Video game consultancy Quantic Foundry published an interesting report this week breaking down the data it gleaned from surveying 1,127 game players about "hot button" issues like free-to-play monetization, violence and diverse representation in games.
Curious developers will find lots of intriguing data to comb through in the full report, but what's particularly interesting in light of developers' ongoing conversations about the value of designing games with diverse characters is the fact that the majority of players surveyed (66 percent) agreed or strongly agreed that video games need to be more inclusive in terms of both gender and ethnicity.
Furthermore, 57 percent disagreed that the quality of video games has declined in the past decade, while 86 percent of those surveyed disagreed that violent video games bear any responsibility for gun violence in the real world.
Practical business takeaways from the survey were scant, though it's notable that 27 percent of those surveyed agreed that they would never pay real money in a free-to-play game. For more data from the survey, check out Quantic Foundry's full report; for further insight into how and why you might want to make your game more inclusive, check out this pragmatic blog post on the topic from Road Not Taken developer Daniel Cook.