During this project, we were tasked with completing development on a videogame and shipping it to a chosen intended audience. In order to do this, first, I need to understand the the target audience I would eventually choose, through market research and promotion research. Eventually, using this information to create a game idea designed around this specific audience, I will compare the viability of this game idea to others in relation to different videogame markets. The different player types are normally categorized by four different sectors, however, sometimes they are categorized by individual ideals.
The different sectors for Player types within the videogame industry are:
Achievers:
Achievers are often players who prefer to gain "points", levels, equipment and other concrete measurements of success in games and are willing to go to great lengths to achieve rewards that are merely cosmetic. They want to be able to show their progression and enjoy collecting rare items and putting them on display. This player type responds particularly well to achievements or hard to get items.
Single-Player appeal:
With single player games, Achievers will typically attempt to "beat" the games that they play, often being drawn to games that offer a 100% completion rating appeal, drawing Achiever players towards the game.
Multiplayer appeal:
One if the multiplayer appeals for Achievers is that they have the opportunity to show off their skill, loot or other things they value, to other players. They can both value or despise competition from other Achievers, while also often getting along with Socializers.
Achievers will often attempt to get all "Achievements" in the various games they play. This can be reinforced by the platform they play on. For example, PlayStation and Xbox both have achievements and trophies for players to collect from games and show off to others.
Explorers:
Explorers, like the name, enjoy discovering new things and secrets in the games they play. They are not as bothered about points or prizes and instead much prefer discovery as a prize. Explorers are often fine with more repetitive tasks as long as they eventually "unlock" a new area of the game or some kind of "Easter egg" (a small bonus within a game left by the developers, it can be a joke, extra video sequence or even reference to another form of media).
Explorers often enjoy finding surprises and can, for example, sometimes begin checking walls in order to try and find secret passages in their search for secret or hidden content. Building secret areas and things to discover into games typically draws these players to play certain games.
Single-Player appeal:
Explorers see combat, gaining levels and points secondary in favour of exploration, solving puzzles and enriching themselves in the games backstory and lore, so they can find out about people and places in-game. This is in contrast to the Achiever.
Multiplayer appeal:
While Explorers do typically enjoy playing with others, showing secret locations and exploring online worlds, they will often become bored with games they have played for a significant amount of time and will swap to other games quicker than most other gamer types.
Socializers:
Socializers normally enjoy games through interaction with other players. Socializers are happy to collaborate with others in order to achieve goals that they could do on their own. Games like "Farmvill" tend to appeal to Socializers because it allows the player to interact with NPCs, forming releationships and working together, while also allowing players to play online with freinds.
Single-Player appeal:
Socializers, rather than wanting to win or explore, instead prefer to be social in the games that they play. This can be achieved by either having a multiplayer function within the game or by having the characters be interactable, allowing the player to talk to and possibly make bonds with the NPC characters in a singleplayer setting. Some games that allow players to interact and socialise with NPCs include the: Mass Effect, Fable and Knights of the Old Republic series.
Additionally, Socialisers also tend to play singleplayer games that have a strong sense of community around them. Games that allow the player to control and build NPC comunities and games that allow players to use forums and post picture of what they have created to share with others. These games include: Cities: Skylines, SimCity 4, and Dwarf Fortress.
Multiplayer appeal:
Socializers enjoy online environments that allow them to communicate with other players, providing them with limitless potential for new relationships. Socializers often take full advantage of the ability to join groups, guilds or kinships in many online games. This often leads to these types of players playing significantly more online games than singleplayer games.
Killers:
Killers are similar to Achievers as they both enjoy gaining points, winning and gaining a higher status than other players. What sets them apart from Achievers is that Killers prefer to win over other players, leading these players to typically play more multiplayer games and enjoy beating others in competition. These players also tend to play games involving fighting other players such as "Call of Duty", hence why they are called "Killers".
Killers are highly competitive, and winning is what normally motivates them, with them typically wanting to be the best at the game and being better than other players.
