Market Segmentation And target audience [WEEK 7]

 Demographics -
What are Demographics? -

A demographic is the broad overall group of people that you are hoping to appeal to, according to Merriam Webster (2024) this definition can be narrowed down to " the statistical characteristics of human populations (such as age or income) used especially to identify markets". Characteristics may include age, location or gender groups.
Games are enjoyed by a wide variety of people worldwide, though one factor that will divide up the total amount of gamers worldwide into separate demographics to study is the age factor. On a large scale, Data gathered on Finances online (Chang 2024) dictates that the largest proportion of gamers worldwide are between 18 and 34 years old, making up 38% of all gamers, closely followed by 36-54 year olds making up 26% of all gamers, then in the lower percentile, below 18 year olds making up 21% of gamers. With this information we can gather that games marketed towards the 18-34 year old age bracket will have a larger audience to receive it. However this is a rather broad observation, to narrow this down we can look at europe and then the UK’s individual data gatherings. My decision to look at this area in specific is due to our game being marketed towards a western demographic, therefore my findings will be more centralized on those areas. Looking at Ukie (2021) data findings across europe for age ranges of gamers, it seems as though only 9% of gamers fall into the 11-14 age bracket, closely followed by 22% falling into the 15-24 age bracket. As our audience for this project is for ages 14 and up, it means our game might not be as popular in comparison to games targeted towards a slightly older audience. This might have something to do with younger gamers having less personal spending money to spend on games, this is something to consider later on when we look at how we might price our game. Age is not the only factor to consider when looking into demographics, looking at the percentage split of gender in gamers can also help identify who exactly will be more likely to buy and play our game. In the UK, Statista (2024) ran a survey to identify the gender split of gamers as well as the age split. Their findings show that 16-24 year olds make up 83% of gamers, with the gender split being very close to equal with 51% being female and 53% being male. This means it is likely our game will be played by all genders, but with a higher likelihood of it being more popular with older teens in terms of age range. The final demographic to consider is console, how the players will interact with our game and what platform will be the most successful in reaching the most people. Going back to the Finances Online data (Chang 2024), it details how in the USA, mobile games seem to be the most popular platform to interact with games on, falling at a rate of 46% on the overall percentage, the second most popular platform appears to be consoles such as the XBOX or PlayStation with 27% of audiences interacting through this medium, and in the lower percentage falls PC gamers, with only a total of 17% interacting through PC. This shows that Mobile games are widely the most popular form of gaming platform. With this said, from my personal findings on Itch.io, Visual novels seem to be most popular on PC platforms, with close to 42,000 results when searching the Visual Novel tag (Itch, 2024).

Psychographics -

What are Psychographics? -
Psychographics are similar to Demographics but cover the way your target audience thinks and what values they might hold. This can have influence on the sort of content that they will interact with. (Meredith, A 2021). This might also cover religious beliefs or hobbies that resonate with your chosen demographic.

Narrowing the Demographics down further we can look into Psychographics and what games are popular with our chosen audience. This will help lay out what traits are most engaging with our audience and how this will influence how they see our chosen game. In an article written by A. McAloon (2016) the author looked into the most popular game genres with tweens, teens and young adults. Their findings dictate that “"Puzzle and strategy games are still the most popular genre” however other genres such as adventure, sandbox builders, racing games, simulator games and AR games are also very popular. It seems that most of these titles fall under the creative, problem solving or social game titles and encourage the player to be very active in the story telling and plot. This could slot into our game in the sense that we encourage the player to make decisions to drive the plot forwards, While Visual Novels do not seem to rank in the top game genres of our age demographic, we can still implement that creative and decision making element into our game to appeal to that aspect of psychographics. As our game surrounds the theme of Mental health struggles and especially themes of anxiety in young people, i felt it was important to look into how mental health effects youth. In a study by Braithewaite (2024) most younger people and teens are seen to say that “they experience mental health struggles". Further backing this up is a study by the World Health Organization (2024) stating that over 4% of younger teens and 5% of older teens will struggle with an anxiety disorder at some point. It is our hope that our game will resonate with people who struggle with Anxiety and Generalized Anxiety Disorder as a way to perhaps help find ways to cope with their anxieties and feel less alone in their struggles.

Behaviour and Trends -

What are Behaviours and Trends? -
Behaviour and trends are the type of content that your chosen demographic is most likely to interact with and what catches their attention the most. Trends can quickly change but as a whole they show what is most popular with your audience at the current moment. Trends can be highlighted through social media, upcoming technology and especially within the games industry, streamers can be an excellent way to gather trending data.
Looking at current trends for genres in games goes back to reinforce the point of looking at how we can improve interaction and engagement with our game by looking at what mechanics or features make a game popular. In 2024, some of the top game genres across all audiences include (Rocketbrush, 2024) Shooter and battle royale games, Adventure games, Roleplaying Games, and strategy games. Most of these titles also reflect the previous findings of popularity in player driven plot or social games. Narrowing the investigation of trends down to just our genre of Visual novels reveals games promoting storytelling through NPC interaction, mysteries or tense plots, Slice of life’s, and appealing unique art styles are most popular amongst this genre, top titles including (Majarucon 2024) Murders On the Yangtze River(OMEGAMES STUDIO 2024), Vampire Therapist (Little Bat Games 2024), and Hookah Haze (ACQUIRE Corp 2024). The latter of which does tackle themes of mental health struggles in a relaxed setting, helping the characters work through their problems, this somewhat relates to how we want to approach our game, having the character work through aspects of their life that give them anxiety and learning how to overcome their fears and make friends at the same time. 

