FC's response to the survey

Note to players: Please see the final (and apparently official) response to the Immersyve survey here: Immersyve Survey - #166 by Ignasis
This was, without a doubt, the most tone deaf response I could have imagined being come out with. It’s also very clear my own initial post was not read. So let’s go through this.

Ignasis: We’ll proceed to close this thread as it has been taken out of context in more ways than one, not without a final series of clarifications.

No, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t taken out of context at all. It was clearly a marketing survey, not a “how can we make our game better?” survey.

Ignasis: The survey is optional and voluntary. Taking it is not forced or enforced, but it is appreciated for those of you who are willing to take it.

Not a single person claimed FC was holding a gun to their head to make them take the survey. The only people who used the expression “forced” was to explain that if they wanted to participate in the survey they were “forced” to answer a large number of questions they felt were personal, intrusive, and offensive. There is no “opt out” on any of the questions. And yes, that’s a problem. There absolutely should have been a “Prefer not to answer,” option on all the questions that did not directly pertain to the game itself. Yes, all those questions asking people about their mood and their satisfaction with their lives.

Likewise, there should have been an option to opt out for questions that did not actually pertain to people. One writer spoke of all the roleplaying questions that did NOT apply to them because they don’t actually play on roleplayng servers. So to continue to participate in the survey they were, indeed, “forced” to answer a whole host of questions that did not even pertain to them. There’s two obvious problems with this. The first is that a significant portion of respondents will simply just stop taking the survey at that point. So now you’ve lost a chunk of valuable data. The second is that those who DO go on and answer questions that do not actually pertain to them will skew the data on those questions. How is that helpful to either Funcom or their players? It’s not.

So who the heck signed off on this and did they even read it?

Ignasis: It is a product and customer satisfaction survey created and processed by Immersyve, a world-class leading company in this field. Their services have also been used by other gaming companies and organizations outside of gaming. You can check their website here: https://immersyve.com/

I, in fact, actually did go to their website. Which is where I found the following:

This did absolutely nothing to make me feel any better about this company or Funcom’s association with them. Not only that, but as “ a world-class leading company in this field” I was shocked at how poorly produced the survey was.

As I mentioned:
Question 50 through 54 they totally screwed up. They all read:
50. How interested are you in accomplishing Other - Write In (Required) ***? ********
And then they don’t give you the ability to write anything in. I would not expect a “world class” company that’s been in this biz for forty years to be so sloppy. And no one at FC caught it. There are actually a few more places where similar gaffes were made. That was just the most glaring one, being four questions in a row.

Ignasis: The questionnaire has been crafted by Immersyve, and the data that stems from these questions is collected and processed by Immersyve. The results will be used by us to better understand the pain points and motivations of our player and customer base.

I’m sure it will. I’m also very sure that the questions that ask how frustrated you have to be that you’ll reach a point where you’re willing to make in game purchases to either have an item that will allow you to more easily “complete your goals” or to “save time” are exactly what they look like: An attempt to gauge how willing players are to accept microtransactions, cash shops, etc. If it was REALLY about identifying “the pain points and motivations of our player and customer base” it would have addressed issues like lag and general performance, how balanced PVP is, the impact of thralls, the amount of players that are able to play on both official and private servers, how well armor and weapons values work and a whole host of other questions that actually pertain to your players’ experience of the game. Of course that would have required that the survey be crafted by a “world class” company that actually knows the first thing about your game. Or perhaps FC’s own participation in crafting the survey rather than just farming it out and failing to read the finished product before releasing it to your customers.

Ignasis: Once again, the survey is completely optional and voluntary. Those who don’t want to take or complete the survey are 100% free and in their right to not do so.

Again, not a single person claimed that they were being forced to take the survey. That you feel the need to say this twice shows your utter incomprehension of the objections people have had to this survey. You’re responding to a non-issue that no one raised.

Ignasis: And finally, to reiterate, thank you to those of you who have voluntarily agreed to take and complete the survey. It is still available, and you can find it in our blog.

Y ou’re welcome. In fact, I took it twice. Because you can you know. Not sure how that might skew your results but my surmise is that, since Immersyve can easily tell if a survey is coming from the same IP or machine, they’ll simply throw those out.

As to the issue of privacy, I notice you don’t touch that. There is no reassurance that our participation in the survey will NOT open us up to targeted advertising or that our information will NOT be sold to other third parties. There is no reassurance that our identifying information is NOT being collected by participation in this survey. So, my question is: IS IT?

To say that I, and many other players, are deeply disappointed in this response is a colossal understatement. Saying that other companies also engage in these practices and use Immersyve to do it does not excuse Funcom. Thus far Conan Exiles has pretty much been the last bastion of freedom from coercive salesmanship and psychological manipulation of its playerbase. I am incredibly sad to see that era come to an end.


