A while back, we offered listeners of the Coriolis Effect a chance to shape the show in 2018 by answering some questions in a simple on-line survey. Given that 2018 is just a few days away, I have closed the survey and started to to look at the results.
First of all we asked listeners to rank the various elements of what we’ve done so far, in order of their favourite to least favourite. Some people don’t like that question because it forces them to make choices when they might like two or more things “about the same”. But I like the question because it forces people to make choices. However it was great to glace at the table of results and to see that pretty much every element was somebody’s favourite, that pretty much every element was somebody’s least favourite too shows me that our “magazine” style format seems to have something for everybody. Nothing came out as heavily disliked.
Averaging out the rankings, the most popular bits are what we call “Horizon fluff”, new locations, characters, ships etc. So we’ll endeavour to produce more of that. Second came our middle-of-the-podcast discussion topics, followed by mine and Dave’s banter, which is good to hear. We enjoy chatting on the podcast, but there’s a deep seated fear I think we both share, that no-one could enjoy listening to us. So its good to see that fear is unfounded. In the middle of the popularity league, separated by only one point, are our house rules and campaign reports. Then come three tied topics: Talent of the Episode; Interviews; and, Wider World of Gaming, but its worth pointing out that this is on average, some listeners rate one of these there as their favourite element of the show. The least popular element in 2017 was Players in the Hamam, which was the only one not be ranked as somebody’s favourite. But even that is not for the chop as it was one listener’s second favourite, and by no means the element that got the most “least favourite” rankings. Incidentally, w also asked later in the survey whether there was anything listeners would like to hear less of. Only a few people ticked anything. Just one person on a few items, and at most three people (for The Wider World of Gaming, and Talent of the Episode segments). So its all good.
Ninety-three percent of correspondents thought the length of our episodes was “about right”, so no changed required there.
But we did ask about change. We put some thoughts on how the podcast might develop, and asked how keen our listeners were for each change. Of the four options we offered for each, only one was entirely negative (“I’d prefer not”). A few of our suggestions had no dissenting thoughts: Publishing more regularly every three weeks; and more interviews with both players around the world and creators. Of those, more interviews with creators was the most popular improvement we could make. There are a couple more of the Fria Ligan team we didn’t see in Sweden that we’ll have to grab for an interview.
The least popular developments were: going weekly (thank god! I’m not sure we could); and expanding to cover RPGs in general, which as some correspondents said, might rob us of our “USP”. There was some demand for more actual plays, but not as part of the main programme. We do have a couple of recording waiting to be edited into actual plays, but I think we’ll need to improve our recording equipment if we want to do more, as improving sound quality was also quite popular.
We also asked about whether listeners would support the ‘cast through Patreon or similar. The response was broadly positive (only two people said “no”), but not massively enthusiastic. Given the recent kerfuffle over Patreon changing their terms, we’re not eager to jump in that pool, ourselves.
Finally we asked about our listeners. Most the respondents were male, aged between 25 and 54, and with university degree or higher. Sweden was the location of the highest number of respondents, with the UK and USA tied in second place, then Germany. But people also replied from Denmark, France and Japan, which is cool.
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