Invitation to participate in a short survey about Mass Effect 5 (hosted by University of Antwerp, Be

Fairly painless to complete.

I even got to reference playing 'Mass Effect Infiltrator' 

Nice, thanks for completing the survey! We were shooting for "fairly painless"

It was. I think you start in the loading bay where Shepard and Edi end up in ME3.

It was pretty rudimentary, but it was 'ok'...

Thanks for the feedback! It is perfectly okay that you want to play games to have fun as well as to escape into a virtual world or escape from real life. But there are plenty of people that want to play games that have emotional story lines or narratives that revolve around topics that are personally meaningful to them. That's, imo, the cool part of 'modern' gaming: we can experience all kinds of things when playing games.

Dude, every question in a research study is meticulously picked and thought about. They don't put pointless questions in. Some questions are used as controls/baselines to eliminate outliers and stack responses against each other. While it may seem like a dumb question to you, oftentimes for research you need to have that control there to ensure that the data you are gathering is valid. If you don't like the study, don't partake. I have a strong respect for these folks for putting their work out there - they will get plenty of feedback from peers and colleagues when this gets edited and published. As someone who has conducted research myself, explaining the project tends to be tough and people often judge when they don't have the facts or the full context - when you conduct qualitative studies like this, oftentimes you cannot disclose why you put things in due to potentially biasing those surveyed. 

Sheezus. Just take the quiz or leave it. 

I think the term fun was maybe used as a catch all term relative to the person answering. Maybe you can clarify a bit what you find entertaining through some of the number graded questions or the free written section on your expectations for ME5. Failing that the final bit gives you the opportunity to highlight any perceived shortcomings.

Well personally I agree up to a point. I'm never really sure how much analyses of these type of q&as gives you a clear signal out the other end. I think in this case motivation of the surveyor maybe helps maintain a degree of objectivity but in general I hold the view that clever design and appropriately asked questions are, for better or worse, at the mercy of the public. That doesn't always go well. In my case I have a tendency to rush (or skip) the questions and try to do it far too quickly. Thats going to give unreliable answers.

From what I remember of the survey some questions were sort of repeats (albeit from a different angle) - I suppose you can use that to filter unreliable respondents - assuming you get a decent return.

Even then you have the issue of self perception and interpretation of results.

Its interesting - I'm sure the surveyor will employ a number of things to try to contextualise this and other data collected.

Yeah - focus group syndrome. I get the impression whoever writes the survey may very well see immersion/losing yourself differently from me. I certainly didn't pick up on a link between that and an open world but your point makes sense to me. Its just another way when your not on someones wavelength that things get lost in translation. Not just that but little details so often add the sparkle on anything - boiling a game down to just a general signal misses those out and not everyone will remember the little things that gave them a smile or hooked you in over the course of however many hours. One of the other threads mentions a banter between Wynne and Alistair - I barely remembered it but wee snippets like that, when done well, add so much.

I agree with you on some of the open world stuff especially MEA and the enemy encounters. Very repetive to say the least. I liked DAI mind you but those areas were a tad smaller and I find myself tackling them in a much more linear fashion.

I think my one and only 6 was something to do with story or plot etc. That and character writing is probably a priority for me. Several years ago I would have thought we were in a safe pair of hands but yeah - not so much now. Your likely right on some of the auto 6 giving behaviour! Far too much unwarranted enthusiasm! Seriously though it ties in with some of the little things I referred to earlier being overlooked.

Maybe I am an outlier (actually put a hold on the maybe) but things looking nice is sort of a luxury to me. I'd much rather have substance and engagement than 'oh thats a pretty view.' Better still - 'ooohhh great textures,' when your being shot up the rear end. Are people really convinced by how it looks over how it feels? Maybe everyone just expects great graphics now.

The relationship with EA, despite a renewed emphasis on SP play still concerns me RE technical support. No matter how good or bad a job is done of design and writing, the old problems with culture and backlogs will torpedo them should they still be there.