Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #333 - Market Research

Episode Date: May 20, 2016

Mark talks about the use of market research to understand what players want. ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm pulling up a driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, a couple things. First off, it is my daughter's spring vacation, so I'm not driving her to school, so we'll have a normal back-to-old-school commute. Also, today's topic was suggested by someone on my blog. So someone said, could you please do a podcast all about market research? It's something I talk about a lot. I talk about us responding to it, but I don't talk that much about us doing it. So let me start with a caveat of there's obviously some proprietary information I cannot share. So I'm going to talk in broad strokes today. I'm not going
Starting point is 00:00:40 to give all the details away, but I will talk enough to sort of explain some basics of how we do market research and how we use market research and why we do market research. In fact, let's start with the why. Sometimes I talk about market research and people get mad at me. They're like, why do you listen to market research? And I'm like, it's you. We're listening to you. The reason we do market research is part of our job is to make a game that the players love. Well, how do we do that? How do we make something the players love? Well, ask the players. One of the things that's very interesting is we'll do things, we'll try things, and then we put it out there.
Starting point is 00:01:19 And we want to get a sense of what the audience thinks. Now, note, market research is not the only tool available to us. We do, I'm on social media, and not only do I obviously have people come to me, I search out people and search out information. All of R&D does that. We have a lot of interpersonal communications. You know, people meet us and we talk to them.
Starting point is 00:01:43 There's sales information. There's market, there's magic online information. There's tournament, there's organized play information. There's lots and lots of data. So market research is not the only data that we pay attention to, but it is a piece of data and an important piece of data we pay attention to. And the reason, like I said, it's so important is it is, now given, I mean I'll give the caveat of no matter where we get the information from, there's some bias inherent in the way we get it. And so, as I explained some of our ways of getting information, obviously we recognize that we're not always recognizing the entire magic
Starting point is 00:02:20 audience based on where we get the information. That was as a caveat. In general, look, this is a way to hear from all of you what you think so that we can respond not just to our gut, but to actual data of what the audience likes and dislikes. Now, that said, just because something might be unpopular or something is popular doesn't inherently mean that we should or should not be using it again. It is a piece of information. For example, if we come up with something that's very valuable, that works well, that's easy to develop and easy to design around and does really good things for design,
Starting point is 00:03:00 you know what? Maybe we're more likely to use it even if the audience's response was lukewarm. On the flip side, the audience could love something but it causes all sorts of problems for us. You know, the audience loving it doesn't necessarily mean we do it again, because there's other problems that can be caused we have to deal with. But as a general rule of thumb, we like to do things players like, we tend to avoid doing things players dislike, that that is important. And when I, when I use market research, a lot of what I'm trying to say is a lot of our decisions of whether we do things or whether we don't do things is whether we think the players will like it or not like it. We are encouraged to do things we think you guys will like. We are discouraged
Starting point is 00:03:34 to do things we think you guys will not like. Okay, so let's actually get to the nitty-gritty of market research. So what is market research? So let's define it. Market research is when we question some subset of you asking for your opinion on magic. Usually the most, okay, so the most common market research we do comes off our website. So if you ever visit our website, every once in a while it will say to you, would you like to take a poll? And you can say yes or you can say no. If this happens, I would suggest saying yes because this is a way for you to directly impact what we do. We very much care about market research and so it's an opportunity to have your opinion heard. Note, I'm not saying you can't write to me through social media. I'm not saying you can't have your
Starting point is 00:04:24 voice heard in other ways, but market research is. I'm not saying you can't have your voice heard in other ways. But market research is a nice, good, strong way to have your voice heard. So anyway, you go online. It says, would you like to take a poll? You say yes. There are different kinds of market research we do. So I'm going to describe the most popular one we do. But be aware, you could get...
Starting point is 00:04:43 We have you do market research, there's a couple different types of market research, but the biggest one we do is a set, is we do market research on a set. And we tend to do it twice, two times. Once when the set first comes out, and once, I don't know, like six weeks, six to eight weeks later.
