Game Design and Target Market

GAME DESIGN AND TARGET MARKET

Let us begin with the most popular target market of today’s game industry: the casual gamer. By separating the word casual from the context let us try to have an idea of who this people are, or try to understand the true nature of this target market.

Dictionary definition of the word casual: “Not showing much CARE or thought. Not showing that something is important to you.”

So from that simple definition of the word CASUAL we can deduce now that this is a market that does not CARE about games, and games are not very important to it. This means that this market has other forms of entertainment that weigh higher to it, no matter how hard you try to shove brilliant games in its face, it accepts them with a nonchalant attitude.

I like to compare it to a man going after a woman already in love with another man.

This, however does not go to say that this is not a cost-effective market to pursue. This market is the largest target market there is. Nintendo for example, has shown us that it is in fact a very lucrative market. But the effects it will leave on the industry in the end is just as broad as its large customer base.

The present dormant and lacking atmosphere of the game industry is as a result of the pursuit of the casual game market. And it will get worse with time if not immediately addressed.   

I also like to compare it to porn. Porn is probably the highest selling genre of film. I want you to imagine the entire Hollywood pursing this very lucrative market.

The result as you know, will turn out to be very insane. It will completely halt creativity. It will destroy the movie industry as a whole, but they’ll be making a lot of money at first.

The same way, I want you to picture the entire game industry publishing similar titles to what Nintendo is doing today. It does not encourage forward movement in terms of true creativity. What Nintendo is releasing today is almost totally 90’s style games. Just relax and take a closer look. It is pulling the industry backwards.

This is supposed to bring us down to the clash of profitability and creativity, a topic that I will leave for another time.

But now we know that pursuing the casual game market ushers in more cash and leads to backwardness in the game industry.

This is the most financially rewarding market, but we have seen its acute disadvantages. Also notice that I’ve kept using the words “forward movement” “Progression”, which is very different from growth in this context.

To increase in size does not necessarily define progress. An Obese man grows in size according to his continuous intake of unhealthy food. That this man is big does not mean that he is healthy. The results of his wrong food intake will only play out in the future.

Just like a healthy man requires a balanced diet to be healthy, in the same way the game industry needs to achieve a balanced system of game development. This I will break down in the following pages.

Now, keeping healthy is something of an effort. You need to accept some practices that are not very pleasurable to you, like exercise, vegetables, etc. The same way the game industry is like an organism, and I care about this organism. There are things I will say, which will sound unpleasant to some in the industry, but I believe they are things that must be said.

There are things I will say which a few may not agree with, but I’ve been following the game industry with an analytical eye. I believe I know what’s wrong and I want to contribute what I can to providing a soultion.

I was going to wait until I’ve proven myself with a shipped game written or directed by me in order to gain the industry’s confidence, but time waits for no one.

Due to the rampant number of casual titles today, there are a lot more people playing games today who weren’t playing games in the past. The game industry may be financially bigger today, but this does not define progress.

Let me give you an example of progress. The last time we had progress in the game industry was in the days of the Playstation debut. I had been playing Street Fighter and Mortal kombat on Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis a lot and there came talk of these new games on arcade. I read about Tekken and Resident Evil and eagerly looked forward to seeing these games.

The day I walked into the right arcade, the first thing I saw was Law pulling off the knuckle grab on Nina…I was dumbfounded, speechless, helpless, and awestricken. That my dear developer, is progress. And then I looked the other way and saw Taki doing a knife grab on Siegfried in a Soul Edge duel.

To prove my point of a stagnant game Industry, what different was the recently released Soul Calibur IV from the Soul Edge of many years ago? What different are games of today from that of those days.

And to return to our original line of discussion, everyone knows that porn is extreme but I can assure you that both casual gaming and hardcore gaming are also extreme practices in their own rights. And the question now comes, if casual and hardcore gaming are extreme then what market should the game industry basically pursue?

The game Industry’s average target market

Notice that I have used the words Game Industry, and not the words Game Developer. It is okay for a 3^rd party developer to solely pursue after either the casual or hardcore market, or both.

But a hardware company and 1st party software publisher like Nintendo or Sony pursuing after any of the two aforementioned markets would be totally wrong, as Nintendo is wrongly pursuing the casual market today. You’ll make a lot of money, but you’ll seriously harm the industry in the end.

