Target Audience
With the last post being about graphics and the topic that for some audiences that more graphics are better, the thought of target audience has been with me. So I looked back on my designs (which I swear I will someday actually finish) and realized that I’ve been designing more for an ‘adult’ audience. Not in the sense that there’s violence or swearing, but the way the games work. Most of my designs require making decisions based on detailed information about your character or country. They also are heavily laid with player interaction, and not just making friends, but manipulating and using other players… that is if you have the skill to do so.
How does this relate to the graphics? Thanks for the question. With a more mature audience that isn’t expecting graphics while playing this kind of game, an abundance of graphics would likely irritate my target audience.
So, which should be done first? Figure out your target audience, or design then game, then target that audience? Sometimes it’s difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends. I want to design a certain kind of game, so by deciding that I just want to design that type of game, I’ve already picked out my audience. But there is nothing wrong with that.
The important thing I think is to realize early on in the design who your audience is going to be, so you can build the entire game out to meet the expectations of those you wish to play. So if I want to target the 14-18 age group, I’m likely not going to make the game require a lot of micro-management. I will likely instead make the game focus around groups and interaction of those groups, with a simple, but pretty GUI. But if I’m going to make a game for 20 somethings +, targeting old school RPers / MUDers, I’m going to give the players a lot of control over their character and interaction in the world and focus on text (story, descriptions of events and areas) and navigation. That group is far more likely to endure an hour or two of nothing more than exploring a small village and talking to all the villagers just to gain some more info on the story.
As you can see, graphics for the first group is far more important since they want to “see” what they are going, while for the second group, they want to “do”, and while showing them might be neat, letting them imagine for themselves is part of the fun.
You also gain more important details though than just the amount of graphics you intend to use from figuring out your target. You can determine what kind of language they expect the game to use, the style of play, the navigation, the amount of detail in story, events, characters, the amount of interaction with items and people and even how they expect the game to play out in terms of rounds, persistent, or event wise.
So while you don’t need to, I think, have a target audience when you initially start a game design, it’s a good idea you figure out who you are going to target early on in the development stages of the game.
Sun buys MySQL
Well… I don’t know what this will mean yet, but the news was released about 12 hours ago that Sun Micosystems is going to buy MySQL for a grand total of 1billion dollars (I shit you naught) of cash and stock options.
You can find the announcement here on the offical Sun website.
With Java going open source about a year about and Sun having heavily contributed to OpenOffice and other open source projects, it makes me wonder what exactly their plans are with MySQL. Supposedly they intend to optimize the LAMP stack across all platforms. This could be great if it happens. As long as they don’t just sit on it or charge for licenses I think MySQL is in pretty good hands.
For those out of the loop, MySQL makes up the majority share of databases online, and is the main database used amongst PBBG developers because of its ease and that it’s free.
Graphics
So I’ve been looking at a bunch of different games lately and some have amazing graphics, some no graphics and others possibly the worse graphics I’ve seen in a long time. Also, I was talking to someone about a game he is designing and he was saying how the graphics were a key component of his game.
I’m sure as most people you have read this blog for a while have realized I personally don’t care about a game having flashy graphics. My primary concern is game play and layout. Graphics in many web games I find hindering. But I’ve been thinking. Does a web game need a bunch of fancy graphics?
I think if a player were only drawn into playing the game because of your graphics, I think that player would likely quit not long after sign up. I do think a game needs to look nice, and it can be part of the hook for a game, but to make the graphics a core component is something I don’t agree with.
A web game, for several reason I believe, should be graphics light. And I will explain
1) Speed. People want to play the game first and foremost. If there is delay because of loading graphics or even lag do to transfer rates, players are going to become frustrated quickly.
2) Bandwidth. Saving yourself come cash 
3) Simplicity. Some graphics may make it easier to navigate a site. But some also make it difficult and cluttered. That is that must be avoided. If your navigation of the site is cluttered or confusing, not just because of graphic but they can quickly add to the mess, players are going to quit. Or worse… complain.
I sternly believe that graphics should be used to make the the layout function better and make the game not look like crap. Clean, simple, small graphics. Nothing crazy. If the graphic proves to be any form of hinderance, I think it should be deleted or recreated.
So what are everyone’s opinion on this?
Looking for writers
First off, happy late new years!
Secondly, I want to throw this out there for anyone interested. I would like to have two or three more people to help write articles for the blog. If you are interested, please feel free to email me at bardic [dot] knowledge [at] gmail [dot] com. Please supply a link to a previous or current blog.
And thirdly, how do you stay motivated? I’m having a hell of a time keeping myself on track and want to know how everyone else manages to keep at it.