Starting point is 00:05:00 So the idea we want is, initially, what did you think? And then after you've had time to process it, what did you think? Because we're both interested in initial impressions and we're interested in sort of longer-term impressions. Those are both interesting to us. Because the thing is, we want you both excited when it's time to buy the product and we want you happy after you've played with it for a while.
Starting point is 00:05:21 So that's the two things we're testing, is kind of initial impressions, which is important because we want you excited. Like one of the things that helps get people by the product is having them excited by things and wanting things. But also we're not just interested in the first impressions. We also want to know, okay, I played with it for a while. What
Starting point is 00:05:40 do I think of it? Was it enjoyable? Is this something I would want to do again? And we're aware, we always look in the data of each against each other. Here's the initial data, here's the follow-up data. The most common thing you'll do on our website is you will look through actual cards and we will ask you questions. I mean, the survey will ask you some general questions about the set. Well, the survey will ask you some questions about you and then we'll ask you some questions about the set. Well, the survey will ask you some questions about you, and then it will ask you some questions about the set. The reason it's so important to get questions from you is,
Starting point is 00:06:10 when you do market research, not only do you want to get information at large, but you want to figure out the kind of player you are so that we can look at information sliced up. You know, is this mechanic more interesting to people who have been playing a long time? Is it more interesting to people who are younger? Is it more interesting to, you know, we can break down all sorts of different demographics
Starting point is 00:06:32 to look at, oh, you know, what demographics like what kind of thing. We want to make sure there's a balance and that all of our audience enjoys something. We'll often ask you how you play Magic, how often you buy Magic, where you play Magic, you know. buy magic, where you play magic. You know, we'll do a lot of questions to try to get a capture of your behavior.
Starting point is 00:06:48 And then we'll ask you about the set. We'll say, what do you think of the set? Um, usually what we do is we first ask some larger questions and then, um, we'll often show you cards and ask you questions about individual cards, have you rank cards. Um, depending on how, on your study, because some of them are lengthy, some of them can last quite a while, some of them are shorter, we try to mix up
Starting point is 00:07:11 how long, because one of the problems is the longer you ask somebody to talk, the less people are willing to take your survey. And so, we have some longer surveys, but we have a lot of shorter surveys. And once again, the key with our research is we're trying to get a sense of not, I mean, we want to know what you, the individual, think, but we also want to know what you,
Starting point is 00:07:34 the magic plane group, thinks. And micro-research does a good job. So, for example, we will always ask about mechanics. Usually that means we will ask about the keyboard mechanics and ability words, and then we will ask about things we consider to be high-profile things. Like in Innistrad, I'm pretty sure we asked about curses, although those are neither technically a keyword or an ability word, but they were connected and they had a theme to it.
Starting point is 00:08:01 So we will ask you to rank different mechanics and keyboard mechanics and ability words and sometimes themes. We also will ask you about the flavor. We'll ask you about the art. We'll ask you about names and flavor text. We will ask you about, you know, all the different facets of the card. And this data isn't just something we use in design development. It's something the creative team uses. It's something I know editing looks at.
Starting point is 00:08:31 All the different people involved are really interested in, okay, the part that I have some control over, what does the audience think of that component? And one of the things we find is there's lots of correlations. One of the interesting things is there's a high correlation between power level of cards and whether people like it. And we're aware of that. It's another reason why the first impression one is interesting is first impressions, you haven't yet heard what the good cards are. While six, eight weeks in, you know, if you're paying attention, if you're a franchise player, which if you're coming to our website, odds are you are, you're more likely to have read other articles on the internet and you'll listen to the pros and experts say what they think
Starting point is 00:09:14 the good cards are. So one of the things we'll find over time is that players tend to associate powerful cards better. Oh, this is a good card. I like it more. So one of the things we always look at, and one of the important trend lines is things that fight against that trend, which is, is there a powerful card that you didn't like?
Starting point is 00:09:35 That's really important, because in general, players like powerful cards. Is there a weak card you really enjoyed? Also very important, because generally players are less inclined to like weak cards. And so what we find is, it helps, one of the big things about getting data is, there's a lot of ways to slice it up. And one of the things R&D likes to do is, we like to take the data and sort of crunch it and look at it in a lot of different ways, because the market research will collect the data, and they will tell us information, but R&D is more familiar with the information.
