master thesis - survey about playing visual novels

[MissNordkorea]

Hi,

my name is Stefan Ebner and I'm a student at the university of Vienna. Currently I am working on my master thesis (cultural transfer through computer games using the example of visual novels). For this reason I've created a short survey about playing visual novels (26 questions, should take 5-10 minutes) and I would be very happy if some of you could take it.

https://www.soscisurvey.de/visualnovels

Thanks a lot,

Stefan Ebner

 

[Kaguya]

Fun survey. Taken.

[Deep Blue]

done, although some questions were a bit tricky to answer, like the one that asks about how you get vns, you can only choose one answer... I do pirate vns and I also buy them from steam and from others sites too, why can't I make comments on that specific question? So yeah that answer is wrong no matter how I answer it, same thing goes for a few others....

[MissNordkorea]

11 minutes ago, Deep Blue said:

done, although some questions were a bit tricky to answer, like the one that asks about how you get vns, you can only choose one answer... I do pirate vns and I also buy them from steam and from others sites too, why can't I make comments on that specific question? So yeah that answer is wrong no matter how I answer it, same thing goes for a few others....

 

You are right, this is a tricky questions. I thought about enabling multiple answers but I think it distorts things as I can't weigh the answers. You answer with both but in reality it's more like 5 pirated, 1 bought on steam (just an example of course). So I changed it to how do you "mainly" get them. This cuts away information too but I'll make sure to mention that in my thesis. In any case thanks for answering!

[Nosebleed]

Well the question says "usually" so I'd say you should answer with the method you use more often.

Nice survey, I would say the only question I felt was lacking was the genres one but other than that it's fairly comprehensive.

There are a couple questions where I felt I could have picked multiple answers too but since all of them had a "mostly/usually" on them I just picked the one I used the most out of all.

[Deep Blue]

I think that using the "usually/mostly" oversimplifies the answers too much, it would be a good idea for example to ask "why do you pirate", "what's your opinion on drm applied to vns in general" (almost all the vns sold in japan have some kind of drm system) 

This is pure constructive criticism, don't take it in the wrong way   

[MissNordkorea]

Don't worry, I'm happy for the feedback.

In the end my professor and myself had the feeling that 26 questions are enough. Make it any longer and people won't answer it (laziness). It's also a question of focus. The drm question is an interesting topic but not important for my research (cultural transfer). Same with "why do you pirate". Also I'm playing VNs myself so I don't really expect some surprising answers (too expansive, too hard to get (japanese online store)).

[Darklord Rooke]

14 minutes ago, Deep Blue said:

 it would be a good idea for example to ask "why do you pirate", "what's your opinion on drm applied to vns in general" (almost all the vns sold in japan have some kind of drm system) 

Questions asked should directly address or be devised to glean information which directly addresses the purpose of the thesis.

Taking survey now  

[CeruleanGamer]

Question 20: How many hours have you approximately played visual novels?

151 is the max? That's like 3 long VNs. Casuals can get that easily. Pretty sure a lot of people here easily clocked over 1,000 in a year and many people have been a VN player for 3-5 years or so. Heck, personally, I probably clocked about 2.5k hours in VNs last year. 

[Darklord Rooke]

I have a criticism. Considering some people can spend like a couple hundred hours on Clannad alone, I don't know what the 'how many hours have you approximately played visual novels' is supposed to answer. Furthermore, it would obviously be more for people who are older. I'm 33, I've been playing VNs for more than a decade, my first VN was about 15 years ago. For me to spend 151+ hours playing VNs, I would merely need to play 10 hours of a VN a year. Also, if I click that option, I could be spending 10 hours a year playing VNs, or 200 hours a year playing VNs, you wouldn't know. For someone who's played VNs for only 1 year, they would need to spend over 151 hours in that year alone playing VNs. So I'm not sure what this question is supposed to be telling you...

[Deep Blue]

5 minutes ago, Rooke said:

Questions asked should directly address or be devised to glean information which directly addresses the purpose of the thesis.

Taking survey now  

 

"survey about playing visual novels" so piracy and drm is not related in any way to playing vns in your opinion?

[Darklord Rooke]

2 minutes ago, Deep Blue said:

survey about playing visual novels" so piracy and drm is not related in any way to playing vns in your opinion?

"Currently I am working on my master thesis (CULTURAL TRANSFER through computer games using the example of visual novels)."

Read the actual post.

5 minutes ago, CeruleanGamer said:

Question 20: How many hours have you approximately played visual novels?

151 is the max? That's like 3 long VNs. Casuals can get that easily. Pretty sure a lot of people here easily clocked over 1,000 in a year and many people have been a VN player for 3-5 years or so. Heck, personally, I probably clocked about 2.5k hours in VNs last year. 

WHOA! We think alike  

[Deep Blue]

1 minute ago, Rooke said:

"Currently I am working on my master thesis (CULTURAL TRANSFER through computer games using the example of visual novels)."

Read the actual post.

WHOA! We think alike  

so? if that's the case then there is no point in pretty much all of the questions that do not refer directly to the culture transfer ( 3 in total in the whole survey) 

[Zenophilious]

Took the survey.  The MuvLuv Kickstarter alone pushed me over $200 spent  lol

By the way, what does your professor think about the topic you picked?

[Darklord Rooke]

Just now, Deep Blue said:

so? if that's the case then there is no point in pretty much all of the questions that do not refer directly to the culture transfer ( 3 in total in the whole survey) 

Most of the general questions are there for the surveyor to know more about you and how heavily you are involved in the VN scene. They are not there to give people, or you, yet another excuse to go on another boring rant about piracy and/or the state of the VN industry. They are wasteful questions which are off-topic. If you want to rant, get a blog.