Single-Player appeal:
Killers, due to their competitiveness and normally multiplayer based playstyle, don't typically play singleplayer games. However, Killers enjoy causing mayhem among NPC characters.
Multiplayer appeal:
Killers much prefer to play against another player controlled opponents to playing with or against NPCs and mostly, Killers enjoy friendly competition, while others enjoy being the strongest and destroying other players. An example of this can be seen in MMO RPGs that allow Player Vs Player (PVP) combat, when an incredibly high level or overpowered character begins destroying and repeatedly killing weaker, lower level player characters.
In order to create a videogame before the deadline, I have decided to create a top-down shooter game using the Unity engine.
Analysing market information to define a target audience:
Some games I have used for inspiration on my project include: Darkwood, Hotline Miami and DoorKickers.
Darkwood is a top down perspective, 2D survival horror game that was developed by Acid Wizard Studio and uses a line of sight lighting method to hide enemies and changes in surrounding areas where the character could not normally see.
The game takes place somewhere within Poland or the Eastern hemisphere of countries in Europe, where the characters have been trapped for an indiscernible amount of time. The story is mostly vague, however, what is known is that the game takes place in the late 1980's within a mysterious forest that has rapidly occupied a large amount of land and is still continuing to expand. Many people have been left trapped by the forest with a strange plague that is ravaging the survivors, killing and causing its victims to transform into monsters and abominations.
A group known as "The Outsiders", which mostly consists of government and soldiers were sent to investigate the woods, setting up hideouts and a tunnel system to get in and out of the forest. By the time the game takes place, most of The Outsiders are dead or evacuated from the zone.
The Player takes control of a supposed doctor as he searches for supplies. The Doctor seems to be disillusioned with his job of helping people and is hellbent on escaping the forest.
Darkwood marketing and release:
The game was revealed through the release of a pre-alpha gameplay trailer on YouTube (March 5th, 2013) before that releasing a page for the game on Steam Greenlight on March 11th, 2013 and creating a campaign on the crowd funding website "Indiegogo", funding the game's initial development.
This campaign grossed over $57,000 (USA), totaling around 143% of the established goal ((USA) $40,000).
The game was first released on Steam Early Access on July 24th in 2014 with the full game eventually being released on August 18th in 2017 for PC, before then being ported to the Nintendo Switch (on March 20th, 2019), Nintendo Direct (on May 16th, 2019), PlayStation 4 (on May 14th, 2019) and Xbox One (on May 16th, 2019) under the publisher "Crunching Koalas".
Eventually, the developers released a blog post on "Imgur" detailing the story of the game's development process and releasing a free torrent of the game, asking players to buy it if they enjoy it. This was because the developers wanted players who couldn't afford the game to be able to play it and they preferred to give the game for free to some people rather than feed the "leeching key-reselling websites".
The game was positively received upon its release, getting a "Metacritic" score of 80/100 on almost every platform (PC - 80/100, NS - 74/100, PS4 - 80/100, Xbox one - 80/100), leading to Metacritic including the game in their top 100 best videogames of 2017.
Darkwood audience:
Overall, I believe Darkwood's audience is a mix of both Explorers and Socializers. I believe this because the map layouts for Darkwood are procedurally generated, allowing Explorers to find new things each time they play, whether it is secrets, loot or different characters. Leading on from this, I believe the game also tends to Socializers because it allows you to interact with, form alliances with and do missions for, a large number of different NPC characters, with the outcome of these interactions having an impact on the game as you progress.
Hotline Miami is a top-down 2D shooter created by Jonatan S and Dennis Wedin (Dennaton Games) and was published by Developer Digital, releasing on October 23rd 2012 on PC.
Hotlime Miami is set in 1989 Miami and revolves around an unnamed silent protagonist, called "Jacket" by the fans, who receives coded messages on his answering machine instructing him to commit massacres against the Russian mafia. The game is a mix between stealth, storytelling and extreme violence all based around music and visuals inspired by the 1980s.
