Variety, Social Aspects More Important To Game Success Than Graphics, Plot

proslack writes "In a study presented at the Human-Computer Interaction conference in Cambridge, England, British researchers Beale and Bond found that plot and graphics are not critical to the success of video games; price and the inclusion of social aspects (e.g. multiplayer or chat) were found to be more important." An unfinished version of the paper (PDF) is available from the researchers' web site. They said, "One of the most unexpected findings was that gameplay was not featured as one of the most important categories to fulfill," though they acknowledge that variety and cohesion were measured separately from gameplay, which past studies have not done.

Comments

Makes sense

[davidphogan74]

In other news fun is more important to a games success than graphics, plot.

For certain markets...

[Myji Humoz]

The findings might be true for certain markets, but huge hits recently such as Bioshock and Mass Effect show pretty clearly that a good plot, solid setting, and good graphics are key to a blockbuster game. The study is based on reviews made by gamers, and thus tends to have a skewed sampling population. Certain segments of the market enjoy variety and social games. Other parts enjoy plot driven RPGs or gorgeous and engaging FPS games. Without doing an economic or financial analysis, judging what factors correlate most strongly to success is a rather large leap for this study.

Methodology is everything

[graft]

Well, I suppose this is marginally interesting, but poor methodology really makes this paper mean very little for me. For example, check out this brilliant passage:

These results did not reflect our expectations, as they put a lot more importance on gameplay and environment in relation to other categories than we had expected. We suspected the complexity of the categories was causing this,with some categories encompassing far more criteria than others, making them far more likely to be mentioned than others with relatively few criteria. In a rough attempt to overcome this, the count was divided by the number of criteria for each category.

In other words: "We didn't like the result we got, so we massaged the data until we got something we liked, and called that our method."

Re:Methodology is everything

[Quothz]

In other words: "We didn't like the result we got, so we massaged the data until we got something we liked, and called that our method."

You said just about all there is to be said. They changed their method to make the results match their hypothesis. They acknowledge poor methodology in their data collection, so even the original results are suspect. The only place this paper ought've been published is in a landfill. Beale and Bond should go back to 101-level courses, and the headline of this story should be "Don't Publish Research With Obvious Flaws".

Conclusion

[pi4]

The best selling video game of 2009 is............... facebook?

Re:Nahh

[KDR_11k]

"before multiplayer"? Weren't both Space War and Pong multiplayer-only?