End of year 2024 MegaSurvey Results
I absolutely DO look through all your responses and I’m always grateful when you respond to one of my surveys. So I’m going to share the results with you, along with my thought process. If you have any comments on the below, jump on the discord and use the channel “Newsletter Feedback”.
For reference we had 36 responses, mostly folks from Louisville. Not a huge response, but enough to make some decisions for next year in my opinion.
An obvious bias in these results is self-selecting - i.e. I can pretty much garentee that anyone who filled it out is a fan of some sorts, and likely to want to play again soon. Therefore, when I look at these results, when I write “people” in the below analyses, I mean players who enjoy megagames.
Again, a huge thank you to everyone who participated.
Only 1 person who took the survey had not participated in one of our games, but I have to assume they’re a fan of the hobby otherwise what are they even doing? So outside of that, approximately 2/3 of respondents have played or helped with 2 or more games. A quarter of the respondents with 4 or more games under their belt. These folks are a mix of super-fans and my control team (also super-fans).
I have a couple of interesting takeaways from this one:
1) There’s a bias towards most recent games - not surprising I suppose. But what is surprising (to me) is that there’s not that many respondents who played in Gods of the Ancient World. As this was designed by me, it makes running it easy, and because I have all the components, it makes running it a cheaper proposition. Also, in my completely unbiased opinion, it’s a great game and I’d love for more people to experience it.
2) Same goes for Deephaven to some extent. Originally, the plan was to run it once and be done with it but the feedback response for it was excellent, and now I’m seeing that not a huge number of people have played it, which makes me think we should bring it back sometime.
I shouldn’t be surprised with this one - EVERYONE LOVES SCI-FI! If I’m honest, it’s not my favorite genre (even though my next design is sci-fi lol). But it does tell me that there’s a want for this genre.
Drama is way low on this list, which is somewhat of a shame. I kind of like the idea that we’re all creating linked stories for a soap opera or something. I think that’d be a lot of fun (love triangles, homicides, climbing the corporate ladder using underhanded means, etc.).
Horror is in the same boat. Honestly, I’m not sure what horror looks like in a megagame. I think if you want to be scared, you should just go to a haunted house at Halloween. My vision is more of Ghosthunters, or Last girl, or solving a murder with a Ghost detective or something i.e. less on the jump-scares and gore, and more towards including “spooky” elements.
Despite the lack of love for Drama or horror genres, I bet I could convince you they’d make for a good game!
I can’t believe I missed Cyberpunk!
And I think this comment sums up what we should be doing: “it is nice to have a variety so I’m not locking down just one type”. I couldn’t agree more.
I almost didn’t include this question because I knew we’d see the majority pick “somewhere in the middle” but it is nice to not be surprised. It tells me that I need to cater to all types.
After the success of Deephaven earlier this year, I am a little surprised that Free-form isn’t larger. I suppose I expected red and blue to be flipped in the above chart.
Thought number 1 - there’s no massive standout in this list. Which is probably what I expected. Most people don’t know a lot about other megagames they’ve not been a part of (I certainly don’t).
Thought number 2 - A couple of requests for Den of Wolves - that’s interesting. I’ll put that in my back pocket.
Thought number 3 - I’ll come back to this chart in December when I release my schedule for 2025 and talk more about it then.
This is the question on the schedule and I’m sharing the responses as-is so you can all see what I have to process.
You can see that there’s essentially 2 camps: 1) The schedule works well, especially when you’re travelling a couple of hours to get to Louisville. 2) MOAR LONGER. I hear this all the time and I get it.
My conclusion for this is as follows - I’m leaving it as it is for the following reasons: 1) Timing for those coming out of state. 2) As mentioned above, if there were one more turn, I’d expect to hear “just one more turn” again. 2) The control team need time to set up in the morning. 3) The control team is exhausted after a full day of running. 4) Players get tired! You may be a machine and want to go all night but not everyone does and I have to cater to all my players.
In terms of more time for rules explanations, that’s in the same boat. I cannot cater to everyone on the perfect time for rules explanations, but it is a good reminder to me how important it is to send out quality rules to everyone before the day.
Question: Where should we run next?
I included this (naively) thinking that if I got an overwhelming response on a single city, that’d be a good place to run. But now I see the results, you can see the scattershot of answers and I suppose I should’ve have been surprised in these results. First off, most of our players are going to come from surrounding cities which creates a bias towards Indy/Cinci/etc. Secondly, cities outside of the 4 hour circle are never going to get more than a single vote or two because I don’t get that many players from those cities, particularly regulars.