Hotline Miami marketing and release:
Hotline Miami was mostly marketed through YouTube, their Steam page and website. Leading up to the release of Hotline Miami, Devolver Digital opened a phone line in real life Miami, Florida to allow people to call and leave voice messages of their own. Some time later, after the initial release of the game, a trailer was created using these recordings.
At its release (23rd October 2012) the game received massive critical acclaim and praise for its narrative, themes, music and gameplay. Hotline Miami has therefore been regarded as a "cult classic" and a sequel called "Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number" was released shortly after (10 March 2015).
Around mid-December (2012), the publisher for the game (Devolver Digital) revealed that around 130,000 copies of the game were sold within the first seven weeks after the game launched.
Later, in an interview with Poket Gamer, the developers explained that they would be porting the game to PlayStation devices but would require a third party to port it for them. The developers also explained they were considering porting the game to IOS and Android devices, with the IOS version releasing on the 19th of March 2013.
In mid-February 2013, it was revealed that over 300,000 copies of the game had been sold and Devolver Digital with developer Dennaton Games confirmed the game would be coming to PlayStation 3 (PS3) and PlayStation Vita (PSV).
The game, on PlayStation devices, was cross-buy, allowing people who had purchased the game of PS3 or PSV to play it across both platforms without needing to buy it again. The port for the game was done by Abstraction Games, who decided to shift the game engine from GameMaker 7 to the PhyreEngine, adding extra features such as enhanced controls, an extra unlockable mask and online leaderboards.
Hotline Miami audience:
For Hotline Miami's audience, I believe it primarily consists of Achievers. This is because, the gameplay is primarily fast pace, with point systems that can be higher or lower depending on how well you play. Alongside this, the game also has a leaderboard function, allowing Achievers to compare their skills to others in the attempt of climbing the leaderboard and besting other people.
Enter the Gungeon is a rouge-like top down shooter with a cartoonish style and a fast passed "bullet hell" type gameplay. Enter the Gungeon was developed by Dodge Roll and published by Devolver Digital, releasing worldwide for PC and PlayStation 4 (PS4) on April 5th (2016), Xbox One on April 5th (2017) and Nintendo Switch on December 14th (2017).
The game follows a number of characters as they descend into the Gungeon (a gun-themed dungeon) in order to find the gun that can "kill their past". The game has procedurally-generated levels where the player must fight through enemies and acquire new guns while descending deeper into the Gungeon.
Enter the Gungeon marketing and release:
Enter the Gungeon was mostly marketed through its steam page and youtube trailers, though they also have a website relating to the game.
On release, Enter the Gungeon received mostly positive reviews, with Metacritic giving it a score of 83/100 on PC, 82/100 on PS4, 85/100 on Xbox One and 87/100 on Nintendo Switch, other review sources also gave the game high praise, with Destructoid giving it a 9.5/10, IGN giving a 8.5/10 and EGM giving a 9/10.
Enter the Gungeon sold over 200,000 copies within its first week across all platforms with an estimated 75% being bought from their steam page. By January 2017 the game had sold over 800,000 copies across all platforms, and according to Devolver Digital, eventually reached more than 1 million copies sold by July 2017 with 2 million being reached in March 2019, also as of January 2020 it has exceeded over 3 million copies sold.
Enter the Gungeon audience:
Ultimately, I believe Enter the Gungeon's audience is mostly centered around Achievers. This is because of both the game's difficulty posing an appropriate challenge for players and while not having a point system, the game does have a series of unlockables that are randomly generated as well as a large number of achievements that can be unlocked.
Also, while the game doesn't have a leaderboard function, the game has a lot of emphasis on skill and luck, which may be a draw to the game for Achievers.
Strategies for promotion and marketing of a videogame:
Marketing the game is incredibly important, it is how you gain interest in your game, leading to people eventually buying the game once it is distributed. Therefore, it makes sense to use one or more marketing strategies to promote your game.
