Pathfinder 1E [Paizo] Paizo wants your opinions... Why?

[buzz]

There's a link on the main news page to a survey Paizo have on their Web site. I just finished taking it, and I started to wonder what their ultimate aim for the survey was.

It seems primarily to serve as a guage of their customers' buying habits, most likely for targeting advertising. However, there were a few questions asking whether readers wanted to see broader content in the magazine: book reviews, game reviews, coverage of CRPGs, minis, and even other PnP RPGs.

Curious. Could Paizo be looking to turn Dragon into what it was back in the day? I.e., covering the hobby as a whole?

I welcome any Paizo reps to comment.

 

[Harlock]

I'm sure everyone will see something a little differently. I felt the interest was geared a bit toward premiums or promo material. Why ask about eating habits around the gaming table? Maybe promotional coupons/advertising from frito-lay and Pepsi (maker's of Mt. Dew)? It seemed pretty clear at least that they want to get some idea of what the majority of their audience wants. Of course without putting a free postage insert in every magazine and only having it on the web will give them skewed results, but I'll leave statistics class in the dungeon of college memories.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

If they are looking to make me happy then waste less space on damn cartoons.

 

[buzz]

If they are looking to make me happy then waste less space on damn cartoons.

Heh. The cartoons are the first thing I read.

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

Aww. I love the cartoons.
Well, the good ones. As we know though, taste is subjective.
All in all though, I think they're worth the space they take up. What would go there instead? Ads?

 

[EricNoah]

I would imagine that there are several "purposes" to the survey -- it could help with everything from advertising to deciding what types of features people like.

 

[Jesse Decker]

We're not planning drastic changes in editorial policy from this one survey, but it'll serve to give us a better understanding of how most of our readership feels about specific parts of the magazine. The magazine is constantly changing in small ways in an effort to give folks what they find most useful about the magazine and to present original stuff at the same time, and because of that I think it's really important to ask the readers what they think about the magazine as often as possible.

For example, including reviews in the magazine has been debated a lot here in the offices. There are merits to including reviews, and there are potential pitfalls as well, but the biggest question that we can't answer is, of course, whether or not readers want reviews--so it became a question on the survey.

Over the coming year, we're going to be doing a series of smaller, more detailed surveys to supplement the general info we learn from this one. It would be cool, for example, to see how folks felt about presenting campaign settings in the magazine, so that might be the subject of one of the 3- or 4-question surveys in the coming month. This one's really just a beginning. Some folks might also notice that it resembles last year's printed survey--sort of a yearly progress report for the staff.

 

[Desdichado]

What's the link? Also, have you checked out the "Dragon bashing" thread?

 

[buzz]

We're not planning drastic changes in editorial policy from this one survey, but it'll serve to give us a better understanding of how most of our readership feels about specific parts of the magazine.

Thanks for chiming in, Jesse! It's always appreciated when publishers demonstrate that they care about their readers' opinions. Keep the surveys coming.

I still didn't like the latest cover, though.

:ducks:

P.S.: Joshua, the survey is here.

 

[Knightcrawler]

If they are looking to make me happy then waste less space on damn cartoons.

Ah the cartoons are great. And there are a lot less cartoons than there used to be. I really miss Dragonmirth and Snarfquest, yes I know I'm dating myself with that.

As to going back to how the magazine used to be, covering gaming as a whole, I would vote a strident NO! Back then I found much less use for an issue and there was no reason for me to get a subscription because some issues were next to useless to me. Keep it focused on D&D and only D&D. Right now the magazine is great.

My couple of suggestions/wishes would be to included more Forgotten Realms Prestige classes like there was. The prestige classes for the various gods were great and we still need some detailed. Also the short stories have gotten way to long. The last one in #305 was twenty pages long. I would vote to get rid of the short story completely.