Now back to our question, what should be the Game Industry’s primary target market?

All these years I’ve always heard game developers mention these two extreme markets and waited patiently for the single normal market to be mentioned…which is the Intermediate Gamer. This now takes us back to our dictionary.

Dictionary definition of Hardcore: “The small central group in an organization or a particular group of people who are the most active or who will not change their beliefs or behavior.”  

That definition gives us an understanding of the hardcore gamer. He is the most active. He is unbending and has a very high expectation of games. This gamer is very advanced.

To this gamer, gaming is serious business and is approached very passionately. Also notice the word “small” in the dictionary definition. This is obviously the smallest target market, and at the same time carries the potentials of being the most massive market.  I’ll break all this down as we go on.   

Just like the casual gamer who will rarely attempt to purchase difficult games because games are supposed to dance to his/her tune, the hardcore gamer will almost never attempt to purchase a too simple/easy game, because games are supposed to provide a high level of challenge/competition. Notice my use of the words “rarely” and “never” in this paragraph. 

These attitudes makes this two group of gamers extreme. From our little analysis we can now see that this two target markets are limited, due to the fact that there are certain expectations already printed in their minds, which strongly dictates what they will and will not purchase.

I will now like to mention that the hardcore gamer however, is still the most rigid. A lot more rigid than the casual gamer; which is a negative quality. Remember the dictionary definition of this group: “who will not change their beliefs or behavior.”

But the casual gamer, just like the intermediate gamer, is more flexible, in that he can still easily be swayed or influenced to purchase a hardcore game. If a hardcore game comes out tomorrow and it’s very good, the gaming community will talk about it and promote it.

This will cause both the casual and intermediate gamer to want to check out this game. These two groups have limited knowledge about games so most times they are just following the crowd, they are novices, they’ll go and pick up a game in the store if there’s a buzz about it.

But this does not work in the reverse because the simplistic nature of a casual game alone is enough to completely repel the hardcore gamer. This is why I pointed out the fact that the hardcore market has the potentials of being the most massive market. Because it can carry the entire casual and intermediate market along on special occasions.

This only happens on special occasions because it only takes an outstanding game to do this. Tekken is a very complex game but casual, intermediate, and hardcore gamers alike love this game. I noticed that most casual gamers preferred to use characters like Eddy, with whom you only need to tap random buttons to pull of a streak of crazy moves.

So, ways that the game can be made accessible to the casual gamer can come in many other forms apart from an easy mode setting. Easy to control characters, weapons, items etc are also ways to consider reaching the casual player after the main design of the game has already been achieved.

 It is important for us to now take note of the fact that the casual gamer is negatively extreme and has the highest potential of ruining the game industry if given utmost attention; (which is presently ongoing) Whereas the hardcore gamer is positively extreme.

Let me explain this, the hardcore market still manages to foster creativity and progression, thereby encouraging forward movement of the industry. Since the demands of a hardcore gamer are very high and advanced, it pushes developers to work with a more complex and progressive mindset, thereby coming up with new ideas and creative solutions.

The rout to original ideas is hidden deep within the intertwining corridors of the maze called COMPLEXITY. Note that complexity is not actual difficulty, but seeming-difficulty. It’s all about executing a complex game idea in a simplistic manner.

For example, I have a brand new idea for how weapons should be reloaded in shooting games, which would eliminate the one button reload system that’s currently in vogue.

Developers with a casual-game-market mindset would discourage such a thing, stilling any complex sounding ideas from surfacing at all, thereby stalling the progression of the game industry.

Though from my own understanding it is the direction of the IP owners and managers and producers etc, it’s a shame that almost the entire industry pursues after casual gamers today.  Again, the clash of profitability and creativity, a separate topic I will address in the future.

Were it like this in the 90’s, games like Tekken and Gran Turismo, Virtual fighter, Tomb Raider, Super Metroid etc would never have surfaced. But these were very innovative and creative games. And judging from the list, these were all intermediate/hardcore titles.  

Even though they were complex and challenging, they were still accessible and enjoyable. Most of these games were key in ushering the game industry into its next level at the time.        

Giving utmost attention to the hardcore gamer however, means that only highly skilled players will be able to tackle games, (there’s only a few of these people) which would also in the same vein, ruin the game industry, mostly in terms of profit. But this works in the reverse when you develop a hit hardcore title, because you’ll be making far more money than the casual and intermediate market alone could ever generate.  

