Well, Baltimore rocked. We set up shop in the Betascape booth and had somewhere between 150 and 200 people play our game and give us awesome feedback. Our purpose there was pretty much to get our name out and see what people thought who’ve never played our game and don’t even know us. In addition to finding out what parts of our game were fun and which parts were not fun, or even frustrating, we also got several stamps of approval that we were on the right path whenever someone would sit down and play for 30 minutes. “One more level, Mom!”

Kids were laughing and cheering, some significant others stormed away when their partner wouldn’t stop playing, and there was some mad shit-talking going on during the multiplayer. And over a hundred email sign-ups to be notified when the game launches. I couldn’t be happier! Mad pix too.

Gamer: “So why are you guys called Space Whale?”
Me: “Well, what’s cooler than a Space Whale, hm?”
Gamer: “..A Space Whale with an axe.”

One of the best parts of this event was how much data we pulled in about people playing our game. While Zynga’s obsession with metrics to dictate their game design might draw a lot of hate from other developers, metrics can (in moderation) be very useful to a small company like Space Whale. That’s why we recorded as much information as we could while people played the beta version of Return All Robots! I’d like to share our findings here, as they provided us some excellent insight that will help refine our game for its final release. Check out the info that Andrew compiled!

First, an overview of the data we collected:

• A total of 114 people tried the game, and from this group, 37% joined our mailing list
• Of the 76 people whose gender we recorded, 22% were female and 78% were male
• We gathered specific behavioral/gameplay data on 96 people
• The average age of people who played our game was nearly 22, with the youngest person being 4 and the oldest 54
• The platform used was roughly even, with 42% playing on PC and 58% on Xbox 360

This stuff wasn’t too surprising, though it is important to remember that our sample wasn’t perfect given that we were only ‘testing’ the people who go to ArtScape, a demographic in and of themselves. However, it seems reasonable that about three quarters of our players would be male, with the average age being on the low side of ‘adult’ and most being ambivalent about the platform. More on this later, though!

A primary goal of ours was to get feedback on our level design thus far and help determine if our difficulty curve is reasonable. The statistics below were derived from the 96 people that we specifically monitored. Any single player statistics exclude those who did not play the single player mode.

Levels Completed (% of Single Player Pool)

• 97% of the pool completed, at a minimum, the first tutorial, while 3% skipped the tutorials to play the levels
• 60% completed all three tutorials, while 28% completed only two and 9% only one
• A mere 8% of people defeated the first four levels (all of whom had played each tutorial) – nobody completed the entire game
• About 3% beat only three of the first four levels, 9% beat only two and 7% beat only one
• 2% completed all three advanced levels – interestingly, one of these individuals did not play the normal levels at all, and the other completed ¾
• 8% beat only one advanced level – everyone that tried had done all the tutorials and at least one of the standard levels. Most of this group had beaten all of the standard levels
• In total, about 31% of people beat at least one non-tutorial level
• 16% of players tried the multiplayer mode – only 6% of players tried both multiplayer and single player, and thus 10% played only multiplayer

This data was particularly interesting. It seemed as though our difficulty curve was a bit more challenging than we initially thought. Some of the mechanics that we clearly understood, such as the robots’ inability to move if they are called at diagonals, were confusing to players. We found that people tended to die more than we had hoped, not by losing the puzzle itself (manipulating the robots), but rather by colliding the player character with ‘death tiles’.

The disparity between the people who really got into single player and the people who played multiplayer was a little surprising. Nobody that did well in the single player mode played multiplayer, and in fact the people that were engrossed in multiplayer hardly played any single player at all. This perhaps shows that the multiplayer mode we designed attracted a different demographic than our single player puzzles.

Demographics were something we wanted to learn more about in general, so viewing some of the above data with player age as a filter yielded further thought-provoking results:

Player Age Distribution

• 14% of players were under 12. Everyone in this group completed at least one tutorial, and the majority completed all three tutorials. Nobody in this bracket played the multiplayer mode
• 17% of players were 12-17. Again, the majority completed all three tutorials, but unlike the youngest group, several individuals played multiplayer, and a small percentage only played multiplayer
• 61% comprised the magical 18-35 bracket, and thus the widest spread of player behaviors occurred here. The vast majority of players in the total pool who played multiplayer resided in this age bracket
• 8% of players were above 35. This group was decided least-engaged, with nobody completing all three tutorials or even a single non-tutorial level – however, many players from this bracket were self-proclaimed “non-gamers”
• Nobody over 30 completed all the tutorials and standard levels. Of the group that did, the majority were under 18
• 26% of the group that completed at least one non-tutorial level were under 12
• Nobody under 10 or over 30 completed any advanced levels, but the majority that beat at least one were under 18

Email Signup Distribution (by Age)

• Of the people that signed up for our mailing list, 9% were in the youngest group, 12% were 12-17, 74% were 18-35 and 5% were above 35.

Now, when analyzing data like this it’s important to keep in mind things like the size of our sample, the fact that we helped some players who were having difficulties, and the aforementioned ArtScape bias. However, some conclusions regarding demographics can still be drawn:

• Age was inversely correlated to skill, or at least patience; the younger players generally completed more levels. In particular, those under 18 seemed to be best at getting through the game and even trying the advanced levels
• Interest in PVE and PVP was strongly correlated with age; the 18-35 bracket was seemingly most interested in PVP, while younger players were far more interested in the single player experience
• Even considering that the oldest group (35+) was mostly non-gamers, there was still a striking dropoff in their skill/patience compared to the young’uns
• General interest in the game resided strongly in the 18-35 bracket proportionally to the others. While this can possibly be attributed to the fact that a smaller percentage of <18 year olds actually have emails, it could also be that the youngest groups did not find that our game would hold their attention long enough

Based on this, we decided to slightly shift our art design – we had initially planned on a “T” rating, including some slightly more violent art in the office building and labs. Since children enjoyed our game consistently, we’re toning that back and making sure none of the content is too objectionable.

Additionally, these results reinforce that Return All Robots! is following our company direction: we create retro-inspired games that anyone can enjoy, but that also offer enough challenge and depth for more hardcore gamers. If we hone our multiplayer mode, relax our difficulty curve but continue to provide more advanced mechanics later in the game, we can appeal to the casual demo of puzzle solvers as well as the thrill-seekers and PVP fanatics!

Tags: artscape, baltimore