Starting point is 00:10:08 So here's the classic story. I might have told this story before, but it's hard not to tell this with Market Research. So we did Market Research on the original Unglued, and the two cards that ranked the worst of all the cards in the set was Blacker Lotus was number one and Chaos Confetti was number two. So Blacker Lotus is a card, it's a Black Lotus, costs zero, gets you four mana instead of three, but you have to rip it up when you use it. The idea being it's a Lotus, but it's a better than Black Lotus, but one time use. And the Chaos Confetti, you rip
Starting point is 00:10:41 up the card and toss it and then every piece it touches gets destroyed. It's a riff on the old legend of Chaos Orb. So anyway, the most disliked card in the set was Blackheart Lotus. The second most disliked set was Chaos Confetti. So, in note, I should say, this was back in the 90s,
Starting point is 00:11:00 so our market research people have a much better sense of magic than they used to. So the story's funny, but I don't want this as an indictment of our magic market research. They've improved quite a bit. Anyway, so they come back to us and say, well, we've looked at the cards and we can't find any correlation between why those are the most disliked cards. You know, we looked at their art scores and we looked at their flavor text and we looked at all the different factors we can look at
Starting point is 00:11:23 and we can't figure out why these are the two most disliked cards. And I was like, well, perhaps because these are the two cards that make you rip up your card, you know, because they didn't process like the, you know, they could just say whether people liked the rules tax or didn't like the rules tax. They weren't processing it. And so the reason of that story that I like to tell is that R&D likes to take the data and crunch the data
Starting point is 00:11:47 and look at the data because we have a much better working sense of both the game and our players and why they would or would not like something. Another thing,
Starting point is 00:11:56 if you ever take a market research survey, we always include at the end a place for you to write things. We ask you specifically of anything you want to say.
Starting point is 00:12:06 We always read those. R&D loves reading those. So if you have something to say, that's a very good point to, you know, if you have some opinion that you want heard, you know, that's an excellent spot. Even if you weren't specifically asked about something, if there's an aspect of the site that you really want to comment on, that's an opportunity for you to do that. And I will stress that R&D does read those. you really want to comment on, that's an opportunity for you to do that.
Starting point is 00:12:24 And I will stress that Arnie does read those. In fact, it's something that we often will go out of our way to sort of break up and read because there's lots of neat data there. And it is the one data that's not captured anywhere else. Everything else is numbers so they can capture it. But when people write sort of comments, it's harder to capture that. I know we've been working hard to figure out ways to use that data and capture it. But when people write sort of comments, it's harder to capture that. I know we've been working hard to figure out ways to use that data and capture it. And there's actually some data sets we've started doing
Starting point is 00:12:51 using those comment fields. So the comments are important. If you have things to say, definitely let us know. So anyway, we will take all the data. We will look at the first impression data. We will look at the, I data, we will look at the, I don't know what to call it, more, you know,
Starting point is 00:13:08 not second impressions, but more mature data of people who played for a while, and we look at that. And the one thing that's interesting about taking it twice is it allows us to look at where things progress. For example,
Starting point is 00:13:22 it gives us a really good sense of what are the first impression thoughts and then what are the thoughts once people have sort of played with it. So for example, in Conjuring Dark here, prowess didn't do well in first impressions. The first impressions of the mechanic, it scored the worst of the mechanics. But after people had six weeks to play with it, it scored the highest. So what that told us was it didn't create good first impressions, but it was fun to play. And one of the things we try to do, which is important, is we want a mix of things.
Starting point is 00:13:54 It's okay to have some things in the game that don't at first look fun, but are. It's okay to have some things that look really exciting that aren't quite as... I mean, we want them to be somewhat fun, but things can be not quite as fun as they look. You know, they can have a really high first impression and then aren't quite as fun as you get from first impression. Obviously, more of the former than the second. But we also want a lot of stuff that looks fun, is fun. And, you know, one of the things that this helps us with is to get a sense of those impressions.
