Industry Practice: Case Study and Audience Profile

 Industry Practice: Case Study

Before talking about the audience profile, we all picked games to do short case studies on. For myself, I picked Little Nightmares (Tarsier Studios 2017), and how they make the non playable characters in the game that oppose the player seem monstrous. As I go through each section, I will highlight the parts that we could possibly bring into our own game, and explain why. It is very important in industry to have reasons for decisions, and doing case studies is a very in-depth reason for our design decisions. There is a lot of things I want to avoid for my own character design in terms of monstrous qualities, so this case study will also help with that.

Before going into individual elements of enemies within Little Nightmares (Tarsier Studios 2017), it is important to know what the game is about and what makes the enemies within it so unsettling. Little Nightmares is a puzzle/platformer game within a 3D side-view environment, where the player controls a little girl. One of the main selling points of the game is the horror aspect of it, specifically in its approach to enemy design.

One of the key factors in the enemy design is a distorted sense of humanity, with all of them having multiple of the following features: elongated body parts, excess skin and unnatural growths. The most relevant example from this game that is most similar to my character is the Janitor (as seen in the picture above). I think the approach to elongating the arms gives a really good and unique sense of expression, as it makes every move the character makes unnatural. For the Jester, I want to avoid creating a grin like seen on the Janitor, since it looks uncanny, and whilst I do want the grin on the jester mask to be mildly unsettling, I think something like this leans to far into the uncanny valley and therefore too much into horror.

Moving onto the movements of the enemies, all enemies in the game due to their uncanny proportions move in a staggered, jerky manner that adds to the overall horror of their designs. This is something I want to replicate to some extent with the Jester in the sprite designs, but not take it as far as to lean into the horror genre overall.

Another key part of the enemies within Little Nightmares (Tarsier Studios 2017), is the sound design. All enemies have a unique sound profile, and the game makes it a constant point to make the sounds the enemy makes louder than the players. Despite this being very hard to replicate within a visual novel stye game, it is possible to use the players imagination to make them potentially think of how the character would sound.

Overall, Little Nightmares (Tarsier Studios 2017) is a showcase of terrifying enemy design, which showcases both elements I want to bring across for my own character, as well as elements I want to avoid such as the uncanny grin.

 Industry Practice: Audience Profile:

Before trying to build a strong audience profile, it is best to fully understand some key terminology.

Market: A place where parties can gather to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. The parties involved are usually buyers and sellers.

Target Market: The specific parties you want to buy your product.

Audience Profile: Defined by the most commonly shared characteristics from data, individuals in the target market are the most likely to buy/play the game.

First starting with the Demographics. This is mainly what I had for the pitch presentation, so I will fill in the information that's missing and change some things in different places.

Age Group: Gen Z [1995-2015]. This is because as seen in the below image from Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Games: Gamers Want Less Toxicity in Games and Want Publishers to Take a Stance (Newzoo 2022), 29/31% of the gaming audience (UK/US) identify as having a disability, with mental health being most reported, and Gen Z covers two markets.
Other demographics like gender identity, ethnicity, neurodiversity etc. Don't really matter here, since anyone can suffer from mental health issues, and age group is really the main demographic that applies here.

In terms of psychographics, there are things like values, attitudes, tastes and preferences, hobbies and beliefs. One of the only things that is applicable here is the hobby of playing video games, which doesn't need mentioning on the audience profile since anyone seeing this game will most likely have a hobby of playing video games already. One thing that is important though is the fact that according to Frontiers in Psychology (2018), up to 89% of gamers that are addicted to video games are also depressed. This game could potentially be targeted at those addicted to video games in this case.

Finally, behaviour and trends refer to things like social media trends, technology trends, competitive gaming, creative industry trends etc. In terms of trends, I don't think we should focus heavily on this as of now, since a game focused around mental health would be worse off. In terms of behaviour, Alexis Pamboris from Newzoo (2021) describes a list of gamer personas.

I feel the personas our game is most suited for are the all-round enthusiast, the popcorn gamer, and the lapsed gamer. The ultimate gamer is also a potential persona, but they are much more likely to play the game anyway, making it much more worth it to market towards the other personas I listed.

References

Minh Tue Le Ngoc, 2022. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Games: Gamers Want Less Toxicity in Games and Want Publishers to Take a Stance [Online]. Newzoo. Available at: https://newzoo.com/resources/blog/newzoos-gamer-sentiment-diversity-inclusion-gender-ethnicity-sexual-identity-disability  [22 November 2024]

Linder, C., García, D., and Schnettler, B. 2018. Internet Gaming Disorder in Adolescents: Personality, Psychopathology and Evaluation of a Psychological Intervention Combined With Parent Psychoeducation [Online]. Frontiers in Psychology. Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00787/full [22 November 2024]

Alexis Pamboris, 2021. Newzoo's Gamer Segmentation and Gamer Personas. [Online]. Newzoo. Available at: https://newzoo.com/resources/blog/overview-newzoos-gamer-segmentation-and-gamer-personas [22 November 2024]

Tarsier Studios, 2017.Little Nightmares. [Video game] Bandai Namco Entertainment. Available on: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/424840/Little_Nightmares/ [22 November 2024]

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