The survey and why it's bad but take it anyway

[Alexandria]

First of all, you should be aware that there is no privacy statement as part of this survey. There is no promise to keep your identity private. And even though they do not ask for your name or even your email address, rest assured that they can very easily trace your response back to your IP and, ultimately, you. That right there can and should give you pause. But, perhaps surprisingly, I am going to end this by telling you why I think you should take this survey (which is extremely long) anyway.

So the survey starts by asking your age, gender and marital status and if you have children. Okay, I get that they want to know who their main demographic is. It then goes on to ask what kinds of games you play and on what platforms and how often. Also the kinds of questions I’d expect though it seemed a bit odd to be asked about mobile and phone games in a survey purporting to be about CE whose only platforms are PC and console. But I guess they might want to know if it’s worth making a phone game with a Conan theme. So, alright. Oh and they really want to know how much TIME you spend playing games. And I get that too.

But now, with question #9 we start getting into some strange territory.

Note that it asks you to answer these questions about you IN RELATION TO VIDEO GAMES. But the question that goes: “I have enough positive and meaningful relationships” really feels a bit too personal and as if they are fishing for something here. Are they really asking if you find your relationships with other gamers positive and meaningful? Ditto to the questions: “Overall, how happy would you say you are?” And “How satisfied are you with your life?”

Or are they “really” asking if your life in general is positive and meaningful or if you’re the kind of person who has a terrible life and finds most of your positive experience via time spent on games? And, if so, why do they want to know that? The short answer is: Not for any reason that is actually beneficial to you.

Whole books can and have been written about the use of psychology to manipulate people into buying things via advertising. A HUGE portion of the R&D that goes into modern games is devoted to figuring out ways to manipulate players into playing longer and spending more money after their initial purchase of the game. The marketing director of SWTOR and, later, briefly, ESO has a psych degree and infamously tweeted along with a pic of several handcrafted art objects she had purchased while on vacation, “Apparently I’m good at making deals with poor people. Not sure if that’s a plus or minus!”
I would bet you money that her successors at those companies ALSO have psych degrees. Because that is what “marketing” is all about now.

They then go on to ask about the games that you play and why you play them. These questions are fairly innocuous and are about what I’d expect a gaming company to want to know for legitimate development reasons.

They also ask: 22. In the past 90 days, how much money have you spent on in-app purchases when you’ve played free-to-play games (e.g., using real money to purchase additional levels or features, coins, gems, etc.)? *****

Happily, my answer is ZERO. But I know a lot of people would answer differently and here is where we start getting into dangerous and creepy territory. Because they REALLY want to know at what points you are willing to make ridiculous impulse purchases and at what points FRUSTRATION will lead you to make in game purchases. Trust me, they are not asking these questions to look for ways to KEEP you from getting frustrated. They are asking to find out how to MONETIZE your frustration.

Indeed, the survey goes on to ask many pointed questions about your frustration levels with games and at what point you might be willing to buy items that will let you “save time” while playing to more quickly achieve your goals. In fact, I’ll just let the survey speak for itself here:

And if that doesn’t tell you where they are aiming it’s time to sit up and start paying attention. And if you take this survey answer everything that let’s you “agree” to spending money on free-to-play games in the negative.

This question is very telling of the psychological manipulation I’ve been speaking of:
“My time is too valuable to not spend money in a free to play game to progress faster “

If you can’t figure out that YOU are being gamed here you need to wake up and do some reading and start paying attention.

Finally, with question #28 they get down to the business of asking you things specifically about Conan and this is why I will encourage you to take the survey.

It even asks if you’re a Robert E Howard fan or a fan of the movies, comics, etc. Which is cool. And if you don’t answer that you’re a huge fan of Howard may Crom send you dooms! LOL

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. Funcom, you paid for this. Did you read it? Like, at all?

And question #55 is another zinger:
55. Do you think it would be worth the money if you could purchase items in the game to assist you in achieving this goal? *****
To which I hope you all respond with the option of: NOT AT ALL WORTH IT.

They also ask how strongly you agree with these two statements:
Based on my experience of the game so far, I anticipate I will be playing this game for a long time

I think I will be playing this game for a long time

These are the same question, with only one question between them. You paid for this Funcom. Though they do ask a lot of what is essentially the same question over and over from slightly different angles. So there’s a purpose to that as well. But the above was just really kind of lame.

From there the survey goes on to ask really pretty good questions about playstyles and the things you do and don’t enjoy and how much you do or do not enjoy them. And this is important for them to know. Surprisingly to me there were a lot of questions about role play! This was incredibly refreshing since typically roleplayers are ignored and under valued and yes, in my opinion, FC has a long history of this. So while I’m not sure why the sudden interest I’m pleased to see it is there and I’d very much encourage my fellow roleplayers to dig into this and especially answer the questions that give you the opportunity to write in your responses rather than just choosing from a limited selection of responses.

Question #140 has an “Other” option and says you must write it in…but doesn’t give you the ability to write in anything. You paid for this FC.

Overall the survey asks a lot of valuable questions and serves as a way to voice what matters to us as players to FC. But there’s also some serious creepiness associated with it. And FC would be wise to address that. My opinion of the company has definitely gone down for the reasons I bring up in this post. Let them know that the psych profiling and lack of privacy associated with this survey is NOT ACCEPTABLE and that we are holding them to a higher standard.

Funcom, I am happy to give you more money. Really I am. Give me better character creation and customization as a game update. Implement PIPPI as a game update. And pay the folks who put so much hard work into it! Optimize the game for more players and less lag!

Give me $10 DLCs with hairstyles, tattoos, scars and beards! Give me more building sets. And figure out how to let me have CURVED WALLS and DOMES! Let me put SNOW on my roofs! Give me $10 DLCs with new pet skins and idle animations and new colors and saddles for horses. Give me a yearly expansion like Isle of Siptah, which made me completely change my mind about paid maps. Expansions with new maps and new gameplay are exciting to players (if done right and man do I hope you’ve learned your lesson with IoS!) and important for your profits. Which I want you to have. I WANT this game to be successful.

So don’t turn totally creeper on us. Add a guarantee of privacy to this survey. Fix this survey and apologize for what you tried to do here. Keep the parts that are legitimate fact finding. Give us value for our money instead of trying to figure out how best to addict us. Don’t game your gamers. It’s gross.

And to my fellow gamers: Take the survey. Lie on the personal questions they have no business asking. Absolutely reject anything that even smells like pay to win, “time saving” or loot boxes or in-game purchases. Demand value for your money. Demand respect as a paying customer. Answer the legitimate questions and tell them what you really want and what you really think where you have the opportunity to do so. It’s worth the time and effort.

There’s another good post on this topic here: Immersyve Survey - #47 by Alexandria