Starting point is 00:14:23 Okay. things that this helps us with is to get a sense of those impressions. Okay. But, market research, the online study, that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is where we have done market research sometimes in the product. Like back in Tempest, for example, there was a little booklet that came with it and there was a sheet at the end, it was a card, that you could send in. Sometimes we will go to places and collect data
Starting point is 00:14:48 like there's two different types of market research. One is where they come to you so it's like on our website but once again that's a subset of people who come to the Magic website more franchised or we can go out to them.
Starting point is 00:15:01 So every couple years we do what we call a deep dive market research, which is more about figuring out our audience and less about figuring out thoughts on a particular product. And the point of a deep dive is instead of you coming to us, we go out to you. And what we do is we get a company, an expert in this kind of study, and what they do is they go out and they find a cross-section of people, not of magic players, of people.
Starting point is 00:15:29 And they find out from that cross-section of people, and I'm talking a lot of people, what percentage of the people play magic, what are aware of magic, what know somebody to play magic. So we find a good sense of just not only who plays magic, but where they play magic, and who's heard of magic.
Starting point is 00:15:46 You know, we want awareness. Like, one of the things we talk about is, what is the awareness of magic? It doesn't even mean you play it, you're just aware of what it is. The three big things we look at is, are you a magic player? And if you're a magic player, we ask all sorts of questions. Do you know a magic player? So maybe you're not a magic player, but you're aware of a Magic player. And third is awareness of the brand as a whole.
Starting point is 00:16:08 Maybe you don't play Magic. You don't even know someone who plays Magic, but you've heard of Magic. Those are all three interesting numbers we want to know, which is how many people play, how many people know people that play, so the one rung out, and how many people are aware of the brand. We call it brand recognition. So the thing about the deep dive is one of the problems we have with a lot of our normal stuff is we're going someplace.
Starting point is 00:16:29 Either we're polling you when you come to us or we're going someplace where we know you are. Sometimes we'll do market research off other sites that we know people go to. But nonetheless, those kind of surveys, we're trying to find the magic players so we go where we know magic players are. What a deep dive does is it just goes out to the magic public.
Starting point is 00:16:49 And it looks at, not the magic public, it goes out to the public. And it gets a sense of sort of what the magic players are. The reason this is important is the people that come to our website, while very valuable to us, and obviously a very enfranchised player, is a small portion of people who actually play Magic. And so it's very important for us to sort of get data on, we refer to them as the invisibles, meaning there are people that they don't come to our website,
Starting point is 00:17:20 they don't play an organized play, they don't get on Magic Online, they don't go anywhere where we can monitor them. And so it is harder for us to get a sense of who these people are. And that is why the deep dive is so important, is we want to sort of figure out at large what percentage of people play Magic and who are they. A while back, for example, I mentioned a statistic. There's a statistic that came from the last deep dive that was very interesting to us which was one of the questions we had asked was
Starting point is 00:17:48 have you within the last month I think played magic and by that question it was like played paper magic played any form
Starting point is 00:17:56 of digital magic magic online magic duels did you play some form of magic in the last month and of the people in the thing
Starting point is 00:18:03 that we asked who were self-identified as magic players, meaning they'd play, I guess this is how we determined they were magic players, is we said have you played magic? That's how we determined if you were a magic player.
Starting point is 00:18:17 I think we asked, we might have asked in the last month, in the last six months, in the last year, we might have asked over a period of time. But one of the questions was, right now, in the last month, have you played a months, in the last year. We might have been asked over a period of time. But one of the questions was, right now, in the last month, have you played a game of magic? Could be paper magic, digital magic, some form of magic.
Starting point is 00:18:31 Have you played a game of magic? And of the people that said yes, yes, they themselves, not have heard of, not know someone who does, not aware of the brand, they themselves have played a game of magic. 38% of their recipients were female.
