Survey Writeup Part I feature - Zombie Stress 2 mod for Half-Life 2

Date: 22/05/08
Number of People who answered it: 21
Survey Created: 01/04/08

Reading the information from the survey of zombie stress 2 which I made I have found some interesting information. One of the most interesting questions was Question 2:

Did you download/ play Zombie Stress 2?

Yes - 9 votes - 45%
No - 11 votes - 55%

This question showed me that a lot of the people who answered the questionnaire would be new to the zombie stress idea and may not have played the original maps meaning that I may be including them as a separate map pack in a later release of the game so that people can download and play that game.

I also found that, in question 4: What did you enjoy most from playing the Half Life 2 game and episodes? Was that the majority of people loved “blasting zombies”, whilst the second place was “Using world objects to kill the enemy”. Thus meaning that in the Zombie Stress maps there would be loads of opportunities of using world objects including barrels, physics traps and such to kill the zombies. As well as this giving the player plenty of ammo and weapons in order to aid with the “blasting”.

In question 5:

How did you find the following?

Solving Physics puzzle’s
Using the source engine to take out enemies
Zombies coming at your from every angle
Taking on speed zombies
Taking on poison zombies

The user would select how stressful the item was, if they wanted more of it, if it was enjoyable or if they weren’t particularly fussed about it. The answers gave me some interesting insight into how players interacted with some of the new content within Half Life 2 that separated it from the previous versions of the game.
Solving Physics puzzles was found to be “wanted more” then any other option. This was not what I had expected but was something that may be incorporated into Zombie Stress 2 if it’s needed or perhaps it can be done in order to reach certain Easter eggs within the game.
Using the source engine to take out enemies was the one that came out “Wanting more” then any other response to any other of the minor-questions then any other option within question 5. So such things which were found popular in question 5 will definitely be incorporated within some of the maps.
Zombies coming at your from every angle’s response was something that I found curious, I found such instances slightly stressful but according to the responses it came out with “Enjoyable” as a popular favourite meaning that being swarmed by zombies was something that we could happily incorporate into certain maps.
Taking on speed and poison zombie options were found to have a majority label of “Stressful“, but with enjoyable being the runner up of the other options for that minor-question then they will be put into the game just not overly used.

Question 6 addressed a more direct information gathering as to what people wanted to have with the new game of zombie stress 2’s game content. The one that came out most popular was “More Weapons”, followed by “Having loads of stress relieving maps” as it’s follow up. The next favourite was that people wanted “Loads of zombies” which of course was something that was always going to be incorporated within the game. The option of having “the maps from Zombie Stress 1” was something that came out with a majority of people not being bothered whether they were included or not. So I have decided to have them as a map pack if people want them then they can download them. If not then they won’t be forced onto them. The option for “users to have their maps appear in later versions of the mod” was part of an idea I had been playing with the for the mod. The response of “yes” has synched the idea for me, there will be map packs that will be released which will be created by fans of the community and then uploaded in packs of minimum of 3-5 maps so that people can install them onto their computer as they choose.

The last 2 questions of the survey revealed little bits of information as to what people wanted out of the out-of-game content of the mod. People seem to want a lot of content that can be read or enjoyed out of the game including competitions, reviews of maps and a good manual for the game. So Zombie Stress 2 may have map making competitions or even a community where submitted maps could be reviewed so that other people could see which map packs were popular. A game manual was something that will be written up and added to at a later date which would give important information about the game and other things to do with Zombie Stress 2.

Further press releases of the mod would have a lot of content but with “game play videos” coming out as a majority of the wanted content we will try and see what type of things we can get out.

The first write up of the survey has allowed me to closely look at what fans of zombie stress 2 want out of the mod and so we can address certain things but not go so far as to give the majority of what they want but keep tabs on what may be unpopular so that we can have a happy community and fan base of the mod.