A Netrunner Player Survey

aka A Bunch of Random Data

Disclaimer Time:

This is all just aggregated data. It doesn’t necessarily reflect my own views about the game, the community, or anything else that’s going on with
Netrunner or Fantasy Flight Games. I just like numbers.

Here’s a list of changes I made to the raw data for clarity:

● Removed about 20 very obvious troll responses. There are some borderline troll responses but I left those in there. I only removed the troll
responses because some of them weren’t caught by data validation and were skewing the numbers.
● Combined entries with multiple choices in “Which site led you to this survey” into a category called “Multiple”. I thought Google Forms would
be smarter about how it aggregates that data - it is not.
● I also combined any choice other than “Male” or “Female” into a category of “Other”. I apologize if that is a problem for anyone, but it was
impossible to display anything meaningful using the responses as given since there were so many one-of answers. I also tried to do this in a
separate form when creating the graph to maintain the integrity of the raw data but I messed up and pasted the wrong column back into raw
data. Google Sheets is kind enough to autosave...and I didn’t notice until about half an hour later.
● Broke up the short answer responses into broad segments. This was necessary in order to make the data understandable and displayable.
There are some edge cases where an answer may have been shoe-horned into a category but almost all fell into the mentioned groups.
More on this later.
● The raw data (after the first three changes) can be found at this link.

I apologize for the lack of nice presentation. I’m not artistic minded, and while a number of people offered to help I didn’t get back to them in time
and wanted to get this done. The graphs, once exported from Google Forms, weren’t super pretty. Next time I’ll see if I can import the nicer ones it
generates in the spreadsheet doc. On to the numbers...
Demographic Information
Let’s start simple, with some demographic data about
the responders.

I don’t think we have many surprises here. The

overwhelming majority of players are males, with
ages between 25-34. Combined with the age ranges
above and below that makes up 96.5% of
respondents. The plurality of players have been
playing for about two years, with a lot of new players
ranging 0-12 months. There were a few outliers in
time played, presumably O:NR players.

Reddit made up the largest number of respondents,

followed by Facebook. Thank you to everyone who
shared the link to their local groups, retweeted it on
Twitter, or shared it by word of mouth. A lot of
respondents wrote in things like “My roommate told
me about this” or “People were talking about it at the
store.”

Thank you to everyone who responded across all

platforms - and shout-out to Stimhack for the hefty
14.4% despite not being a major social media
platform like the rest.
Demographics - World Map

A majority (53.9%) of respondents were from the US. The next major groups were the United Kingdom at 10.7%, Canada at 7%, and Australia at
5.3%. Anywhere on that map that is not white had at least one respondent. I was surprised by the number of respondents in Southeast Asia, and
the lack of respondents from China and India.
Corps, Runners, and Factions

Here we get into some gameplay related data. While the plurality of people don’t have a side preference, those who do seem to prefer corp - though
not by a huge margin.

Among those Corps, Faction Choice is very evenly split. Haas-Bioroid comes out on top, but is less than 3% ahead of Weyland, which in turn is only
.5% ahead of Jinteki.

Among Runners, we see a clear competition between Shapers and Anarchs, with Shapers holding a 2.8% lead. Criminals are quite a bit behind the
other two - it’ll be interesting to see if this changes as the competitive power levels change per faction. While it’s basically impossible to tell, Apex
won among the mini-factions.
Competitive Play

Of the respondents, the majority

considered themselves “competitive”
players. This was open-ended - people
could define competitive however they
would like. The difference was not huge.

The ANRPC question was poorly worded,

and should have included options about
whether you’d attend if one was in your
area. It does show there are still many
areas that don’t have circuits available to
them.
 These next few data points require some explanation. The
Problems? problems reported by people varied pretty wildly but some
major themes emerged relatively quickly and could be grouped
into four broad categories. We’ve further broken down
“Community Building” and “Game Design” in future slides, so
let’s talk about the others first.

● FFG Support: This covers things like competitive

support, communication, bad release schedules, the
lack of a judge program, lack of online support and the
legal issues with the fan sites. Some people cite the
ANRPC as a step in the right direction, with fans taking
over competitive support for the community.
● Competitiveness: About 10% of responders
complained about the competitive nature of the
community. Some recurring complaints said the
community was becoming “too much like Magic”, with
many citing the ANRPC as a negative example,
especially the cash prizes. Words like “hivemind”,
“groupthink”, and “sheep” got thrown around a lot.
● Other complaints were wide ranging. It’s not captured
here, but about 40% of respondents left this section
blank.
Game Design
This was our catchall for any issues people had with the game itself or the direction it was taking.

● Balance: Any complaint about one side being too strong or too weak. Lots of complaints
here about the weakness of Weyland and Criminal, and the strength of NBN, Shaper, and
Anarch.
● Ban/Errata: These were people who wanted to see the implementation of a ban, errata,
or restricted list. Some specific targets were Astroscript, Account Siphon, and Near-Earth
Hub.
● Designer Change: A solid 12% have some concerns about the upcoming change in
Game Designer after the Mumbad Cycle.
● Non-Interactive Decks: DLR, Noise, and Fast Advance in general. It’s noteworthy that
this survey was released right as DLR decks hit their high-point.
● Power Creep: Some people saw it in the existing cardpool, others were concerned about
the possibility.
● Rotation: There were concerns regarding rotation, with some worried it would ruin the
game and others concerned it was too slow of a model.
● Silver Bullets: These concerns focused on the overuse of Silver Bullets as a balance
mechanism.
● Templating: Concerns about consistent wording on similar mechanics leading to
confusion and the need for FAQ/Clarifications. Some of this was related to the frustration
of rapid changing Twitter rulings and the lack of frequent “templating” erratas.
● Tournament Format: This included the length of game rounds, the format of double-
elimination, and the lack of competitive events with unique rulesets (draft, limited card
pool, etc.)
Community Building
Community Building is a pretty generic catchall for anything that makes it harder to build a
new community.

● Diversity: Many people felt that the community needed to do more to diversify the
player base, especially on gender lines. Some felt the community wasn’t
welcoming, while others cited this as a general symptom of the industry/hobby.
● Other: This was a mix of people who just wanted more players in their area, people
who wanted more online communities, and those who felt that local stores weren’t
incentivized enough to run events.
● Barrier of Entry: By far the biggest category, this is further broken down due to its
size.
○ Cost: The entry cost has become overwhelmingly high. Buying 1-3
Cores, 4 Big Boxes, and 4 cycles of expansions is too much to ask a new
players for a game that’s supposed to be a cheaper alternative to a CCG.
○ Knowledge: A mix of non-intuitive rulings, hard to find information, and a
complex, ever changing meta makes it hard for new players to compete
and play.
○ Availability: Even if players can get past the first two barriers, many key
packs are unavailable for sale. In the even playing field an LCG is
supposed to provide this is a difficult problem to deal with - especially
when core cards are not available for purchase.
Conclusion
Netrunner is fun. Go play it.

If you have any suggestions for the next version of this survey, please let me know. I’ve gotten a lot of
feedback already, but will gladly take more. Also, any suggestions for survey tools is welcome. Google
Forms was great for quick and dirty, but I’m sure there’s something better available. Most liked and
disliked cards wasn’t very easy to capture. Anecdotally, you saw all the names you’d expect to see -
NEH, Astro, Caprice, Siphon, Faust, Noise - were all present. Next time I’ll try and create an autofill that
actually selects the card so it’s easier to capture data off of it.

Thanks for participating!