So what makes the hardcore market extreme is that it ushers in more creativity and progression due to its advanced nature, and less finances, which is also not healthy for the game industry.

So what we’re looking for is balance.   

I’ll use the example of a hill. If getting to the top of the hill were the goal, the casual gamer sits lazily at the bottom of the hill, the intermediate gamer is balanced at the top of the hill while the hardcore gamer has reached the top of the hill but is descending the other side of the hill.

Dictionary definition of Intermediate: “Having more than a basic knowledge of something, but not yet advanced.”

It’s a very ordinary definition for a very ordinary group of gamers. This market is not by any means the largest market and because of its ordinary nature is invisible to the eye. This target market is just slightly bigger than the hardcore market. 

Anything extreme tends to stick out or protrude which is why the focus has always been on the casual and hardcore markets. While the intermediate market is balanced in the middle, the other two lean to opposite directions.  

            I’ll use the illustration of three men walking into a reception for a job interview. One of them is tall and is putting on a jacket and shorts and has a crazy haircut.

The other is a midget, while the third is your every day guy in a suit. Now anyone that walks into that reception immediately notices the tall guy and the midget; why? Because they are out of the ordinary, they are extreme. The every day guy in a suit will only be noticed when it gets to his turn for the interview. This has been the case with the Intermediate Gamer.

            As a writer and game designer that I am, and prospective developer, I know that I am a hardcore gamer. It is of course not a shameful thing. But this fact actually affects the way I design games, but because I am conscious of it, always want to see from the intermediate gamer’s point of view whenever I do my game designs.

So as a game designer, it is important to know what kind of gamer you are, and learn to adjust your mind while you design games. Although every designer should be able to design a game that appeals to the intermediate gamer, I highly discourage something like (which I know is ongoing) getting a mentally hardcore designer to write a casual game.

They’ll mess it up. Call someone like me to design a casual game and you’ll almost be throwing away your money. All this talk about a designer being able to multi task and tackle different genres of games is quite wrong. But there may be rare cases, though. This branches us into a new topic.

The Need For Freelance Game Designers and Directors

Hollywood understands this fact that is why a film studio will not get an action movie director to shoot a romance movie. It’s common sense. Hollywood equally understands that the director does not work for the studio but with it. That way no one will be directing the director.

And if the director’s earning a small amount for his work, means he’ll hardly be respected enough to allow him the independence that a director is supposed to be allowed in the process of doing his work.

Most of the guys we call game designers and creative directors are supposed to be earning a lot more money. These guys are the creative anchors, and even if you want to keep them at your studios can you pay them in the six figure range for each work they do? At least that way they’d still be respected and their creativity would be working at maximum. 

The problem is that we want to employ everybody. When a creative anchor works for you there’s a big psychological and spiritual negative effect on creativity, than when they are working with you. It is for this reason that veteran anchors in the industry are opening up companies of their own. That sense of independence lingers in their minds.

And I’m sure the film directors do not perfectly know how to handle film equipment, how to set up the set, or how to do jaw dropping CG. It takes a lot of people to do those other things but the director remains the director. The creative anchor originates and anchors the vision. And the development team brings his vision into fruition. That is how every branch of entertainment works.

This is why we still solely depend on game ranking sites to sell our games to the customer. Apart from the game ranking sites, which I am in no way disapproving, the customer needs people to trust when purchasing a product. They need people to celebrate. And the game ranking sites will only assist in celebrating these people.

Example of what customer talk is meant to be like by now: “Hey have you seen that latest EA game directed by John black?” “I heard Peter black’s designing a new game for Capcom.”

Microsoft announced Peter Jackson would be working on a new Halo game. This is actually supposed to get the fans excited that someone a superstar they trust is working on the next Halo game… but yet we sit on our own creative anchors. When will we start flashing big names in the industry to the fans rather than big names in an already established industry? Let’s establish our industry.

If Hollywood was not operating the right way by not trying to employ its creative anchors, treating them well and properly rewarding their creativity, Peter Jackson would be just an unknown employee at some film studio, and his creativity would be dulled out by his employer who would constantly interfere with the film direction. And there’d be a psychological/spiritual limitation to his creativity.

