Unit 6 – Critical Approach to Media Products
Criteria 1 – Understand how media producers define audiences
for their products.
It’s important to make a game for a specific target
audience. Looking at secondary research
to find out what audience would buy your games. Defining an audience allows you
to target a specific target audience and identify that audience.
Ways of dividing an audience up:
Age
Age
Gender
Sexual Orientation
Sexual Orientation
Religion
Country
Race/Ethnicity
Niche
CoC
Alternative
Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Mainstream
FIFA
FIFA
Audience Profiling
Psychographics
Psychographics
Psychographics classifies an audience by their lifestyles,
attitudes and values or ‘tribe’ rather than income or social class.
Succeeders : People who are successful and self-confident.
They tend not to buy aspiratio10nal products and follow their own ideas of what
is a good product.
Reformers: Creative, caring, altruistic, not brand
conscious.
Aspirers: People who want to “get on”.
Manistreamers: The largest segment, conformists who buy
“safe”, big brand products
Strivers: Status-oriented people who seek money, approval
and social status. Obvious buyers of “aspirational” goods.
Explorers: seek novelty and want to try new things. They are
likely to be early adopters of completely new products.
Constrained: they are the resigned and struggling poor.
Alternative: Usually an alternative to the mainstream.
Niche or Specialist: Special interest groups.
Hipster: Liking games because nobody else does or claim they
play something before it was popular.
Fanboy
Criteria 2 – Understand how media producers create products
for specific audiences
Criteria 3 – Understand how media audience respond to media
products.
Criteria 4 – Be able to develop
responses to media products.
Geodemographics
Geodemographics literally means where you are in the world
or where you live. Knowing where an audience lives can really be helpful
because if they live in a poor area, you will obviously try to target that
audience so they can afford it.
Places that appear in games when you play online are
normally from the USA, Spain, France, UK, Holland, China and Japan. These are
westernised areas of the world and are the richer countries as well.
This allows thinking about the marketing that you will need
to do and where it would be most profitable to put on and this also allows you
to know what languages you might need to translate your game into.
You also need to think about making the characters appeal to
the audience and make sure that you don’t insult a certain culture or nation.
Researching what could be offensive to a certain country would be a good idea.
Types of games that would appeal to a certain psychological
profile:
Succeeders: I feel that people with a succeeder profile would try to strive for games with challenge and likeability but the game can also be a game that is personal to them. Games that may be in this category are games like Nier, Dark Souls, Fire Emblem and Shadow of the Colossus. These games give a degree of difficulty and mix it well with storylines, music and gameplay. These are the sort of games I feel that a succeeder would play as they would personally like a game themselves and not because another person does and they are good games with lots of challenge involved.
Succeeders: I feel that people with a succeeder profile would try to strive for games with challenge and likeability but the game can also be a game that is personal to them. Games that may be in this category are games like Nier, Dark Souls, Fire Emblem and Shadow of the Colossus. These games give a degree of difficulty and mix it well with storylines, music and gameplay. These are the sort of games I feel that a succeeder would play as they would personally like a game themselves and not because another person does and they are good games with lots of challenge involved.
Reformers: Games like
Minecraft, Age of Empires, Command and Conquer and SimCity are games where you
create in a massive world and expand to create more. As reformers don’t care
about brand and they like to be creative, these games cater to their
demographic.
Aspirer: A game like The Sims could appeal to an aspirer because
The Sims in a game you can just “get on” with. You don’t need to know a whole
lot to play it as the learning curve is really low. Mario games are another
example of a game you can just get on with as the controls are really simple
and the game appeals to a lot of people meaning it’s well known.
Mainstream: Games like Call of Duty and FIFA are mainstream
games. These are the sort of games that the majority play so people who are
mainstreamers can feel safe with their purchase because so many people like
these games and these games also stick to a formula so the games barely change
when newer versions of the games come out.
Striver:
A striver will go and buy an extremely hard game, just to complete it on the hardest difficulty so that they are able to brag about it. A good example of a game that a Striver would buy is, Dark Souls. The Striver would play it on the hardest difficulty and try to complete all achievements/Trophies then post it on gaming forums and tell as many of people as possible to make them sound better at gaming.
Explorer:
An Explorer would go and buy a game that has been released by a new game producer to test if that they are good at creating games. They would also go and buy new games series released by previous game producers and would typically write reviews on forums and other type of gaming websites to let people know what they think about the game. A great example of a game that a an explorer would buy is Dead Island.
Constrained:
A Constrained gamer would buy games with good replay value or MMORPGs because they are unable to buy multiple games. A great example of games with good replay value would be Elder Scrolls or Fallout because they have multiple ways to play through the game.(Good, evil etc.)
They would buy MMORPGs because they can take years to become top members of the servers and are mostly free or a one-time payment.
Alternate:
Alternate gamers will buy the games opposite to the main stream game. A great example of what a alternate gamer would do is, if people are playing Call of Duty they will go out and buy Medal of Honour just to be di9fferent and try and stand out from the crowd.
Niche:
A niche gamer will only buy games that are good for their specific type of gaming interest. A great example of this is Pokémon. The reason they would buy it is because there isn’t many or any other game that are the same as it.
Hipster:
A hipster will go out and buy a new game that people aren’t talking about just in case people decide to play it and it becomes mainstream so they can say they played it first. A game that a lot of people did this with is Mine Craft. They bought the Beta and never let people forget it.
Fan-boy:
A Fan-boy will go out and buy a game if it is part of the series. A good example of this is Final Fantasy. There is well over 30 games released in this series and people buy them just because it is part of the series.