UPDATE: 5/13/21

Alright because I am curious, try to be fair, and am also apparently machoistic, I have taken the survey for a THIRD time. So, for starters, and in GOOD news, there’s this:

So, yes, they have finally addressed the privacy concern. Apparently they are NOT collecting our IP addresses and selling them off. Hurray. Now you can all go take this endless thing and I STILL encourage you to do so.

Also, pretty much all of the errors I noted on my first run through have now been corrected. This actually now works/reads like a professional product. Also good news.

The personal questions about your happiness, etc are still there and still do not have opt outs. However, with the assurance that IPs are not being collected we can probably be more comfortable with answering them. I feel the reasons they ask these kinds of questions are still not legitimate and may even be nefarious but I am now less concerned than I was initially. And because I know someone will ask… Why do I consider the personal/psych eval questions to be potentially nefarious? For some of the reasons I’ve already talked about. Knowing the state of mind of players gives companies an edge in knowing what kind of psychological manipulation to employ against them in order to get players to act against their own self interest. And I maintain that this is unethical.

There are still all the questions that probe to see if you’ll get to a point where you’re willing to accept microtransactions and cash shops, etc. So be on guard for those and I hope you’ll join me in firmly rejecting all such monetization schemes. Be clear that what will get you to open your wallet is a quality product that performs as it should with new, high quality content released on a reasonable schedule. And the return of our beloved cultural DLCs! :slight_smile:

But, overall the survey has been improved and if you can force yourself to wade through it you probably should.

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Have I ever told you I love you, @Alexandria? Of course, you know this post will most likely result in you being banned, and the thread locked, perhaps I’ll screen it and save it to be able to repost it once they lock the thread.

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It wouldn’t be the first time dear. LOL But because I love this game and its community I’ll take that chance.

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I`m kind of curious how the Datatilsynet, the norwegian data-protection-authority and the GDPR would see this survey because there is clearly personal data being collected and there is now sign of who to contact in case when you got questions.

Also, lets be honest, having a company that works for Amazon and Disney, really doesnt makes me trust in their data protection. And the fact that they worked also for Activision and EA teils me, that Ignasis either has a very different thinking about “customer satisfaction” or he has been living under a rock way too long.

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I don’t think they’re collecting the type of personal data that would normally be protected where there are adequate protections, (i.e. not where I’m from, lol), but I would agree with the rest of your comments.

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I would like to thank Ignasis for the very clear and unambiguous response, it left no room for misinterpretation on Funcom’s stance to the matter.
Surely I would have hoped for a different answer, but if we are going to be honest for a hot take, it was the answer we had all expected.

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The problem is, normally you would have at least a disclaimer which teils you, who is collecting your data, how to contact them and even more, if they will be kept only for that single case and specific situation. Without that, right now you basically handing over your data to Immersyve and they can do with it whatever the f* they want. Compare it to other surveys they did? Sure. Filter it and cross-check it with other data-collections which allows them to get a more personal picture of you? Of course. Sell the whole collection to other companies and developers. You can bet, they will. Because thats their business. And even more, if you dont check and have cookies enabled it is rather easy for them to build a very very detailed profile of you.

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It’s normal commercial practice to outsource surveys like this to experts. That doesn’t make this particular dumpster fire of a survey any better.

We all have different levels of tolerance for invasive questions. I think that most of us who objected to the survey have a problem with the questions on personal happiness and meaningful relationships and such.

Were they “nasty”? I don’t know if that was the word I would use, but I feel like they do not belong in a survey you give customers you respect. I’m not sure if that makes my point any clearer, but that’s the best I can do for the moment. :man_shrugging:

Anyway, that was the biggest problem for me. The rest is just long, boring, repetitive, dry, and pretty out of touch with the game itself. That’s the problem with outsourcing surveys to experts: they don’t really know (or care about) your product.

I assume that’s the second objection some of us have: we were expecting a survey that would improve the game by giving the development team data they don’t have about how people play the game and what the common pain points are.

Instead, we got something that resembles the “Google translate game”, where you put a sentence or a paragraph into Google translator, then translate it from language A to B to C to D and then back to A, and laugh at what you got. First you have the “translation” from Funcom to Immersyve, then from Immersyve to players, then the player responses will be “translated” to Funcom.

TL;DR: The two major problems with the survey are invasive questions and mismatched expectations: players some way of giving feedback to the devs, but instead got something that looks like it was translated from English to Klingon to Quenya and then back to English.


Spot on. And that question never has a satisfactory answer. Unless you’re dealing with actual addictive chemicals :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Dude, no. Just don’t.

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I would suspect that I am one of the many who started the survey, and then backed out of it once questions started to be asked about my personal life. Trust me, I fully understand the reasons for those questions, and in certain markets those are completely valid and required questions. For something like a game, not so much. This survey should have been short, sweet and simple, focused around what keeps you playing, and what makes you want to quit playing. I’m glad I didn’t get so far into the survey to see the shoddy workmanship noted above, and if I were Ignasis or whomever else at FUncom signed off on the finished process, I’d be quite pissed over that. Really doesn’t speak well to a “world class” company, nor to the attention to detail FUncom should have been paying to a survey that, by their own words, is very important to the future of the game.

