For about a month, I ran a survey intended to find out more about my target audience; who they are, and what they like. The results helped me immensely in answering some questions I had about development choices. Let me show you what I mean, and what I've learned from it:
Ages of people the survey reached:
My target audience is males 18-35, but most of the gamers I'm reaching are under 18. So, I did a little reading and discovered that even AAA studios target younger and younger gamers when marketing, even if the game is 18+. I couldn't find a straight answer as to "why", but I assume it is for this very reason. Younger gamers are online a lot talking about games and talk about games a lot offline as well. An 18+ target audience spends less time reading and talking about games because that takes away from actual playing time. So, in order to get the word out to an audience of any age group, targeting 14-17-year-olds is the way to go.
How much time a day do you spend gaming?
My audience plays at least 2 hours a day on average. That means, my players are going to need to remain engaged for longer periods of time. Rocket Potato must not try to create instant thrills for short gaming sessions with time gaps in between. How do you keep a player engaged for long sessions? I knew the answer to this one: Emergence!
This game doesn't have much narrative, so telling a compelling story is out. I must create emergence through actual gameplay. So far, Rocket Potato's missions pop up in random order. That means they all have the same level of difficulty. That doesn't mesh well, so I'm scrapping that concept and making the missions appear sequentially. That way, I can increase the game's difficulty a little with each mission.
How do you prefer to play games?
A tie between PC and consoles, beating out mobile devices significantly. Since developing for consoles is so much more expensive than PC, and everyone taking the survey obviously has a PC they spend plenty of time on, my choice for primary target platform is clear.
It is becoming clear that developing for multiple platforms at once may be time efficient, and good from a development standpoint, but bad from a marketing standpoint. I've tried to create Rocket Potato with features that will be compatible with every platform and sabotaged my ability to focus on making my game the best it can be for the audience that will be playing it the most. A multiplatform game runs the risk of fitting everywhere, without being a perfect fit anywhere, if that makes sense. Therefore, I will be developing first for PC only. Later I will revamp the game to be as suitable as possible for the next target platform, and so on. It will take more time and effort, but each version will have more of what the players want. A happy player is a returning player.
How many hours do you think a platform game should take to complete?
Because I was initially developing with mobile devices in mind, I didn't plan for too many missions. I didn't need them because the main level is procedurally generated to present fresh challenges each time one of 8 random missions is played. Since missions will now be in sequential order, with an actual game ending, I need to redesign for playing time. A mission will take about 20-30 minutes to complete. 4 hours is clearly not enough. Since I need to aim for a minimum of 10 hours, I need at least 20 individual missions. Time to roll up my sleeves, I guess.
How much would you pay for a game of that length?
This one was a little tricky because people didn't always match their time and price answers. Quite a few people actually entered 10 hours for $19.95. At this point, I know I'm not developing for mobile right now, so free with ads isn't an option. It is interesting that not a single person picked $14.95. Prices just under a multiple of 10 must just be more appealing to the subconscious.
The averages tell me I should be making a 10+ hour game and charging $9.95. Since aiming high rather than doing the bare minimum should be aspired to, I'm shooting for around 20 hours. I plan on charging $14.95 so that I can do frequent sales.
I also asked people to tell me the name of the last platformer they enjoyed playing for long periods of time, and why. I got a large variety of answers, but the most common were: variety in levels, increase in difficulty, variety in levels, and the urge to complete objectives, especially hidden ones. This confirms that focusing on emergence through difficulty is the right call to make.
I also gave survey-takers the option of leaving their e-mail address if they are interested in getting updates on the project. Quite a few left one, and any marketer will tell you that having a group of people who have opted to be informed by you are awesome. They don't know it because I didn't want to taint the survey pool by offering rewards, but every one of those e-mail addresses will be getting a free copy of Rocket Potato when it is complete, possibly an early access version as well if there is one.
My thanks to everyone who participated in the survey. You see how tremendous a help this information has been to me in directing this project. I hope Rocket Potato will live up to be everything you want it to be.