Starting point is 00:18:48 I talked about that statistic. And a lot of people were very skeptical because they were like, I look around the place I play magic. And 38% of the people there weren't female. And I'm like, okay. We know that there are a lot of pockets that's not true, but we're looking at, the point of a deep dive is the larger picture.
Starting point is 00:19:04 You know, for example, organized play, which is what most people talk about. Organized play is not 38% female. We are aware of that. It is ever growing and getting bigger, but it is not at 38%. But the deep dive, what it's saying is, look, there's a lot of places people play magic that we can't easily see. And that's why the deep dive is so important. That's why understanding data like that. And it's why the deep dive is so important. That's why understanding data like that, and it's not just gender.
Starting point is 00:19:28 We also break out by age, by education, by spending habits, by geographical, all sorts of data. We want to break down and figure out who plays magic, who, why, how, everything we can about who plays magic. Because one of our goals is, and I mean, hopefully you can see this product, is we're trying really hard to appeal to as broad an audience as we can. It's one of the reasons that we have spent a lot of time and energy
Starting point is 00:20:00 really pushing, for example, diversity, because we want people to see themselves in the game, that we want people who play Magic to go, hey, that person is like me. That's really important. That's a very powerful thing. I think it's powerful everywhere. I mean, I think diversity is a good tool all around. But particularly for us, we want to make sure that, you know, we're trying to make sure
Starting point is 00:20:21 that people can see themselves in the game. That is super important. And the reason we do market research is to figure out who's playing the game. And we find information, we find data that is shocking to people because it contradicts what they see up close and personal. And one of the things that I always sort of say to people is the place that you play Magic, is the place that you play magic, whether it is in person, at a store,
Starting point is 00:20:49 it is a community you have online, maybe even just listen to my podcast, there is a subset of that group and that group is not necessarily representative of the larger whole playing of magic. And so it's very easy when you look at the group that you play with to go, okay, well, I got a sense. This is who plays magic.
Starting point is 00:21:06 It's like, well, that is who plays in your group that's not necessarily represented, why market research is so important. Okay, let me talk about another important thing we do. We don't do this all the time, but we do this from time to time, what we call focus testing. So what focus testing is, there's two different kinds of focus testing. Focus testing is when you go out and you get, the way focus testing works when you go out and you get, you, the way focus testing works is you go
Starting point is 00:21:27 out, somebody goes to some general place, a mall, let's say, and says to people, hey, we're doing some market research. Can I ask you a question? You might have been in a mall, so I'm going to ask you this. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to find people that fit the criteria we're looking for, but out in the wild. Because if you go to our website and ask people, well, you're self-selecting a little bit by who comes to our website. So you go out in the general public and you ask people, and the focus group, it depends what you're trying to test. Sometimes it's people who have never heard of magic.
Starting point is 00:21:58 Sometimes it's people who have heard of magic but don't play. Sometimes it's people who know someone who plays but don't play themselves. Sometimes it's play themselves but play casually, but don't play themselves. Sometimes it's play themselves but play casually, whatever. Whatever we're going out and looking for.
Starting point is 00:22:09 And then, a focus group, usually, there is, the idea is the audience is either they talk to the audience or they have the audience
Starting point is 00:22:20 actually use your product in the case of Magic to play with the game. Let me talk about both those. So, a focus in which they ask questions, what happens is you have a trained moderator with a list of questions and there's a group of people. Sometimes focus groups are just one-on-one or one-on-two. Often there's group focus things.
Starting point is 00:22:39 We can do both. What you do is you ask people questions. Either there's a two-way mirror or there is a camera. Actually, there's almost always a camera. Either there's a two-way mirror or there is a camera. Actually, there's almost always a camera. Often there's a two-way mirror. Meaning that people can watch the people answering the questions without the people answering the questions aware of who's watching them. Once again, I talk to this all the time,
Starting point is 00:22:57 that your feedback is tainted if your audience thinks the people who are directly making the product are there. So normally the people who question them state to the people, look, I didn't make this product. I don't care about what you say. I'm looking for your honest opinion. And then anybody who's watching is behind a camera, behind a glass.
