How to Take Advantage of Polls to Create Better Games

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#1

Hi everyone,

I know what you’re thinking, “I know how to use polls, why the heck is he posting this. If they’re in the dev forums, they’d know how to use a poll.”, and for some of you, you’re totally right; however, I’m hoping to at least bring some light to what further advantage polls can bring in many different situations. I’ve bulleted what I thought were some key aspects of poll running below.

What Should I Post About?

Although you can make a poll for anything, there are many situations where the decision really shouldn’t be up to the community. In making polls, you should try to avoid asking for music type, when to release updates, what order to release updates, and pricing for different game passes or products. The reason for this is because the community can be extremely unreliable when it comes to these topics.

Music?

For music, you always want to choose what is best for the theme of your game, and preferably copyright free. You also want to take into account the question of if you will have a music or radio game pass or some variation of these game passes in your game. This is why the decision is better left up to you

Updates?

For both when you release updates and what order you release updates, the community will always most likely pick the earliest date and the update most hyped for. This can be negative to your game because of rushing and also pushing forward big updates and leaving smaller, less exciting updates for later dates. You always want to space out the excitement of your game. Think about it this way, having a huge firework light off will keep people around for awhile, but having many smaller fireworks light off throughout the week will keep people there longer.

Gamepasses?

The community will always pick the cheapest game pass so that they can get the biggest bang for their buck. You should aim to price your game pass with a balance between quality, price, and demand, and find a median in there to aim for. If so many people are buying it but the price is super low, try upping the price. A great alternative to asking the community on these things is simply talking to friends or asking the dev forums what seems reasonable.

Although to some of you, this may be common sense, these topics should be avoided. A major tip for when thinking about what to post about should be “Will the majority of people pick one of these right away?” and “Do I really need different people’s opinions on this?” If the answer to the first is “Yes” and the second is “No”, try not to post it and get other people’s opinions alternatively.

Where Should I Run My Polls?

As mentioned somewhat previously in the last topic, you should try to pick the community best fitting for an opinion. If it is a developer related question to pricing, advertising, release date, etc, you may want to post your poll here on the developer forums to here about other people’s successes and failures (that you can learn from, of course). If it is something design related, maybe a different color or font, you may want to ask the community. You may also want to ask the community what they are hyped for or what they would like to see in the game in the future to plan out other updates.

How Should I Take My Results Into Account?

Some people may be tempted to simply pick the winner of the poll to make a decision. Although this is not always a bad choice, it can be a huge mistake under certain circumstances. In general, if a large amount of people voted for something alternatively in the poll, do NOT take the easy way out and pick the winner. If you pick the winner, you may be leaving the majority happy but the LARGE minority upset. If it is a close race and a large amount of people picked the alternative, try to compromise the decision by making a choice that both parties would agree with if possible. It may make the world of a difference in your game.

Although I could go on and on about polls and how to interpret them in the right way, the most common rule and best rule for poll running is think before you run. If you take the time to think out what the results might be, and the negative or positive side effects of getting these results, it will help you make the right decision.

Good luck with your future games, and please feel free to leave other tips relating to the topic below.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps!

Best,
Stefan
AKA FamedChris

3 Likes
#3

Your first spoiler says what the user would do if they were a rational agent that favours quick updates and cheap items. Then your ‘How should I take my results into account’ topic just says screw the polls, ignore them because first place makes people unhappy.

If your poll includes a price for gamepass/product then it is a bad poll. EG

  • Apple - R$10
  • Orange - R5

People will pick the orange, assuming they have no preference between fruits, but the lower price may also affect how they decide on the fruit to pick

  • Apple
  • Orange

Means the user can just decide which fruit they like without external influence.

Just as a side note, I dont think the developer forums will care for polls about your release date and anyone apart from the developer or a player will find it difficult to give a reasonable price for an item in your game.

2 Likes
#4

Hi Paul,

I’d like to follow up with a clarification that you may not have understood from my reading. My first topic is usually a large amount of the community. It is commonly seen when asked about prices of selling things that the lowest price is the majority picked, and the earliest release date is usually the things pushed for the most as well as quick updates. Most of the time, these are the cases when asking players their opinion. The “How should I take my results into account” topic says to find a compromise IF there is a large minority. This does not say to completely ignore your results or to, as you say it “screw the polls, ignore them because first place makes people unhappy.” It says to take it with some question. If there is an extremely large minority, that means that large minority may be lost in the interest of the game, which is why there should be a compromise, which I also underlined in my article. If the minority is fairly small though, I would suggest listening to the majority, as the minority’s opinion may not be the best of a decision.

To give an example of this, if you were looking to make something for shooting out of cars and asking people if it was a good idea, and 55% of the people voted yes while 45% of the people voted “this is a terrible idea”, those 45% of people COULD potentially be lost in the game, which might influence you to make a less overpowered version of your idea in the game to balance out each of the votes and find a middle ground.

Also, if you explain the situation for release date for the developer forums, I’m sure they would be able to give an opinion on the release date. If not, maybe consider talking to your developer team or other experienced developers for advice personally. I believe anyone apart from the developer forums would choose the lowest price the majority of the time. Little to never have I ever seen a situation where players majorly voted for a more expensive price.

I hope this helps clear things up, and thank you for your criticism.

Best,
Stefan
AKA FamedChris

1 Like
#5

Interesting perspective

  • This forum helped me
  • Polls are for normies

0 voters

1 Like