The Use of Target Market Research

As research for my target market, I've created three different personas to represent my target audience. Each of them are unique, as there will be multiple types of people playing my game, not just one, so it is important that I take multiple kinds of people into consideration when designing and marketing my game, as this will give me the greatest chance at success. I defined them using demographics and psychographics.   "psychographics data is used for classifying people by looking at their attitudes, aspirations and other psychological criteria."(A Complete Guide To Target Audience Analysis For Content Marketers, 2020).  This makes them far more valuable than demographics, which are less relevant to whether a person will actually like a game as they define age, gender etc, and these don't help to understand if a person will like a game or not.

Chloe  is the first persona I've created, and she represents the more casual part of my target audience. She generally plays web games to kill free time as opposed to playing them in her free time, meaning she rarely goes out of her way to play games, and when she does it's only for a short period of time. I'll need to tailor the difficulty to make sure it isn't too difficult for a novice, as inexperienced players are a decent part of my audience and I don't want to drive them away with an insanely difficult game. 

Colin is my second persona, representing the intermediate experience level. I feel he represents the majority of my market, with people who have been playing web games for a good few years, and occasionally goes back to play some. He is colourblind, so every time I refer to his persona I will be reminded to ensure my game is accessible. The main theme for my game is a bit niche, being environmentalism, and he isn't interested in this so I'll have to make sure my game is interesting to those without this interest to keep a broad target audience. This will be done by making sure the gameplay is fun and rewarding, so it can be fun for all. 

Riley is the final persona I created, and they represent the experienced category of my target market. Due to their experience level, I will need to find a balance in difficulty so that it won't be so easy that they stop playing the game, as there are plenty others they could go and play instead. I feel they are a good representative of more hardcore gamers that will be playing my game, and it'll be good to refer to them during development to ensure my game will appeal to this part of the market. 

These personas fit into either the explorer or achiever bartle player type. I chose to focus on these two types for my personas as I feel these are the types that my game will appeal to the most. It's a single player game with no NPC interaction, so it wouldn't appeal to socialisers for example, however it involves the exploration of separate environments - appealing to the explorers - and there is a time constraint on the levels with a scoring system - appealing to the achievers.

Sources:

We Build Links You'll Be Proud Of - Point Visible. 2020. A Complete Guide To Target Audience Analysis For Content Marketers. [online] Available at: <https: www.pointvisible.com="" blog="" complete-guide-target-audience-analysis-content-marketers="" #define=""> [Accessed 18 March 2020].</https:>