[Deep Blue]

Just now, Rooke said:

Most of the general questions are there for the surveyor to know more about you and how heavily you are involved in the VN scene. They are not there to give people, or you, yet another excuse to go on another boring rant about piracy and/or the state of the VN industry. They are wasteful questions which are off-topic. If you want to rant, get a blog.

Wow sorry dude I didn't know that I needed your approval to post something or gave my opinion in a thread, my mistake!! 
Next time I will send you a missive before posting something. Right now i'm completing the form so I can create my next post, I'm eager to see your approval 

[Nosebleed]

I'd also like to ask how did you decide you wanted VNs to be part of your masters thesis? 

I am interested in taking a translation masters and I also had a vague idea of wanting to incorporate VNs in my masters thesis if possible so I'd like to know how one goes about this stuff.  

[Darklord Rooke]

8 minutes ago, Deep Blue said:

Wow sorry dude I didn't know that I needed your approval to post something or gave my opinion in a thread, my mistake!! 
Next time I will send you a missive before posting something. Right now i'm completing the form so I can create my next post, I'm eager to see your approval 

The tears of others strengthens me and gives me warm fuzzies, but alas contempt doesn't effect me. As such your sarcasm is useless to me.

[MissNordkorea]

Buh, so many questions to answer.

Yes, the thesis is about cultural transfer but the cultural thing will be mostly covered with analysis of the games + interviews with translation groups etc. In the end visual novels is for much of the western world a really new topic so most questions in the survey are to get some general player data. But you are totally right, the questions about the amount played is badly designed. I wanted to clearly get a view of the new/casual players and set the bar very low, forgetting that 151h+ is set really low. But I will note your feedback here to mention that in my thesis.

To give you an idea about the thesis:

What might surprise you is the fact that it's written for the history
department. In the end you only need a professor that is cool with it.
Game studies (kinda a broad topic as many fields like history, cultural
studies, psychology, computer science, sociology etc. are applicable) are
becoming more and more common so it's fine. My focus is more or less pure
(historical) cultural transfer though as I can't do "game studies" on
visual novels without knowing japanese and being able to play them in the
original way. In the end you only need a usable focus and the right
keywords and you can write about any topic in any class.

So what am I researching?
1) The japanese culture has been "disrupted" from the west two times, 1853
and 1945, you see these bits in the japanese culture today too and in
these games.

2) Visual novels originate from western adventure games (~1980s), how did
they become typical japanese?

3) In light of 2) why are visual novels a japanese culture product? What
does this include? (e.g. japanese games for japanese people, japanese
development tools, special gaming culture (eroge) - also comiket etc.)

4) When parts of a countries culture appear in another country you can
talk about a culture transfer. How does this happen (mainly fan
translations, now also companies like JAST -> translation = culture
transfer)?

[Down]

Took the survey. There are probably some questions that could have been better designed (some would need multiple choices for example) imo, but well, this is only very general anyway.

10 minutes ago, Nosebleed said:

I'd also like to ask how did you decide you wanted VNs to be part of your masters thesis? 

I am interested in taking a translation masters and I also had a vague idea of wanting to incorporate VNs in my masters thesis if possible so I'd like to know how one goes about this stuff.  

You should also read this dude's post.

[Thunderbro]

I filled out your survey, can't wait to see the results.

That said, as other have already pointed out, some of these questions could have been designed better. The question asking about translation quality stuck out to me. I've played some VNs that had fantastic translations and some that were barely better than a machine translation. 

[LiquidShu]

A survey that wasn't boring to take.. woot!

[Chronopolis]

Just noting some questions I had trouble answering.

17. Do you talk to other people about visual novels?
This should be a multi-answer question. I use a mix of forums, reddit, skype (=chatrooms?), discord (chatroom).

25. At what level do you speak Japanese?
Like most people who learned Japanese by and/or for reading VN's, my reading ability is much higher than my speaking proficiency. This should be kept in mind.
 

The whole culture transfer thing is quite interesting. I'm not sure where to begin to look for what kind of an effect the Japanese media has had on this part of western culture. Looking forward to seeing your work

[sanahtlig]

2 hours ago, MissNordkorea said:

In light of 2) why are visual novels a japanese culture product? What does this include? (e.g. japanese games for japanese people, japanese development tools, special gaming culture (eroge) - also comiket etc.) 4) When parts of a countries culture appear in another country you can talk about a culture transfer. How does this happen (mainly fan translations, now also companies like JAST -> translation = culture transfer)?

You can't really fully address this without exploring the porn aspect of VNs.  The majority of VNs are for PC, and the majority of those are pornographic.  To me, the porn element is what makes VNs uniquely a Japanese product.  That wouldn't fly in the West, and that's why VNs have had so much difficulty getting a foothold here.  To me, and probably to others, VNs represent the pinnacle of erotica--visuals and sound integrated with a highly developed story that lets you insert yourself into another world.  That's something you can't find in Western pornography.

[sarkasmus]

there were 2 tricky questions for me, one was the question about the completet education where I just gave a an explanation what "Fachgebundene Hochschulreife" is since I didn't know any similar kind in english and the question concerning pirating/buying since I usually buy everything which is avaibale for me but I'm pirating an equal amount of VNs because there's no way to get them for me.

 

And I hope I chose the right occupation: Student at University = Student?