Mailbag 4: Findings

Recently, after making Tour of Italy, I got a number of messages from people who saw the secret room with an image of a marketable plushie in it, who said things like "That's so cute!!" and "You should make that plushie!!" and "I'd buy that!!"

Thus, in the spirit of market economics, I decided to do a smalltime market research survey, regarding not only the plushie, but other sorts of questions too such as shipping, streaming, future videogames, Waffle's Revenge, and so forth.

All-in-all, I ended up with a whopping 20 responses, which is a nice healthy amount, perhaps even veering on the edge of "statistically significant."

Demographics

One of the most important things when conducting a survey is getting a good idea of the demographics of the people you are surveying (so you can do stuff like "crosstabs" (I did not do crosstabs)). In my case, I felt like the most important piece of information was "How do you know me?"

While Discord is still currently the king, I think it's nice that we still got a healthy third of my respondents coming from the open-air webbernets (forums, this site, and non-login-walled social media). Maybe I should have asked for more granularity between the Discord servers and forums I posted this on, but I think these results speak well enough for themselves.

I'm not quite sure what the deal is with the person who said "you made me do it." I just asked her a few times, that's all. :3

Anyhow, I also wanted to know how familiar people were with me as a character, or if my postings elsewhere were just interpreted at the ramblings of someone who is deeply unwell (note: this survey question did not answer that latter question):

With 20 respondents, it's interesting the only thing here to break the 50% mark was the milk game. Still, there is quite a large spread of ways one could be familiar with me, and only 1/5 of respondents chose the last option where they claimed to know nothing (and half of those people were clearly joking, seeing as how they selected multiple other options as well). All in all, I wish you all were familiar with every facet of my being, but these results nonetheless suffice.

Plushie

Now we're on to the big, important question:

Everybody looked at the plush:

(This was Required.)

Most of you would protect and cherish the plush (rather than perish):

Curiously, one respondent would protect the plush, but would not cherish it. We are contacting Erwin Schrödinger for advice with regards to how best proceed with their situation (please understand).

With those crucial questions out of the way, it was time to ask about cold hard cash:

The people who selected the bottom two "No" options did not select any other choices, meaning that roughly a third of respondents were not swayed enough by the picture above to feel compelled to make a purchase (no worries: preorders aren't opening any time soon).

Almost all respondents selected a contiguous range from their preferred minimum to their preferred maximum. The most common answer (n=6) was just a flat $20 with no other options. Curiously, 3 people selected $30 as their minimum, perhaps recognizing the economics of small-scale plushie production.

The most curious answer was from a respondent who selected "$20, $30, $90." I am not sure what the reasoning was for the discontinuity there, but I can respect it.

The Stream

Now we have a couple simple questions about my streams on twitch.tv:

Previously, 9 people said they were familiar with me through my streams, but here 11 people said they watch my streams. Looking at the individual survey submissions, I have no explanation for the discrepancy, except that they maybe did not recognize my on-stream avatar as belonging to me.

Inconsistencies aside, 17 people had opinions about my on-stream appearance:

I gotta say, it feels nice to see that the major of respondents are fine with the streams as is (even if I want to improve personally). Only picking the last option was the most popular choice (n=6), while picking all five options was the second most popular choice (n=3). Ignoring the "stream is fine" option, 6 people picked only 1 option, while 5 people picked multiple options.

As for my opinion on each option:

• Improved PNG - A bit basic for my tastes, but it would require the least amount of changes to my setup.
• Live2D Model - This would require setting up facetracking, which I'm not sure how well that would play with my glasses.
• 3D Model - While the poll here is even, elsewhere it seems like people prefer the aesthetic of Live2D models. Personally, I'd prefer a 3D model for its versatility, but the same worries about facetracking apply either way.
• Cosplay - I'd be extremely up for this option if I weren't camera-shy. I mean, I've been meaning to dye my hair IRL for quite some time, and I do want to sew that silly shirt of mine. Alas, my room is kind of a mess, doesn't have the privacy this option would demand, and there's no workable way we could rearrange things. I might reconsider this if my living situation changes.
• Stream is fine - I guess, but I want to try improving.

Game Ideas

At this point in the survey I had the survey takers rate various Game Ideas for the expansion of the Samantha Arantes Brand-Space. About 19 out of 20 people provided their opinions on the one-sentence game pitches, though keep in mind that one person just gave every pitch a 1/5 (weezer fans amirite).

The results, per game, are as follows:

For the curious, here are more elaborate explanations of each Game Idea (note: these contain more information than was provided to the survey takers):

• Awkward Dates Done Quick - Pitched as a "ZZT Speed-Dating Simulator", this is the game I plan on making for Oktrollberfest 2024. It will be an immediate, direct sequel to my 2023 Oktrollberfest game.

