Defining Your Audience

Defining Your Audience

In this part I will be choosing a competitor to my game concept, that game is Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Crysis 3, both these games are Sci-Fi FPS. Upon researching them I will compile a report which covers the following three:

Quantitative.

Qualitative

Audience Classification.

Quantitative.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - This part could be broken up into two separate parts, sales figures and review scores. Going into more depth I have found different review scores for each game on different websites making to research more reliable and credible. Looking at websites such as Metacritic and Gamerankings. For the first game, Deus Ex: Human Revolution there are similar patterns for this game because the ratings are very similar, on Metacritic they’ve given it a score of 89 out of 100, which is very good. There were a total of 50 critic reviews, all 50 of them being positive, with one of the critic’s reviews being a solid 10 out of 10 which said: “It’s rare I play a game that doesn’t let me play the way I like, but actually showers me in prizes for doing so, I love it.” This was published in 2011. Nearly all of the critic scores rated this game at least 80+ out of 100. The user reviews mirror those kinds of ratings bar one who rated it as 0 out of 10, there were a total of 149 user reviews, 122 of them being positive, 8 being mixed and the final 19 being negative and one of the more lower rating which said “I have been playing games for a long time now and have played all types of games, from RPG to FPS and others... and I have to say this is the worst piece of crap I have ever played. As a shooter it completely fails with ridiculously bad weapons, as a story it’s so basic and uninteresting it’s not even funny. The levels are so badly designed that it is a pain to get oriented in them; the graphics are so early 2000. Bref, this game could have been good in 2000 or 2001 but today it’s just a horrible, horrible game. Don’t believe the hype.” Looking at Gamerankings, there reviews are nearer the same as the ones taken from Metacritic, some ratings were 9 out of 10, 5 out of 5 and a staggering 9.7 out of 10 with the average of all the reviews being a solid 8.4 out of 10. Now moving onto the sales figures, Square Enix confirmed in 2011, 3 months after its release that the game sold over 2 million copies in the US and Europe, which has likely risen to more than that in the present day. The majority of the sales were Europe based with over 1.3 million been snapped up, whereas only around 800,000 copies were sold to North American players who wanted to play the sci-fi action RPG. Around 2 months later the game was released in Japan, but these sales figures were not included in the report. Dues Ex dominated Square Enix’s software sales  for the last 6 months which ended in September 2011, with Dungeon Siege lll behind it on around 800,000+ sales, then followed by Dragon quest 25^th Anniversary Collection which sold around 350,000 sales in Japan. 

Crysis 3 - Again this part will be broken down into two separate parts, sales figures and reviews from the same websites (Metacritic & Gamerankings). The reviews on Crysis are different to the ones for Deus Ex: Human Revolutions. On Metacritic they gave Crysis 3 a rating of 77 out of 100, which again is reasonably good, not as good as Deus Ex, but close enough. There were a total of 23 critic reviews for this game, 16 of them positive, 7 which were mixed and surely good news that none were negative, one of them was “All-in-all Crysis 3 is a great package, despite burning bright half as long. It may have not been exactly what all the fans wanted, but it does a great job or trying to appease as many as it can without sacrificing too much. Add to this a decent; if not groundbreaking multi-player suite and you have a solid FPS that is more than worth a look.” Now looking through the user reviews they have a slight different to the critics reviews as in some of their reviews were negative unlike the critics reviews, there was a total of 25 user reviews, 13 positive, 5 that were mixed and 7 which were negative, one of the more positive ones  who scored it as a 10 out of 10 that wrote “The single player is okay but the multi-player stands out. It’s a blend of Battlefield and Halo, but with a lot more strategy in how to manage your suits energy. It’s really a blast.” One of the more negative ones which scored it at 4 out of 10 wrote “The only saving grace is the single-player which for some odd reason features horrible AI, even on the hardest difficulty. I’m only a few missions in but I’m easily able to simply run past everyone only shooting a few people to beat a mission. The storyline, voice acting and graphics are the best part about the experience they are next gen quality. Multi-player is average at best and brings nothing new to the table at all. In my opinion I have had more fun with Crysis 2 multi-player as this version of the game is 100% dumbed down even further for the Call of Duty audience, and it looks like it sold like a turd, less than 1,000 players online together. Expect LAGGY hosts and o players in every mode not names TDM, FFA, Spears and Crash Site. Minimal improvements have been made as well compared to Crysis 2 mp this feels like nothing more than a map pack with different kill streaks . Piss poor job EA.” Now looking at Gamerankins views on it, they were nearer the same as what Metacritic gave it, some of the reviews reached a maximum of around between 6 and 7 out of 10 with only two being higher at a respectful 8.5 and 9.2 out of 10 which average works out as a 7 or so, out of 10. Moving onto the sales figures of Crysis 3, one article which I found compared it to the sales figures of Dead Space 3 which was released at around the same time. It red “Big-budget shooters Crysis 3 and Dead Space 3 did not meet Electronic Arts’ (EA) sales expectations, despite topping sales charts, the company revealed today (May 7^th 2013) which shows this article is relatively up to date. Again it goes onto talking about how many copies were sold during its February launch month. “Crysis 3 was also released in February and was the month’s third best selling game in the US, moving 205,000 copies, according to the research group.”

