HA7 - Task 2 - Applying Research Techniques

Task 2 – Applying Research Techniques

To find out statistics about Grand Theft Auto 5 I created a simple questionnaire that consisted of 10 questions. These helped me gather quick and factual information provided by people who different professions, age groups and demographics. 

The first question I asked was have you played GTA 5? With the options of a simple yes or no, it was easy for me to now find out how many people have or have not played the game. 

Answer Choices–	Responses–
– Yes	41.67% 5
– No	58.33% 7
Total	12

41.67% Said Yes and 58.33% said No so I instantly know more people have not played the game compared to ones who have. Information like this if used correctly can massively affect a product because making the right decisions after results gathered can help companies focus on the right demographic. For example

Surprisingly I got the most feedback from people under the age of 18. To me this shows that even though the title requires the player to be over the age of 18, most players that make up the GTA community are in fact under 18.

Relationship Status

As the stereotype goes, people who play games are single. My results say exactly that because 8/12 people said they were single, 2 in a relationship, 1 married and 1 widowed.
By having the results show the players' age, martial status and gender, I'm able understand the diversity in the players of Grand Theft Auto 5. I found the majority of players were under the required age of 18 to play the game. There are more males than females who play the game despite the fact there were more females than males who took the questionnaire and there are more single people playing the game than of other statuses. 

For qualitative research I asked  questions that required an answer, in other words these were open questions. I wanted to find out opinions that are not strictly facts for example what is someone’s favourite aspect of the gameplay.

 The answer to this will be different for everyone because someone may prefer the singleplayer aspect of the game and the story. Whereas another person may prefer the multiplayer for whatever reason. We can see how this applies to people in the research I conducted as one of the people I researched said they like the 'free roaming and exploring' of the game. Compared to this, another feedback says they like the races. We can see how opinions of people differ on the same product, the same game with the same gameplay. It comes down to an opinion and preference and for my qualitative research I decided to go for people’s opinions to show what qualitiative data is compared to my previously illustrated quantitative data.




By asking a question like this,  I not only ask people about the game but at the same time I get their opinion. If it was my own game I was surveying people about, with this question I would find out which character in my game (GTA 5 in this case) is most liked by the community. 

Most people favor the character Trevor and say its because 'he is very funny' and 'he is unpredictable and crazy'. With the feedback not only do I know what people's favorite character is but also why they like him/her or favor him. 

As a games developer despite the company name or the development reasons, feedback on the game is important. It is crucial to know whether the game is liked whether there are bugs and if the game is liked. Here is an example of one of the simplest questions a developer can ask players. 'How could the game improve' this simple question will let players say anything that they think will improve the game and because the question is not limited in any sense, the answers can be very broad.

As we can see, one of the answers in completely different to the other. A feedback says 'Release more missions for the players to do' meaning they want more campaign and the developers can then look at making DLC content depending on how much demand there is for it by the community. The next answer says 'Make collectibles easier to find' and this answer is completely different to the other because this player wants a certain game mechanic to be slightly tweaked compared to the other demand that requires more work and additional content for the game.