Market Analysis and genre [WEEK 5]

 Market Analysis -

As stated in the brief, our main audience is teens aged 14+, this means that according to the Pan European Game Information rating, our game will be rated at a 12.  A rating of 12 restricts us to limiting profanity, sexual innuendos and violence towards non human characters (PEGI 2024). In our game, there shouldn't be any of this present, there isn’t a need for any violent situations and since our game is not a dating sim type game, we won't have any sexual content. There may be some tense or sad scenes but nothing that should be inappropriate for our age range. Aside from this, we also want to make sure our game appeals to a younger audience through art style and gameplay. A brighter and more colourful art style with interesting and relatable characters will be more appealing than characters the players cannot see themselves in, on top of this, a more simple yet effective gameplay will be more attractive than something that requires a lot of time and effort to play. Our game will be a simple multiple choices game with a baseline of storytelling and interaction with characters, this way the game is simple to play but still keeps the player interested by implementing interesting interactions. Regarding art styles, something we wanted to avoid was creating our game in an anime artstyle as the genre for Visual Novels has a high volume of games in this style. By stepping out of this, we make our game more recognisable and interesting to someone who might want something different from another anime game.  Our game does use themes of mental health and is used as a way to look in the perspective of someone with anxiety to both inform the player how someone struggling with this might think and for those who do have anxiety, this game may offer them ways to cope with their anxieties especially around social situations. 

Genre -

The genre of our game will be a Visual novel containing multiple choices, storytelling elements and an interactive storyline. The playstyle will be similar to games such as Monster Prom (2018) In the sense that it is based around the main characters interactions with the characters around them in a school setting. As Monster Prom(2018) is rated a 16 for strong language (steam 2024) our game will differ from this to make it more appropriate for a slightly younger audience. On top of this, romance is not the main theme, rather building platonic relationships and overcoming social anxiety in a university setting. Outside of the Visual novel genre, there are some slight similarities within our game and the game Life is strange (2015) which is a “third-person narrative adventure game” (square enix 2024). They both contain themes of going to university and getting to know the people around you. Though as stated before, due to the age rating differences, there won't be any disturbing scenes, sexual content or extreme profanity present in our game.

Platform -

The platforms we have considered publishing our games upon are PC on which we would likely put our game on Steam and Itch.IO. With our target audience in mind, that being 14+ year olds, this would be the most easily accessible place for them to find our game. Steam is a great platform to advertise games on, especially in this genre. Some of the best selling visual novels on steam are also very well known, titles such as Doki Doki Literature club (2017) and Danganronpa : Trigger happy havoc (2010) can be found on this site. These games both have an overwhelming amount of reviews on the website, Doki Doki literature club (2017) having around 200,000 positive reviews and Danganronpa : Trigger happy havoc (2010) having close to 26,000 positive reviews (steam 2024). 

The mechanics of our game lend themselves more to a PC setting as opposed to a platform such as mobile, on PC we have access to a higher aspect ratio therefore more of our games artwork can be shown, As the artwork is one of the most important aspects of our game, showing less of it would likely impact the player’s overall experience. However, according to Whimsy games writer Daria Holoskokova “there are currently 2.67 billion mobile gamers worldwide” (2024), this is significantly higher than the almost half of that amount that play PC games. Considering this, we might want to consider altering our game in the future to suit a mobile platform to open our game up to more people. 

Bibliography :

Websites -

Holoskokova ,D. 2024. Mobile gaming Vs Pc gaming [online]. Whimsy Games. Available at :https://whimsygames.co/blog/mobile-gaming-vs-pc-gaming-key-differences/#:~:text=Newzoo%20reports%20that%20there%20are,gamers%20is%20around%201%20billion . [Accessed 18 October 2024]. 

PEGI, 2024. What do the labels mean? [online].. Available at: https://pegi.info/what-do-the-labels-mean   [Accessed 18 October 2024]. 

Steam, 2024. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc [online]. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/413410/Danganronpa_Trigger_Happy_Havoc/  [Accessed 18 October 2024]. 

Steam, 2024. Doki Doki Literature Club[online]. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/698780/Doki_Doki_Literature_Club/  [Accessed 18 October 2024]. 

Games -

Beautiful Glitch, 2018. Monster Prom [online], PC. Steam. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/743450/Monster_Prom/  [Accessed 18 October 2024]. 

Spike Chunsoft, 2010. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc [online], PC. Steam. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/413410/Danganronpa_Trigger_Happy_Havoc/  [Accessed 18 October 2024]. 

Square Enix, 2015. Life is strange [online], PC. Square Enix. Available at: https://lifeisstrange.square-enix-games.com/en-gb/games/life-is-strange-remastered-collection   [Accessed 18 October 2024]. 

Team Salvato, 2017. Doki Doki Literature Club [online], PC. Steam. Available at: https: //store.steampowered.com/app/698780/Doki_Doki_Literature_Club/  [Accessed 18 October 2024].