I know there are others who were fine with the survey, had no problems with providing the information requested, and that is perfectly fine. Different strokes for different folks, and all that good stuff. I would hope that FUncom takes the criticism of this survey not as a personal attack on them, and rather uses it to perhaps refine their efforts in figuring out what the community wants, (even though it’s been reiterated ad nauseum in these forums and countless other online media,…), and perhaps actually works towards addressing the most commonly voiced issues. As others have said, if they decide to use this information to push for pay to win features, or microtransactions in this or future games, I know I’ll drop it and not purchase any products that do have them.

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Just a regular reminder for everyone on this thread that Ignasis, Hugo, Dana, Mayra, Spynosaur_Nicole, AndyB, and anyone else I forgot to include are just the people whose job is to talk to us. They don’t make decisions about what to implement in the game, how to spend money, or any of that stuff. :slight_smile:

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Yup, totally agree, and that was one of my original criticisms when I first looked over the survey, wasn’t talking about it in here though, separate discord. But yes, you are completely correct, there is absolutely nothing indicating how the company would use your information once it was collected. Of course, FUncom would get the product they paid for, but Immersyve would undoubtedly retain that information for as long as they wish, and as you said sell it off as they could to any other companies who were looking for similar information. Seeing as there was no disclosure or indicators of protection before taking the survey, I would assume that you waive any rights to protection as you are willingly providing the information. Not a lawyer, so I may be factually incorrect there, but that’s how I understand it, at least.

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Okay, no more politics.

What is strange to me, is that, if you google for Immersyve, you will find, that they not only for the business, but also on the field of science. Which is kind of surprising, because like Alexandria pointed out, the survey does not look that professional at all, but the questions look more like a psychological study.

It looks like the trainee was in charge because everyone else at the company was in home-office. The fact, that some not completed questions are in that survey either shows, that no one was reading it or that their focus was wandering of at that point, which is, without doubt, a very bad sign, if you expect your players to go through all the text.

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The description in the news says, its asking about the players motivation, the pain points and the development, where its not clear if this means the development of Conan Exiles as a game or the one of Funcom as a company. But im rather sure, that if you ask a gamer, whats his biggest pain point in a game which he plays on a regular base, bugs are way ahead of “I think of how much money i can invest in microtansaction”.

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Most bugs have been fixed. The game is in a playable form that can give you thousands of hours of gameplay.
The survey is optional meant to get feedback on what the game could be in the future, and not to adress bugs. At least that’s what I gathered from taking it.
This topic is just a shameless bash on Funcom. If it wasn’t for the survey, I’m convinced it would’ve been any other reason, and we’d still be here. I’m amazed this rant got as much attention as it did.

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Good point. No, the survey itself does not claim this. It is my interpretation of what Funcom said about how they intend to use it. Others have already quoted the Funcom blog post, I’ll just add this quote here:

It’s entirely possible that many of us misinterpreted this to mean that the results will be used to improve the game itself. No one affiliated with Funcom has actually presented that specific claim, so we might have jumped the gun here.

Stay classy, dude. There’s a difference between unhinged conspiracy theories and being privacy-aware. I know different countries have different cultures. I won’t bash yours if you stop bashing mine :wink:

Again, privacy concerns are very valid in this age, so that’s one very good reason why this isn’t “just a shameless bash on Funcom”. Or at least, it didn’t start that way.

Of course, it’s almost inevitable that a topic like this will – and already did – turn into Funcom-bashing, along with a fair share of name-calling, ridiculing other people, and a bit of unnecessary real-world politics dragged into it for good measure.

I’m not. Problem is, people still haven’t learned that if a thread gets closed – for reasons that don’t have to do with flags and rude behavior – then it’s pointless to create another one.

Ignasis relayed the official response from Funcom. Everything in that reply makes Funcom’s stance on this clear, and so do things that are absent from that reply. We can keep making noise here, but it doesn’t serve any purpose other than to vent frustrations.

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Sometimes letting ones frustrations loose can help. If heard by the right person.

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The same guys who ask you about your “charcter” and give you “write-in required” choice without a write-in textbox :laughing:

Hey, is it okay if we turn this into an Immersyve-bashing thread? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Ouch. Right in the feels, dude. :confounded:

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All I see is Funcom trying to do something to better understand what we want besides the swinging tide of rheee back and forth. They appear to be damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

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Im very familiar with these types of surveys so nothing will surprise me. I wouldnt be shocked if it asked my preferred pronouns.

Halk

2m

raises pitchfork at the evil witches

Heyyyyy now! LOL

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