WSGF Nov 2012 Survey Results

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The WSGF recently posted a site survey, to help direct us as we move the site forward in our 10th year. I want to thank everyone who took the survey, the response was more than what I had anticipated and am grateful for everyone who took the time to give us their opinions. With just a week of being live, the survey has collected 250 completions. Again, I am surprised at how quickly we amassed these results, and I am very grateful.

I thought I would share the results here, and provide some of my thoughts as well. Additionally, we've posted a short follow-up survey, to ask some questions we forgot and get a few more bits of info. You can click on any graph to embiggen it.

Visiting Habits

Almost half of the respondents visit at least once a week, but over one third only visit the site when they need info on a specific game. It is nice to see that almost half of the people who took the survey make a point to visit the site on a regular basis, and even 14% of those who answered were first time users. It's nice to see that we have a sizable population of new users each month (and our web stats show that as well). The largest response was that users only visit when they need info on a game.

The WSGF may not ever be a "destination" site like HardOCP, but we would like to be as useful as possible and have more people visiting on a weekly basis. At the same time, we've got to make sure that we maintain our niche, and don't water down the site in an effort to attract a larger audience.

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Looking at reasons behind visiting, almost 75% of people said their primary reason for visiting was to get info on a specific game. By more than a 2:1 margin, people are looking for info after they purchase a game. In looking at reasons why people don't visit more often, one-fifth said it was due to issues with the site speed. A similar number said that enough games simply supported widescreen (and possibly multi-monitor), and they didn't need to visit the site. Almost 25% said that they couldn't find what they were looking for.

With regards to the speed, our recent migration back to phpBB forums (as well as other tweaks) has resulted in very significant speed improvements. With regards to being able to find information, we have made the search options more prominent and labeled the individual searches for the site articles and the forum. We are always open to suggestions on how we could improve the site menu or layout, and encourage you to respond in the comments.

When we look at the "other" reasons why people don't visit more often, the biggest reasons are: lack of time (busy playing games), more games are supporting multi-monitor, the user only has a single widescreen (and only the rare game doesn't support widescreen), only visit when they need info on a specific game, and the lack of new information on the site.

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Looking at the last two charts in this section, we see that more than 60% of the respondents already have a multi-monitor setup and almost 15% more want one. Additionally, more than half of those users now require the game to support their multi-monitor setup (either natively or by WSGF fix), before they will purchase said game.


Doing More; Doing It Better

One of the major things we wanted to find was, what do users want out of the site. What can we either do more of, or do better. The biggest thing that people want more of are Detailed Reports. The WSGF Staff and Insiders do a great job of producing the Detailed Reports we have, but any user can add games to the database. The process has been made much easier since the move to Drupal, and I think we need to do a better job with tutorials on how to add a game to the database. The amount of community involvement we have in this area will be directly proportional to the amount of new content.

Next in the list is more media-related entries (videos and screenshot galleries), and benchmarking. Skid's multi-monitor videos are quite popular, and are a feature unique to the WSGF. One thing we need to figure out is what benchmarking users want, and where we should focus our time and resources. This will be the bulk of our follow-up survey. Benchmarking is a time-consuming endeavor, and we can't afford to waste time producing content that people aren't looking for or can get elsewhere.

I do plan to get more consistent with a weekly newsletter, if only to point out new content in the other areas. Additionally, I am going to look at how I can do a video version of the newsletter, with a minimal amount of time investment. Video can be deceptively arduous, and a time consuming process. If we can get something short and sweet turned out quickly, that will be our goal.

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Additionally, when we look at the display technology that interests people, we find moderate to strong interest almost across the board. Many users want to see additional developments and improvements in the existing Eyefinity and Surround ecosystems. There is also strong interest in gaming with 120Hz panels, 4k panels and 21:9 displays. We do have a 120Hz panel in-house and plan to do some articles on this topic. We also have one of the first Dell 21:9 panels scheduled to arrive the week of Thanksgiving, and we could begin to test 4k by setting up a 2x2 Eyefinity grid with 1080p panels. There is also decent interest in the Occulus Rift VR display, and the WSGF was a Kickstarter backer. We are scheduled to receive one of the December units.

Whether you like multi-monitor, higher FOV single panels (21:9 displays), high pixel density (4k panels), smoother displays (120Hz) or fully immersive VR displays - the WSGF plans to cover your interests and continue to serve you.

Finally, we asked an open-ended question on what we could do more of or do better. Out of the 250 completed surveys, we received almost 100 responses to this question. A few people said that we were doing great, and that they were overall happy with the site. Many people listed that they would like to see more games on the site. A general sentiment was to keep to our roots. Some of these responses are listed below:

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  • Nothing. WSGF is just a source of info for widescreensupport, if not implemented out of the box. Stay by your roots and don't try to build some nonsense community gaming site, there are already thousands of them
  • Please focus on unique selling point: everything that has to do with multi-monitor gaming (fixes, analyses etc.)
  • U are great and You doing most importand thing for me. You give back to life many old games I had play over the years and for this I am gratefull dont change!!!
  • Everything mentioned above is cool but honestly all I care about are the Detailed Reports and the Fixes (WideScreen Fixer etc). I'm Interested in more detailed reports for games. Have detailed reports published faster for new games. It would be awesome if you guys could get games before release to review.
  • frequent updates/news to game reviews, compatibilty, multi-monitor fixes, and new game releases
  • I really liked the red vs blue vs green widescreen analysis. I think that kind of thing and widescreen analysis and solutions should be the main ideas powering this site.
  • I sometimes find a lack of input on new MMORPG's as they come out. They are often covered after release, but I (and I am sure others) would appreciate people taking the time to at least review the multi monitor possibilities when games are in beta if not provide fixes/ work-arounds. This is a small critique as many people do provide excellent support on WSGF
  • more fixes / improvments for older (1995 ~ 2005) games

A lot of the responses talked about the desire for more hardware benchmarks and testing.

