How game designers can benefit from using SmartSurvey

Any creative endeavour springs from someone’s imagination. A key benefit about using surveys as part of this creative process is to take an approach where survey and BI data is used so that creative energy is harnessed in the best possible way.

The rise of freemium models and “early access” has led to greater opportunity, and greater expectation, for players to give feedback throughout the development cycle. So it pays to understand how your players’ hopes and desires can change as successful game grows and evolves over many years.

Using SmartSurvey's embedded, email and exit surveys helps you find the areas creativity has greatest impact. Enabling you to ask the questions when and where they are relevant to the players experience and get the honest feedback you need.

How SmartSurvey can help games companies

Pre-release surveys

Before you start a project, it can be a good idea to make sure that your thinking is along the same lines as your expected audience. By creating surveys with visual and audio elements, combined with our consumer panels feature, you can test the waters for your vision with a targeted panel of respondents.

Key features:

• Consumer panels
• YouTube embedding in questions
• Image embedding in questions

Manage player feedback

Creating feedback surveys to your player base allows you to find out about what your players are thinking, as well as what they are doing. By using a custom variable via the contact list, you can match specific survey responses to specific player data in your BI system, for greater understanding of player motivations and behaviour. The Text Analysis tool will allow you to let your players communicate in their own words.

Key features:

• Custom variables
• Email invitations
• Contact list
• Text analysis

Manage data collection for alpha or beta testing

By creating forms in SmartSurvey, you can collect data from potential testers. By using survey scoring, you can apply values to particular answers to allow you to quickly rate the quality of a test candidate’s hardware. By using the “File Upload” function, you can have text candidates upload DxDiag exports.

Key features:

• File upload
• Scoring

Bug reporting

No piece of software is perfect, despite a developer’s best efforts, so it’s always valuable to offer an official route for bug reports, whether that’s during an open testing phase or post-release. By creating a Bug report Form in SmartSurvey, you can gather reports from players supported by screenshots, debug outputs, or other files. Using the API or Zapier integration, this can be smoothly connected to software such as JIRA or Asana.

Key features:

• File upload
• API
• Zapier integration

Strategies for using surveys as part of game development

Modern videogame development consists of a much wider range of business models than the old-school methods of simply making a game, then selling it. Here a just a few examples of how surveys can be built into your development strategy:

• Finding which games or features will get the best response before committing to production.
• Use embedded NPS^® feedback surveys to quickly measure player reactions to changes.
• Using Less frequent, but in-depth surveys gives valuable context to BI analytics data.
• Get feedback on item and reward value from the players perspective when balancing in-game economies.