recently, it was brought up by Merung that the definition of our target audience is merely implicitly stated and that there is no document one can refer to. The Illarion Vision just states:
This is a start, but not concrete enough. After speaking to a person who knows some practical methods to determine a target audience and not just the usual, theoretical blah blah, I tried to adapt an "inverse approach" to determine our target audience. Since we cannot turn our game upside down, we need to start with what we offer to the market and what the resulting target audience is. As a niche game, we cannot compete with all the other games out there, but need to fill the gap between them for those players who look for a game that is slightly different from the rest. Different does not mean "worse" or "absurd" in this context, by the way. As usual, please give your constructive input on the individual aspects to improve the definition of our target audience. Add your points to each headline and also, think about how to make the definition even more precise. I want this document to become a collaborative venture of the whole team so we can all identify with this target audience definition.http://illarion.org/development/us_about_project.php wrote:Illarion is open to all players, regardless of nationality, language and role-playing experience. The main target audience are casual gamers who maintain a distant relationship with their characters, and are thus able to engage in real role play.
1 The Market
Illarion is a game for a market, generally described as (massive) multi player online roleplaying games. This market is tightly in the hand of a set of AAA titles with extremely high budget. Among those games, not a single one existed when Illarion hatchet from its egg. Illarion is, hence, a living fossile from a time when this market was not as developed as today. The top ten games of this market generate a turnover of around three billion dollars a year and have up to 7 million active members each, see these interesting links:
Clearly, Illarion cannot aim to be a major factor in this overall market. Hence, by defining our target audience clearly, we must aim for a niche without neglecting the rules of the market. Within our niche, we need to become the best, albeit a comparable small niche. A game with few players is not necessarily a game with a small niche but it can also be, bluntly spoken, a crap game. Not taking into account the overshadowing, competing AAA titles can lead to not identifying nor covering any niche.
2 Competition
Illarion's competition consists of major AAA titles for the general market but also of niche games that target a similar audience. Both types cannot be neglected. Obviously, Illarion also competes with "distractions" of different genres, such as offline games, casual games, and girlfriends (not to be treated here). These are the main competitors:
- Planeshift: A game very similar to Illarion in terms of goals but in 3D
- Ryxom: An MMORPG present in Debian distribution
- UO Freeshards RP enforced
- RP enforced servers of commercial games (e.g. Lord of the Rings Online has four)
- Your games here
These are the aspects no other game of the market can offer. They are exclusive to Illarion. They give Illarion the edge over other games and make it a unique indie game. They are not necessarily main features of the game.
- Bilingual Game / Multicultural Game
- Unique Levelling System
- Complex and involved alchemy system.
- Ability to be whatever you want.
Players of our target audience expect a certain baseline of features. These selling points are not unique to Illarion and partially offered by other games as well. Illarion can only stand out by the collection of features, not by single features alone.
- Real, enforced Roleplay
- Free to play (and always will be)
- Play 2 Win (as opposed to Buy 2 Win or Pay 2 Win)
- Crafting
- Combat
- Retro graphics
- Non flashy graphics
- An immersive soundtrack
- Pretty map
- Three distinct factions
- Coming Soon: Magic
- Coming Soon: Housing
In addition to the selling points above, Illarion offers more aspects the target audience could deem interesting. They are not mandatory for a player nor do all players like them. But they still enrich the game.
- No forced Class System – everyone is able to do anything in the game
These are aspects Illarion will and cannot offer. Members of the target audience won't have them among their mandatory features or they won't be part of the target audience.
- 3D graphics
- Your points here
Common theories claim that most things we do pursuit goals to e.g. fulfill a desire or overcome a problem. Playing games - especially social games - like Illarion is done because of the following motives, problems, and desires:
- Escapism
- Desire to take on a meaningful role such as becoming leader of a guild.
Illarion can provide solutions for problems or desires, like those listed above. Playing the game can grant the following:
- Get away from stress from life
Obviously, our target audience is limited to those who have access to a computer that fulfils the minimum requirements for the client. These are the hard facts:
- Screen resolution of min. 800x600
- Windows XP or higher, Linux, MacOS
- Java 7
- Graphics card with Open GL 2.0
- Internet connection
Commonly, our target audience shares a couple of demographic data. This does not mean that every member has to fulfill all aspects, but the majority of members fulfill the majority of aspects.
- The majority of the target audience understands english
- Your points here
Consequently, to reach our target audience, we need to be visible to it. These are the channels we need to turn to to reach them all:
- Steam - the #1 platform for games with an extremely high reach
- Desura - a major platform for indie games
- Download portals - for many, the main source for downloading binaries
- Linux distributions - the game is shipped directly to our players
- Roleplaying communities
- Game developer and indie game sites - uniqueness wanted
- Your points here
From above definition of the target audience, we can derive some interesting consequences for development. These consequences, mainly derived from the motives, problems and desires in combination with our existing selling points, should govern our actions. We might think that what we do is best and right, but does our target audience think the same? Keep in mind that all of us ARE member of the target audience - as players. So we need to consider what we like - as players!
- The text display has to be as clear and easy to read as possible due to the massive amount of text a normal Illarion player will write and read
- Your points here