About GamerSurvey 2025

GamerSurvey is an research initiative from GamerInsights.  

It is a short, 5-minute survey that asks players to give feedback on individual game titles, asking questions about their user experience.   

The GamerSurvey has multiple functions:

• Gather feedback on video games from the most important perspective: the actual players.  

• Support the creation of GamerScores, a single-number summary of GamerSurvey responses on a given title. GamerScores are made available to the public - so that everyone has access to good information on the relative quality of video games.  

• Support the creation of detailed (but anonymized) reports to developers, to aid game design decisions. 

• These functions are in support of a single goal: to help developers make games that will delight players.  

It is called GamerSurvey 2025 because it is annual and ongoing - there will be a GamerSurvey 2026, and so on.  The games included in the survey will gradually change over time, as players' attention shifts - but the core survey questions will change very little.  By not changing the way we measure games, we can make valid comparisons between games & across years.  It's like using the same ruler to measure different things.   

GamerSurvey measures elements of user experience common across most games

GamerSurvey is build around a standard set of measures that are relevant to the vast majority of modern video games.  This is a set of ten "scale" type questions with similar construction. This core set is named the "GEAR" questions, the acronym for General Experience Assessment Research. This label is used to specify the core "scale" questions, which is a subset of the overall survey questionnaire.  The GamerSurvey contains the GEAR questions, but GEAR questions aren't the entirety of the GamerSurvey (it contains a few additional questions to help with data analysis).   

The GEAR questions asks respondents to make a subjective evaluation on following concepts, for the given rationale. 

• Technical performance.  If the system performs poorly, it is unlikely they could have a good experience. 

• Usability. If a player consciously struggles with the user interface, this will detract from the experience. 

• Options. If a player cannot adapt the system to support their needs, this will detract from the experience.

• Guidance. If the game fails to help the player understand how to play, this will detract from the experience. 

• Controls. If the game controls are not comfortable for player during play, this will detract from the experience.

• Presentation. The audio and visual aspects of the game greatly impact the players' experience. 

• Value. The perception of overall value delivered by the game can alter a players' opinion about it.  

• Fairness.  If the perceived difficulty of the game feels unfair, this will detract from the experience. 

• Gameplay.  If the core gameplay is not satisfying, it is unlikely that the game will be a good experience. 

• Sentiment. A player can arbitrarily like or dislike a game to any degree, regardless of other factors.  

It must be noted that this list of concepts does not cover every aspect of every game - but that is not the intent.  The GEAR questions are not intended to be comprehensive of all possible game elements, nor act as a detailed diagnostic for assessing the nuances of any given genre.   
The GEAR questions are kept at a high level out of necessity. To craft a survey that is equally applicable to a wide variety of games, the questions need to be limited to common factors. Obviously, the GEAR questions themselves are an implicit argument that the concepts listed above are both important to experience and common across games.  It is possible that the GEAR questions could be refined intermittently, but only if there are compelling reasons, backed by data evidence.      

Conceptual underpinnings 

The GEAR question set is built on the following assertations: 

1. All games have a measurable experience 

2. All games have an interface, controls, and a set of rules that dictate the relationship between them

3. The interactions with, and perceptions of, these components are the primary drivers game experiences  

4. Game experiences are multi-dimensional; thus, measurement must be multi-dimensional    

5. Components of experience are intertwined, but can be measured individually and understood independently 

6. Self-report is a valid approach for measuring game experiences, because experience is inherently subjective

7. The dimensions of experience are somewhat hierarchical, with low-level dimensions (e.g. technical stability) influencing the higher (e.g. "fun") 

8. The dimensions of experience can be expressed in scales that have unambiguously "good" and "not good" endpoints

9. The most positive gaming experiences would be rated "good" along all dimensions measured

10. The least positive gaming experiences would NOT be rated "good" on any number of dimensions measured (ratings do not need to be uniformly poor - any combination is sufficient)   

All that said, it should be recognized that no finite set of measures / dimensions can capture the entirety of experience; we can only hope to identify the top factors that explain the most variability.  

No survey will ever be perfect, but we can endeavor to make one that is good enough.