Sega Player Survey Wants to Know If Its Fans Enjoy Anime

Surveys serve a crucial purpose within the video game industry, acting as a valuable source of information from players across the globe. No publisher is quite as invested in the gamer focused questionnaire than Sega, who routinely sends out surveys for even its subsidiaries. With surveys at times serving as an indicator of what a company is planning, the recent Sega survey featured an interesting question.

Sega uploaded the survey to its official website and even shared it on Twitter to get as many fans to participate as possible. The survey itself hits very familiar beats with anyone who has participated in one before, but it was question 11 and the proceeding queries that have players talking.

Question 11 of the "SEGA Survey March 2021" asks participants if they consider themselves anime fans. The question lists five responses ranging from enthusiastic agreement to indifference. Following that question, the survey proceeds to list a selection of popular anime and asks which series participants have watched. The list includes numerous anime spanning generations, with classics like Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, and One Piece to more modern anime like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and Sword Art Online. From there, it proceeds to focus primarily on the anime selected until breaking away to return to regular gaming preference questions.

While not stated in the survey itself, there are a few possible interpretations of the intention behind asking players about their interest in anime. The first is likely for Sega gauge if it is worth investing in developing anime series or films based on some of its most popular intellectual properties. There is a basis for this with the popular Persona 5 anime which released on streaming services last year.

Another possible reason for confirming how fans feel about anime could be understanding if the style is resonating with players. Games utilizing an anime aesthetic is an incredibly popular artistic design choice, as many games use it for both 3D and 2D applications. Sometimes is can be a meeting of both like Arc System Works' 2.5D anime fighting games like the recently delayed Guilty Gear Strive.

The final consideration is that Sega may be thinking of acquiring the license for anime titles to developer their own games. The market of anime licensed games is prominently led by publisher Bandai Namco, the current holder of some of the biggest anime licenses in the world. Some of those owned IPs were directly referenced by Sega in its questionnaire, including Dragon Ball Z which Bandai Namco continues to support with new DLC and releases.

This new Sega questionnaire comes just days after another survey was released by publisher Atlus, a subsidiary of Sega. In that survey, Atlus presented numerous questions focusing on new possible spin offs for the Persona franchise. Within this Sega survey, there are similar questions as the Persona 4 Arena games are mentioned numerous times. With the Atlus survey asking directly about a Persona 5 fighting game, alongside Sega exploring player's history with Persona fighters, maybe Arc System Works is planning beyond of Guilty Gear Strive.