I know I am not the most active user, but I am a big fan of Starcraft and e-sports in general.
I am finishing my M.A. in International Business and for my thesis topic I thought… If I have to write about something for 4 months… why not choose something awesome that will/might help an entire community: electronic-sports.
It took some convincing, but my professor agreed that this topic is worth exploring. This is where I need your help. I am doing a general market analysis, in order to collect enough significant data that will attract new and large sponsors and help grow e-sports.
All the data collected will be 100% anonymous, and I will share my results with anyone who asks Furthermore, I will publish the results after I handed in my thesis at the end of October.
Please share this with as many friends as possible, even if they don’t watch e-sports.
Thanks so much!
Rob
***UPDATE***
Thanks to everyone that has filled out the survey so far! We have reached almost 1500 responses. A goal I never dared to imagine.
Next Friday I will publish some final numbers, but complete results will be available once I handed in my thesis
***UPDATE***
WOOOW! Liquid'Taeja wins Dreamhack! And we just reach 2000 responses!!!! Thanks everyone!
***UPDATE***
Alright, *drumroll* we have reached way over 2500 results... amazing! Please don't tell me about bias, xD this is an esports analysis. I think TL is pretty much the best (and most representative) community when it comes down to e-sports, despite the obvious bias towards scII.
Sorry for not posting the results immediately, I will first have to hand in my thesis (25th October). Afterwards I will even make my entire thesis available for anyone that is actually interested in the theoretical background. A lot of you have sent me an email, and I will definitely keep my promise to send out the results as soon as possible.
But what I can say is that I strongly believe some of the results will open the eyes of future sponsors! And seeing this kind of energy within the community is fueling my drive to further help and build the community Now there is only one thing left to say:
While I don't see myself as a typical "gamer" (I don't play any videogames at all, and haven't in the last six months; haven't played seriously in over a year) I still watch some sc2, and I still filled out the survey. Good luck with the Thesis!
i study physics, should i select engineering at 6? plus the income is my parents income?(since i dont work) or just the money i spend over a year or anything else? thx
EDIT: Also why is the fighting game scene completely uh... absent from the survey? There are more competitive fighting game fans than competitive FIFA game fans I'm pretty sure.
haha. Thanks for all the support. I am in the 10+ section as well. (I cut it off on purpose otherwise I would have to disclose over 20+ hours per week )
i remember someone who did s survey similar to this one on esports. seemed like deja vu for me, but finished the survey! maybe a bonus question should be who's your favourite team?
On September 22 2012 13:36 Dagobert wrote: On the last page, it is unclear to me what you mean by
apparel (whereas I would buy a mouse in general, I would not buy merchandise) consumer goods (?)
Apparel typically means clothing, bags, stickers, hats - anything you can put a logo on and wear around. Consumer Goods I'm not too sure about. when I think of "consumer goods" I think of anything that you buy for actual use, not to get something else out of. I guess they're whatever doesn't fit into the other categories?
I filled it out to try to help you out mate, but I really hope you aren't using teamliquid as your main/only avenue of people to fill this information out. We will obviously be completely biased towards esports being awesome.
Posts on TLO don't seem like a randomized population - how are you going to be able to do any statistics with it? It seems very skewed, just saying... Or are you simply trying to establish that some sort of a market exists?
I have some experience doing these kinds of essays, altho not on your level, answering and creating surveys etc, so I'll give some feedback. (typing this as I go through it)
I've learned that questions about age, social status etc should be at the end, but I don't really mind either. On the first page, asking about social status, there seems to be no option for people who are in <1 year relationships? On page 3, you ask "Do you play video games?". Would love a followup question such as "If yes, how many hours per week?" since you seem to be mapping out people's habits. On page 5, when doing "Rate the following" it's usually recommended to have an even amount of options, for example 4, to prevent participants to be neutral. Also, the options for amount of hours watching esports seems a bit low and narrow? I imagine many people who watch esports reach 10 hours/week easily, especially when there are live events during weekends. Also on page 5, "Are you watching more esports than last year?" feels like it could be more 'neutral', like "How much esports do you watch this year compared to last?". Maybe I'm just being a bit nit-picking
Other than that, good survey in general. There are so many questions tho, I have no idea what you're actually trying to figure out with this, ie what questions you are trying to find an answer to. Would love to hear the conclusion of your analysis for all this data! Good luck!
Done. Hope it really helps e-sports. Do a good job and convince everyone who sees the thesis that e-sports has a future. I watch some shows in TV (and other media) wich just don't have the potencial that e-sports has.
took the survery. hope it helps. i hope this hasnt been mentioned but i hope this isnt the only community you are gathering data from as it will be mega skewed and non-random. (im sure u took the due diligence to get a random sample since this is a masters thesis, but as a man with a degree in stats i just have to bring it up :D)
On September 23 2012 00:02 ParkwayDrive wrote: i hope this isnt the only community you are gathering data from as it will be mega skewed and non-random.
Good point, forgot to mention that in my post :p Some options on some of the questions hinted that that it was sent out to non-esports fans as well. Important with varied data!
hey mate, good luck with your thesis my pleasure to help out by filling out your survey, looking forward to see the results here in this thread, did not leave my email ;p
Fantastic you were able to convince your Professor that E-Sports is a viable option to do a masters thesis! Took your survey and to be honest it made me think just how much time thought and energy I put into the internet and games(mostly SC2) Wish you the best of luck with your thesis mate
Finished it. Hmm, from a subjective POV, wouldn't it be the best idea to fake interests in like.. everything? I mean, if the data is going to be used for something, I bet sponsors would be more interested in taking up E-sports if they thought 99% of us were interested in, lets say, fashion, lol
I know it's wrong to lie, but it's for a good purpose!
