Crit 1: Understand how media producers define audiences for their products

Psychographics and Geodemographics

It’s important for media producers to define their audiences because if they didn’t they wouldn’t make as much profit, the game wouldn’t become as big and the producer would lose money rather than gain it.
Mainstream Game:
Call of Duty
Alternative Game:
Naughty Bear

Niche Game:
Odd World

Audience Profile:
Psychographics classifies an audience by their life styles, attitudes and values rather than how much their income is.

Succeeders: People who are successful and self-confident. They tend not to be aspirational products and follow their own ideas of what’s a good product.

Reformers: Creative, caring, altruistic, not brand conscious.

Aspires: People who just want to “get on”.

Mainstreamers: The largest segment. Conformers who buy “safe”, big brand products.

Strivers: Status oriented people who seek money, approval and social status. Obvious buyers of “aspirations” 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 reigned and struggling poor.

Alternative: Usually the opposite of mainstreamers.

Niche or specialist: Special interest of games.

Hipster: Someone who claims to like something before other people.

Fanboy: Someone who loves something and other people’s opinions are wrong

Of the aforementioned psychographics I would consider myself to be in the Succeeder category; my reason being that I am confident in my media purchases regardless of whether or not they’re popular with the masses or even my peers. When I buy any product it’s due to my own personal interest in that product and although I am not stubborn and may consider other people’s opinions on the item at hand, in the end the decision will be mine alone.

A few examples of the games I play are as follows:

· The Soul Blade/ Calibur series (this franchise I became a fan of at a very young age, I had seen a trailer of the first game and found it to be intriguing).

· Legend of Kay on the PlayStation 2, this game is another that I saw of trailer promoting and I just had to play it, even after being released not many of my peers had heard of let alone purchase it and so there was no influence when I bought it.

· Halo 3 on the Xbox 360, this game unlike the others is a very mainstream game and franchise however once again I only purchased this using my own initiative and for my own personal interest.

People that fit into the Reformer category doesn’t mind what types of games they play as long as they enjoy them; they’re usually not ones to be swayed by game reviews if they have played a the game’s predecessor or a similar game and they aren’t at all brand conscious ( e.g. liking a game because it’s made by Activision). An example of a game a Reformer might buy would be Ninja Gaiden 3 although it got quite a few bad reviews because they have played previous Ninja Gaiden games and liked them.

Gamers that fit into the Aspirers psychographic will usually play games that aren’t much of a challenge so that they can just have some casual fun; Asura’s Wrath being a perfect example because a large portion of the game uses QTE (Quick Time Events) that only requires a few button inputs whilst watching cut scenes.

Mainstreamers are quite boring in my opinion they only really play branded games that are popular with everyone else and won’t usually take the initiative to buy a game that they haven’t read or heard a review on, an example of a mainstream game would be: Call of Duty Black Ops (the COD franchise is one that is very popular with gamers in all regions.

An example of a Striver would be someone who would go out of their way to buy the latest game of a franchise e.g. Fifa 13 and probably spend extra money to buy the limited or collector’s edition just because then they can brag to other people about their purchase.

Explorers are as the name states usually enjoy game in which they can free roam large areas in games, an example of an Explorer being a game like Skyrim where players have a huge world to explore with many caves and dungeons to explore.

Constrained players will almost always find themselves on free games this varying between demo’s and trials or free to play games this because they don’t usually have the money to spend on other more expensive games although a lot of games that can be played for free can be good, most of them don’t really compare to games you’d have to purchase.

Alternative players you could say are the opposite of Mainstreamers, they make a habit of buying "risky" games (games that aren't all that popular but may be good). Games bought by Alternative players are likely to be ones that didn't do great in adverisment.

Niche gamers tend to have a special taste for certain games, for example: a person who might be interested in Japanese culture may be drawn to games like Okami where the visuals and setting are strongly influenced by (if not actually based on) Japan's landscape, traditions and mythology.

Hipsters usually seek out games that aren't at all popular to feel a sense of superiority for playing a game before the majority of other gamers. Due to Hipsters generally being "Anti-Mainsteam" they'll usually move onto less popular game titles than play the ones that have now become Mainstream.

Fanboys usually stick to the franchises they love and probably grew up with although that doesn't suggest they don' try to extend their horizon every now and then however their preferred games to play are usually ones within at specific franchise and they tend to purchase a lot of different titles within the same franchise, an example of this would be how a Super Mario game is released at least once a year and fanboys will most likely have bought and/or played several of these titles. Fanboys usually aren't all that good with drastic changes or inovation within their preferred franchises and onlin tend to attack new ideas.

Geodemographics

Geodemographics in gaming focuses on where gamers live in the world; knowing where your audience is from can be very useful for when trying to create and distribute games to them, helping optimise successful sales (selling them appropriate content).

Most players that you might meet or compete with online will probably be within one of the following countries: Unite Kingdom, USA, Holland, Spain, France and Japan (all of them being quite westernised).

Profile of the class
Name: Kyle Mallard
Age:17
Home area: Wythensaw
Music: alternative rock, metal
TV: British comedy
Film: Comedy, Action Adventure
Games: RPG, Beat'em up, Shooter, Fighting games
Guilty Pleasure: Final Fantasy 10-2

Name: Dane Coleman
Age: 20
Home area: Altrincham
Music: Anime soundtracks
TV: Anime
Film: Anime
Games: JRPG, RPG, RTS
Guilty Pleasure: Furry, Scaley

Name: Ben Seager
Age: 19
Home area: Altrincham
Music: Death metal, Heavy metal
TV: Comedy, Horror
Film: Action Adventure, comedy
Games: RPG, Shooters
Guilty Pleasure: Funk

Name: Ash Potts
Age: 19
Home area: Wythenshawe
Music: K-Pop, Metal
Film/TV: Comedy, Action
Games: RPG, Shooters, Fantasy
Guilty Pleasure: Two Worlds

Name: Casey White
Age: 18
Home Area: Wythenshawe
Music: Metal, Blues
Film/TV: Anime, Comedy
Games: RPG, Fighting, Sports
Guilty Pleasure: Feminine Shows/Movies

Western Europe

It is well known by worldwide that Western Europe are huge fans of the football sport and so it should be no surprise that Fifa is one the most popular franchises. In the western region of Europe, Fifa 13 has already sold

USA

Japan

South Korea

Middle East

North Africa


China


South America

Australia

In Australia the violence in video games is greatly reduced, things such as: bloodshed and corpses are heavily censored and/or removed. On this Youtube link below there’s an example of how Australia has censored the game ‘Left 4 Dead 2’; how they has toned down the amount of blood in the game and how they’ve made the corpses disappear.

Left 4 Dead 2 Censor Comparison

The reason games in Australia are censored is because of their harsh laws when dealing with age restricted content. The top 3 sold games in Australia are:

· The Amazing Spiderman

· London 2012 Olympics

· Lego Batman 2