In music the studio works with the musician. In film the studio works with the writer and writer/director. They consult them. In football the club works with the coach. In books, the publishing company works with the writer.

I’ve published a book and I don’t even have an idea what a publishing company looks like, how many employees work there, or the exact effort and process it takes to edit, produce, manage, print, bind, publish, distribute, and promote a book.

That more mature industry understands that without the writer you can’t print blank pages. In movies, without the writer/directors all the cameras/ CGI equipment is a total waste. Nothing happens. In music you can’t just get anyone at your recording studio to lend their voice. Even though you have the equipment, you seek out the right voices.

Its funny to me that in the game industry we feel comfortable getting actors from Hollywood to do voice-over for us. Why not try employing some of the top ones and see how it turns out. Try employing Vin Diesel for example. Vin Diesel was once a nobody but Hollywood made him what he is today. And Hollywood in turn profits from his talent. It’s vice versa.  

The truth is that if anybody had talent in games and talent in movies they’d pursue and develop their movie talent over their game talent because they know that the rewards in movies would be higher. Why pursue a career at an industry that wants to hand you a few thousand dollars a year and pull you behind the curtain, when you can go for film where just one movie can earn you an instant six figures, and some fame to go with it.

So the game industry can be sure it’s lost a lot of talent to Hollywood. Why are my not pursing film instead of games? Because I have a passion for games and I’m not a sell out. Because If I don’t say the things included in this article no one else might say them in many years to come. I love games and I want to see the industry living out the next level rather than remaining in one place as it has all this while.       

Try to imagine Coldplay or Hoobastank being employed at a recording studio and being handed monthly paychecks. Try to imagine George Lucas being employed at a film studio back in the 80’s. Try to imagine Britney spears being employed at a recording studio and receiving salary. Try to imagine Stephen king being employed at a publishing company…would we have seen the level of creativity showcased by these people so far?

These people are creative anchors.

The problem we have is we’re trying to get the anchor into the mix of employees. This should never be.  

This is what brings about credibility. It’s not about making a lot of money and being disregarded by society. It’s about the game industry being accepted and taking its stand in society. Exceptional talent just has to be celebrated no matter what, and I’m not just talking about the creative anchors here.   

When personalities in the industry become household names like movie stars and film directors, then we become accepted as a reasonable branch of entertainment. That’s why its entertainment. Have you ever heard of entertainment without celebrities?

Understand that it’s not about the position, it’s not about the money, it’s not about the shine, it’s about maximizing creativity. And the only way it can be done is very apparent as seen in other branches of entertainment. It’s nothing to get sentimental about. You cannot trap a creative anchor and expect him/her to function properly.

I also want the technical guys, artists others in the industry to know that I’m not discrediting anyone in anyway. If you’re outstanding and your company allows it, you’ll surely be in the limelight and this affects the quality of work you do eventually, in a positive way.

So it’s not just designers and directors, perhaps I’ve not clarified this enough. Anyone that can constantly come up with original ideas. Whether be you an artist, engineer or programmer.

Maybe not necessarily original but outstanding. Can you come up with something no one’s ever seen in the industry? Then you need to be celebrated. That is why in film we see awards for best picture, best sound, best CGI, best production, etc. They try hard to reward and celebrate everything that stands out; that way they’re encouraging these people to do more. Push yourself, do something better than the last if you want to get another award.

They try to maximize creativity. They try to push their industry forward.   

For example the first time I played with the double analogue stick strafe/look control for FPS games I was very impressed and told my colleagues that I can’t wait to meet the person that came up with that control style. I still look forward to meeting that person and getting an autograph. Someone else may add to it but I’m very certain that original ideas only come from individuals. 

For example John Carmac is a technical but very recognized person in the industry. Notice how the man keeps ditching out new game technology. This would not happen if he was not being celebrated by fans. I’ve heard fans call him a technology god before.

And I still look forward to getting an autograph from the guy. He was actually the first person I wanted to contact in the game industry but after trying to get my hands on his contact for two months and failed, I settled for the contact of someone else at his company.

In the game industry we’ve been taking our talented staff and non staff for granted. We can start by setting up a game award ceremony where the people that make the games are celebrated rather than the games; the artist, the engineer, the programmer, the writer, the designer, the producers, and so on. Even in books we see awards for best cover illustration. Even something as simple as that gets celebrated.

