Microsoft Forms (Primary Research)

What Graphics Style Do You Like?

(Results come from peers that I personally sent a link for the form to)

Question 1 - 

The first question was more just out of curiosity than anything to influence my project, I wanted to make the project centred around pixel art rather than normal art to make up for my lack of skill when it comes to drawing. Luckily for me, people seem to want pixel art more than anything else, probably due to the over saturation of drawn games in the current era such as cuphead. Pixel games have still had major hits such as stardew valley but the artstyle never gets as much recognition as with normal games like hollow knight.

Question 2 - 

Contrary to what I expected the answers to be for why they made the previous choice, most people seemed to like pixel art for various unrelated reasons. One person pointed out how it would be easier to create for me, meanwhile another person saw it as vintage and another saw it as a case of normal art being overused. What is strange to me is that someone considered the style easier on their eyes, which makes you assume that they would recognise things without having to stare or squint, meanwhile someone else thought that normal artwork is better since you can tell what everything is, not really lining up with one another.

Overall, I feel fairly confident that the pixel art style is what I should go for.

Question 3 - 

In order to get a few potentially similar games I can use as reference for my own project, I asked my peers for some. Minecraft isn't really something that applies and neither does hollow knight, but the old pokemon games, mario and street fighter are definitely some good places to look if I need some sort of inspiration for my own game. 

The main thing is that I remember that this is a question on art style not mechanics, noone is telling me to add in mining or goombas, just to go there if I need some graphical help.

Question 4 - 

Since the project will have to be lit in some way, I feel that it's important to make the distinction between prelit or properly lit environments and characters. The only different here is if I have point lights and such as well as changing the material of the different sprites the game will have. Since no clear conclusion was reached (60/40), I feel that I can try both and make my own judgement closer to time.

Question 5 - 

Unfortunately this question has a tie between my personal design choice and 64x64. I'm currently thinking that 64x64 is plenty for my characters and sprites, so it shouldn't really matter that everyone wanted me to do one or the other since they're likely to both end up being the same either way. Since the personal design choice question had a decent amount of answers, I feel like I can definitely make my own choices depending on the circumstances surrounding potential decisions down the line.

Question 6 - 

Graphical style coming in first was expected, but the animation side of things coming second, not so much. Animations were something I knew would be important but expected to be in 3rd behind environmental variety, meanwhile I expected camera filters and frame rate to be low since pixel art is famously low frame rate anyways, and the general concensus is that games should be 60fps for menus and such anyways so it never needed saying. 

Lighting and environmental variety are both pretty much the same importance, to get around the priority of them both I will just use my own judgement for each different circumstance and if that fails I can always ask peers for their advice and rethink my decisions and path forward from there.

Question 7 - 

This is arguably one of the most important questions since it could completely change how people percieve the project. One person recommended that I use raytracing which would make a game need an expensive graphics card to run rather than just a normal low spec computer. This would be a terrible choice the game as I need as large a net as possible.

Adding other characters seems like a good decision until you realise that it would be a lot of work, meanwhile Blen jumpscares is just an inside joke with a few peers rather than any serious suggestion. Lucky for me, I had 2 people answer with having animations play in the background, the way I interpret this is that I would have things like raindrops visible through windows as well as having things like an idle animation for my main character to keep the screen moving.

Question 8 - 

Most people liked the idea of uniformity of pixel sizes or just didn't really know, this tells me that despite games like Mario Land and other games having same sized pixels due to screen resolution issues, perhaps it would still be good as a graphical design choice when it really comes to it. If this sort of thing just doesn't work I can always go with my own opinion or make another form asking my peers again.

Question 9 - 

Despite being a form about graphical choices, I decided to throw this question into the form in order to see if focusing on graphics is really what matters or not. The final answer I came out with was that interactivity matters more than graphics, so any extra animations or pixel art sprites I could do as extras can be replaced by time spent coding. This could be very good for getting the project finished on time. I still think it's important to consider the amount of time spent on graphics carefully, I want the game to look good and play well, not look horrible so people give up before ever even getting a chance to play the game in the first place due to not being able to look at the screen without throwing up or getting a headache.

Question 10 - 

The same result % occurred on the next question, this isn't important but I like how strange of a coincidence it is. What is important is that people think the game should be very obviously 2D rather than attempting to be some sort of 3D. This will allow me to spend less time on specialised shading and getting angles in my artwork correct and will give me more time to perfect the games graphics, animations and gameplay. Without this question I could have wasted a massive amount of time on something that noone really wanted in the first place.

Question 11 - 

Rather than just having a few recommended games to inspire me or help me with design choices, I wanted to know what actually stuck with the people who played those games. Most people seemed to have something either positive or negative that stuck with them since they played, making these things quite important to know as I can include or exclude them depending on if they're positive or negative graphical choices.

Question 12 - 

Despite one person answering with N/A, most people gave good recommendations. One person wanted the game to just be good and that's it, meanwhile another pointed out the cartoonish yet terrifying world of subnautica and the pokemon games having perspective despite not really being graphically intensive and still 2D. Hollow knight was also mentioned for an iconic tinge the world seemed to have, whilst another person mentioned the bright colours in beasts of bermuda. This tells me that I can't just add one thing and expect the game to be memorable, I need the game to just generally be as good as possible in every area possible.

Question 13 - 

Finally, most people rated the form a 5/5 with only one 3/5 and one 4/5. The main thing I've realised from the ratings is actually that I should have a text question on how to improve my future form rather than having just a number that whenever less than perfect could mean anything. At least having a text box with a sentence would tell me where to look when it comes to fixing issues with the site and sorting out more advanced Microsoft forms in the future.

Conclusion

This form left me with a large amount of information that I can 100% use for my game project. It gave me confidence in knowing that the popular demand for a pixel game is quite high, alongside giving me importance reference pieces for how I style the game, with people saying Mario and Pokemon would be good references. It also told me that out of all of the design choices, animation and graphical style are the most important. This tells me that I should focus on making these areas as advanced and fleshed out as possible in order to give the user the best experience possible.

Luckily I was also given more time by having a question on including shaded 3D looking 2D sprites and backgrounds. This genuinely does save me time as I get to focus less on drawing 3D things using pixel art (which is a very hard job) and focus more on actually doing the programming work for my game, giving me a better chance at finishing the game project entirely.

I also learned a valuable lesson from the rating system I added to the end of the form. Despite getting a very good rating, 2 people gave less than perfect starts, but since I didn't have a text box they couldd't elaborate on what needed changing or improving, and so I will have to make the change in the next Microsoft form I make, just without having made the other changes that people wanted to see as I don't know exactly what they are. I did notice that I can add images though, and for things like choosing between styles this could be very useful as it gives the person answering the form a look into what their answer actually looks like when implemented, such as pixel graphics or smoothly drawn ones.