So when you compare the 2, Crysis 3 doesn’t live up to the same stature as Deus Ex: Human Revolutions, Deus Ex sold far more copies than Crysis 3 did. Also the reviews I researched prove that every game has its good views and bad views, all games have their own specific audience.

Moving onto qualitative research, I decided on creating two questionnaires, one for players who have played either Deus Ex or Crysis 3 and one for those who haven’t played it.

Looking at the two questionnaires above, the one to the left was filled out by someone who has played either of the two games and the one on the right is from someone who hasn’t played either of the games. Looking at the one to the left, the answers were filled in for Crysis 3; some of the answers given are similar to some of the user reviews found on Metacritic. 

The person said that the graphics are good, but it doesn’t make the game great. As well the person also added if Crysis made a new game such as Crysis 4 then he wouldn’t purchase it mainly for the fact that when he played Crysis 3 he said it “Got boring very quickly.” But looking at what the person posted on Metacritic, 6 people out of 11 that viewed it did in fact found it helpful, so the comment has effected other people’s view on the game, some of them could’ve been wanting to buy it but saw the comment and changed their mind.

Now looking at the other questionnaire on the right, this person said he had never played either Crysis 3 or Deus Ex, I asked further questions such as “Would you consider buying it?” which he said they wouldn’t and then asked how else would he find out about games he doesn’t know about, his response was “Friends, YouTube and comments from random people.” This proves that most people could end up making their choice on getting a game on comments based from their friends, videos online and what other people may say online such as replies on Metacritic and Gamerankings.

Moving onto audience classification, in this part I will be writing about what types of players play either of the games and their wants and need from the game. First off are player types. Crysis 3’s player’s types could be a mixed community, as the game is in first person, which would appeal to many of the first person shooters (FPS) that play games but could also be described as a action or adventure which would appeal to gamers who play games for the adventure and finding items, and basically going on missions and also sci-fi gamers. For Deus Ex the type of gamer that this game would appeal to is similar to the audience for Crysis 3, gamers who enjoy first person shooters, also this game would appeal to another genre which Crysis 3 doesn’t have which is role playing games (RPG).

Next I will be covering the player needs; this can be split into 5 separate types of needs which are:

Cognitive – Which is the desire to discover or learn to find out more. An example for this could be a quiz show.

Affective – This is the need to stir someone’s emotions; this would include pleasure, sadness, excitement and voyeurism. An example of this could be a TV soap opera or everyday life. An example of this could be the movie Titanic.

Personal Integrative – The need for self esteem, this helps the person reassure their own views on their status in the world. An example of this could be some form of make-up advert or anything that shows the viewer how they could be.

Social Integrative – This is the need to socially interact with their friends, family or co-workers and the need to feel popular. An example of this could be some form of social networking site such as Facebook or twitter.

Tension-free – A need for escapism, or to switch off and just relax. This could also be used for entertainment purposes and amusement. An example of this could be a football match or an aimless website where you view thousands of pictures.