How can you choose the right audience for your game?

Understanding the game audience goes hand-in-hand with early development of the game, where the core pillars and vision statement of the game are defined. Game theme and genre provide a foundation, on which you can base player psychographics. This goes beyond basic demographics like age or gender, delving into the psychological aspects that drive player behavior. By analyzing psychographics, game developers can tailor their games to resonate more deeply with their target audience, creating experiences that align with player motivations (e.g. challenge, social interaction, narrative engagement, escapism, or skill mastery). Understanding psychographics is crucial for crafting compelling game experiences and effective marketing strategies.

As a Narrative Designer, defining your genre and theme is the first step. Following that, you should have in mind what the "player fantasy" is: what fantasy are we fulfilling with our game? For example, if it's a Spiderman game, we are fulfilling the fantasy of what it feels like to be Spiderman. Every aspect of the game should be in service of this "player fantasy". Knowing what the fantasy is can be a huge advantage in defining your audience: in the Spiderman example, you can refer to existing data about people who are already enjoying and actively engaging with the "Spiderman" IP, and with the larger Marvel Universe.

Understanding what your game offers will help identify the audience that is likely to enjoy it. Factors that play a key role are: UX and Market Research Playtesting Community Feedback Accessibility Alignment

There are some questions that you have to ask yourself. As a Solo Game developer what genre are you more comfortable with? To answer this look back at what you have done before. Systems, gameplay loops, assets, and integrations. Pick those where you have experience whit and this will pay off in the long run. As a Player what is your favorite game or genre? You have to enjoy what are you doing and play it 1 million times, this will reflect in the quality, feel, and enjoyment of your game. Do you want to aim at another demographic different from yours? If so, try to combine and do some kind of restrictions on your gameplay, let's take as an example game jams where there is a restricted theme and as a result, there are mixed genres.

As someone who is developing an RPG game with a retro look and gameplay, I can say that almost 80% of the community is 20 years or older. This makes it easier for me to get an approach to what they would love or hate in the game. Since a lot of them still play old RPG games, it's easy to understand their preferences. By knowing that, I'll not only make them involved in the game development, but at the same time, they'll be waiting for a new release or update. So, I believe the audience can change depending of the game you're creating.

This is one of the most crucial things to figureout before starting planning any new project, Because if audience is not relevant the product might not perform as anticipated. RnD before hand is highly recommended, see what is working in market, or how we can make something work by slightly modifying our game scope, but modifying will lead to experimentation and experiments take time for which you might or might not fit in your timeline.

Its a step that most dismiss these days, researching competitors and the market isn't just beneficial; it's a game-changer. It's like having a cheat code to unlock strategic insights. Knowing your rivals' playbooks and understanding player preferences isn't optional it's the key to leveling up your game development. So Don’t skip doing the position diagram exercise where you list your competitors and find that sweet spot for you to grow and isn’t crowded. Don't just equip yourself with the basics each data point is a weapon in crafting your next hit game.

Knowing who your customers and players are gives you such clarity in defining User Stories and keeping the project on track. Researching your competitors is meant to go beyond just trying to copy ideas.

RND is huge. While you can never truly make what they created the goal is to create something of your own that far exceeds what the competition has built. Know what the competition has presented. How can you improve upon their design and mechanics while maintaining a level of originality? These are all questions one must ask and answer.

In the current scenario, the importance of digging into your competition and market dynamics is frequently undervalued. Yet, it's more than just beneficial; it's a revolutionary approach. Picture it like having a secret weapon that reveals crucial strategic insights. So, make sure not to skip the position diagram task, where you identify your competitors and carve out a unique space for your growth that's not oversaturated. Move past the basics; treat every piece of information as a powerful instrument in sculpting your next outstanding game.

Here are my top tips to build usefull player profiles: - Identify the demographic from your own objectives, your IP, theme, and competitors. - Identify what they are supposed to like in games but also in movies, shows. - Idenfity the MOTIVATIONS! Why they are playing games, what they are looking for in games. This will support your objectives and will be very valuable tool to align your Vision. I really like to using Quantic Foundry's gamer types classification and their motivation clusters. - Also identify what they DO NOT like, what they are not interested in. This will create a frame to know what you need to avoid or won't do. - Write fake reviews of your game through those fake players pov. This will help you synthesize the profile

Adding value for the consumer is our primary objective while providing any kind of product or service. This reality is no different for games. What is value? This question should be the fundamental inquiry. Value is a variable expression for every different segment. We must be certain about the target audience for our value offer if we hope it will be successful and reach the correct people. This also applies to our product or service. Persona and specifying the real value to be provided for the persona is a crucial first step toward achievement. Analytics data are a trustful source of guidance. To make sure that the value we wish to deliver through in-depth study fits the persona, it will be helpful to apply continuous analytic studies.

