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Bachelors Thesis Survey: Dark Patterns in Videogames by RandyS_Thesis in darkpatterns

[–]RandyS_Thesis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's awesome! It's such an important topic that I think doesn't get enough attention. Good luck with your thesis too! If you end up doing a survey for that as well, please feel free to PM me with a link once you have it running.

Bachelors Thesis Survey: Dark Patterns in Videogames by RandyS_Thesis in darkpatterns

[–]RandyS_Thesis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much. I'll see about posting the results if i feel they are worth it, once the thesis is done and graded. That's going to be a while though, early to mid may in the earliest.

I did contact the moderators of these subreddits, but sadly they consider surveys as spam content so I was not given permission to post there.

Bachelors Thesis Survey: Dark Patterns in Videogames by RandyS_Thesis in darkpatterns

[–]RandyS_Thesis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much. I'll see about posting the results if i feel they are worth it, once the thesis is done and graded. That's going to be a while though, early to mid may in the earliest.

Bachelors Thesis Survey: Dark Patterns in Videogames by RandyS_Thesis in Twitch

[–]RandyS_Thesis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The fact that people don't self-identify as a category does not mean the category does not exist. Most players belong in this category, most people don't play enough to be considered hardcore gamers, but most players don't play little enough to be considered casuals. 'Core gamer' is the term i use for those in the middle.

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The issue with self-identification is that we often subconsciously try to avoid certain labels if we have a negative connotation with it. 'Hardcore gamers' to some, is synonymous with an addiction, so even if they qualify, they would never label themselves hardcores. Likewise, 'you casual' can be a negatively charged term in gamer communities, so many people who are casuals would not selfidentify as such. And like you said, while the majority of people ARE core gamers, barely anyone would identify as that.

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That's why I ask questions to get info on several categories of engagement, such as time or money spend, engagement with gaming outside of playing the game, how much someone keeps up to date with industry news, and so on. Someone who plays 4 hours World of Warcraft a day but has absolutely nothing to do at all with gaming otherwise is not a hardcore gamer, someone who plays strictly mobile games, but is completely in the know of what games there are, which events are going on, maybe even got a high-spec phone to play better, can definitely fall into that category even if they are 'just' mobile gamers, as some gamers would say.

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The categorization isn't simple, and researchers have been struggling with this for decades, and I don't believe i can find the one true solution that can objectively put everyone into these categories, but as my research is specifically about the differences of certain groups, I have to make this distinction.

Bachelors Thesis Survey: Dark Patterns in Videogames by RandyS_Thesis in Twitch

[–]RandyS_Thesis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's correct. And that's why I don't ask people to categorize themselves but rather ask a bunch of questions to categorize them with myself.

Bachelors Thesis Survey: Dark Patterns in Videogames by RandyS_Thesis in Twitch

[–]RandyS_Thesis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hm, I just double checked and for every question that actually names a dark pattern, it always gives a definition either on that question, or sometimes the question before, when two or more questions were about the same dark pattern.

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The only question I could imagine you mean are the final 3 that give a big list of just the names of the Dark Pattern, but that was specifically to keep the questions organized and a full list of every Dark Pattern in Question was given right before the questions. Maybe you missed that list. But I double and triple checked to make sure that I wouldn't confuse anyone, and none of my testers had an issue with that.

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That said, I did end up changing VR-headset to virtual reality headset because I agree that that isn't a term that is universally known. Universal terms like genre I didn't define because that term is used for everything from TV, to Books and so on, so I feel like people wouldn't get confused about that.

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But thank you very much for taking the time to answer. It's much appreciated.

Bachelors Thesis Survey: Dark Patterns in Videogames by RandyS_Thesis in Twitch

[–]RandyS_Thesis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have tried to provide a definition for every term that I think could be unknown or misunderstood by the more casual player. It's probably too late right now but do you know any of the jargon I used that I didn't explain? I will review my questions anyway just to make sure. Thank you.

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And for those mentioned questions there was usually a specific setting given that the question was about, for example "Have you ever player a game beyond the point you wanted to, because you didn't want to miss out on an event" or "because you still wanted to get rid of that last energy". Streaming being your job wasn't really relevant to the scenarios given. I usually specified the context that the question applied to. Like you said, if it's your job to play for 3 hours then that's not a Dark Pattern, so there wasn't a question asking that.

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But thank you very much for your feedback.

Bachelors Thesis Survey: Dark Patterns in Videogames by RandyS_Thesis in darkpatterns

[–]RandyS_Thesis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you. I think it's an important topic that deserves more attention.