On September 23 2012 06:44 Fearce wrote: Finished it. Hmm, from a subjective POV, wouldn't it be the best idea to fake interests in like.. everything? I mean, if the data is going to be used for something, I bet sponsors would be more interested in taking up E-sports if they thought 99% of us were interested in, lets say, fashion, lol
I know it's wrong to lie, but it's for a good purpose!
I seriously doubt that someone considering investing in eSports would look to the results of an academic survey as opposed to a market study by a professional consulting firm. I am glad the OP is doing what he is doing, it'll hopefully be at least some reference for our future discussions - but I don't see how it could affect actual sponsor behavior. Particularly for event sponsorship.
On September 23 2012 06:44 Fearce wrote: Finished it. Hmm, from a subjective POV, wouldn't it be the best idea to fake interests in like.. everything? I mean, if the data is going to be used for something, I bet sponsors would be more interested in taking up E-sports if they thought 99% of us were interested in, lets say, fashion, lol
I know it's wrong to lie, but it's for a good purpose!
I seriously doubt that someone considering investing in eSports would look to the results of an academic survey as opposed to a market study by a professional consulting firm. I am glad the OP is doing what he is doing, it'll hopefully be at least some reference for our future discussions - but I don't see how it could affect actual sponsor behavior. Particularly for event sponsorship.
Interesting point of views here. 1) If something looks to good to be true it usually isn't. The same principle applies to market studies, surveys etc. Companies know what to look for, in order to judge the validity of a study.
2)@ Volkov: Dont be so nitpickey about the Linux wording But I appreciate the feedback! 3) I do strongly believe that there are various companies out there interested in the results of an academic research. What do I base this on? Well, first of I already got several emails from professionals around the globe that are interested in these results. Keep in mind that there are A LOT of small and medium sized companies, marketers, etc out there that cannot even dream of buying expensive "professional studies".
This survey is lacking so much. I'm still in High School. I can't check any field because I didn't finish it yet... and I can't check any field under field of education because I'm study 'general' so I still have 1-2 years to choose and I'm not earning income -.-
awesome, thanks so much for doing this OP, i'm glad to let people know my love for esports :D
a few critiques though; -i noticed highschool students were perhaps misrepresented in the 'area of study' question -i felt unsure when asked what games were found 'easy to understand', as i was not sure if you meant that they were easy/hard for ME to follow/watch, or if it was that "i" felt they are easy for others to understand, learn, or pick up on. -when rating what services i found 'interesting' i was unsure if "internet services" meant like an ISP, or simply a service provided over the internet -when asked what sports i watched i was unsure if "american football" meant actual professional american teams, or simply that style of sport as opposed to "soccer". because i follow canadian football quite closely, and they are similar but i didnt want to indicate that i watch a lot of sports from other countries (which i don't) -when i was rating what was important to me in an event, i felt unsure what "type of game" meant. did it mean, rts or fps, or this sport or that sport, or more specifically how the general flow of the matches went (exciting, quick, slow, tense, surprising, funny, etc) -also in the section, i was unsure how to rate "prize pool" as it affects me not so much, aside from bragging rights and good looking numbers for showing off, i understand it can affect which players will go to a tournament, or how much effort they'll put in, so in this case i do find it important, while not affecting me really. (also worth noting is that a tournament with like a $50 prize is much less important to me compared to a tournament with a substantial prize pool) -the last thing i can remember was just that i felt bad saying all the education i had completed was highschool when i'm currently attending university. i just felt a little misrepresented.
Will be interested to know the answer for how many married female professionals are watching SC2 more than 3 hours/week.
I was unsure how to answer some questions like, how much would I spend on merchandise...I included how much my husband and I spent on total on gaming keyboard/mouse etc..so the figure was at the higher bracket. I did this since I answered the income range in consideration of both our incomes.
Ah..to nitpick =)
Good luck though...I hope you get a good grade on this.
Done. Hope it really helps e-sports. Do a good job and convince everyone who sees the thesis that e-sports has a future. I watch some shows in TV (and other media) wich just don't have the potencial that e-sports has.
Pretty long survey but it was actually fun to fill out. I guess that's becaus it had a lot of relevant questions concerning eSports in general. Good luck on your thesis and I hope it works out well! It's really great to see the community to be able to take their time to do small things such as this that goes a long way for others.
Calling early adopters innovators and late adopters laggards, is quite the insult to intelligent people.
People who are early adopters don't buy based on product quality, but based on hype. This has no relation to innovation or the rewards of it, but to marketing work.
Late adopters of new technology, like me, perhaps don't need new technology Until they make self replicating bread. Or other major improvements in basic necessities.
Done and Done, I would like the results but the email link didnt do anything. I'll check again later to see if it's working. Good survey hope it helps the e-sports community
If I had a thesis of some sort to write I would definitely have written something about eSports. Since I've gotten my degree without having to do so, always willing to help out! gl!
for the final section, about what services/product advertisement am i interested in, there really should have been one for movie trailers. always interested to hear about any new movies coming out ^^
EPT
)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/T130Q.png)
