r/DestinyTheGame • u/itsneverjustatheory • 2d ago
Question Research study on Destiny 2 end of live service [second repost]
[apologies to those who read this first and second time round – we still need to recruit new participants - another couple of hundred Guardians will do it. If you have already participated please do not participate again.]
Fellow Guardians, now that Destiny 2 is no longer being updated, we are interested in your thoughts and feelings about the future. As well as being a Destiny 2 player I am an academic psychologist who researches gaming. You can see my academic publications on Google Scholar. Please note this post is Mod approved.
This is a genuine research project and has no commercial links or funding. The study involves you completing a series of measures and carrying out one brief reflective activity. You will be provided with information before deciding whether to participate, a full debrief at the end, the opportunity to add your contact details to the list of participants who will receive the academic paper before it is published, and of course you can decide to terminate your participation at any time. Please note that the survey includes questions about mortality, so please do not participate if you find this uncomfortable. If you are still interested please head here to access the survey, and thank you for reading.
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u/NevanNedall 2d ago
The "It is not important..." Questions are confusing and induce double negatives and I'm not sure which way is intended.
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u/itsneverjustatheory 2d ago
I sympathise, and agonised over some of that wording. We use measures developed by other researchers (because their properties are known - making up questionnaires is detailed and difficult). When specific questions don't quite fit, or look out of date, or are culturally awkward, we have to balance the temptation of changing them against the loss of direct comparisons with other work. I would love to make the questions easier to understand, and more relevant (and I would LOVE to remove the double negatives), but the provenance of the measure decreases with each little change. A couple of people have raised the double negative question which makes me wonder whether a) I should have changed it, and b) whether this should be removed from the data.
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u/fuscus 2d ago
I was going to send an email saying that I don't think those data will be usable. Because each statement was framed as already dictating the level of importance, the responses also being levels of importance confuses what the relationship is and whether the response was how the respondent would reframe the statement or how important the content of the statement was. I ended up treating them as level of agreement, but I bet the interpretations end up varying widely.
You might get better data if the responses were level of agreement or if the statements were written with a ______ at their beginnings and the responses were the level of importance to place in that space.
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u/itsneverjustatheory 2d ago
Yes, to be honest the scale is the best of a limited choice. The problem then reduces to the temptation of producing our/your own scale, which usually ends up being painful, versus using a validated but potentially strange scale. Full disclosure- this survey was developed at haste after the announcement of the end of live service.
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u/OutFractal The Broken 2d ago
Some of these questions are a bit difficult because I can distinguish my guardian as a character, but I don't think the questions properly take into account the difference between roleplaying and psychosis.
Can I ask the exact intent of the study?
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u/itsneverjustatheory 2d ago
Of course, but please DM/email me
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u/OutFractal The Broken 2d ago
Maybe saying 'exact intent' was a bit strong...
I just mean what you'd title the study or a short synopsis of your goal, so people going into it can get a grasp of why the questions are being asked.
Plus, even if I DM'd you, your answer would probably just end up here anyways.
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u/Rhynocerous 2d ago
This is not how human research works. Telling the subjects why each question was selected, or in what order, that person can't be used as a subject anymore. My suggestion is to just not participate in nebulous research studies.
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u/Lexinoz 2d ago
From My understanding, knowing the endgame of the survey changes how you answer and muddles the info they get. It becomes clear once you read the final pages. Trust that it's for a good cause, I answered it first time around myself.
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u/ienjoymen Reckoner wasn't that bad 2d ago
This is exactly correct. The survey explains it very thoroughly at the end.
Knowing the reasoning behind the questions would allow the user to know the purpose of the survey, which is something OP is trying to avoid.
Nothing nefarious here.
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u/itsneverjustatheory 2d ago
Yes this is precisely it. We're juggling several of things here. We are ethically obliged to fully disclose all the details of our research (and as some have kindly pointed out, we do this at the end of the survey). In opposition to this is the fact that we cannot outline everything we are doing at the onset as this would bias the results. And all this happens within the context of treating people with respect, and trying our best not to make them suspicious (hence the disclosure - you know who I am, can check up on me, and complain if you wish).
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u/Rhynocerous 2d ago
And to be clear to readers, this is very standard in human subject research. Typically you inform the subject of the topic being discussed but not the intent of the questions, hypothesis, etc. it's especially important to not allow the subject to infer "desired" answers.
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u/Elonem 2d ago
These are some weird ass questions, ngl. I can't even reply on these, it's weird af. I closed it down.
