Pre-Website Devlog No2 -
I was pretty successful today in identifying the design I wanted to go for with my GDD. It’s a pretty nice relief to have the weight of graphic design off my chest, even if its not quite over yet. The main thing I'm interested in now is the target audience. Instinctually it feels like a null factor given most of my audience would be young 20 year olds like myself. However, it feels a little presumptuous to assume players like myself would just engage with the game in the way I expect. It also feels shortsighted to just make a game for myself without any target audience in mind. Tales of Iron in their design doc did a really interesting thing where they plotted a graph with annotations of its genre and placed it spatially among other games. It served as a really interesting way to pitch who their game was aimed at, and made complete and intuitive sense. In this way, instead of using age as the measuring stick for my target audience, I use other communities. I can potentially use that information to inform my marketing strategies and the effort I distribute among my socials. For example, geometry dash has a big creator presence and is big on discord because of it, whereas narratively driven games like Just Shapes and Beats are more steam oriented (JSaB does have a creator scene, but it still serves as a demonstration of my point). If and when I am to take this game to release, I probably should dredge steam pages to have a look at other indie titles, the type of game they are, and the patterns in how people have responded to various community strategies.