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  • Hardware bench marking specializing multi-screen ,such as GPU,display,display arm,PC desk,PC chair,and multi display 3D environment.
  • Have multi-monitor hardware reviews, for GPU and CPU, to show real game performance in new AAA games. Kind of like the reviews in HardOCP, but focused on multi-monitor gaming.
  • I play on a GTX 680 at a resolution of 6000X1080 and I'm often looking for optimal playable setting and fix (when needed) I hate to see my game droping below 30 fps so when it does I look for the best setting but it's hard to find for surround gaming BTW Your already doing a very good job you're community kinda save my gaming experience because developper don't support very well triple display wich is kind of sad but I found fix on many game beacause of you continue your great job
  • Many sites have jumped on the triple monitor bandwagon and added 5760x1080 to their benchmark suites which gives us a general idea.
  • I'd like to see 5760x1200 and a bezel corrected res benchmarked. Does bezel correctection kill performance? I'd also like to know how tied in GPU VRAM is for all new releases. How much does more help framerate? Is the system bus getting thrashed? Does running the CPU 100-500 mhz faster improve framerate on triple monitor games or is the game GPU bound at high res, etc. More specificity catering to the triple monitor community. Occasionally WSGF (once or twice?) have done this but it would be nice to know if you buy a card with 4GB of VRAM if it actually did anything. Test relevant games old and new and a lot of them. Also, FXAA new settings, what do they do at 7-8Megapixels 60 times per second? OC video card help? VRAM help? etc.

Other people were looking for more interaction with and better promotion of the WSGF within the larger gaming communities.

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  • A better tie-in with the gaming community at large. I see WSGF as being a niche crowd, but I imagine it could be so much bigger. We're not well known by people uninterested in multi-monitor gaming and I feel I still have to explain what it is all the time. Multiple screens should be far more pervasive for the cost.
  • Get the name out there. Not many people know about this site.
  • Spread the word.

And finally a number of people mentioned issues with the site speed and layout. The recent migration with the forums have enabled us to put in significant improvements to the site speed. As we do additional site updates (moving from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7), we are also looking to overhaul the look of the site. We are also planning some incremental improvements between now and then, and will be engaging the community on help with that.

WSGF Nov 2012 Survey Results - Page 2

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Connecting with the WSGF

It is evident from the previous questions and input, that the WSGF is kind of a "need to use" site for many people. While some people come around routinely, many people only use the site in preparation for purchasing a game, or fixing a game they have already purchased. We agree with the earlier comments that the WSGF should stay true to its roots, so we won't be looking to expand beyond our core mission. However, we do want to find a way to bring people back to the WSGF. We want to provide a reason to connect the community as much as possible.

We asked a couple of questions to gauge how people connect with the WSGF. The first question dealt with how we push site news and info out to people, and the second dealt with how people might want to connect for online gaming. With regards to connecting for information push, I was surprised with how many people don't use Facebook or Twitter. I thought those were all the rage. ;) We won't stop pushing our news out through those venues, but the data did show that many people are connected via Steam and YouTube. Based on this, we have started posting our news pieces to our Steam group as announcements, and lends for evidence that a video newsletter might be a good idea.

With regards to connecting for a game, Steam is the clear winner. We are going to start scheduling a weekly Steam event, and will be running polls on the site and inquiring in the Steam group what games people would like to play. We will also be looking to see what dates and times work best as well. The lack of interest in an MMO helps to explain why we were never able to get a WSGF guild off the ground.

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Purchase & Play Habits

When looking at where people purchase games, Steam is the obvious winner with Origin being the big loser. My main reason for asking this question was to gauge interest in Amazon and GOG, with regards to our affiliate links. We've received just a handful of purchases through those links, and this data helps explain why. It's too bad Steam doesn't have some sort of affiliate or referral program, but with stats like this they really don't need it.

Corresponding with only moderate interest in GOG as a retailer is the moderate interest in indie and retro titles. I personally have a passion for indie devs and retro games, and I'm hoping that we can get more involvement with indie devs here at the WSGF.

With regards to play styles, single player is the most common, followed my co-op and the multi-player. This makes sense given the popularity of single player RPGs on the WSGF, like Oblivion. The interest in co-op and multi-player does bode well for us getting people together for a regular Steam game night.

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Additional Bits

In a first attempt to see what accessories our community uses and would like to see reviewed, we put together these two questions. There is a solid usage of Stereoscopic-3D, followed by the 4th "accessory" monitor and other immersive accessories. There is some interest in seeing reviews and news on these products on the WSGF, and we will see where we might be able to fit this in.

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Thanks again for your feedback, and be sure to take our short four question follow-up.