Analysis of the Current Games Market

The games market is a huge place in 2016, and bigger than ever. With such a huge number of potential target audience members with such a variety of different tastes in games with different opinions, it can be very strenuous trying to figure out what the most popular genres of games are, and what each game's target demographic may be. For a game to maximize as many profits as it can it's a good idea to reach out to a large number of potential buyers, as very niche games with a much smaller fanbase just may not be large enough in size to sustain an income big enough for all of the costs and expenses used during game development, and could cause the games company to make an overall loss, and worst case scenario, go out of business.

Because of this analysing the current games market is key before development of a game starts, so you can be sure it's being pitched to the right people. So for my own analysis of the games market today I will be using statistical data with my researched sourced from the companies (The Entertainment Software Association, 2016) and (Interactive Software Federation of Europe, 2016), which are analytical companies who collect information and statistics from all around the games industry and make it publicly available.

First off are age and gender, and as evident by both sources, the gender ratio of gamers is pretty equal (44% are female at the ESA and 45% for the ISFE), and the average age range of gamers are in their early thirties. These are overall very balanced statistics at first glance, with a much more balanced gender ratio than anticipated; however females are shown to be into casual PC games and mobile apps much more than a male market, and because women who just play games like Candy Crush and Scrabble for twenty minutes on the train to work technically count as gamers, the figures actually point to males playing more 'hardcore' and in-depth games compared to women.

More older woman play games than younger children, due to the rise in popularity of mobile gaming. (Casti, 2014)

Likewise mobile apps are actually the most popular type of games at the moment (with 21% of all games that are played being mobile games), whereas only 11% are online multiplayer games. This is a worrying statistic for anyone who wants to make a wholesome console-based gaming experience, as app based games (as posted by games journalist (Rigney, 2014)) are much cheaper to make, require less time to make and get played by more people. It entices more people to get into app development and in turn makes more people buy the new mobile games, it's a vicious cycle. As mobile games continue to get more widespread, people are going to continue wanting smaller and more digestible games, and may end up rejecting a full PC and console experience entirely. To sum it up in a quote below, why both creating a triple A experience when you can just make some easy money instead? This is a slippery slope for the future games market, and a concern that people may continue to want slow-quality titles.

"YOU DON’T NEED to be a programmer to break into the App Store’s top charts. All you need is 100 bucks and a free afternoon." (Rigney, 2014)

As posted by (Fahey, 2011), writer for games journalism site Kotaku, there are 27 different 'types' of people who play games, each with different traits, which is something else to consider when developing a game for a target audience. These include 'Hater', 'Loner', 'Politician' and 'Snob'. Haters for example are incredibly agitated and arrogant, often out to cause trouble. Politicians on the other hand will play anything that seems interesting, and are very open to change, while keeping up to date with the latest news and information about games. Fitting all of these 27 different kinds of gamers can be very useful when creating a game, since if you have a shooter game for example you can tweak many of its elements to be more action packed and violent to appeal to the Hater crowd.

This is all valuable information to consider for my own game's proposal, which is why I feel my game being a third-person shooter, but with a funny and colourful visual style will have such a huge potential target audience. Since it will have the popular shooting mechanics and gameplay for teen/adult males, and the easy-on-the-eyes quirky visuals of the game will entice under 18s and adult females to give the game a go too, due to the more appealing nature of the game as it defies set third-person shooter conventions to reach out to such a large target demographic of people. I feel having the best of both worlds in the game also can help ease people how normally wouldn't play many games into trying it out, simply because of the iconic characters and cute locations, which in turn could even help boost the 11% statistic for how many games that are played are online multiplayer based.