[Survey] Your habits about modding - 5 minutes maximum

[Sca4ar]

Hello,

I am doing a thesis about modding and competitive advantage in the video game industry. Among other things for this research, I am interested in the habits of video game players about modding, which is why I am here.

I would really appreciate if you could take the time to take this survey. It won't take you more than 5 minutes.

Please note that all the data collected with this survey will strictly be for my research. I will only share the results with you once I have analyzed the data.

If you have questions, I would be glad to answer them.

Thank you so much for your help.

 

[iXenite]

Done. Good luck on your thesis.

Edited November 20, 2016 by DaddyDirection

[Banzai Babe]

Oh, participant observation, this is so exciting. The scientist and his primitive ojects of research. :dance:

 

I'm not sure about the relation of modding and competitive advantages, though, as you don't differentiate between single player games and online games. You can only use those mods required by a respective server, but this means that all the players on this particular server have to use the same mods. As such, this abrogates any possible advantage. Doing otherwise would imply the use of hacks in order to get an advantage over the other players. This is the only sort of competition I can imagine right now. If you don't want to deduce a logical relationship between modding and competition, though, it's alright, then I've simply misunderstood you there.

 

I'm not sure how flexible your survey is. If you have to stick to this one, then do it. If you're free to change it or add some additional questions, I would like to suggest a few ideas not covered by your survey yet. Even Malinowski spent some time among the primitives before he tricked them into telling him all their secrets, so try to do the same before running off with our sacred knowledge.

 

1.) Many gamers spend a lot of time modding their games, some of us even more time with mods than actually playing the games themselves. You ask about the average time a gamer plays in a week, but you don't ask about the time he/she uses for modding, setting up mods, troubleshooting and de- or reinstalling their games due to wrong usage of mods. In addition, your survey does not cover the time span modders have been using mods: you do not differentiate between beginners and modding old-timers. However, this is important for the vailidity of their respective statements. A gamer using mods or editors for perhaps twenty years has a different approach than some 12 years old kid who simply downloads a nude patch for Fallout 4 for the first time.

 

2.) Games like Fallout or TES traditionally come with a creation kit. Many other games also have their own editors. Even if players are no active modders, it does not mean that they have not installed these editors. Right now your survey does not cover this aspect. How many players install editors in addition to the vanilla games? How many players have published mods or have created some for their own use? The first time I used a scenario editor was back in the early 1990s with games like Siege. The first real editor that required me to learn some coding as well was the Duke Nukem 3D editor in the late 1990s. This one really got me hooked, so you see that each modder has a long history of modding, the latter even becoming more important than gaming in some cases.

 

3.) Modding at its best is a creative, interdependent process involving not only the mod creators but also their user base. Just take a look at the postings and you can see that in many cases users came up with ideas and improvements that really benefitted the respective mods. It's not some isolated nerds (at least some of us) who work in their ivory towers, neglecting any sort of criticism; modding can be a dialogic process. I've participated in some modding teams, and I can tell you that compiling and revising 80,000 lines of code, for example, is not something you do entirely on your own ("no modder is an island, entire of itself"). Right now your survey treats us all as mindless consumers downloading additional features and then wasting away our time as unproductive members of society: it does not cover the creative and social aspects of modding. Modding has to be seen as clearly distinct from gaming. I know a lot of hardcore gamers, and even more casual gamers, who don't use mods at all, simply because it's too complicated and time-consuming. For some of them modding is eponymous to cheating. Modding means a lot of work and dedication, which is not usually seen in those console kiddies who like to plug and play (Sartre would distinguish between playing a game and consuming a game, I suppose). I am not quite sure if you really understand that. I hope you do. Perhaps you are familiar with Max Gluckman's writing about naivete in scientific research, Wilbur Sander's thoughts on truthfulness in any academic work or even Sol Tax's concept of action anthropology: try to turn us into subjects, not objects.

 

Good luck! :thumbsup:

[Sca4ar]

Hello,

 

I think I should have explained it better. I'm talking about business competitive advantage, not an advantage you would get in a competitive game. It is what allows a company to outperform its competitors. If you think about story-driven RPGs, the low wages in Poland is an asset for CDProjekt for example.

I'm sorry for not explaining it. I thought it was "obvious" ( spoiler : it's not ! ) because I was into my topic ...

 

About your point 1), Both your advices are valid. The only issue I can find is that it would made the survey a bit more complex and the numbers of response would have dropped. It's not really an issue. I thought about asking the time spent on setting up mods, I removed the question and I don't remember why, should have documented more my thoughts ...

 

About your points 2) and 3), That's because this survey is focusing on video game players and not video game modders. I intend to speak with modders more in the following week to get qualitative data. (maybe you could be interested ?)

 

Thank you for your feedback.

[Oblivionaddicted]

Done. :happy:

[MalachiDelacot]

Your title threw me off for a minute because until about 15 months

ago, "modding" referred to the making of mods, not the act of adding

mods to a game. And, some of the long time mod makers still refer

to the making of mods that way.

Any the how, nice survey you have.

[Brandiibuck]

Done!

[randomdayi]

Done. Don't forget to share results with us. :D

[goranpaa]

Done. Good luck with your survey.

[DoctorKaizeld]

Done