WII 2. Know the regulatory, ethical and legal requirements applicable to the games, animation and VFX industries.
WII 3. Understand how products in the games, animation and VFX industries are taken to market.
A target audience, in simple terms, is the demographic that you are targeting when you are designing a product. This is important because this is where most of your sales are going to come from. Knowing the target audience also allows you to target marketing strategies such as best time to air ads on a TV channel, or what websites ads should target as a result.
A target audience can be defined in many ways, it doesn’t just boil down to age groups and genders, but also cultures and ethnicities. As an example, The Walking Dead features a male protagonist on nearly all of the promotional material, however upon watching the show, there are plenty of female heroes as well. As the show features tons of action, mild sex scenes and blood/gore, the age rating for the TV show is an 18, however attracts an audience starting from late teens up to late 50’s.
In terms of our mini-game, our target audience would be kids who are aged 7+. As the game features a low poly art style, nice and bright colours and simple to use controls, this would be a sensible demographic to aim at. The game isn’t particularly targeted at any specific gender either, Skins are customisable and the game has plenty of replayability.
We see this to be true because of the way our game is played. The game is a two player game where you share one controller, so ideally our game could launch on a platform such as Nintendo Switch, where the controllers feature a similar layout to how the game should be played. The Nintendo Switch is known as a family product which targets a younger audience, I would say from the ages of 7 and up, which ties in nicely with our game.
In our industry, there are regulatory bodies such as PEGI and ESRB who determine an age rating for your game. This is important because it helps us know if we are hitting the right target audience and if there are any roadblocks in hitting our target audience, but also important for consumers because it helps them decide what games they can purchase by knowing what content could be happening on the game.
If regulatory bodies didn’t have a say on what age ratings or content weren’t included in our game, it could lead to a pile of problems for the developers and publisher. The target audience in a sense is verified by these ratings so it helps with research. As previously mentioned as well, customers like to know what they are buying. If they pick up a game that contains blood and gore but the box art might not depict it, then they are going to be in for a shock.
Generally speaking, when I purchase my video games, I don’t take notice of PEGI ratings or content descriptors but if I was a clueless parent who’s child was recommended a video game from a friend, I most certainly would be looking at this sort of stuff. Content descriptors break down what kind of content the game may contain.
An example of the game that is rated age 3 could be a game such as FIFA. FIFA isn’t the easiest of games to play but the game does contain easy to access and easy to use in-game purchases. As this label would be on the box, I would know that the game is suitable enough for a child to play it, however I would also know to restrict any online access.
The game that is rated age 16 could be something like Spiderman. The game does contain violence but also contains DLC within the game that can easily be purchased through the in game store. When it comes to films and television, they may use a different regulatory body, as an example, BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) would review and certify that a certain piece of media in terms of film and television is suitable for certain ages.
U – Suitable for all audiences
PG – Parental Guidance
12 – Suitable for audiences aged 12 and above
15 – Suitable for audiences aged 15 and above
18 – Suitable for audiences aged 18 and above
R18 – Suitable for audience aged 18 and above however may contain footage that may offend viewers.
JORDAN | GLITCH ARCADE 