SWP market research

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 1:08 pm

in the pub yesterday evening; having a pint and playing the SWP, some fella comes over to watch. normal enough then he gets out a clipboard and starts shuffling papers, getting more unusual. it turns out he was doing market research about SWPs, i used to do loads of these (about coffee, beer, shampoo, antifreeze, anything with a double vowel really) so i know the drill. anyway he gave me £1.50 for my time and asked me various questions about SWP which needfully went tangential. has anyone heard of/witnessed this before?
i don't flatter myself that i'm a major player any more and i'm not too bothered about blowing my pseudonymity, so was happy to answer him and hopefully get some of my (our?) thoughts heard by the swp companies. one thing which seemed to impress the interviewer was that i had seen the omen advertising on shitbox.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:33 pm

I've often wondered how the SWP companies market research their existing products and how they prepare for new ones, although I've never actually encountered or heard of this type of approach before.

I know what I would do, namely ask regular players to run through any new games to identify strengths and weaknesses, not necessarily in terms of whether they are 'winnable' or not, but more in terms of game play, perceived fairness and so on. I think we as a group would have ensured that Trivia for Dummies for one never saw the light of day, and personally I would love to have had some influence on Millionaire 2006

before that came out!

Did he identify which company he was working for?

Matt Vinyl · Post by **Matt Vinyl** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 9:06 am

I assume there's also a 'log' inside the machine (or on the network) that clocks up how many times particular games are played. (Having said that, I know this is true as they have that leaderboard type thingy that shows which is the most popular.)

They could get more detailed than that though, and see how many consecutive times games are played / for how long etc.

I'm just rambling really, but I'd bet my bottom dol, er, pound that there's some clever stuff going on inside that box which tells the developers etc a lot about how us punters feel about their games.

I'd still be a bit wary about someone coming up to me whilst I was playing it though, imagine if someone from Andrex popped in to query you on the softness of their toilet paper 'whilst using it'!

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 9:51 am

NS, he was working for a factoring company but i suspect revolution were behind it because a lot of what he asked was about what i thought of the advertising on SWP which (i think) only itbox does.
he also asked if i have ever downloaded a ringtone from an SWP. "no, because i am not a berk"

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:48 pm

unknownpseudonym wrote:a lot of what he asked was about what i thought of the advertising on SWP

Thanks, UP. My response re the advertising would be that I would never take any notice of it myself but if advertising made ItBoxes more lucrative so that they could have a decent selection of games again, I'd be all for it - I've virtually given up playing them unless I'm waiting in a pub to meet someone etc. as all the games are to my mind either rubbish full stop or potentially playable but never worth doing so.

A great example of this was that recent Risk game which was actually quite similar in gameplay to the old standalone version but it had been made much more difficult to win anything more than £1 and it has already been relegated to the 'second screen' after no more than a few weeks and will soon I expect disappear from sight. Here's a tip for any lurking games designers or management from SWP companies - set up games so that people CAN win a few quid and I guarantee they will have a much longer and more lucrative shelf life than the garbage that keeps being released nowadays. Yes, by all means set up the games to get much harder if a big win occurs, as has always been the case, but don't create games where no one EVER wins!

I feel better now - it must be the hot weather!