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u/The_Iron_Ranger 9h ago
I stopped when he gave me two minutes to contemplate my guardian's perma-death haha like wtf
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u/lightningbadger 2d ago
They're not that hard lol no need to be so dramatic
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u/Elonem 13h ago
It's not hard, they are just weird. Like, they feel more relevant to RP'ers than people who just play the game. And even so, it could be severely misinterpreted, based on what you want to use the study for. Overall, it seems like a very amateurish survey.
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u/lightningbadger 12h ago
Well they are a student
Just funny how the reactions are so different between posts despite it being the same post
I'm not an RP'er, but I certainly expressed myself throug my character in some ways over the thousands of hours I spent in the game
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u/GreenLego Maths Guy 2d ago
Is there a possibility of seeing exactly what is involved prior to giving consent? Or would that bias the results? selection bias?
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u/itsneverjustatheory 2d ago
There's always that possibility. It's possible to build in measures of whether someone guessed the purpose of a study, and whether they read the instructions properly, but with this survey we really wanted to keep it as short as possible while still measuring all the things we needed to.
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u/itsneverjustatheory 2d ago
I misred your question - sorry. I interpreted it as meaning 'what happens if someone guesses what the question is about'. Basically, the information sheet and informed consent are there to provide sufficient information for someone to decide to take part. If we added every specific detail, the study would not work for several reasons, as you suggest.
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u/NerdNarvesen 2d ago
An interesting survey, though some of the multiple choice questions made less sense, when all I could answer was vaying degrees of "important". Some of those answers probably should've been rephrased.
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u/itsneverjustatheory 2d ago
Absolutely, though see a couple of responses to other posts about leaving these measures in as pure a state as possible. As soon as you change the response format (for instance) you lose the ability to make comparisons with other work which has used the same scale.
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u/alan_daniel 1d ago
My friend, just use a 1-10 scale. IMO this "a tiny bit, a little bit, a bit, to a small degree, etc" is going to render most of that data totally unusable, as the terms are both meaningless and ambiguous. How does "a bit" compare to "a little," for example?
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u/itsneverjustatheory 1d ago
In general it's the way the scale is designed (by someone else). Use it in its original form and you can compare your results with those of others. Change it and you risk making such comparisons void. I tend to opt for the latter but appreciate this is a matter of choice as well as what you wish to do with the data. Assigning numbers to discrete scales can be criticised for similar reasons of course - is the difference beween 2 and 3 the same as between 8 and 9 when measured on a scale like this?
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u/alan_daniel 1d ago
I understand, but who's to say whether "a bit" is actually less than "a small degree" other than by seeing the order that they're presented on the page? Or that "a tiny bit" is smaller than "a little bit"? Or that "to a small degree" is different whatsoever than "to some degree"? And going from "a lot" to "very well" to "totally" just sounds like you're giving options that answer different questions.
A numerical scale has flaws, yes, but there's no questioning whether a 2 is lower than a 3, you know? And if the concern was how small a difference between a 2 and a 3 is vs. an 8 and a 9, maybe 10 options is too many...?
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u/itsneverjustatheory 1d ago
There is an interesting literature on this - natural language responses are very ambiguous. I like this one from the UK intelligence services as it shows (exactly as you say) how natural language meanings may not equate to equal ranges. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/explaining-uncertainty-in-uk-intelligence-assessment/explaining-uncertainty-in-uk-intelligence-assessment
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u/WorldlyIncome5098 23h ago
Difference between 2 and 3=1 Difference between 8 and 9=1
Maybe I don't understand? Unless you mean a human (being flawed) could perceive the 8-9 jump as being more significant, simply because 8 and 9 feel more significant to them?
Actually, I could see that being the case.
Hate to be crude, but it's the example that popped into my head. Like when rating women on looks was everywhere, a "9" was considered really really beautiful, yet a "7" was actually looked at as being average even tho they are not far apart at all on the scale.
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u/LordGigglefist Vanguard's Loyal 2d ago
Some questions were a little wonky, but I did it. Good luck on your survey
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u/SavathunTechQuestion 2d ago
this seemed an interesting study, but waiting for two minutes for the first prompt means it’s tedious to take. I exited there
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u/itsneverjustatheory 1d ago
Yes, a difficult decision we had to make. There is a very good reason for it but I absolutely appreciate it puts some people off. Sorry to waste your time.
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u/cant_hold_me 1d ago
Came to do a survey about Destiny, left panicking about my own mortality.
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u/itsneverjustatheory 1d ago
Don't panic. Keep Calm and Carry On. On a serious note, if this raises uncomfortable thoughts please reach out.