To round up this topic, another example of why we need freelance directors and designers is: I have the design notes on what the next level of Tekken should be like. I also have design notes on what the next level of Street Fighter should be like.

I also have design notes of what the next level of both arena and tactical FPS should be like, and a few more. But it’s an obvious fact that I can’t work for all the involved companies at the same time. But working with them would make it very possible.  

Returning to our original topic, another question arises now. What is the Intermediate gamer’s point of view?

The Intermediate Gamer Perspective

Let me begin by pointing out a discovery I made in the times I played games with a group of friends. I carefully studied everybody’s attitude towards each game we played together. With time I began to realize the kind of gamers these guys were.

I was hardcore, as well as was two other guys. I noticed that I and this other two hardly played a game at first hand on the normal level; we always started a game on the second to the hardest level. This was the only way we could challenge ourselves and derive enjoyment from playing a video game.

Beating us at a game we loved, and I’m not ashamed to say this, was not something we took very lightly. We would always look forward to a rematch in order to redeem ourselves. I’m sure most hardcore gamers will not deny that lingering habit.

We had a very competitive mindset toward playing video games. This was a limitation in regards to the amount of games we purchased. There was one casual gamer among us. This guy would complain when he got pounded at a game and would head home to go continue his single player RPG games or action games set on the easy level.

There were two other guys and these guys were Intermediate gamers. It didn’t matter if they were losing 50 - 0 at a Tekken 3 game, they would still laugh and play the game with you all through the night, which was a rare thing among hardcore and casual gamers.

Finally I decided to make a thorough observation and realized that while I and the other hardcore guys mostly owned fighting, driving simulators, and first person shooter games, the casual guy mostly owned simpler games like Sega soccer slam, super smash bros, burnout etc.

Because we were extreme, (hardcore and casual) the number of games we owned was limited. On checking over at the intermediate guys houses, they owned every game owned by both my hardcore group and the casual guy…and more. Not only that, but they equally owned all the available consoles at the time, and would hardly be involved in any arguments as to what console was putting out the best games.

As a fact, hardcore gamers would feel quite reluctant to purchase a console like the Nintendo Wii since it publishes very few hardcore titles. But these are clearly limitations of the hardcore gamer.

So from all the observations I made, I found out that the intermediate gamer has a more open minded approach towards playing games. The intermediate gamer loves games but will never be fanatical or overly competitive about them and neither does he/she approach games with a nonchalant attitude.

So from the Intermediate gamer perspective every game is playable and enjoyable, but he would prefer a game with balanced difficulty which is why he always begins a game on the normal difficulty setting.

Again, balance is what we’re looking for.

Summary

To do a comprehensive summary of all we’ve leant so far:

CASUAL MARKET brings in cash because of its large customer base. But it limits creativity and stalls the forward movement of the industry.

I’m not denying the fact that Nintendo publishes quality games today but if you look closely you will notice that these games hardly appeal to more passionate gamers. Such games will only appeal to people who are not so passionate about games.

The true video game fans want something new, and it is only by meeting the demands of the passionate gamer that the industry progresses.

HARDCORE MARKET fosters creativity and forward movement of the game industry, but due to its small customer base, brings in too little cash to meet the financial demands of the industry, but ironically holds the potential to bring in the most cash than any other market. A good example of a complex game that was widely accepted by all gamers is the Street Fighter series. I remember how difficult it was to master the hadouken, but once you got the hang of it, it was second nature. Another is Mortal Kombat. I have a friend who still has a list of a good number of complex-button-combination fatalities in his head till date.

INTERMEDIATE MARKET is the balance we’re looking for. Meeting the needs of the intermediate gamer means making more games that do not lean to the left or to the right in terms of simplicity/complexity and difficulty; which simply means operating a game industry where major focus should never be on the casual or hardcore gamer so as to maintain the balance of creativity and profitability, thereby pushing growth and forward movement of the game industry.

The best example of Intermediate games is the Resident Evil series. Not too difficult/easy, not too simple/complex.

FREELANCE DESIGNERS AND DIRECTORS: Directors and designers whom to the game industry are like screenwriters and movie directors of Hollywood working externally and being paid their work’s worth will help in providing an ambience of respect from the management and development team while they do their work. This maximizes their creativity and pushes forward movement of the industry.  

