I originally intended to separate them but decided that story and characters are really not so far from each other, its still the "writing" aspect of the game so separating them seemed a bit silly to me since in most cases, people feel both are interchangeable at times for making the other good.

Its the same reason why I lumped other aspects together cause technically from a generalized view they are hardly far from each other. Audio and visuals for instance are sense experience aspects of the game so I felt it was better to group them together, it will also keep graphics from always being the least liked for 99% of the entries.

The only thing I actually separated was gameplay cause technically I feel that Exploration, side-quests, mini-games, combat, and customization is all part of gameplay but I felt the thing needed a bit more options otherwise I could expect everyone to rank Story 1, Gameplay 2, Graphics 3 for all entries. I felt side-quests and exploration were related and significantly different from combat/customization to warrant it a separate entry.

I also wanted to keep this somewhat simple cause I was unsure of how much participation I was going to expect and felt I didn't need to complicate crap too much cause I'm terrible at organization.

In the future, I if I get bored enough to do this again, I will make sure to first create a survey to find out what people want to be on the future Census survey.