Quarto

Yep! As I've promised, I will be posting an infographic that summarises the most important results. Because a number of people have indicated interest, I will also be posting the raw data so that other people can do their own analysis of it (so hopefully, in the coming academic year, we'll be seeing a few undergrad essays about Skyrim modding/lore communities ). Please be patient with me, though - it will take me a few weeks to parse the results, and I don't want to release the raw data before I myself have had a chance to do that. You will definitely know about it, though - I'm holding on to the links to every single thread I've posted related to this survey, so in the same way that I spammed all throughout the community about the survey, I will also be spamming everyone with the results .

Thanks! The number of responses has sharply increased in the last few days, and I'm really looking forward to diving into the results - and sharing them! Interesting comments! Regarding the UESP thing, I would say it's not so much undue prominence, as rather a reflection of the fact that I'm looking at two very different groups of TES fans here, and there is some overlap between the two. I imagine that somebody else, who is extensively involved in the UESP, but only a tinkerer as far as modding goes, might feel that there's too many questions about modding :). Your employment comment, though, is very much valid. I suppose there's always some category you'll wind up missing, but in such circumstances, it's usually a good thing to include an "other" option with a textbox. I did that in a number of questions, but guess I thought I was exhaustive enough here :P. And yes, there is a large gap between undergraduate and master's - but that's kind of the way it is, most people who go into tertiary education at all actually do stop after completing their undergraduate studies. This is all right, because I'm not going after exact demographics here, just establishing a general overview. More detail would be possible, but it would likely make the survey more demanding. A couple of people have pointed out to me that the education question is slanted towards university education, and does not provide enough response options for people who went into professional training or apprenticeships after high school, and while I feel bad that I missed that particular option, it again comes down to how much detail is needed. The final week or two of preparations for this survey were all about cutting questions and reducing numbers of responses, in order to streamline the survey and allow people to complete it in a reasonable time - so, that's why not everything is as detailed as it could be. Oh, and about TES as an inspiration to study - definitely many TES fans finished their studies before TES came along, so nothing unusual there!

To be honest, I actually gave up on Star Citizen pretty much the moment it was launched. I'm a Wing Commander fan more than a fan of space sims in general. After taking a look at what Chris Roberts was presenting, I reluctantly concluded that it's about as exciting for me, as Kingdoms of Amalur to the TES fans. Sure, it's got Ken Rolston, but... y'know, it ain't Morrowind. No, no, still the same survey . I'm just spreading it to a few more sites in order to squeeze a few more responses in there. That having been said, from what I can see, posting in new forums no longer has a particularly significant effect, which tells me that I must be reaching the point of saturation where more or less everyone who cared to answer has done so .

Yep, Nexus was the first place where I posted it, actually :). As for Wing Commander, back then the developers certainly didn't make it easy, so there wasn't much modding going on. The games themselves were actually designed with easy expansion in mind, but Origin never released any tools or info about formats. So modding WC was very... different. It really took years to figure out all the ins and outs to be able to add content. Our most ambitious project was Wing Commander: Standoff, and, well - the game for which Standoff was made had been released in 1998, but Standoff itself wasn't completely finished until 2009. Today, that kind of time gap probably wouldn't be too problematic - I mean, we all know what modders have been able to do with Morrowind - but 1998 came just before the huge shader revolution in graphics cards, so upgrading the game to look half-decent was not easy ;). But the series still has a small, hardcore following (http://www.wcnews.com/ is the main community site), even though there really hasn't been any new games since 1998 (except for Arena for the XBLA, but... you know, not much to say about that one).

Hi All, I’m a long-time TES fan (but only a lurker here), and currently a PhD student at Bond University in Australia. I’m really amazed by how much TES fans do around the series, in terms of modding, compiling data in wikis, producing fan films and more. More broadly, my research is actually about what cultural heritage organisations can learn from commercial RPGs in order to produce great culture-oriented RPGs themselves. A part of that argument is looking at Skyrim and showing just how much world-building detail is involved in its world, but then I’m also arguing that it’s crucial to collaborate with fans – to give them the necessary means to produce mods and other works around a given game, in order to push it even further. To show this, I want to document who the TES fans are, and how they work. I’m limiting myself to two particular groups –the lore-oriented folks at the UESP and the modders (yes, yes, I know some people do both ), especially (but not exclusively) those who publish mods on Nexus Mods. Myself being a modder (not TES, though – Wing Commander) and game developer in past lives, I have a pretty good idea about how much work is involved in fan projects of any kind, and how much effort fans put into learning all the skills needed for these projects. Not to mention the time devoted to better understanding the lore of the TES universe! My anonymous survey asks you to help document this by answering a bunch of questions about your experience as a TES fan, particularly in regards to Skyrim. If you have fifteen minutes to spare, please, pretty please answer my survey, and let others know about it, too! The more responses I get, the more interesting the results will be. And to thank everyone for their efforts, I will later on write a report from the survey for the UESP, so that as the TES community, we all know a little bit more about what makes us tick. tl;dr – got 15-30 minutes to spare? Please answer an anonymous survey about what you as a TES fan do with the games, particularly in regards to modding (at Nexus) and lore-related activities (at the UESP). If you agree to take part in this survey, please click the link here. The survey page is mobile-friendly, so you can also do it on your phone - and actually, while it might take up to 30 minutes, most people get it done in under 15, so it's not so bad . Needless to say, should you change your mind, you can close the survey any time you like. Oh, and feel free to contact me at jmajewsk (at) bond.edu.au (or just post here) with any other questions or comments about the survey. Thanks in advance to everyone who decides to give it a go! Jakub Majewski P.S. Apologies in advance if you've already read about this at Nexus, Bethesda, or at another forum - I've already posted about this in a number of places, but I'm just trying to make sure I reach as many people as possible .