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Game Design Theory / how much does your target audience influence the kind of games you make?

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Posted: 29th Feb 2012 00:14
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There was a comment on one of the other threads (http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=193279&b=19) where the poster (CocaCola) had an idea for a game and wanted opinion on it then said

Quote: "I don't wanna start if nobody would play it"


Unless making games forms a significant part of your income, I completely disagree with this philosophy.

As a hobbyist, I tend to make games that I enjoy creating and playing, as a consequence I tend to favour skill based games). If others like my games then that's a bonus.

If people don't like what I've made then, yes, it is disapointing but I find I can shrug it off and move on. It doesn't dent my enthusiasm to try something else. Don't get me wrong, I would love to make a game that people said "wow, that's amazing" and I suspect that my attitude might change if I spent years making a game that received nothing but poor feedback.

I understand that making games for a living is different as you need to appeal to enough people who will buy your game and, in doing so, put a roof over your head and food on your table. But I'm guessing there are a lot of people on this forum who are either hobbiests like me or they sell games as a supplement to their main income, maybe with the hope of making the next big thing.

I would be interest to know how much your target audience influences the kind of games you make and do you feel that focusing too much on "pleasing" this audience actually hampers your ability to experiment and/or your enjoyment of making games? Do you have an idea for a game that you haven't progressed with because you feel no one would play it? Have you ever spent a long time on a game and found no one liked it?
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maho76
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Posted: 29th Feb 2012 14:03 Edited at: 29th Feb 2012 14:17
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you wont develop a game that no one else likes because then you also wont like it, means there is NOTHING out there that isnt liked by anyone, you just have to find the propper audience.

if really NOONE likes your game, its crap in gameplay or handling. you have to live with that and do it better next time. every other aspect is a question of taste, and there are all sorts of tastes out there.
but normally its all about the promotion. look into EVERY market in the world and see the (good promoted) crap that sells there.

the new leasure-sweet-larry promoted on a christian singers site: NO
the new COD-remake on a peace&harmony blog: NO

the new leasure-sweet-larry-goes-to-war on a gaming site with xxx-adverts: YES!!!
larry-game promoted on a pornsite: not that bad idea.

same for gameplay: dont promote a jump&puzzle on sites where its all about stupid war-shooters.

if some nonpro only does what a specified audience is waiting for, he just wanna earn respect and aplause with it. its nice to get it for your work, but its not neccessary if your self-confidence is not damaged.
if so: better get a girlfriend than doing game-dev, buddy.

so totally agree to your thoughts.

what you CAN think of to serve the audience is looking at the type of gameplay you do, and if no special things are made up by your side, stay to the conventions in handling (WASD for movement, lmb for actions for FPS-games, etc.) so its easy to adapt the game to your normal conditions when playing any kind of game of that type. gives the player more space to explore enviroment and story.

in the given case of the other thread, no question DO IT MAN, and even its only a one-level-experimental to get your thoughts into a form ... even if its only an abstract looking screensaver at the end^^

p.s.: "leasure sweet larry goes to war" ... sounds cool, have to think about that^^

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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 29th Feb 2012 21:11
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I approach game making like I do writing, it's not about a target audience, it's about loving what you do and doing it. If you like what you're creating then there's a greater chance other people will. I think choosing a target audience or market kind of removes the love a bit, I feel the target audience should be 'you'.

I don't think 'market' and 'art' are 2 things that should ever be combined, but when it becomes a business, it's what has to be done to see a return on your investment and not only that but to make profit and not end up sacking talented people. And to be fair, this part of the games industry has created decent and well polished titles.

There's certainly formulas to games that people are guaranteed to play (if marketed well enough too), but with the indie games industry what I like is that people aren't scared to try something different or even take an old style/genre and do their own take on it or basically do something other people aren't doing at the moment.

Minecraft is intensely popular and there's a few clones out there, but it did something different, I doubt they sat there trying to make the game appeal to a target audience (though they might have had an idea on what kind of people would play it). Breath of Death VII is an awesome title, it plays like retro RPG's, and it met a good sense of humour with a sense of nostalgia (and so did Cthulhu Saves the World) and from what I understand they made those games because they loved the idea of doing them - I think what people may fail to recognise is that how old games had pretty decent mechanisms for games, which are now dead. That's where my own project comes in, I loved the JRPGs on the PS1, so that's my main inspiration and I'm doing it for me really...if other people like it, AWESOME! if they don't, it's up to them.


So really...I'm on your side.


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Latch
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Posted: 29th Feb 2012 23:22
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I can see making games for 3 basic reasons:

1. I want to create something similar to what I played before and liked (general enjoyment)

2. I want to test out some new ideas and see how they'd work

3. make money

There's something about creating anything, one generally wants it to be enjoyed or shared with someone else. It's rare that this isn't the case except when striving for personal achievement.

For item 3 above, it's very important that you have some idea of an audience.

