Researching the age group of your target audience is critical in any media product and is arguably more important in the games industry due to it being an active form of media rather than passive. This means that video games intrinsically have a greater impact on our behavior than other media products as the audience is actively participating.

FUN FACT: The games Doom, Quake and Mortal Kombat were responsible for the introduction of age ratings in videogames

Research shows that while many modern video games are tailored towards men, 52% of gamers are women. It is important to promote inclusivity in game design to prevent people feeling as if they are excluded from a media text, for example, the sheer concentration of cut-out male protagonists may drive away a female audience as the pattern becomes clear. Having more diverse characters promotes inclusivity and broadens the audience.

Some video games like to engage their audience by making a comment on the developer's beliefs. For example, The indie title: The Binding of Isaac is a game that mirrors a Christian text of the same name. The story involves a child, and his parent who is given a message from god to kill him. The game itself tells the story of how the developer was traumatized a a young age by his parents' religious fanaticism.

While all these factors are important, arguably the most important focus when picking a target audience is the type of gamer you are marketing your game towards.

There are (x) main types of gamers:

• Casual

  • Play games for fun or to pass time

  • Having simple mechanics and a low entry level will appeal to casual gamers.

• Competitive

  • Play games in pursuit of being the best, particularly in online games but the type can embody speed-runners in single player games

  • Games that feature player vs player elements and leaderboards such as Team Fortress 2 will appeal to competitive gamers. Shooters are particularly popular with competitive gamers

• Completionists

  • Plays games to earn everything in the game and discover all the secrets, aim to get everything out of a game's content

  • Featuring a lot of collectibles and secrets will likely appeal to completionists, One example of a game that does this really well is LittleBigPlanet with it's many prizes, scores and keys to unlock secret areas

• Hardcore

  • Plays games on the hardest difficulty to earn achievements and demonstrate their skills within a game.

  • Featuring different challenge levels and difficulty spikes will appeal to these people. One example of a game that appeals to hardcore gamers is super meat boy, not only is this game insanely difficult in it's standard difficulty, but there's even a hardcore mode called dark world which can be unlocked by getting a high rank on a basic level.

• Professional

  • Play video games professionally in large events or in competitions often for money. Will often join E-sports teams and primarily play multi-player online games.

  • It is uncommon for someone to market their game towards professional gamers.

The principle of fandom is that an audience will be more interested in a game if it features a brand or icon that they like. Players will feel more incentivized to pick up a game of a genre they've never played before or don't like. On the same token, a player may feel incentivized to pick up a game in a larger series if it is part of a genre they enjoy.

A personal example to me is with Sumo Digital's new game Sackboy a Big Adventure. A game that features the character, Sackboy from the hit PlayStation exclusive series Little Big Planet. Little Big Planet just so happened to be my first game as a kid, which meant I was much more interested in this new game as it featured a character that I had grown to love over the years. The new game was nothing like the originals, taking a 3D adventure approach rather than being a UGC platformer game that I was brought up with, and yet I was still more interested in the game due to it's use of the character, as we hadn't seen a new game featuring them in nearly a decade.