• Samantha Arantes vs. Karid-X - Pitched as an expanded remake of my hack "Samus vs. Karid-X" with an 8-bit spec, this idea comes from my desire to make homebrew for the Sega Master System (note: I have never owned a Sega Master System).

• Samantha Arantes Abolishes the Metropolitan Android Police - Pitched as a "16-bit spec search-action game patterned after Y-Faster (i.e. with Megaman-like progression)", this is a prospective sequel to Awkward Dates Done Quick. The police station is a floating island like Sigma's Fortress, and they have legal authority to just abduct people like in those corny old space alien movies. I'm not sure if I want to make this a Genesis homebrew or just have it be a retraux thing.

• Little Samantha's Big Adventure - Pitched just as a "search action game riffing on Tiny-Huge Island", this is based off of an idea I've wanted to make since the 2021 Oatsngoats romhacking contest (which I ended up not participating in). My only worry is that I'm not sure if this concept would be able to sustain a whole game (perhaps it could work as a sub-area in one of these other games).

• Samantha-Vania (working title) - Pitched as "an Igavania-style thing with Samantha in a legally distinct (from Konami's) version of Dracula's Castle," this idea exists as a way of making as a literal of a "metrovania" as possible. I have only a vague idea of how this would actually work in the lore or setting or the Samantha-Verse, but I think I'll be able to manage something special.

For the sake of comparison, here's the average rating of each game on one chart:

You fellas really wanna see me kill Neo-Dracula, don't you?

Waffle's Revenge

One person skipped this question.

52.6% of you need to see me after class.

From this point on, we will be dealing with short answer questions. Viewer discretion advised.

Shipping

About two-thirds of you say that you don't ship me with anyone. However, of the remaining third, only two of you were brave enough to answer "Yes."

To protect the innocent, the none of you shipper-folk will be identified by name:

i said maybe!

Maybe? You need some more confidence than that!

I'd imagine she boards a ship to travel in space with numerous others every now and then

TRUE!

Suprathika Maraj (Super Mario Hindi girl version)

Oooh. She sounds cute. Do you have her number?

marioroid can be her coworker they can fight stuff together tag team style i dont think it would be romantic tho or it would be but one sided only like marioroid would have a crush on samantha but surprisingly(?) not the other way around

With what I know about Mr. Marioroid Esq. this seems pretty accurate. He seems like a very pleasant guy and good at his whole Space Hunter job, but I'm just not that into short guys like him. Sorry there buddy.

The sweet sisters that showed up to her house I ship her with both of them I want a nice Mormon thruple

Hey WiL buddy, did you write this? This is unhinged enough that I'm pretty sure you wrote this one WiL.

hot karid

Awwww yeah. He's just a big, nice, hunky guy with the voice of a baritone angel. Just an absolutely perfect specimen. It's too bad that I killed his brother (the not-as-hot karid) for one of my previous jobs, so I doubt things will ever work out between us. v_v;

weezer

No.

Anyhow, all of these answers have been duly noted and will be considered as possible inclusions for the upcoming speeddating-sim later this year. Keep your eyes peeled.

Questions & Thoughts

The very end of the survey had a bits where people could freely ask questions and give comments --- ya know, more traditional kind of mailbag fodder:

alexman25 asks:

Are you NUTS?

No. I escaped Nuts Station in time to avoid becoming NUTS. Thank you for your consideration though :)

alexman25 thinks:

I very much appreciate characters with simple color palettes such as this !

Ah shucks! :3 You can have a simple color palette too! :3c

From "n_no"

no

So true bestie! :D

anonymous asks:

quick! favorite sandwich?!

Ooooh... that's a good one... I'm not sure if it's a absolute favorite, but I'm having a craving now for a hot pastrami sandwich with tomatoes, pickles, some fried onions, and a brain-blasting medley of cheeses.

anonymous says:

Any thoughts?

nope, keep up the good work.

Thanks!

anonymous, in trouble, pleads:

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computer

Oh, to the survey? You clicked a link to get there. If you want to go somewhere else, I recommend clicking another link, such as this one.

Zinfandel asks:

Dubious mixed non-alcoholic beverages involving lactose and cola: yes or no? (i swear this is the last time)

Are you talking about pilk? Yeah, that stuff's great! I dunno about you, but here in 2560 they sell it in little single-serve boxes right next to the root beer milk. It's very popular amongst the kids.

"The reason she was put in a ZZT game to go to the fridge for a glass of milk" asks:

How many Arantes are in one Samantha

Hmmm... that's a tough question...

