D&D General WotC Asks What Makes YOU Play Dungeons and Dragons?

WotC has a new survey asking about what you want from D&D -- "Extra extra! The D&D team wants to know what makes YOU play Dungeons & Dragons! The open world? Character customization? Shared storytelling with friends? Iconic art? Take our survey and help shape the future of what we're working on at Wzards. Please share to help us spread the word and hear from more fans."

https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5231853/pas?sglocale=en

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fishing for results to confirm one's preconceived notions is generally not a great idea,...

...not generally, but if...

......it's clearly being used for publicity....

...might not be such a bad idea.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It still has the problem of being heavily self-selected, as are internet surveys without some randomization.

I don't see any way it could be done without major selection effects.

Skewed information is probably better than no information at all though.

 

[DammitVictor]

Their survey process is getting self-selecting responses, but by and large people are self-selecting for being the most passionate consumers of D&D products-- the people whose preferences WotC most wants to accommodate.

People like me are outliers, a very small percentage of their overall response... and even then, we're telling them what sorts of niche products might have a consumer base outside of their core 5e playerbase.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I don't see any way it could be done without major selection effects.

Skewed information is probably better than no information at all though.

There's no way to survey without selection effects period, but strong skew due to selection bias has the potential to really mislead. On the other hand, blowing off selection does lead to a very inexpensive survey.

 

[Parmandur]

There's no way to survey without selection effects period, but strong skew due to selection bias has the potential to really mislead. On the other hand, blowing off selection does lead to a very inexpensive survey.

Well, these surveys apparently get six-seven figure response rates: they might not want a representative sample, but a through look at a large subset of the population.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Their survey process is getting self-selecting responses, but by and large people are self-selecting for being the most passionate consumers of D&D products-- the people whose preferences WotC most wants to accommodate.

I didn't really get that vibe from the survey. They seemed very much on the whole "are you bringing in new players?" That might be due to the branches I went down.

People like me are outliers, a very small percentage of their overall response... and even then, we're telling them what sorts of niche products might have a consumer base outside of their core 5e playerbase.

Except they seem to have little interest in generating those products, or haven't so far.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Well, these surveys apparently get six-seven figure response rates: they might not want a representative sample, but a through look at a large subset of the population.

Maybe but a seriously unrepresentative sample that is large often provides an illusion of certainty. There are tricks one can do to downweight observations when there's a clear excess of particular kinds but if the volunteering bias is large enough, those don't work either.

Of course, this is marketing research, not science, so maybe that doesn't matter, and the cost is quite low.

 

[Parmandur]

Maybe but a seriously unrepresentative sample that is large often provides an illusion of certainty. There are tricks one can do to downweight observations when there's a clear excess of particular kinds but if the volunteering bias is large enough, those don't work either.

Of course, this is marketing research, not science, so maybe that doesn't matter, and the cost is quite low.

Yeah, they aren't trying to predict election results, they want to know which historical D&D books and setting inspire passions among thousands of people.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

In the D&D motivations section, it had essentially the same page three times. I'm glad I noticed it so I could make sure not to get disqualified by answering "the same" question too differently. Those subtle differences often create a very different question with a possibly different answer for me.

 

[ccs]

Hmm. I got to 99% before getting the age question.
Answered it & hit 100%, & got the thank you for participating line.