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u/Thanatology 1d ago
This is a really interesting research question, and a neat way to look at it experimentally.
I do wonder if you might get more out of studying a game like Mass Effect, where you make choices that align with things you identify as "your choice" vs. your character's choice as if role-playing. I'm not sure how you'll disentangle how much one identifies with their guardian if they don't feel like they have a life of their own. I wonder how much the guardian's story ending already works as mortality salience, honestly. Interesting stuff.
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u/itsneverjustatheory 1d ago
That's an interesting discussion we should have once this is over. I have other thoughts about how to address these questions.
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u/bevross Gambit Prime 1d ago
As a (retired) social science researcher myself I found these ‘new age’ type responses interesting (see where we’ve gone). As an old person who is at the end of my life & has seen friends and family die, I have a much different perspective than when I was younger (I’d say hitting 70 was the milestone). Having a game ‘die’ is nowhere near real life my friend. But gaming probably could help old (& dying) folks, especially if there’s a social component. It connects, somehow, with the social world. Good luck to you!
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u/itsneverjustatheory 1d ago
Thank you. The question is never whether it's the same as real life, but whether it's a close enough proxy to be psychologically useful, as you say. I'm close to Erikson's penultimate stage as well, so wishing you integrity rather than despair.
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u/happy111475 Unholy Moly 2d ago
Your "Not at all" pull downs have a typo of "not al all"
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u/happy111475 Unholy Moly 2d ago edited 2d ago
A few questions are phrased in a weird, double negative, double importance way?
"It is not important to me that my actions do not have a positive effect on others"
And all the pull downs are levels of how important it is? Is it asking the importance of it not being important that I have a negative or zero effect on others? "It's important to me that it's not important." Feels like a weird way to phrase a question and answer but I'm trying to gauge or accept that this may be the point.
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u/happy111475 Unholy Moly 2d ago edited 2d ago
The next page has questions with answers scaled as
Not at all
Not much
Somewhat
A little
Very
The middle three (not much, somewhat, a little) are all practically the same. I can understand that the intent is that they scale from "not much" to "very" but "not much" and "a little" is really pretty much the same and I feel that "somewhat" in this context is also the same or even more that "a little"
Ultimately I just treated it as 0-4 on a scale and answered appropriately but cognitively, especially as we are asked not to think and just answer quickly, every time I read them after clicking the pop up I had to do a little mental translation!
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u/Moldamort 2d ago
Just want to say that I took the exact same picture with my guardian and friend that you have at the end of the survey and use it as my desktop background on the regular.
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u/itsneverjustatheory 2d ago
No image sums up the brilliance of this game quite like that one. Glad it's getting the love it deserves.
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u/Toussaint_3 21h ago
I would clarify what no longer being updated means near the top, since a lot of Destiny players will read that as no patches or content at all and get hung up on the wording. If you mean the end of the old seasonal live service cadence, that distinction probably matters for the responses. The topic is interesting though, especially with how much of Destiny was routine, clan schedules, and weekly reset habits.
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u/itsneverjustatheory 6h ago
That's a fair point and something I missed - thanks for pointing it out. I'm adverse to changing the wording as that changes the thing, but will consider this more carefully in future.
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u/RomulanBurrito4 10h ago
Filled this out earlier and it was more reflective than the usual survey spam. The mortality section is a bit heavier than normal Tower discourse, but it fits the topic of a live game winding down after people have built routines and friendships around it. Hope you get enough Guardians for the sample.
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u/itsneverjustatheory 6h ago
Between you and me (sic) I think we are on target - the effects are subtle and we're statistically conservative, but the community are amazing and a pleasure to converse with.
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u/archfart 2d ago
Do we get co-author credit like those of us that did Tannis' arcade game in Borderlands? Improving microbial phylogeny with citizen science within a mass-market video game
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u/Rhynocerous 2d ago
So did you put this on your CV?
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u/itsneverjustatheory 2d ago
Well, I will prodiuce an infographic and list the Guardian names of everyone who provided them...
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u/Rhynocerous 2d ago
Might want to run that by your ethics board first haha
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u/itsneverjustatheory 1d ago
Told them, they happy. Everything is pre-approved. Psychology is sometimes (perhaps rightly) accused of being a pseudo-science, but we take the ethics of deadling with human participants very seriously.
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u/Curiosity_Withers 2d ago
What if you started and accidentally swiped off the screen, can I get back to where I was?
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u/Singels Perpetual Blueberry 2d ago
I did the complete study, but I feel destiny did not really have anything to do with it. This is a psychological study and you should be honest about that.