Monday, June 21, 2010

Biweekly Poll Talkback - Screen Size


These random sketches I'm posting are largely unrelated to the biweekly poll content. Consider them a sneak peek of things to come (hopefully the genre of this game is readily apparent from the sketch XD). 101 votes this week, so we beat our record again. \^o^/

Anyway! This week's poll results were once again very interesting to me. The ratios weren't quite as surprising as the last round's, but something else did catch my interest. So let's get to it.

Screen Size: Large 36(35%)/Small 17 (16%) - Large screen wins out pretty soundly, but there's still a very decent chunk of people who prefer small. A quick browse of sakevisual.com's visitor analytics shows that less than 3.5% of the visitors have a screen resolution under 1024x768 (the resolution of Jisei). I assume that some 1024x768-ers still prefer a small size due to issues with menu/dock bars? What sort of hardware do you guys use? Specifically, what hardware to you play your games on?

Aspect Ratio: Standard 61(60%)/Widescreen 42 (41%) - Whoa. I was not expecting this. First, the percentages add up to more than 100%, so some of you voted for BOTH. Any reason? Second, people seem to care about aspect ratio much more than screen size. About half of the people who voted on this poll voiced a screen size preference, but pretty much everyone has an aspect ratio preference. I'd really curious to know why.

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Next poll is about sakeswag (Notice how I just tack the word "sake" onto another word and suddenly it's related? It's like being Batman or something, except I'm driving the "sakemobile" and throwing "sake-a-rangs."). I'm currently working on going to more conventions, and I'm always up for giving away free stuff. What are you guys interested in getting? Naturally, if you vote other, you really should leave a comment telling me what "other" is. Remember, this is FREE giveaways only, so don't ask for something too extravagant. >.> I'll talk about sakestuff for sale some other day...same saketime, same sakechannel (last of the Batman jokes, promise).

7 comments:

Drakey said...

(Not sure if I voted myself, but...)

I can see a bit of rationale personally, for voting twice on aspect ratio. I usually attach my laptop to a second, bigger monitor, and that's what i use for the bigger widescreen games. But I have to fullscreen it on my laptop monitor if I wanna play it on that screen, and I often enough am doing other passive things in the background while reading a vn, so switching in and out of FS is a headache... then again, the reason I have a laptop is its portable nature, so I don't always have that other monitor attached... It's really a matter of my current whims what I play it on, but I like having the option...

Also, the entire idea of a "sakemobile" scares me half to death... It doesn't sound safe in the least...

Ayu Sakata said...

I imagine a sakemobile would be less of a car and more of an ice cream truck, driving slowly around town to dispense overpriced cups of sake to all the adults who come rushing from their houses when they hear the music play.

Nameraka said...

I prefer my visual novels in 800x600 partly because it's what I'm used to using, and it fits on my laptop's 1280x960 screen without having to move my windows around (so yes, menus and dockbars). 1024x768 VNs work really nicely on my desktop, though, unless there's heavy transitioning or even light animation (à la Heileen).

I'm mostly fine with either standard or widescreen as long as it's no larger than 1024... though it would be better to just use standard in that case. :P

KNC said...

I don't know if I can really help with this but I prefer small and widescreen sized games.
According to whatismyscreenresolution.com my laptop's screen resolution is 1366x768(widescreen ftw xD ) so large size games don't fit well on my screen and I have to move the game around to see words at the bottom or top of the page which can get annoying and take away from the game experience, such as Jisei for example. It barely fits on my screen and I can't see the game as itself unless I move the option bar or whatever it's called at the bottom of my laptop's screen .( I hope that makes sense xD ) Good thing there's a fullscreen option.I liked Re-alistair's size though.

I like widescreen/fullscreen games if the game has a CG gallery and can make the pictures look bigger :D
I also like small games just for the option and if I want to do things in the background.

I doubt that I will ever go to a convention anytime soon but for extra sakeswag you can make small magnets or some rubber bracelets with the sakevisual logo or pictures on it( although I don't know how you'll go about making those or how much it'll cost).I'm just throwing ideas out there so feel free to ignore this xD

Whiner said...

I suspect people would be more likely to vote on aspect ratio than overall size because the wrong aspect ratio is more likely to screw up the game display than simple resizing is (although iirc the new renpy version will handle aspect changing better?)

mong said...

(I hope that picture means this new game's got something to do with bishounen. :D)

I like the screens smaller/standard, because my resolution is a 1280x800, meaning my dock covers some of the text and buttons. D: I't'd be cool to have a smaller screen but a fullscreen option, maybe. :O

As for sakeswag, I'm personally a geek for small things that I'd actually have a chance to use as opposed to collect (although I like collectin stickers haha) so I like keychains and bookmarks. :D It would be cool to see postcards or small magnets as well~ :D

Anonymous said...

Also, Widescreen is rare in VNs. The only vn's (according to VNDB), that have widescreen is Cross Days, cause there's a option to switch from 4:3 to 16:9 (possibly cause it's an animated Vn),and Caucasus ~Nanatsuki no Nie~, which is pre-defaultly in 16:9... So, yeah...