Some of the different strategies for marketing /promoting a videogame include:
- Videogame blogs/websites. These are used to both market the game through showing gameplay, screenshots and typically giving a description for the game and to give updates on the game's development.
- Crowd funding. This is used to gain the funds and traction needed to create the game while also marketing the game by showing screenshots, gameplay, game updates and giving crowd funding backers benefits, such as their names appearing in the game. Examples of crowd funding sights include Kickstarter and Indiegogo, both of which can be used to advertise or fund your game. Crowd funding is similar to having a Videogame blog or website, however, there is significantly larger pressure to deliver the game, as many people have paid in advance for the game to be created.
(Games that have used this mode of advertisement: Darkwood, Undertale and Outer Wilds.)
- Advertisements on YouTube. These are used to advertise the game to a wide audience, with more adverts appearing depending on how much you pay. At the same time, you can also pick video types that your adverts can appear on, therefore allowing you to advertise to a targeted audience.
This is good for getting people to see your game and can gain a larger attraction compared to other advertisement strategies.
This method of advertising also has multiple other branches to it, such as using a personally created YouTube channel to show advertisements or updates for the game. Or using paid sponsorships, which is when you pay a larger youtuber to play or advertise your game.
(Games that have used this mode of advertisement: Enter the Gungeon, Darkwood, Raid Shadow Legends and Fortnite.)
- Advertisements on TV. Similarly to advertisements on YouTube, these are used to advertise the game to a wide audience, once again the more paid the more adverts are shown. However, unlike on YouTube you cannot particularly choose what audience the adverts are shown to.
(Games that have used this mode of advertisement: Clash of Clans, FIFA Series.)
- Advertising at Game Conventions. This is used to simultaneously advertise the game to people by showing the game and possible gameplay as well as game testing by allowing people to try the game, possibly making them more interested in the game. Advertising at Game Conventions pairs well with Videogame Websites/Blogs as it allows people that saw the game at the convention to find and get updates on the game during it's development.
(Games that have used this mode of advertisement: Fez, Destiny series.)
Possible Marketing ideas for my Game:
As already discussed, there are many different ways I can market my game. The most available marketing strategies to me include:
Marketing through a website - because I already have a website that I could use it to advertise the game and I have yet to use the website for anything particular.
Marketing through Youtube - as I could use my YouTube channel to advertise the game for free and with little effort.
Marketing through my blog - I could advertise the game on my blog by showing the progress of the game being made as well as explaining what the game will be and examples of what it looks like.
Out of these marketing strategies I most likely will use YouTube to market my game through the use of trailers and possibly by using my website to market it, using it to show videos and screenshots.
Basic Game Concept idea:
My idea is a Top-down Shooter where your character goes Room to Room fighting enemies. The player will have limited visibility making the player unable to see any Enemies in the next room.
Comparing the viability of my game idea to different markets:
Of course, my game idea won't cater to all audiences and as previously stated, I decided to cater more towards the Achiever demographic.
The likelihood for my game marketing towards each of the market demographics includes:
Achiever - the most likely because the game type and gameplay elements cater towards them the most effectively. In order to strengthen this bond I could add a leaderboard and score, depending on how the player makes it through the level or possibly add collectables.
Explorer - least likely because I intend to make the game with levels rather than an open world and the game would have significantly less exploration that is available. In order to make the game more marketable towards the Explorer demographic I could add secret rooms or additional secrets that can be found.
Socialiser - not particularly likely but depending on my decisions in game development I could possibly cater more to this demographic by adding characters that talk to the character and maybe giving the player options to respond.
Killer - not very likely because this demographic gravitates to more online centred games. I could cater more to this demographic by adding a multiplayer option, however this would be unlikely.
My target audience:
Overall, due to my research I have decided the target audience I will be working towards will be the Achievers. This is because many other similar games to my concept idea cater towards Achievers and it would allow me to create a point biased/ time based game that records your score. Other reasoning for this is because top down shooter games that lean towards the Achiever audience tend to sell a significantly larger amount of game copies than other top down games.
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