'Miknal' said:
Why would anyone not want the dc ported? They don't have to play it.
Are people worried about attracting dreamcast fans? Do they smell?
People on this forum confused me :/
The most sensible and interesting post I've seen on the topic. So I'll try to at least partially consider it and maybe address some of it, as best I can.
People are strange, and trying to understand their motivations can be tricky even when they state what they believe their motivations to be. It's so tricky that there's at least an entire industry surrounding human minds - but the first point, I feel, should be that the OP *invited* "No" answers. In fact in the first poll there are 3 possible answers and 2 of them are negative. So I think we should first question why the OP invited negative answers.
It would appear TO ME that by splitting the "No" answer into two options the OP is trying to understand the potential audience without making a simple poll into an entire survey. Instead of a simple "yes/no" we now actually have a "maybe" - in essence one of the so-called "No" options is almost a dare... as in "I DARE you to make a DreamCast emu that's actually playable - because you can't! So Ner!". In many cases even a childishly opaque dare is sufficient to provoke the "I so CAN do that! And to prove it, I will!" response. The OP is definatley looking IMHO to interpret such "No" votes as a "Dare You Yes". Without that option, people who thought the Pandora (or the emu writers) not up to the task could have been counted as more negative than they actually are. Wouldn't it be lovely to have them gleefully eating their own hats while they play their favourite DreamCast game?
The "No" vote seems similarly qualified with "I don't want it". So it really IS, it seems to me, aimed at people who do not, themselves, want a DreamCast emulator for the Pandora. Why are they reading this thread anyway? Who knows - possibly out of boredom with Pandoras not available, perhaps they wish to see news of ANY progress that suggests they may have a Pandora soon or... dunno. There is no "No, I don't want anyone to have a DreamCast emulator purely out of spite" so such people COULD use the 2No I don't want one" option as that does pertain to their situation. The poll is nicely geared towards attaining information without encouraging a negative attitude IMHO.
As to why the OP wants statistics on who wants a DC emu vs who does not, we don't know. My best guess would be that they would (or could) use such statistics to guide them on how many Pandora owners actually want a DC emulator - after all, if 95% of respondants said "No and only 5% aid "yes", then they could probably save themselves some time, effort, and sggro by not porting NullDC to Pandora. On the other hand, if they got 90% "no you can't do it", 5% "No I don't want it" and 5% "Yes" they could work to turn that 90% into "Yes, wow, that's FAR better than I thought possible".
If we leave out the second, financial, poll (at least for now) then we're left with the voters. Why might someone vote "No"?
Well, of course, there could be some people who just vote to be contrary, or for "fun"... but also they could vote to answer the poll as honestly as possible as a favour to the OP. They really might not think it technically possible, or just might not want one themselves.
If 50% of the voters were to vote "No - I don't want one" that means that from the first batch of Pandoras, at least, that proportionally there's an apparent MAXIMUM client base" of 1500-2000 people for Pandora NullDC.
If we open up examination of the financial poll then we see other potential reasons for a "No" vote. "The Devs might get one or more machines for free even though *I* have to pay for mine?" could be an axcellent reason for a "No" vote, especially since there is no GUARANTEE that a Pandora NullDC would run games at fullspeed. Another "good" reason might be the fear that the OP would be sent one (or more?) early "first batch" Pandoras - shuffling paying customers down the queue. There has been a LOT of angst about retaining position in the order queue, so I imagine this could be quite a serious contender as reasons go. Either reason could elicit a "No" response as a way of trying to retain the status quo.
But for the most part, although I think the above is REASONABLY reasoned out, I suspect people who vote "No" will do so for their own many and varied reasons. I'm slightly more interested in the opposite question - why SHOULDN'T someone vote "No" if that's the vote they are inclined towards? Because some posts in this thread feel like they are suggesting that. This thread, by its title, is already slanted in the pro-DC direction, so to NOT post "No" if that is their honest feeling would slant the statistics even further. To encourage "No" voters to not vote and just buffer off instead (paraphrasing) would smack of "rigging the voting" - the OP requested negative votes, IMHO we shouldn't skew what will already be self-selecting votes to a large degree.