For me, tinkering is fun. Coming up with short interesting stuff is great. But I don't think I'd sit down and hammer out a Final Fantasy type RPG over several years for just myself; I'd have some intention of others playing it and enjoying it - and hopefully buying it.

Enjoy your day.
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mnemonic
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2012 19:13
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I like to create games that I enjoy, but then it would be nice if other people liked it aswell.

If you like a game that you have created but everyone else think it's crap, and so they tell you. Both positive and negative feedback helps you to 'develop' yourself or how I should say it. What I mean is that you learn more about eg. what the general audience like.

But then It suits me better to develop games that I like, it keeps me more motivated to continue develop it and then make a perfect release. If I would make a game that I think is crap, but I know the audience will love, My enthusiasm would lack, and I'd come up with a nonperfect release.

www.memblockgames.com
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Posted: 14th Mar 2012 03:18
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There's been some interesting points here and it seems that we're all pretty much into doing are own thing for the fun of it, which shouldn't be all that suprising condsidering this is an indi / hobbyist forum.

Quote: "what you CAN think of to serve the audience is looking at the type of gameplay you do, and if no special things are made up by your side, stay to the conventions in handling (WASD for movement, lmb for actions for FPS-games, etc.)"


This is a good point as I think this helps with the accessability of the game. There's no point coming up with a completely different control system if it doesn't enhance the game.

Latch had it right with making small stuff, I wouldn't want to write a massive RPG just for fun. However, if I did make an epic game it would probably be more in the style of Mount and Blade, in terms of game play. I think this kind of sand box approach works quite well for a indi / hobby project.

I think, even as a hobbyist, it's nice to have somewhere to share what I do. Like someone mentioned, unless you make something that is truely abissmal, someone, somewhere will like it and getting good feedback (positive and negative) is important. You don't necessarily have to rewrite your game but it gives some useful tips if you ever create something simillar.
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DAEvo
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Posted: 18th Mar 2012 17:27
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The target audience, market research, and intended platform all have a HUGE influence in what I design.

I take the comedian David Cross' approach: Take what jobs you can and use them to fund your interests. Right now I'm making a big budget tablet game. Not exactly my favorite platform, but it will fund my next venture and then some. I'm hired to make it happen, and that's what I'll do.

BUT... I am also noodling with FPSCreator on a game that only my dev team will enjoy. And I make little side-scrolling beat-'em-ups in Unity3D for my fiancee to play with.

So, for a living I go by market research and audience. For fun I design games that I like. Every once in a while those two overlap and life is good.

Game Designer, NOT Game Programmer. Handle with Care!
Specs: Intel i7 2600k 3400 Mhz, 16 GB RAM, GeForce GTX 560 Ti, 64-Bit OS
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The Zoq2
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Posted: 4th Apr 2012 14:07
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Personaly, if I make a game, I make the game so I enjoy it, of course I will listen to what others say, but I will not make a change that I wouldn't like. That's the misstake that a lot of High budget games make today.


Allso here is a vid I fould 2 days ago discussing the subject...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9X3yXAjCjw&context=C480c303ADvjVQa1PpcFOBEp_D4u-VaoDSHJHQ4uy9ySdhu57gT08=
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Libervurto
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Posted: 14th May 2012 00:09
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I totally disagree with the idea of "target audience". People don't know what they want, that's why they're the ones playing games instead of designing them. Look on any game-related forum and read the feature suggestions; the vast majority are terrible ideas, which is natural seeing as these people are not game designers.

So why the hell should we design our games around what a bunch of design-illiterates think, whose only knowledge of game mechanics is from rehashed old ideas they've encountered before?

Why is there this perception that people are close-minded to new ideas? Yes it takes time for new ideas to be accepted and become popular but they certainly aren't rejected and usually end up being far more popular than mundane regenerations of old ideas.

I might sound patronising but I think its far less patronising to admit that the general public can't design games but are open-minded, rather than spoon-feeding them the same old crap because that's all we think they are interested in and they couldn't handle even the slightest change.

Have a bit of faith in yourself, if you find something fun or interesting chances are that many others will too. Even with the craziest ideas it's more about the quality of presentation that gains mass appeal rather than the ideas themselves.

WARNING: The above comment may contain sarcasm.
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Posted: 15th May 2012 01:57
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Quote: "Why is there this perception that people are close-minded to new ideas?"


Call Of Duty 22, FIFA 2047 (which we'll see in thirty five years time), Need For Speed Dead Horse Flogged Edition?

There is obvisouly a lot of people who want to be spoon fed the same crap on a yearly basis.

I like a bit of variety but there are always going to be design decisions that will put some people off a game.

Look at something like Mad World for the Wii. From what I understand it had generally good reviews but poor sales. Some people thought it was because games like that don't sell on the Wii but I think, because of the black and white comic book graphics, it wouldn't have faired much better on the other consoles.

Even though I really liked the art style of Mad World, I can understand why others would be put off.