CELEBRATION OF TALENT: I can not emphasize the need for this enough, for what difference does it make if all an employee expects for all his efforts is the same paycheck year round. Celebrating the brains behind the games motivates those brains to perform better. Just to show how other branches of entertainment have been doing this:

Movies – Oscar Awards

Music – Grammy Awards

Books – Hugo and Nebula Awards

Games – blank space (please fill with award ceremony that celebrates game developers at every level)

If you’ve been developing top quality games for over ten years and don’t have a trophy in your living room to show for it I want you to know that it’s been complete injustice.

Final Notes

As I look back to the past two three years I begin to admire EA for its efforts at wanting to come up with something new. The only place it went wrong was that it allowed management interfere with development. And management is very casual-market–minded. And I can almost bet that a lot of people in management will only have a go at games for business reasons and never for personal entertainment.

 If the development team had been solely allowed to create those new IP’s things would have been different; the development team led by a single game director of course, or better say an external creative anchor.

Also looking further back to the days of the playstation, you will notice that Nintendo has been into the business of focusing on the casual market for a very long time.

And If not for the original playstation which came out and focused on intermediate and hardcore titles, I wonder where the game industry would be by now. This is why the Sony Playstation flawlessly dominated in those days. Many intermediate and hardcore titles translated into hits and carried Nintendo’s casual market along.

Take a careful look back and you will see that it was those Playsation intermediate/ hardcore titles that ushered the industry into its present level. Of course there were a few Nintendo titles like Turok, Metroid, Doom 64 and a few others, but these were equally not casual games by any means.

The only reason Nintendo is taking the lead today is because other hardware and software companies are now trying to beat them at their trade. But understand that Nintendo has focused on the casual market since the famicom days. If there is focus again on the intermediate and hardcore market, progress will return. Focusing on the casual market will not get us to the next level.

And notice that I am not against the making of casual games, but only against the focus on the casual market. Our current focus on the casual market affects the way we make games. That is what I am against.

To conclude, let us also note that it is a necessity for there to be 3^rd party developers who focus solely on the hardcore and/or casual gaming markets. The intermediate market is basically the primary market. All 1st party developers should try to direct major focus on this market. This is how balance will be achieved in the industry.

As a final word of advice developers should try separating the words complexity and difficulty in their minds. Once you do this we’ll be moving a step forward to begin with. In fiction, I think the most complex stories ever told were Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. They were just told by skilled creative anchors who had the special ability of  origination and execution.

And speaking of creation and execution perhaps I should also point out the basic categories of talent, namely:

ORIGINATOR TALENT

EXECUTOR TALENT

DEVELOPER TALENT.

I have arranged them in order of value. Note that while the developer talent is an employee talent the first two should not be, if you want to achieve maximum result in any given industry. Also note that those first two are the creative anchor talents.   

If theres any industry out there that’s fully operating in this order, it’s Hollywood.

The originator talent of hollywood is the SCRIPTWRITER. An example of executor talent in hollywood is the FILM DIRECTOR while an example of developer talent is the entire film studio employees, the guys in charge of the art, cgi, set, camera e.t.c.

The game industry simply has to emulate this structure.

The fact is that top class originator and executor talent are hard to come by. You can’t duplicate or easily find a replacement for someone like Tarantino (killbill). To cut the long story short, for the game industry to attain the height that hollywood has, it needs to begin fulfilling the American dream. Books and Music are other branches of entertainment which are fulfilling the American dream. That is why these other forms are widely accepted.

How does the industry fulfill the American dream? Can we turn a nobody into a millionair overnight?

 These other forms of entertainment are doing it. The fact is that when this happens society is naturally attracted to the particular industry and everyone wants to be part of the show. This is how society accepts you as an industry, because you can change the common man’s life overnight by simply rewarding them according to their work’s worth.

Personally, I believe video games to be the next major form of entertainment but we just have to chew our vegetables.

To round it up, if we want to enjoy the super success of hollywood, we have to begin fulfilling the American dream.

It can never be one sided, whereby one party enjoys all the gains. It just has to be vice versa. There’s no way around it, that’s the way it will work, that’s the way forward for the video game industry. Thats the way forward for us.