February 2020 - Week 22 - Pitchin'

Summary

This week I finished my video pitch for the UK Games Fund, fixed a couple of bugs, worked on the first story and started writing customer interview questions for my target audiences. I also got distracted by the Shieldwall Chronicles game, I do like a good turn-based, hex-tiled strategy game.

• Ramblings on the problem that games solve
• Marketing personas
• The Sims and Factorio players: I need to interview you

Details

Attending the Creative Bridges session on Understanding Customers, with Wojtek Kutyla,has led me to ask myself, "What problem do games solve?" The obvious answer is that they are entertainment. For me, games are often about self-actualisation; giving me a sense of control and power, providing challenges, goals and a world in which I can set my own goals. Completing these goals sometimes feels anti-climatic but that's also true for 'real-world' goals. It's the journey that matters.

I have two primary marketing personas that I am targeting. The first of these I call Alek.

Alek likes:

• The Sims
• to see his Dwergs interact with each other
• to see his Dwergs grow
• to see evidence of intelligence
• to see his Dwergs emoting
• to be involved with his Dwergs
• to see a consistent story

 Alek dislikes:

• to see his Dwergs killed
• too much management
• being unable to protect his Dwergs
• Dwergs behaving contrary to their personality
• Dwergs behaving contrary to how one would expect a real person to behave

The second marketing persona I call Mhairi:

Mhairi likes:

• Factorio
• A well-oiled machine
• Obtaining difficult to get materials
• Refining materials efficiently
• Building things efficiently
• Defeating enemies without them getting close. Efficiently.
• Production chains and networks
• Figuring out production problems
• Managing complex systems

Mhairi dislikes:

• UI that does not allow doing lots of things quickly
• Lack of production chains
• Agent emotion stopping orders being carried out
• Lack of clarity around what bits plug into bobs
• Enemies that appear to break the rules 

These are all assumptions and this week I will do some interviews in order to in/validate them. If you play either of these games and have 30 minutes to spare for an interview, please get in touch. £10 Amazon gift card for participants.

To focus development I would like to concentrate on satisfying one of these personas. Concentrating on Alek will bring the game closer to the aspiration of the player learning about themselves but requires more work and longer play-tests to get feedback from. Concentrating on Mhairi will make the game more marketable as the mechanics are easier to demonstrate and the game-play is better understood. Mhairi is also closer to myself and so easier to develop for. So concentrating on Mhairi is the better business choice but ignoring Alek risks losing the game's soul.

The UK Games Fund video-pitch asked for a rough plan up to the autumn. While making this plan I've settled on two stories to focus my energies. The first will be a story that is triggered by a dramatic event arising from the interactions between Dwergs; the kind of thing Alek would like. The second involves hunting and combat; something that Mhairi would appreciate.

Sadly, Konbo closed last week so edindies took place at Levels cafe this week. I had two play-testing sessions with the latest tutorial and received valuable feedback. I'm happy to say that allowing users to mine almost anywhere has removed a lot of confusion and I'm happier with the explanation of z-levels. Combining the story with the tutorial has definitely improved how much of the tutorial is read and not skipped.

I got along to GameDevEd this week and had another play-testing session that uncovered a nasty bug. The play-tester works in technical marketing and also had some top tips for me in that area.

This week I will be conducting customer interviews and trying to get through the list of development tasks I promised two weeks ago. I'm looking after my sister's dog this week too, so expect at least one dog picture next week.