Starting point is 00:23:13 They don't get to see, you don't want to see anybody who might be offended by what you say. That's important because you want very clear and open information. So in a talking focus group, they answer questions and you get information about what they think.
Starting point is 00:23:24 The one thing that's neat about that versus like a survey is they then can have follow-up questions based on responses. Surveys can do that to a certain extent as well. But live interaction can do it in a much more robust way than you can do in a survey. Although technology is getting better on surveys. The other thing is the one where they're playing your game. Usually, and the way that works is there's one of two ways. One is somebody comes in and teaches them how to play.
Starting point is 00:23:53 Often that is someone like me, although I will not self-identify as the person who made the game. I will just come in as an expert that knows how to play. So someone will train you in the game, and then the trainer usually leaves and you play. Or you are just given instructions and you play without any actual guidance. It's like, here's the product, open it up and figure out how to play.
Starting point is 00:24:15 Um, the first one is done to figure out whether they enjoy the game because, um, you're trying to figure, when you don't give them any instruction, you're trying to figure out, you don't give them any instruction, you're trying to figure... What you're testing is the instructions. If you want to actually learn whether they like the game, you just teach them the game and then watch them play the game. And the reason is, they're all sort of pitfalls in trying to learn the game.
Starting point is 00:24:37 And so if you're trying to get information about the game themselves, you want to optimize them understanding the game, because otherwise you're too tainted by, did they even figure the game out. And I will say there is, as a game designer, I think focus groups are really
Starting point is 00:24:52 important to do. I think they're very important for you to see. There is little you can do that is more frustrating than watching a focus group. Especially the ones in which you give them no information. Because people will go awry in the ways you would never imagine. Usually what happens when you're doing a test
Starting point is 00:25:11 where you're just giving them information is you have to... In fact, in general, when they're playtesting, you want to have two people, usually two people that know each other. And the reason is if somebody is by themselves, they internalize what they're thinking, so it's harder to get a sense of what they're going through. But if you have two people, they talk to one another, so you get a better sense of what's happening.
Starting point is 00:25:33 And so traditionally, when you have a focus group, there will be two people at least in the focus group for learning how to play or playing the game. That is very common. Traditionally, what you want is two people that know each other. The reason you don't want strangers is strangers are more reluctant to talk to one another, where people that know each other will talk to one another, and it just does the best chance of you understanding what they're going through. The reason it is so frustrating is there are so many ways for them to get it wrong. There's so many ways to go astray.
Starting point is 00:26:03 There's so many ways for just little things to trip them up. And things that you would never ever think of while you do focus testing. We will do things like, we will have product stores like, don't open this yet. Go read. Do not open giant letters. And the first thing they do is they open it. Because it's openable.
Starting point is 00:26:21 And people like to open things. Sometimes you'll give them instructions and they will read the instruction. You can hear them reading them aloud. And then when they go play, they just forget they read it aloud. They just don't listen to what they had read. Sometimes one of them is doing it right and the other one
Starting point is 00:26:37 talks them out of it. Every once in a while someone's doing it wrong and the other one talks them into it, which is a glorious day when that happens. But the reason that focus groups are so important is when we ask you questions we get your opinion
Starting point is 00:26:50 and that's awesome and that's very valuable and we need to do that. But sometimes you also want to watch behavior. It's one thing to ask people to say what they'll do.
