Today we received a lecture from Stephen Hey, who has many years of experience in marketing, PR, production and game/talent scouting within the industry to discuss demographic profiles. Stephen has also has ties to large AAA companies such as EA in the industry and currently work freelance with his company HeyStephenHey, looking for talent and potential games to sign with. During our lecture, Stephen discussed the large variety of demographics that consumers fall into. The importance of understanding what demographic your game will be targeted towards is crucial towards a game’s success and should typically be researched during the ideation of a project so that a team is able to produce something that those audiences would enjoy.
Demographics that were listed to us include:
- Not A Gamer’ Gamer: these audiences typically aren’t all that invested in game genres such as RPGs, and tend to prefer games that don’t offer that much of a challenge, but instead act as a means of distraction and temporary entertainment. The demographic is majority dominated by a female audience ranging from the ages 22-40+. Games that fall into this category are games like Candy Crush.
- Improvers: these players tend to play games that offer an intellectual challenge as well as games that focus on improving their cognitive abilities. This audience of players prefers to have tutorials in order to show them how the game works instead of diving into the game and learning from experience. This demographic usually enjoys crossword puzzles or generally any game that involves thinking or challenges. This demographic is dominated by the female market and on average ranges from the age range of 22-40+.
- Prize Finders: the prize finding demographic are drawn to games that involve giving the player constant rewards for playing. Example, these types of players enjoy playing gambling type games or games that involve giving the player daily rewards. This type of player is attracted to addicting games with audio, visual and kinetic feedback. Examples of this include a “well done” message being displayed and controller vibration and the nostalgic tune played whenever you catch a Pokémon in any iteration of the Pokémon franchise.
- Imaginators: this group of people are typically creative people who want to build and nurture a world to their specifications or desires – they enjoy creating worlds and stories. These players tend to be culturally in touch meaning they are large consumers of media such as games, movies, comic/graphic novels, TV shows and more. Games that this demographic would typically play are games such as Minecraft and the Sims franchise. The rise in popularity in modding games like Skyrim and Fallout is also starting to appeal to this demographic, because it opens doors to a whole new set of creation and storytelling abilities; this also applies to the story teller consumers too.
- Story Tellers: story teller players aren’t looking for a challenging experience, this group of players tends to prefer games that are less of a challenge and are more focused on the story telling aspects of a game. Games that this demographic usually plays are RPG type story driven games such as Skyrim, Fallout, the Divinity franchise & Dark Souls to list a few.
- Party People: the party people demographic are people who tend to focus less on the overall story elements of a game, but instead tends to direct their attention to multiplayer orientated parts of a game. These players to enjoy playing with friend and socialising with other players. This player demographic is largely male dominated, and on average are players from the ages of 22-45. Game titles that this audience would play would include Team Fortress 2, CoD, Counter Strike, Modern Warfare, Battlefield, Fortnite, Mario Cart and Chivalry.
- Score Chaser: a score chaser is a type of player that often enjoys competing online games and dominating scoreboards for enjoyment and bragging rights. This type of consumer tends to play games that feature score systems and are highly competitive/action based. Great examples of games a score based player would play are game genres like FPSs, racing games and card games. Existing game titles that score based consumers would play include Team Fortress 2, Dead By Daylight, Counter Strike, GTA and many more.
- Strategy Kings: a strategy king is a player who finds enjoyment in dominating either online players or their friends through scheming and strategising ways to outperform them and reach the top of a leader board or reach some type of victory goal – this type of player shares similarities with the score chaser demographic, which will also be listed below. The strategy king enjoys games like MOBAs (Massive Online Battle Arenas), FPSs (First Person Shooters), RTS games (Real Time Strategy) and turn based strategy games – any game that involves/rewards planning an careful thinking is a game that a strategy king will love.
- Enthusiasts: the enthusiast player is a particularly hard type of player to please, this type of player mainly looks for the purest experience within a particular game genre and anything that strays from an enthusiasts’ favourite genre they will then refuse to play it. Enthusiasts usually gravitate towards one specific genre or multiple that they feel strongly passionate towards. Games that enthusiast consumers would play any type of game from any genre depending on their attachment to that genre. This demographic doesn’t really care for anything that isn’t affiliated with a game or genre they enjoy playing; example being an enthusiast will not care for competitive gameplay or score chasing if they favor RPG/story telling games.
On discovery through Stephen’s lecture, I found out exactly what demographic category I fall into which would be a hybrid of the story teller and imgainator. I find I identify with both of these demographics because I love to play games that allow me to create and build which can help my creative process through visualising something before starting something or modding a story and warping it into my own version of a story or something completely different and unique. I fall into the story telling demographic as well because I enjoy being led through a story because this too can also help my creative process, and also serves to be a relaxing experience that I can happily spend my time playing at my own pace; unlike that of an online styled game which moves at a constant fast pace. When I pointed my hybrid type of demographic to Stephen, he responded in saying that there’s a trend arising where new hybrid demographics are starting to rise.
Before the end of the lecture, Stephen tasked me and that rest of the class with a group exercise, which required us to get into groups of 3-4 and work together to create a profile for a specific type of player demographic. We also were assigned into groups of two later on in order to create a racing game with a theme, tailored towards a specific demographic’s needs.
[All blog entries have been converted to posts from pages to include tags, dates may change/updated due to this conversion]
Nathan May Game Animation And VFX 