Target Audience:
The target audience for our game is aged 12+. Anyone under the age of 12 may struggle with the mechanics and the features of our game. We are hoping that our game will also attract some older players, for example; 30+ as our game will be similar to the space invaders 2D classic theme. However our version will differ as we will create a 3D PlayStation 4 game which will contain our unique mechanics.
Survey:
The team and I created a questionaire to get an idea of the current market. We received 50 responses. Below is my analysis of these.
Q1: How old are you?
Age was a very surprising result. From the 50 results collected, 54% of the respondents were between ages 13 to 18. This fits our target market quite nicely. A surprising yet comforting result that was gathered from this question is that 16% of the respondents were over 30 years old. This shows that using a classic idea will still get a lot of interest from the generation that originally played it. Even though younger people dominate the market, it is good to see interest from the older age groups.
Q2: What gender are you?
From past experience I know the industry is very balanced regarding gender, and swings back and forth very close to 50/50 at a constant rate. However, our results are dominated by male respondents – 76% were male and 24% female. This could be due to the small amount of responses. As the majority will have been answers from classmates or colleagues. As that both environments are dominated by male people, it is to be expected.
Q3: Do you own a Playstaion 4/Pro?
This question helped solidify my outlook on the gaming market. The answers collated painted the perfect picture, 54% of the respondents owned a Playstation 4/Pro, similar to that I would expect on a global market.
Q4: If you have ticked “No” on the previous question, have you ever played on one before and liked it?
Similar to the previous question, the results accumulated confirm what the team expected. Only a small amount of respondents (27.78%) both don’t own a PS4, as well as having not played/liked playing one. This shows that PlayStation has a massive reach on the gaming market and confirms our target platform.
Q5: What are your thoughts on a 3D space game similar to space invaders on PlayStation?
The general consensus that we gathered from this question was overwhelmingly positive. This reinforces our idea and gives us the assurance that it will be supported by the majority of people. Another reassuring factor was that only 1 negative response was received out of 50, the respondent stating that they are “not a fan”
Q6: How often do you spend playing video games a week?
This questions results were very evenly spread. 3 options had the same share of responses at 16% of respondents, sitting at joint 3rd. The highest answer to this question was 1-5 hours, sitting at 26% of the results, closely followed by 6-10 hours, taking a 22% share. This is not ideal for our group, as we need to now make the game appeal to people who play games for a long time as well as those who play them for a short amount of time. Hook and USP are astronomical in this situation.
Q7: How much do you usually spend on console games?
This question confirms exactly what the team thought. As most console games cost over £25, it is good to confirm that the majority of respondents usually spend this. £40 or more takes the highest share of the results, sitting at 28%.
Q8: What do you use most?
The results gathered from this question show a good range of answers in regards to social media. The largest answer being Youtube, sitting at 38%, closely followed by Facebook at 30%. The least popular social network was Snapchat, and unsurprisingly no one selected the option stating “I don’t use social media/Other”.
Q9: What do you look for when you’re buying a game?
These results were fairly evenly spread. No respondents chose the “Cheap Pricing” option, and 2 options sat very close to one another – Good Reviews (39.53%) and Recommended by friends (37.21%).
Q10: If this game is up to your expectations would you pay for it?
It was very reassuring to see that the vast majority of people would pay for our game, given that it met their expectations. 96% answered “Yes”.
Marketing statement:
This survey was very successful as we collected a number of results which confirmed that we were heading in the right direction in regards to developing the game. It helped the team and I to establish what the current market was interested in and will help us greatly to build the game to what we want it to be, both making it appealing for the consumer and publishing it on the PlayStation 4. The team and I worked well to come up with the initial questions and the results collected were all honest and cencere. It is very reasuring to know that out of the 50 responses, there was only one negative, reading “not a fan”.
Hook:
The hook on our game will be that we have two turrets which you can control, one turret with cover an 180 degree angle, so if enemies appear behind the 180 degree mark off one, you will need to switch to the other turret. This will hook players to our game as it will be fun, enjoyable, challenging and never done before. This will be a next level game based on space invaders game idea.
USP:
The USP for our game will be the music type we will be creating. We all decided as a group that we will be creating old classic retro music, preferably 16 bit music. This is our USP as it has never been done before and we believe it will fit in our game/gameplay perfectly.
Sell Sheet:
Evaluation of Sell Sheet:
The group and I took a long time to create a sell sheet as we have never created one before. It was a challenge as we weren’t sure what images to add, the text and the layout. We sat down as a group to plan what we wanted it to look like and what it should contain. Overall we are all happy with how the sell sheet/one page pitch turned out. We hope that the head of Sony, Luke Savage, will like the design of our sell sheet and what it contains will be up to a professional standard. We will take the criticism and advice from Luke Savage as he has had lots of experience with game companies and most likely sell sheets.
Evaluation:
I am very pleased with how the team performed for this unit. Everyone worked hard to hit their deadlines as well as with presenting the powerpoint initially to get the all clear for Luke Savage. I am looking forward to developing the prototype with Tom, as well as seeing all the other features of the game, already being started by the rest of the team, take form and be ready to implement.
On a personal level, I believe that this unit has gone smooth and we had no issues. I am happy with how much I have contributed towards our game, coding our game prototype with Tom and asking him whenever something went wrong or wasn’t working right, which he was happy to help me with. As well as this, making the presentation come together for the team to present. Organisation was definitely a big factor in regards to getting the work done on time. Everyone knew their roles and sent me their work for the presentation on time for me to put it together. In the future I may try making a definitive production schedule to stick to so no one falls behind.
High Concept Power-Point Presentation:
The link below will take you to our group presentation that we presented to our teachers to pitch our game idea. It went well will fantastic positive feedback and idea suggestions to improve our game idea.
https://prezi.com/view/vJwuFJUipmpTzkDRJe09/