[Lucid:]

Companies that actually put a lot of time/effort into research won't fall into that trap, but unfortunately sometimes they won't put money into researching, whether because they don't want to rock the boat or just because they think it's a waste when they could just pump out more stuff to sell. I took a marketing research class and it was really very interesting how much information you can gather from some simple data. More companies should spend extra time on their research. :<

[Chi]

Yeah, doing the research is definitely beneficial. You should also take into consideration who you're working with too and compare to similar games. Or if you can't, then compare to similar genres. How much money do you have to put into research like that? I would think it would be more of time, not money. But then again time is calculated in money. (At least that's what I learned in Project Management)

[Lucid:]

It depends on what kind of research is being done. Most companies don't have their own survey software, they pay for a company like Qualtrics. These survey companies have huge databases of people that they can send surveys to, and charge around %1.50-$2.00 per survey completed. A good sample size is around 400-600 people. $1200 isn't a ton of money in a big business's eyes, but in a smaller company it can be a decent investment. On top of that you have to hire people who know how to analyze the data, find statistically significant patterns, and come up with results that the company can make decisions on. If there are any free response questions in the survey at all, they have to be read and taken into account individually. You can run the answers through some programs that analyze positivity and negativity in words, but they're not perfect.

More in-depth feedback would require focus groups, which take a lot of time to both administer and do an analysis on afterwards. Focus group participants are also usually paid $50-$100 for their participation, and a good focus group has around 6-10 people in it.

I really only know the costs of data collection since the university had all the programs and us students were free labor, but most of the money in research is on paying the researchers and paying for any programs that help in analysis. If you don't have in-house analysts, you have to pay a research company to do it for you.

[Chi]

Ahh, yes that makes sense. Mmmm, okay. Well the company in particular has on staff analysts but it doesn't really seem they're being utilized well or at all. I'm not going to blame them for practice, I mean they could be bad at their job but I don't necessary think that's the case.

[Lucid:]

It could also be just that the company doesn't prioritize new research. **shrug** Lots of companies are afraid of finding out that things aren't they way they always thought they were, because that shakes things up and is scary.

[Chi]

Well, that's a damn shame. They could definitely learn a lot from it.

So I've become so obsessed with play this game that I don't even want to play my game that I bought a week ago. I really want to play The Last of Us, but this MMO is eating my life. xD; I started playing Aura Kingdom when Founder's Beta came out the 16th. And it has just been a lot of fun. I tried to stream some gameplay but it didn't work out so well. The stream kept stopping and starting, so a lot of it was split up into 5 minute segments. It has really beautiful graphics and it's pretty easy to learn too.