Understanding your game's target audience is crucial for success. While demographics like age and gender matter, delve deeper into psychographics—understanding player motivations, preferences, and behaviors. Craft player personas tailored to your game, incorporating elements like motivations, preferences, and even fake reviews to synthesize profiles. Conduct strategic research, analyze competitors, and find your niche in the market. A comprehensive marketing strategy, starting early in pre-production, ensures your exceptional game receives the recognition it deserves. Player communities are dynamic, requiring adaptation to evolving dynamics and integration for long-term success.

Classic examples of player personas could be "Casual Mobile Gamers," "Hardcore PC Gamers," or "Story-Driven Adventure Fans." The base player persona is how you imagine your average player looking like. You should visualize these personas on a dedicated document by creating a fictional story around them. This helps the development and marketing teams empathize with these personas, making it easier to design and market the game specifically for them. A golden tip is to add a stock photo of a person that can most likely fit the persona and to place it above each persona description in the document. Another great tip is to use ai image generators to nail that visual representation photo of your specific persona.

Test, test and test. In game production you can ask any producer on the importance on testing at a very early stage and he will tell you that testing starts from Alpha phase, in fact as soon as a build is made testing should start with the actual team members spanning to other departments like HR and other game devs on different projects. Every opinion matters, of course later on in Beta and when a release candidate is ready a QA team should be present to do the all testing required for soft launch. Only way to reach a successful game is to iterate your game to success with lots of testing.

You can test your game before writing a single line of code, and if you have the resources to do so, this would be my best recommendation. It's possible to run ad campaigns showing screenshots or even videos of the game you are expecting to create. In case your users interact with the ad, you can send them to a "false" landing page where you can check if they are willing to install your game. You can create and host your own landing page in case of PC games, or use other services (like SplitMetrics) to create fake mobile app pages. In this way you can get real metrics from your real audience (conversion rate, install rate, cost per install...) and even A/B test visual variations. If you have the budget, you need to do this.

Testing stands out as an indispensable phase in game development. Beyond its role in bug detection, testing serves as a compass for gauging the genuine interest of your chosen demographic in the game. Surprisingly, the testing journey may reveal a more extensive or refined audience than initially assumed. It's a transformative step that can truly make or break a game's success.

You have made a great game, everyone thinks its the next big thing, you have fallen in love with it and your mom loves it! Now what? Cricket sound… Well to put in easy words, no one will know about your game and it will never be successful if you don’t have a marketing plan and budget even if its the greats game of all time. Marketing efforts should start from early stages of pre-production, building the hype for your game, creating and growing the social media accounts for it, attending big game conventions like Gamescom and E3 to show sneak peaks of your games are all efforts to be made before even launching your game. After soft launch or global launch a plan to acquire users using Facebook ads and google ads should be in place.

Player communities are not static entities. Particularly games as a service need to adapt to the dynamics of its player population. Recognize that average skill level, community metas, new player experiences, and legacy content experience will change over time. When designs fall short of keeping pace with the changes in a player population, sentiment can lead observable metrics. Design teams can greatly benefit from integrating into player communities and the digital third spaces they exist in to anticipate macro trends that can be obscured by short-term spending behavior.

Game development requires a deep understanding of gamer psychology. In addition to demographics, it is crucial to decipher motivations, preferences and behaviors. Strategic research, player profiling and rigorous testing form the foundation of success. Effective marketing, from pre-production to post-launch strategies, is vital. Gamer communities evolve; adaptation is essential. In short, success in game development is a dance with gamer psychology, integrating research, testing and marketing.

Making games is a cool journey, and to nail it, you've got to get how gamers think. It's not just about their age or gender but figuring out what they love and why they play. The secret sauce is doing smart research, understanding players, and testing your game loads. To sum it up, rocking at game-making is like doing a groovy dance with gamer vibes—blending research, testing, and marketing into one smooth move. It's not just knowing players but also being on your toes for the changes in gaming groups and what players dig.

If you are just starting out in independent game development, then I suggest not focusing on targeting your audience. In the beginning, honing your skills and enjoying the experience is important. Try joining a short video game jam on a site like itch.io to learn and have fun.

Familiarize yourself with all aspects of Game Development Law in the regions you want to develop in and for. This can relate to Censorship, Copyrights & Intellectual Property, Security, ESRB Ratings and Age restrictions, Codes of Conduct and so on and so on.