OSU/GAMA/Wargamer Study Results

Remember that survey I asked you all to take?

They have the first “sortie” of data back.

They haven’t gone indepth with the analysis yet (and they admitted it was flawed in a few ways) but what we do have back are some not so surprising results- perhaps surprising in how overwhelming they are.

93% of respondants were men! 90% white! Over 72% between the ages of 23 and 50!

Kinda disheartening, huh?

But here’s some more interesting statistic: 95% of respondants said they had modified the rules… and over 50% had made a new rule set from scratch! And 7.5% said they had sold their rules.

There was also a long list of gamer motivations. They’re very interesting to look at as well.

After that, they go into a list of factors that ended up NOT being statistically significant, and they were interesting to look at. You’d expect there to be a contingent of hardcore roleplayers who insist on staying in character at all times involved in this survey, right? Not so, says the results:

“Fantasy Role-Players: Pleasurable Immersion
That this factor would be non-significant seems odd, but are fantasy role-players really as “immersed” in the game as commonly thought? How often are players heavily in character throughout the game, as opposed to out-of-character discussions between players (rather than characters).”

There you go, if you’re a white guy between 23-50, you don’t give a crap about staying in character. You’re looking for an rpg that is fun. Rolemaster and GURPS take note, most people don’t care about what leg you’ve just been hit in. Both D&D and WoW know this!

The other one I really liked:

“Board Eurogamers: Three non-significant factors – Challenge of Playing, Exciting Alternative, Pleasurable Immersion
The non-significance of these factors seem to indicate that Eurogamers are playing to win, rather than for escapism or immersion. Since common features of Eurogames are a lack of elimination mechanic (typically, all of the players are still in the game at the of the game), and a multi-player environment, players are involved in trying to win throughout the game.”

People are trying to win in Eurogames. This is why kingmaker problems are bad bad bad- your players will get upset if the endgame is determined by petty politics between players and not their own plays (or even a dash of luck.)

Personally, as a game designer, someone in the games industry, and as a gamer, I’m very interested to see more results come out of this survey. I’ll post updates as they put more conclusions online.