Postgraduate Research Survey for Video Game Trailers

[Myrmidon]

Hi,

I'm currently working on research for my postgraduate dissertation. My research topic is the relationship between video/computer game trailers and company reputation. I've created a survey to collect data. I would much appreciate anyone who participates in the survey, it would help out my research tremendously. It is short and shouldn't take more than a few minutes to complete, and it is completely anonymous.

Here is the link to the survey: https://ljmu.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/video-game-trailer-survey

Thanks!

 

[Brian Boru]

video/computer game trailers

Welcome to the forum

Not directly relevant, but you might enjoy this thread which is going on at the moment:

Best video game trailer

I just shared the Outer Worlds 2 trailer with someone and they said it was the "best trailer yet", which made me realise we don't have a thread for discussing the best trailers yet. So, what is the best/your favourite trailer according to you and why? Multiple answers are possible of course...

forums.pcgamer.com

PS for anyone dithering: survey is very short.

 

[Myrmidon]

Thanks a lot!

This is actually quite a useful thread. It's interesting to see which trailers hold influence over people. My research was actually inspired largely by the release of Cyberpunk 2077. The trailers leading up to the release gave a lot of hopeful impressions, but ... well, we all know what happened after that.

 

[Zloth]

Oh, a serious one! So many of these look like they were just tossed together because 'teacher said to do it or I flunk.'

There's some trickiness when answering these: trailers are more informative for some games than for others. Trailers are great for showing off the general mood of a game, the graphics, and some of the mechanics. They are terrible at showing off how interesting the decisions you make are in a game or how good the story is. A game like Doom isn't about making deep decisions or strong story telling (especially the original games), so a trailer is an excellent source when you're trying to make a decision. Meanwhile, in the 4X genre, trailers are of little use. You can see how good the graphics are. You might be able to glean some information about the mechanics. For the most part, though, you've got to look to other sources to really get a clue as to how good the game is.

 

[Myrmidon]

Oh, a serious one! So many of these look like they were just tossed together because 'teacher said to do it or I flunk.'

There's some trickiness when answering these: trailers are more informative for some games than for others. Trailers are great for showing off the general mood of a game, the graphics, and some of the mechanics. They are terrible at showing off how interesting the decisions you make are in a game or how good the story is. A game like Doom isn't about making deep decisions or strong story telling (especially the original games), so a trailer is an excellent source when you're trying to make a decision. Meanwhile, in the 4X genre, trailers are of little use. You can see how good the graphics are. You might be able to glean some information about the mechanics. For the most part, though, you've got to look to other sources to really get a clue as to how good the game is.

Yeah, this is an interesting observation. My initial idea for my research was to research which characteristics (graphics, gameplay, story etc) of trailers influence purchasing intent, but there is very little literature on trailers about, and literally all of it is connected to movie trailers, so going down that route was tricky.

Unfortunately I didn't get a great deal of time to research and create my survey so it's not perfect, but should be adequate for my objectives. It's also somewhat pioneering because, like I said, there is no published literature that I'm aware of relating video game trailers to consumer behaviour.

 

[Zloth]

None!? That's... insane. This is a multi-billion dollar industry! Some games are really cinematic, like Mass Effect, but plenty aren't!

 

[Myrmidon]

None!? That's... insane. This is a multi-billion dollar industry! Some games are really cinematic, like Mass Effect, but plenty aren't!

There is actually quite a lot of research about ingame advertisements, like when you see billboards in football games and stuff advertising things, but there is literally nothing on video game trailers. Video game publishers/companies use the marketing techniques from the motion picture industry in that department, which isn't very efficient in my opinion because games differ in many ways to movies, mostly by the fact that they are interactive.

But yeah, I know what you mean: the lack of research is quite astonishing. However, saying that, the video game industry is a lot younger than motion pictures, so it's to be expected to some degree.

 

[Myrmidon]

The survey will be open until the 31st of July.

Responses has come to a halt over the last few days so I would much appreciate any taking the time to participate in the survey. It's very short and will only take a couple of minutes to complete.

 

[Brian Boru]

It's very short and will only take a couple of minutes to complete

I can confirm that, so give it a go gamers

 

[ZedClampet]

When the survey closes, I've got some thoughts on the survey and subject. I'm not going to get into it now because it could bias the results to have a lot of discussion in this thread while it's active.

I used to design and conduct surveys for a living and still find them fascinating. Good luck with your project.

 

[Myrmidon]

Survey is open for one more week folks! If you haven't completed it yet I would must appreciate any final participants.

 

[Myrmidon]

Here is a quick summary of the results as promised:

It turns out the overwhelming majority of respondents think video/computer game trailers are deceptive. In fact, I didn't get a single Disagree or Strongly Disagree, and only one Unsure.

Equally the majority of people believe deceptive trailers create distrust towards developers/publishers, except there were a few disagrees and some unsures.

Most people believe reputation is an important factor when deciding to purchase a game. The interesting result of this result was that it was mostly "Agree" and not so much "Strongly Agree".

Ironically, most people believe companies should be subject to advertisement law; however, there was a lot of "unsure" reponses.

And finally, this result is where it gets interesting. Whether people would buy more video games from the same companies knowing their advertisements can be deceptive is very mixed. In fact, "Unsure" had the most reponses. It is very mixed though; there are roughly equal amount of reponses for "Agree" and "Disagree" too.

I haven't run the results through SPSS yet, but it's quite clear that people are willing to overlook deceptive advertisement if another variable such as price or word-of-mouth overides it.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who responded to the survey. You have been a real help!

 

[Brian Boru]

Thanks very much for coming back with your summary.

it's quite clear that people are willing to overlook deceptive advertisement if another variable such as price or word-of-mouth overides it

I expect most general consumers know that advertising's job is to manipulate and deceive, so no surprise that game consumers are the same.

The only advertising I pay attention to is launch announcement for a game I'm interested in. The accompanying hype & deception isn't a factor in my purchasing, because I ignore it. I check mostly players' reports, eg on Steam, and also a few professional reviews like PCG's.

One other advertisement I pay attention to is from retailer's announcing sales.

 

[Zloth]

Trailers are.... deceptively undeceptive. What they show you is truly part of the game, or at least was planned to be at the time they made it. They might even stick a "alpha footage" or something on there to remind you.

But what they show you really isn't what the game is properly like at all. They'll mostly take clips of cinematics, not routine gameplay. If there is actual gameplay in there, it will be in small clips of the most dramatic moments. The whole thing will be edited to fit the music with perfect choreography. The impression you'll actually get is really, REALLY deceptive.

But then, we all know that. More than that, we demand it! If a company made it's 'launch trailer' just be one of the devs playing the game for 7 minutes, complete with getting killed and having to re-load a save game, the fan base would be livid!

P.S. HUGE thanks for showing us the results!