Our Target audience -

Popular franchises [TV/Games/Films] - Monster Prom, Butterfly Soup [Rated highly on the visual novel tab]
Will our game be free or will they have to pay for it? - It will be free, younger audience, less money to spend on games
Do we connect to any charities? - MIND[largest mental health charity], Youngminds [Charity for young people with mental health struggles]
What research are we going to do to make sure our game is educational and spreading the right message?-  Research into anxiety and GAD on the NHS website, 
Should we signpost any mental health services?- HOPELINE UK?, Samaritans?

With all of this in mind, I did some research into how we can make our game more appealing, as stated before in our research for the presentation, Monster prom (Beatiful Glitch 2018) is a huge inspiration for how our game will look and roughly play like. However i also looked at a game called Butterfly Soup (Brianna Lei 2017) which had a similar gameplay revolving around the character’s relationships with people around them, and is set in a highschool setting. Ours will be slightly different as it is set in university. This game was ranked quite highly on Itch.io and as such seems as though is quite a popular name in the genre. Both games have an interesting and bright art style that appeals to a teen audience, the characters feel very relatable and you are able to engage with the story through decisions. Something that Butterfly Soup (Brianna Lei 2017) also does is offer the game for free (or name your own price), This is a very good feature of itch.io and allows people who want to pay to pay what they feel is right for the game, whilst offering the game for free to those who might not be able to afford it. As our game is marketed towards younger teens, this is a great option as they might have less money to spend on games however if they felt like they might like to spend some money and thank the creators, the option is there. This will ensure our game reaches a larger market. On the topic of money, we could also consider supporting some charities through donations, this might be a nice touch as our game surrounds the topic of mental health issues, Some charities i have looked into include MIND (MIND 2024) which is the largest mental health charity, and YoungMinds (YoungMInds 2024) which specifically caters towards youth struggling with their mental health. There could be an option in the game in which we link these charities, if we can’t directly set ourselves up with donations going straight to them. We also need to make sure that we are representing Anxiety in our game in a good and accurate light, to do this we will need to look into what anxiety is, we can do this by researching on the NHS website about Anxiety (NHS 2024) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (NHS 2024). By researching through the NHS website we can get accurate information about the subject. Finally, at the end of the game it would be a good idea to link some mental health services to those who might need it, for example we could leave links to HOPELINE UK and the samaritans.

Bibliography -
Websites -

Braithewaite, J. 2024. Mental Health Statistics UK 2024 [Online]. Forth. Available at: https://www.forthwithlife.co.uk/blog/mental-health-statistics-uk/ ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024)

Chang, J. 2024. 51 Significant Video Game Demographic Statistics: 2024 Data on Age & Gender[Online].Finances Online. Available at: https://financesonline.com/video-game-demographic-statistics/( Accessed at: 8th November 2024)

Itch, 2024. Top Visual Novel Games [Online]. Itch. Available at: https://itch.io/games/genre-visual-novel ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024) 

Majarucon, A. 2024. Best Visual Novels (2024) [Online]. Game8. Available at: https://game8.co/articles/best-games/best-visual-novels-2024 ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024)

McAloon, A. 2016. What kind of games are popular with both children and parents? [Online] GameDeveloper. Available at: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/what-kind-of-games-are-popular-with-both-children-and-parents- ( Accessed at: 8th November 2024)

Meredith, A, 2021. How to Use Psychographics in Your Marketing: A Beginner's Guide [Online]. Hubspot. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/marketing-psychographics ( Accessed at: 8th November 2024)

Merriam-Webster, 2024. Demographic [Online]. Merriam-Webster. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demographic ( Accessed at: 8th November 2024)
Mind, 2024. Home [Online]. Mind. Available at: https://www.mind.org.uk/ ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024)

NHS, 2024. Anxiety [Online]. NHS. Available at: https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/mental-health/anxiety/ ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024)

NHS, 2024. Generalized anxiety disorder [Online]. NHS. Available at : https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/generalised-anxiety-disorder-gad/ ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024)

Statista, 2023.Gaming penetration in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2013 to 2023, by age group and gender[Online]. Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/300513/gaming-by-demographic-group-uk/ ( Accessed at: 8th November 2024)

Ukie, 2021. Player Diversity & Demographics [Online]. Ukiepedia. Available at: https://ukiepedia.ukie.org.uk/index.php/Player_Diversity_%26_Demographics ( Accessed at: 8th November 2024)

World Health Organization, 2024. Mental Health of adolescents [Online]. WHO. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescent-mental-health#:~:text=Emotional%20disorders&text=Anxiety%20disorders%20(which%20may%20involve,an%20anxiety%20disorder%20(1).  ( Accessed at: 8th November 2024)

YoungMinds, 2024. You are not alone [Online]. YoungMinds. Available at: https://www.youngminds.org.uk/ ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024)

Games -

ACQUIRE corp, 2024. Hookah Haze [Online] Available via: Steam. ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2470300/Hookah_Haze/ 

Brianna Lei, 2017. Butterfly Soup [Online]. Available via: Itch. ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024) https://brianna-lei.itch.io/butterfly-soup 

Beautiful Glitch, 2018. Monster Prom [Online]. Available via: Steam. ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024) https://store.steampowered.com/app/743450/Monster_Prom/ 

Little Bat Games, 2024. Vampire Therapist [Online]. Available via: Steam. ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2481020/Vampire_Therapist/ 

OMEGAMES STUDIO, 2024. Murders on the Yangtze River [Online]. Available via: Steam. ( Accessed at: 13th November 2024) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1746030/Murders_on_the_Yangtze_River/