideas people come up with could be something you use in your game.

• Disadvantages. If the question is a yes or no answer then although there will be a majority of one answer the reasons behind why they might that could be a lot different. A lot of people may put really stupid answers down. It could be confusing with all the various answers.

• Example of use to gather research and impact on your game. I could form a discussion group before I start production to see what people want in the game. They could also test out my ideas to see if they actually like them. If there were parts that they didn’t like then I could either take them out and replace them or find a way to improve them.

Audience Research• Definition. Goes into smaller numbers of individuals. You can get in depth research from

talking to people. You would be questioning people from your target audience, which would be people from a particular age group, psychographic, gender, social grade or ethnicity.

• Advantages. It is a smaller group people to ask therefore a lot easier to get a more biased answer so you know what people would like to see in your game.

• Disadvantages. You can’t get a wide range of answers. This is because you are narrowing it down to purely your target audience therefore there will not be as many people taking part.

• Example of use to gather research and impact on your game. I could ask my target audience what they think of my idea, what they think I could improve and would they actually play it or not. This would make me know more about my target audience than I may have known originally. This could give me ideas on how I could make my game better. For example if they liked the idea of 2D side scroll but not the idea of guns and violence then I could figure out a way of trying to make it work so that everyone likes it.

Market Research• Definition. Is the audience for your product and places you could possibly sell it.

• Advantages. It gives you a wide range of places you could possibly go to market your video game. You get to decide on where is the best place to advertise your product.

• Disadvantages. There can be a lot of competition so your product may not sell as well as you might have hoped. It may also be quite expensive to put your product on the market.

• Example of use to gather research and impact on your game for my game I could set up a page on social media and find out what the most popular city/town is in terms of followers and put a lot of copies up for sale in that town. I could also put it up for sale online. Say if my game was more popular in Middlesbrough than in Swindon I would try to get more copies on sale to people in the North than the South.

Production Research• Definition. Is researching what will go into your product and how you would make

it.

• Advantages. It can help you get towards the end of deciding which technologies to use so that you have the best product at the best price.

• Disadvantages. It can be quite expensive and you have to do a lot of research into how possible it would be to produce something. This is because you don’t have the expertise to do it yourself.

• Example of use to gather research and impact on your game. I could search for similar things from other games then decide how I could make them so that it is not too similar which could get me sued. For example a potential way of getting sued would be to either make my playable character either look exactly like Mario or make him look far too similar without the consent of Nintendo.

Research of a gameLO2/3

Football Manager

Game Outline

• Football manager is a football management simulation game which is of the sports strategy genre. The aim of the game is to take charge of a football club and guide them to success in a certain amount of seasons. It involves 117 different leagues from 51 different nations. You make all the key decisions about team selection and transfers. You can play this game on PC and tablet.

Sources used• http://www.footballmanager.com/content/football-manager-classic-2015

Audience

• Who is the audience? age, gender, psychographic etc.• How big is the audience (how many sales did it make)• Football Manager’s target audience would be males aged

between 16 and 55 who are of a working class. The game has sold at least 7 million copies.

• Garry Crawford says in the article “The cult of Champ Man: the culture and pleasures of Championship Manager/Football Manager gamers” from the journal Information, Communication & Society Volume 9, Issue 4, 2006 that the game is popular because of its intertextuality links with the real life game of football. This is because it gives people something to talk about in conversation or on social media.

Critical Response

• look up reviews/metacritic• Andy Corrigan from IGN UK was very positive towards FM in his review and said

“Football Manager, consisting of pages of dry stats and a game of football you never actually influence directly, must seem a real peculiarity for those outside looking in. Yet there’s a reason why year-on-year, football fanatics spend countless hours helplessly glued to it: its absorbing mix of micromanagement and tactical planning has a habit of making hours feel like minutes. With recent releases, developer Sports Interactive has shied away from wholesale changes but, with Football Manager 2015, they’ve delivered a refreshing aesthetic and systematic shake-up.”

• In a YouTube discussion from 7th October 2014 they said that it was an improvement on the previous game but there is still room for improvement for example the menu screen.

Sources used• http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/11/07/football-manager-2015-review• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFhOYK5NZoA

Production Process• how long did it/does it take to make, where is it made, how many people made it

etc• The game is produced by Sports Interactive• The original game was produced by 2 people (Paul and Oliver Collyer brothers)• In an interview by Edge Magazine Miles Jacobson – the studio manager said

“Because we were all in it together, we'd been discussing it for a while, so we knew that it was a possibility. And, well, people don't tend to leave SI. It sounds a bit silly, but there is a family here – of the 35 of us that were here when we were bought by Sega, 32 are still here. From the original eight of us, seven are still here. So we've worked together a long time.

• I would hope that people don't necessarily see it as a job. It's more like being in a band, and we have to keep the band together. I'm the frontman who doesn't write any of the songs, and the real talent is with the rest of the team. They like having their own private lives and not having to be on Twitter the whole time, so they leave all that other stuff to the lippy one who doesn't write the songs, but who tells everyone else what to do.”

Sources used http://www.footballmanager.com/info/football-manager-2015http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/how-football-manager-s-creator-is-taking-the-beautiful-game-online-1288991

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers_%28game_designers%29