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Class Profile:
Kyle Mallard
Age: 17
Home Area: Wythenshawe
Type of Music: Hard Rock, Metal.
Stereotype: Alternative/Geek
TV: British Comedy
Film: Comedy
Guilty Pleasures: Final Fantasy X-2, the works of Ellie Goulding and Freddy Got Fingered.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Phil Gordon
Age: 19
Home Area: Altringham
Type of Music: Hard Rock/ J-Rock/ Metal
Stereotype: Weeaboo
TV:
Group 1: Casey, Jordan, Ben, Ciaran and Jake
Group 2:
What have you found to be the most unifying factor between the people you profiled?
When did your profiles start to narrow down and become more defined?
What did you find difficult about this activity?
Australia
The Top 3 Popular games in Australia:
Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes
London 2012: The Official Video Games
The Amazing Spiderman
The games that are most popular in Australia all contain mainly minimal violence. This is because of the strict laws that Australia abide by. An example of the amount of censorship that some games go through is Left 4 Dead 2. You can see the comparison in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH7QCtuaXgI
The average income for Australia is around $43,960 which is rather good meaning that many households can afford a decent internet connection and also have enough money to at least casually game.
Western Europe
The Top 3 Popular games in Western Europe:
FIFA 13
WOW: Mists of Pandaria
Borderlands 2
The most popular game sold in Western Europe is FIFA 13. This may be because of the immense love of football in the region and the ages of the people that play the game. The game is a 3+ game, meaning anyone can enjoy the game without worrying about violence or gore.
MMORPGs are immensely popular in a lot of different regions. This may be because of the fact that you can play with other people from different regions and also play with friends with chat capabilities and it makes you feel like you're accomplishing something.
The average income of the region is rather high meaning that many people will be able to buy at least a couple of games a month making sales high for this region and online capability available to most people as well.
USA
The Top 3 Popular games in the USA:
Japan
South Korea
South America
China
South Korea
South America
China
North Africa
Middle East
A striver will go and buy an extremely hard game, just to complete it on the hardest difficulty so that they are able to brag about it. A good example of a game that a Striver would buy is, Dark Souls. The Striver would play it on the hardest difficulty and try to complete all achievements/Trophies then post it on gaming forums and tell as many of people as possible to make them sound better at gaming.
Explorer:
An Explorer would go and buy a game that has been released by a new game producer to test if that they are good at creating games. They would also go and buy new games series released by previous game producers and would typically write reviews on forums and other type of gaming websites to let people know what they think about the game. A great example of a game that a an explorer would buy is Dead Island.
Constrained:
A Constrained gamer would buy games with good replay value or MMORPGs because they are unable to buy multiple games. A great example of games with good replay value would be Elder Scrolls or Fallout because they have multiple ways to play through the game.(Good, evil etc.)
They would buy MMORPGs because they can take years to become top members of the servers and are mostly free or a one-time payment.
Alternate:
Alternate gamers will buy the games opposite to the main stream game. A great example of what a alternate gamer would do is, if people are playing Call of Duty they will go out and buy Medal of Honour just to be di9fferent and try and stand out from the crowd.
Niche:
A niche gamer will only buy games that are good for their specific type of gaming interest. A great example of this is Pokémon. The reason they would buy it is because there isn’t many or any other game that are the same as it.
Hipster:
A hipster will go out and buy a new game that people aren’t talking about just in case people decide to play it and it becomes mainstream so they can say they played it first. A game that a lot of people did this with is Mine Craft. They bought the Beta and never let people forget it.
Fan-boy:
A Fan-boy will go out and buy a game if it is part of the series. A good example of this is Final Fantasy. There is well over 30 games released in this series and people buy them just because it is part of the series.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Class Profile:
Kyle Mallard
Age: 17
Home Area: Wythenshawe
Type of Music: Hard Rock, Metal.
Stereotype: Alternative/Geek
TV: British Comedy
Film: Comedy
Guilty Pleasures: Final Fantasy X-2, the works of Ellie Goulding and Freddy Got Fingered.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Phil Gordon
Age: 19
Home Area: Altringham
Type of Music: Hard Rock/ J-Rock/ Metal
Stereotype: Weeaboo
TV:
Group 1: Casey, Jordan, Ben, Ciaran and Jake
Group 2:
What have you found to be the most unifying factor between the people you profiled?
When did your profiles start to narrow down and become more defined?
What did you find difficult about this activity?
Australia
The Top 3 Popular games in Australia:
Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes
London 2012: The Official Video Games
The Amazing Spiderman
The games that are most popular in Australia all contain mainly minimal violence. This is because of the strict laws that Australia abide by. An example of the amount of censorship that some games go through is Left 4 Dead 2. You can see the comparison in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH7QCtuaXgI
The average income for Australia is around $43,960 which is rather good meaning that many households can afford a decent internet connection and also have enough money to at least casually game.
Western Europe
The Top 3 Popular games in Western Europe:
FIFA 13
WOW: Mists of Pandaria
Borderlands 2
The most popular game sold in Western Europe is FIFA 13. This may be because of the immense love of football in the region and the ages of the people that play the game. The game is a 3+ game, meaning anyone can enjoy the game without worrying about violence or gore.
MMORPGs are immensely popular in a lot of different regions. This may be because of the fact that you can play with other people from different regions and also play with friends with chat capabilities and it makes you feel like you're accomplishing something.
The average income of the region is rather high meaning that many people will be able to buy at least a couple of games a month making sales high for this region and online capability available to most people as well.
USA
The Top 3 Popular games in the USA:
Japan
South Korea
South America
China
South Korea
South America
China
North Africa
Middle East
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