Interestingly, No More Heroes also had a comic book art style and was essentially an odd game (more so than Mad World) but it got a sequel and got released on the Xbox 360 and PS3 (I think) so what's the difference between the two games? It could've been that it was by Suda51 (but then Platimum Games are quite well regarded), it could've been because the art style was in colour or it could've been that it was a slightly better game? I don't know.
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Van B
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Posted: 18th May 2012 10:58
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I kinda miss the old days, when we just had to come up with a decent idea, some decent gameplay mechanics, and people would just play it. I mean, I doubt that Peter Molyneux worried about whether people would like his god game, or Miyamoto considered making player 2 a girl, in Super Mario.

I think that's why I like to look at older games, try and take what is cool about them, and apply my own ideas. Lets face it though, people don't persevere with game like they used to - to get the same sort of dedication, we'd have to make the game only load half the time, take 10 minutes to load, because that's what we had to do with the 8-bits - if you had to work to get a game loaded, then you persevered and tried to learn the game. Nowadays we need to have help screens and tutorials and diagrams showing the player how to press a couple of buttons. I'd rather let people discover the game, but the idiot quotent is always there, and we all end up suffering . We have to imagine we're writing games for people who have never played a game before. I dread to think how many amazing games are out there, in the procrastination wastelands, waiting on some more polish. Minecraft is a testimony to that, I've lost count of the number of people who's seen me playing Minecraft, laughed at the graphics, mocked the games style, then only changed their opinion after I hold a gun to their head and make them play it. Maybe that would be an effective marketting campaign - like a videogame home invasion. It shouldn't be this difficult, especially in our field, usually small download and free game, whats not to like!.

Casual gamer snobbery influences more than just the control scheme, but also the appearance, if we don't have nice looking menus and stuff, then people won't play!... honestly, pandering to modern casual gamers is like a house-brick labotomy sometimes.

I read a comment on my first PC game, Stoked - written in DBClassic about 10 years ago, they said it was the worst game ever made. Really! - you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but you catch the most flies with the corpse of a casual gamer!

Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
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Kezzla
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Posted: 18th May 2012 15:01
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lol van b

I appreciate when a game credits me with basic intelligence. Im hooked when a game expects high intelligence (eg riven)

when i think of the direction computer game design is taking I think of the progression of painting.

started with stick figures, 2d images, basic shapes,simple paintings all the way up to the renaissance where 2d imagery was perfected, then there was exploration, impressionism, surrealism, pop art, the process started again with 3d imagery.

some things never change, engaging game play, monopoly still starts as many fights as it ever has, uno is still a fun card game. give kids a willow tree and binder twine and they will make bows and arrows. engaging game concept will always win.
consistent graphic style. doesn't have to be super realistic, just has to have a consistent style and artistic value.

target audience wants something fun and interesting on each of the artistic levels a computer game covers. visual, audio, literature.

so far as audience goes, I make a game that would please me as an general art lover, visual audio and literature.

I am my target audience so It has total influence. but I am not in it to please, that motive will have a xeroxed feel to it.

make it unique. every person has that ability, if they trust themselves.

Sometimes I like to use words out of contents
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Libervurto
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Posted: 19th May 2012 00:18 Edited at: 19th May 2012 00:31
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I got a taste of my own \"casualitis\" today when I bought the original Populus. It\'s funny how impatient I am now because of all this spoon-feeding. I almost gave up, then just sat back and went through the manual and slowed down, it took a while to get any sense out of the game but it\'s great! I\'m not too young to remember games when you had to read the manual or you simply could not play, so my immediate reaction surprised myself. I actually get this a lot when playing older games, your brain takes a while to adjust, like playing the original GTA, I started off thinking \"I used to play this?\" then four hours later I\'m having the most fun I\'ve had in years with games and gotten further than I ever did the first time I played it.

Old games are the best, there\'s no contest. Games these days are barely games at all. I think we get one decent game every three years now, there are such high demands on graphics and crap that doesn\'t even add anything to the game but has become a requirement. Hopefully the rise of indie games is changing that. Maybe games will start being proper \"games\" again.
It\'s funny when you see things like Journey or Heavy Rain, they are such rarities but would be commonplace if the game industry had stayed the way it was in the late-80\'s - mid-90\'s. I suppose when anything gets into the mainstream and starts turning over billions of dollars a year it all goes down the toilet. Look at the movie industry.

It annoys me when people blame kids for having short attention spans these days, like it's some rapid evolution that's occurred, it's not the kids' fault it's the 100mph "entertainment" industry shoving strobe lights down their throats. It's really damaging and will stop them achieving anything of value in their lives because they expect immediate results and their work ethic has been totally destroyed. Games that offer no challenge, require no effort, give too many hints and "achievements" (a concept that disgusts me) are far more dangerous than games where you stab people in the face and/or see tits.

WARNING: The above comment may contain sarcasm.
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