"Arante" has 6 letters, and "Samantha" has 8, so by dividing 8 by 6 we get 1.333 Arantes per Samantha.

There may be some more rigorous mathematic analysis to be had, but this is the best I got.

"The reason she was put in a ZZT game to go to the fridge for a glass of milk" adds:

Do you have any last thoughts?

Space warrior!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That I am!

dave2 asks:

What do ya say what do ya know Sam?

I say many things, and I know things. One thing that I know especially is that Sam I am.

dave2 adds:

I am mostly curious/want to know a lot more about Samantha Arantes backstory and creation; I get the Samus Aran connection, only I don't, at all!

Oooooh boy! This is a big question.

Regarding the history of my creation, I had a whole article about the history of the Karid-X meme on Metroid Construction in the works a while back, but lost steam before I could finish it.

The short version of it is that after making the silly hack "Samus vs. Karid-X" that RT wanted to make a slice-of-life sequel to it and put it on itch.io but didn't want to use any copyrighted characters, and thus I was born.

As for my in-universe biography, I was orphaned at a young age when my home colony was attacked and adopted by a nice family of Froggos from K'kero Alpha after being rescued. Around the age of 15 our family moved to a different Terran-founded multi-species space colony, where I attended high school. Even with all of my space travels since then, it's the place I still consider home.

There a lot of other lore and backstory currently being formulated, such as the colony world I'm on being partially terraformed, with about 1/3 of the planet still in its prior Venusian state (with evidence suggesting that there was intelligent life here before the planet became a literal oven).

...but frankly, I should wait until the games are made before setting any of this in stone.

Mariofan2468 asks:

samantha does the spock hand on the website does this mean star trek exists in the samantha universe

I dunno about you, but for me Star Trek is as a 20th-century Terran media franchise that entered the public domain not that long before the Terrans' first contact with extraterrestrial life. During this first meeting, some of the people there used the Vulcan salute as a greeting, and since then it's become irrevocably attached to interplanetary culture.

I just use it because I think it looks cool.

Also, while plenty of stuff in this universe does work pretty close to Star Trek rules, though in some other respects it does not. For instance, we got convenient FTL travel and communication, artificial gravity, and alien races with a surprisingly high degree of biological similarity and compatibility. On the other hand, our model of galactic governance is completely different, with the concept of a "United Galactic Federation" merely referring to a bunch of treaties and gentlemen's agreements enabling smooth trade, communication, and migration (and, rarely, extradition). Governments as you would understand them almost never exist beyond the scale of an individual planet or solar system (trade unions, on the other hand, tend to exist at much larger scales).

Mariofan2468 comments:

when i see your username rt55j in my head i read it as "rtg" idk why

Because I'm always Ready To Go!!

"en double u" asks:

Can she backwards long jump?

Well, if someone adds a model of me to Super Mario 64, then sure!

"en double u" comments:

Congrats on the new game

(Not sure what you're referring to) uh... thanks!!

anonymous asks:

do you kiss aliens

Yes.

anonymous adds:

she should have a puppy

Sorry, but I'm more of a cat person. :3cccccc

anonymous asks:

Could Samantha beat Samus in a fight?

Me? Fight Samus? I'm not sure how that would happen but, uh, let me think about it for a bit...

I guess it depends on what kind of fight we're talking about. Like, if we're talking about a fair fight, mano-a-mano without any silly power armor, I think I could beat her as long as she agrees not to use her newfound vampiric powers. But if we're both using our full arsenals, I think she'd trounce me pretty easily. (Plasma beats wood, after all.)

"CCCCCCCCCCCCC" asks:

did you wear a frog onsie to fit in with the other frog kids?

Yeah. Those were my jammies when I was a youngun. I grew out of them when I was about 12, though I still call my PJs my "kero suit" out of habit (not to be confused with my power suit, which I sometimes call my Kero Suit instead of my Frog Suit).

"CCCCCCCCCCCCC" comments:

luv u

I love you too. Sorry for making you do this. :3c

"sapphronxd and or oneof69" asks:

favorite weezer song

This one. Thanks for asking.

"sapphronxd and or oneof69" also add:

Do you have any last thoughts?

i dont but im a really big fan of weezer

okay

Conclusion

It's nice to know I have some dedicated fans. :3

I'll be sure to let you all know when I make the plushie or make a cosplay or improve my stream set-up or make a new game or do anything similarly interesting.

No guarantees about the availability of the plushie tho. Hopefully I have enough energy to make at least a few, but I don't think I'd be able to mass produce it at any scale. v_v;

I love you all. <3