Greetings readers and authors alike! In an ambitious effort to crack the nut of, "What is LitRPG?" I've decided to build a website and survey. I'll run the survey for 3-weeks each year, and provide the information free to the community. My goal is to understand LitRPG and the readers who love it. I believe this will help authors narrow down on their audience, write better stories, and learn about ways we can deviate and innovate. This is a great opportunity to learn from the community in a data driven survey. If there is anything you wish to know about our community of readers, please post your questions below. Please be as specific as possible. Good surveys are built on short and specific questions. Here are some of the areas I'd like to dig into: -- Personal information (age, gender, location, language, salary) -- Reader or Author (how do these two groups differ in opinion?) -- Fun vs Serious (game vs realism / real consequences) -- Stats (lots of stats, no stats, something in the middle) -- Pain -- Gore -- Sex -- Game Mechanics -- Progression -- Reason to stop reading -- Book length -- LGBT -- MMORPG vs Tabletop vs Single Player vs Not a Game -- How would you define LitRPG? (Free answer) -- 1st Person vs 3rd person | present tense vs past tense | 3rd limited vs 3rd omniscient -- Kindle Unlimited / Subscription / Renting vs Buying -- Price points per book length -- Series length vs stand alone -- Protagonist gender -- Favorite LitRPG book and why (Free answer) -- How many LitRPG books have you read? -- How many books do you read a year? -- Fantasy vs Science Fiction vs (other genres) (Or, uncheck the genre you're not interested in) -- Have you joined a LitRPG community? -- What would you like to see the most in a LitRPG? (Free answer) -- What potential sub-genres of LitRPG do you feel exist, or should exist? (Free answer) All of these will be given far more thought before the official survey goes up. They will be worked into non-biased questions. Things like language may be somewhat biased unless I can get the survey translated beforehand. What would you add? What would you remove? I look forward to your replies!
Ooh this looks fun to take. Maybe instead of asking salary, ask for a book budget? Whichever is more relevant for your goal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Hey Felicity. I like the idea of a book budget, and I'm not sure I'd include the salary question, especially if people feel odd reporting on that. It's about forming a demographic.
Alright. "How much do you spend on books a year, including subscriptions?" Sound good? This brings up another potential question. -- Do you buy... eBooks vs Print vs Audiobooks I'd imagine that most LitRPG books are eBooks or Audiobooks. This could tell authors whether it's worth pushing out a print version, or if they would be better off just working on the next book.
Not sure how you want to set up the questions but I vote for a 5 rank system 1 Being I dont ever want this in books I read 2 being I sometimes this in books I read towards negative 3 being I dont care about this whatsoever 4 being I sometimes want this in books I read towards positive 5 being I always love this in books I read This is based of of psych tests and personality tests I think it works although its sometimes hard to word the questions
Yeah, a lot of care will need to be taken when wording questions. I agree with some questions have a 1 - 5 answer similar to yours. I've researched a lot of survey software and there won't be any problem setting it up that way.
I feel that what's missing is a core set of questions that help us define LitRPG, from the reader's perspective. There may be a free form question/answer, though I'd like to drill down to how LitRPG is defined in a way that can be shown through data. Questions such as: -- Must (partly/mostly) be in a game or game-like world -- Must have stats (HP, MP, character sheets, etc.) -- Must have character levels and progression via levels -- Must have quests and rewards -- Must have in-game menus, map, communication, objectives, items, stats, etc. The idea here is to identify a set of questions that allow us to identify what LitRPG is. If everyone says stats are not important, then stats are not what makes the genre. If everyone says levels are not important, that the character can merely grow in skill alone, or in other ways, then levels are not what makes the genre. This is just the first set of questions I came up with. I'd put a lot more thought into them and avoid pushing a user in any direction. We can set these up as yes and no, or have the user select on a range. The range may be hard to identify what the user is trying to say, though it's an option. Further, I was thinking we could provide examples and ask the user if they think the story is LitRPG or could fit within a sub-genre of LitRPG. "This story exists within a fantasy video game. The character does not play the game as it was intended and so does not gain experience or skill advancement. Is this LitRPG?" "This story exists within a space opera setting. Captains pilot their ship, trade in advance economies, and war against each other in massive factions. Is this LitRPG?" "This story exists within a game, though there are no levels, stats, or special items. Everything is full immersion and based on the character's skill. Is this LitRPG?" Things like this may be interesting to see what people say. I would say all of those are LitRPG, though a sub-genre may help label them for the audience they were written for. Thoughts?
I think several survveys would be better. One to try to see what fans consider LitRPG, another to see the reader profile (sociologically), and another to see money/time spent
You're probably right. The longer a survey is, the more difficult it will be to get people to complete it. In that case, I would start with defining what LitRPG is. That'st he most important thing here, after all. Perhaps there can be a new survey once a month. I'd collect email addresses so that I can let people know when the results are ready, and when new surveys are up.