I think that players who come from cities within 2 hours are going to make the trip down to Louisville if they’re interested in playing. If I put one on in Indy for example, I’m going to double-dip on my player base (players from Louisville) and it’s a massive amount of work to advertise in a city I don’t know (also my least favorite part of the hobby). If I put one on in a city further away than a couple of hours (Ann Arbor or Columbus for example), I face some of the same problems, with the added issue of needing somewhere to stay, transportation costs/times etc.
Honestly, I’m most disappointed that I didn’t get more respondents from Ann Arbor after we ran one up there earlier this year. I know that 36 respondents is not perfectly representative of all players, but I could've used a couple more responses from MI to make me want to run up there again.
These results just reinforces some of the things I heard with the schedule. People want ease and people want PIZZA! We’ll most people that is. I need to find a way to make it optional.
This was the “anything else” question. There’s so much to answer in this so I’m just going to spew it out:
Columbus - If you go on the MGC discord, there’s talk of getting a Columbus group together.
Minis - If games require use of minis, I’ll try to let you know before the game. If you have ideas on how to use them before a game, ping me on discord before the game and I’ll tell you if they’ll get use.
Music - Brian is in charge of that!
News ticker - Some game runners use this. I don’t. Mostly because it’s more work for me to organize and I can’t always rely on technology on the day.
Bald glasses guy - that’s Daniel. I agree, he’s great! Well done bald glasses guy.
Redbull - I’m surprised this got a like. I end up giving away a load of these at the end because so many people don’t like them.
Level of Chaos/Mechanics - This is very hard to measure. Most games involve moving around the room and most games have some elements of mechanics. I do try to add a paragraph to the description of the game on the event page where each game leans.
Being conscientious of players with different needs - I always think about this: making sure there is enough space for wheelchairs between tables, making sure the maps have chairs, etc. But I also always include a question on the pre-game survey about how we can assist with accessibility. We do our best but always welcome additional feedback. Thanks for pointing this out.
Personal goals - This just depends on the megagame we play. I like them if they’re already in, but I’m not going to add them to a game that doesn’t come with them. It’s a massive amount of work to write briefs and goals for 40 players.
“No” responses:
I think this is more great evidence on why we shouldn’t extend the length of time of a game.
Here’s the negative responses to Mile Wide:
Only 1 spot for large groups to sit and easily move around.
Outdoor seating, don't personally drink alcohol, often feel like I have to talk at an extreme volume when inside in order for people to hear me.
The interior is too loud to hear people when we get rained in.
The pizza isn't very good
loud
Wish there were more food options there, but it gets the job done.
it's much too loud, i usually only stay for a few minutes due to noise making conversation nearly impossible.
It was too loud to really talk to people. Other non mega game people were screaming at sports on the tv and there seemed to be some kind of baby meetup happening? Honestly instead of offering lunch, if you wanted to add the fee and serve pizza for the after party and just hold it at the same location as the game it would probably work better.
The fact that some other patrons brought their babies and a playpen after It Came from the Skies was wiiiiild! Obviously, nothing that Dukes can do about that, but it was an insane site to see haha. But otherwise, everyone from the megagame was awesome
Busy and few food choices
I agree! That’s why I asked. I’ve heard many of these things before which leads to the next question:
For the question on location suggestions, here’s the (non-N/A) responses to that:
West Sixth brewing is an awesome place to go, and not too much further.
PG&Js dog bar doesn't require a dog to attend. Hi Wire doesn't have food but is next to Goodfellas and Caralis.
Atrium Brewing or Canary Club aren't terribly far either
O'Sheas has sooo much space, food, and drink options. It's not as close though
I don’t know most of these so I’d like this to be a talking point on Discord.
Conclusion: Changes we’ll work on
I’ll definitely be running at least one sci-fi game next year. Because of these results, I’ve been doing a bunch of research on well put together, sci-fi megagames (of which there are not many). But I think I’ve found one I can get excited about so stay tuned. It’s also given me a kick up the butt to work on my own sci-fi game. I predict a playtest in the spring.
I’m going to leave the schedule as it is with one change: Lunch can be a pain so I’m going to look at some other lunch options for this next year. My goal is to have pizza as an add-on to the ticket price but it depends on the technology I use for ticket sales. Box lunches would be my preference but they get very expensive. Pizza is simple and easy and works for most people.
Unless I get someone (a con perhaps) super excited to have us, I can’t foresee any other cities in our future next year. We’ll stick to Louisville and Gen Con.
I’m definitely in the market for another after-party location. But as I mentioned above, I don’t know the other options. Let’s talk it through on Discord.
Outside of these things, I feel pretty confident we’re doing OK. I stripped out a lot of the positive feedback because I wanted to focus on the things we can do better.