Starting point is 00:26:58 It's another thing to actually see how they'll behave. It's another reason why when you want to test your game it's really important. If you're trying to see whether your game is fun or not, usually you have it taught by somebody
Starting point is 00:27:09 who knows what they're doing, and then step out and have the players play it. So one of the questions they will ask in focus groups all the time, which is a super important one, is would you buy this? And that a good sign, if you teach someone to play your game and let them play it, and you come back at the end of it, and they want to purchase the game, awesome sign. I mean, that's... In fact, if they're not interested in purchasing the game, you are in trouble. That means your game is not fun enough. I mean, it could mean
Starting point is 00:27:34 there's a wrong audience for it, but usually it means it's not quite where you want it to be. And the other question you ask is not only do they want it, would they recommend it to somebody else? So what you want them to say is, yes, I will buy it right now. Sometimes what they'll do, depending on what stage the game is in,
Starting point is 00:27:49 is they'll even offer the person in exchange for something. Usually you get paid for doing market research, doing focus groups. Because you're using your time. You have to come in. Like, the way a focus group works is that you meet someone in a mall, they say, would you like to do this? Yes. Okay. At this time and place
Starting point is 00:28:06 we need you to come in. And then they pay you to make sure that you come in. And one of the things they'll do sometimes is if the product can be sold to them, they will offer to reduce the amount of money they pay them to give them the game. And the reason that's important is, would you purchase, not just
Starting point is 00:28:22 do you want the game, would you purchase the game? And if somebody's willing to purchase the game after playing it once, very good sign. So, focus groups are really frustrating. There's a magic commercial we once made where Rox is watching people play the game, and they're playing Rox wrong, they're playing his card wrong, and he gets really mad and he smashes the glass. I've never smashed the glass, but I feel for rocks. I get his pain. I understand why he gets frustrated.
Starting point is 00:28:51 When people make a mistake on something and like, sometimes, for example, it's like a card name, which is important for us to know, but like, people get to a card name and they can't pronounce the card name and that throws them. They're gone. Forget them learning the game. They're now trying to figure out how to pronounce this card name. And you're like, that's why when I talk
Starting point is 00:29:08 about things like, um, uh, when I talk about your game and how important the aesthetics are and how important the simplicity is and how the whole package has to hold together, that is why. You might think, like, the name, well, that doesn't really matter what I call a card. It does matter if it keeps people from learning
Starting point is 00:29:23 your game. It's one of the things we try real hard to make sure things are pronounceable. Even if you pronounce it wrong, at least you'll think you're pronouncing it right. Rather than go, I have no idea how to pronounce that. But anyway, we do focus groups. We do deep dives. We do a lot of surveys and stuff. We do all of it because it is that data that tells us what is liked and disliked.
Starting point is 00:29:48 And sometimes, by the way, why it's liked and disliked. What about it? Sometimes we can break it apart and learn which part. Because one thing you'll find in market research is players are complex. Humans are complex. It's not like everything
Starting point is 00:30:03 is clearly I like this or I dislike that. Sometimes I like elements of it, but dislike elements of it. It's not just I love it or I hate it. Sometimes it's like, it's okay. And as I talked about in my, I'll have a whole podcast on this, but talking about people have to love something and not just like it.
Starting point is 00:30:22 Market research is a big part of that. If people play your game and what you get back from them is like, yeah, it was okay, yeah, I enjoyed it, yeah, it seemed like a good game. But no one's like, wow, that was awesome. That's another sign of trouble. You want people really excited for your game. You want people really pumped and going, that was an amazing game. I had fun.
Starting point is 00:30:43 And if their response is, oh, yeah, yeah, it was good. I liked it. Usually that the response is, oh, yeah, it was good. I liked it. Usually that's a sign of problems. But anyway, today I'm driving up to work right now. I want to give you a better sense when I talk about market research, when I talk about what we do and how we do. I want you to understand it. And the thing I will, two walkaways.
Starting point is 00:31:03 One is, if you ever have a chance to take market research, please do. We want to hear what you have to say and it's the most direct way that you can have an impact on the game itself now note I'm more than happy you can talk to me through social media but once again that's only hitting one person and I get a lot of data
Starting point is 00:31:22 so there's stuff lost in the noise of how much data I get so servers are great you get heard, there are comments fields and I get a lot of data so there's stuff lost in the noise of how much data I get. So surveys are great. You get heard. There are comments fields. Leave comments. You know, the more time and energy you spend on a survey,
Starting point is 00:31:32 the better for us and for you because it'll make the better game. So anyway, market research. It is important for us, important for you.
Starting point is 00:31:40 So that is what it is and that is why we do it. But, I'm now in my parking space. I'm actually in my parking space. I'm actually in my parking space. So we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.
Starting point is 00:31:54 So I'll see you all guys next time. Bye-bye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.