RESEARCH

 I began my fundamental audience research by uploading a survey on Smart Survey with questions involving gaming. I had uploaded the Survey onto two social media website, Facebook & Tumblr. On both blog posts, I specifically asked that "Gamers" answer this survey only, as they are the target audience, no matter what age. I realise that they are my Primary Audience & the Secondary Audience must be whoever tunes into Channel 4 at the time where the 3MW's are shown. 

This is the status that I had posted onto Facebook. From the very beginning I had explained how vital it was for me to only have people who had played (or still playing) games respond, so I could get the correct results from the audience I wish to target.

I first asked if people had played Multiplayer with any Family Members. The majority of the answers had said Yes - which I happy with! I didn't want to be the only person that was interested in playing video games with my family. The examples I had used in the question were the games that I had played when I was younger with my family, Mario Kart & Wii Sports with my parents & brothers, whereas I had played Halo with my older brother - so technically they are the people who introduced me to violence. 

Linking in to this question, I had to conclude who the audience preferred playing with & why they do. These were the options & these were the results (below). Unfortunately Family wasn't as popular as I had hoped, but I had more teenagers answer the question more than anything whereas I could have taken into consideration asking anybody younger than 15. 

Going back to the first question to where most people had been introduced by a family member, I was hoping more people had maybe continued with the roots of playing with the family, but at the same time the responses explaining why they didn't was because the family members found it difficult to understand some of the games that they played or they didn't want to show their competitive side with their family. I agreed with most of the responses explaining why they would play with some people. Here are some of the best responses:

To summarize, I still believe doing this documentary will open up the world of playing video games with families, whether they are classed as relatively easy games for them to understand or all out RPG games. Regardless to whether it's playing with a family member or a friend, most of my responses from my audience had said they preferred playing alongside other people as it gives them the chance to pick up on something new, whether it's a Co-op Campaign or Head to Head. My last question was to just ask if people were interested in watching the idea of my documentary, with a sentence of the proposal (as I can't really explain it all in one question on a survey!) & I was happy with the 35 people that had said yes. 

I have also researched into if it's a good idea to begin playing games with family & the exact benefits from playing. It's different from when my parents where younger - without a TV or electricity, so for them it involved good old fashioned board games. Personally, although board games were a lot of fun, as a competitive family we ended up screaming at each other... especially playing Monopoly. There isn't a lot of direct research on to how many families sit & actually play video games together, but from a younger age parents will monitor & choose the games they think their child can play. Research showed that most adults didn't like playing games because they had said it was time consuming & some of the controls were difficult to pick up on. I can relate this to games that are RPG controlled, like World of Warcraft or something because I think they are difficult controls on the computer but I believe video consoled gaming is a lot easier for adults to try & comprehend. 

There are a lot of differences that adults seemed to have picked up on with having children who play games. When starting off at a young age, girls & boys seem to play games that used a lot of colours, have a main protagonist who could be well known - on cartoon shows that they watch. As they grow up, typically boys tend to go for shooting, racing & action/adventure games whilst girls stick to games that are puzzling. (I personally don't believe this research to be true, it depends on what age range of people they asked & when. Only because I know a lot of girls that love shooting games!)

Further research has shown that parents who have previously played video games are more lenient towards their children playing games. Whereas other parents will feel secluded as they don't understand gaming as much as the children who are committed. Parents who tend not to understand just brush off gaming as a waste of time because of the challenge they face with it.

Luckily my parents just have to be used to the gaming in our house because we all do it! I admit, playing alone or with friends can have its advantages rather than playing with family because my mum doesn't like games that involves shooting zombies whereas the rest of my family do. Family gaming has had an ongoing debate for a very long time, which to this day, has still not been resolved. I hope that my documentary will help some people understand that gaming isn't all that bad & it hasn't influenced us to act in bad behaviour including violence etc. 

Bibliography:

• http://confidentingrace.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/benefits-of-playing-games/ 
• http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/lit_reviews/Gaming_in_Families_review.pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_game
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console