Market Research Analysis

Overtime I have gathered much research of many different variety's including: Research into existing Products, Competitor analysis and Secondary research. As part of my research into existing products I looked into 5 games and what makes them successful. All 5 of the games are aimed at teenagers, and considering they are some of the hottest games on the market they must be doing something right. Both COD, Assassins Creed and GTA are very violent games however they portray it in different ways: COD is a FPS game meaning the player feels fully submersed in the game and as if it is them shooting others where as GTA and Assassins Creed are most commonly TPS however GTA does now offer a FPS cameral angle. The fact GTA and Assassins Creed is most commonly played in TPS it offers the gamer a different experience and helps them feel submersed in the game as the actions that they are in control of on the screen maybe be very far from what they imagine in real life so being in control of someone else carrying out them actions will help them relate to the game more. Both are extremely successful and both appeal to their target audiences. One way these games appeal to their target audience is representation of the characters; both GTA and COD are very male dominant games in the sense that most if not all the main protagonists are a stereotypical Alfa male character meaning they are strong confident and skilled, this helps them appeal to their target audience as it maybe someone the player relates to or aspires to be like. Assassins Creed and Mirrors edge are more appropriate as they are dressed for the occasions they are at for example Ezio from Assassins Creed has a long coat on and hardly any skin showing meaning he is suited for his role as a assassin making the game more appealing to the target audience as it is more realistic. I conducted market research into existing products, I purposely selected games with the same target audience so I could fully understand their current options and created a game based on the gaps currently in the market, for example I would not look at games marketed at 5-12 year olds as my findings would not be relevant to the game I'm going to create therefore it would be a waste of time. My market research was very reliable as it came directly from me, when carrying out my own research I can make sure I am non-bias by playing all the games in the same conditions for the same length of time, this means my conscience is settled as I know I have solid primary research that I carried out which I can use to compare with the secondary research I found to consolidate and find differences. I could have improved this my then double checking the difference I found when comparing and looking into them in more detail which would mean my data had no flaws what so ever however I do feel as they were quite small it would not have impacted to quality of the game majorly.

Competitor analysis is another from of research I carried out. All three of the games I looked into were from the genre of Action Adventure so it was interesting to see what made them appeal to others. GTA offered many social aspects allowing the players to invite friends into their lobbies and play games such as Team Death Matches (TDM) together, Borderlands 3 offers many interactive features and many different ways the character can travel round the map some more creative than others. Finally Tomb Raider, Borderlands and GTA are all extremely interactive games which I feel is key to appealing to the target audience especially within the genre of action adventure. Much like my current market research I played the games myself ensuring I had a set of non-bias results leaving me with good data that I could use to compare to others again making this research very reliable. When carrying this research out again next time I will look at more games of the same genre making my results a lot broader so I can find more similarities I can include in my game.

Secondary research is looking into other peoples research that they have already conducted, it allows me to gather an opinion aside from my own research. With secondary research I can have a point of reference to compare my research to to find similarities and differences. A book that I looked at was "Games and Narrative" from this I looked at the structure of the game and the methodology used when playing it. This will help me plan my game in a neat and organised structure however, I could have improved this by carrying out some more audience research before planning to see if they preferred this structure.  Through my research reliability is key, Secondary research is not as reliable as primary research I conducted as I have no way of showing they took the same precautions as I did meaning it could have been done with a lack of attention, while ensuring my primary research was as reliable as I could make it there could still be room for improvement by checking the source I got it from was a trusted and well known blogger or web page creator for example. I feel I could have improved my secondary research by getting more sources as a whole and looking into weather they contain many similarities or differences, I did not do this, this time round due to time limitations.