Faizaan's Work

World of Warcraft

Primary Data

Since World of Warcraft was originally released in 2004 there wasn't as much social media used to promote the game as there is these days. In an interview with Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment he said "We were all extremely pleased with the success of World of Warcraft on its first day of launch, once we saw the numbers for the first day, we knew that we had to immediately increase capacity to accommodate the huge numbers of players joining our game. We're glad so many people are enjoying World of Warcraft, and we are dedicated to supporting a fun and smooth game experience for everyone."

Secondary data

The ratings that World of Warcraft received at released was very positive, the average score on metacritic is 93 and shares great scores across several rating sites. Within the first day, over 200,000 players created World of Warcraft accounts. By 5:00 p.m., over 100,000 were playing the game concurrently. These two record-breaking numbers made World of Warcraft the fastest-growing MMORPG in history. Within a single day, all original 40+ World of Warcraft servers were filled to capacity, and by the end of the weekend, more than 40 additional servers were deployed to meet the rapidly growing player base, as the number of new accounts and concurrent users continued to grow.


Target Audience

World of Warcraft was created for the new people to MMO's and for those who wanted to play MMO's but didn't have 9-12 hours a day to spend. When WoW was launched every Major MMO out was a huge time taker that majority of people did not have the time to play. Aside from this the target audience for World of Warcraft is pretty much anyone that is able to play a computer, the easy going questing or the intense raiding can appeal to everyone.

Market Audience

At the time WoW had several competitors one of the major ones being Guild Wars 2 which is very similar to WoW in many ways it has general questing and dungeon like encounters. Some of the advertisements for World of Warcraft were very odd, for example In China there was an advert in which Blizzard had a crossover advert with CocaCola in which both a man and women morph into an orc and fight over skimpy clothing, when she defeats him she is rewarded with a chest full of Coke. WoW was promoted heavily in China due to the vast amount of people living there, it simply means that it will be marketed to more people in the range of the target audience.

Production Research

World of Warcraft was released to every computer that is able to download the battle.net launcher and buy WoW, the entire idea behind WoW is to make it as readily available to as many people as possible. World of Warcraft has always been a subscription based payment system and then a full price for each new expansion. To play the game it is around £10 a month and roughly £35 for an expansion at release, it has always been this way and probably always will. Apparently to originally create World of Warcraft it took $200 million dollars for upkeep and development of the game, which took roughly 4 years to complete.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/world-of-warcraft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EONagej8Bu8

Undertale

Primary Data

Undertale owes a lot of its success to YouTube, as the game was picked up by many major Youtubers and the hype for it only grew from there on. They didn't use many traditional questionnaires but instead used the FAQs on Kickstarter, one of the questions asked was how long the game would be and the developer replied with 2 - 4 hours.

Secondary Data

Undertale got very good reviews all round receiving an average score of 92 on metacritic and 10/10 on IGN, with people saying "The biggest surprise of 2015, a unique masterpiece.". The game currently has roughly 2,491,632 ± 45,214 owners according to steam. These numbers are incredibly high for a simple indie game that came out just over a year ago in September 2015.

Audience Research

The target audience for Undertale is quite difficult to see as it feels like the game is targeted towards everybody however the story behind it is quite dark and the gameplay can actually be very difficult and so I would place the target audience in the age range of 15 to 30. It clearly wasn't targeted at a certain gender as the main character you play as 'Frisk' is gender neutral. 

Market Audience

Apart from being advertised on Kickstarter the main way that people were informed about this game was from YouTube the some of the major Youtubers picked up the game and it basically blew up overnight. Toby Fox the developer didn't really have a choice to advertise it here however it was probably the best things that could have happened to the game. There are competitors in the form of general indie games but none of the ones I've seen really hold a candle to Undertale.

Production Research

Since release Undertale has cost £9.99 which personally I feel is a very reasonable price for this great game. The game was originally being kickstarted and had a modest goal of $5,000. The campaign however raised over ten times this amount mainly due to one aspect of the game, the fact that you don't have to fight the enemies in order to defeat them. The final amount was $51,124 with 2398 backers. The game was released on steam and so is readily available to anyone with this software installed.

http://steamspy.com/app/391540
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1002143342/undertale

Borderlands 2

Primary Research

Borderlands designer Randy Pitchford, when asked about if the game would offend people he replied, "I'm talking about if a design feels outlandish. If somebody can look at something and go 'that's coll because it's wild and different', then there's value to it, and if it's not the obvious thing then that's why it's producing that result, and makes it more valuable because its rare, it's exceptional." The developers of Borderlands 2 held a social media campaign for the game on Behance, they released a new promotional image each day in the weeks running up to the games release.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/776864/Borderlands-2-Social-Media-Campaign


Secondary Research

The game was critically acclaimed by almost all sources, averaging a score of 90 on meta critic and a 9/10 on IGN, with a lot of the sources praising the games sense of humour, World structure and RPG systems. The game has around 30 hours of gameplay and has quite a lot of replayability. The current price for Borderlands 2 is $19.99 however the price at release was roughly $40. The game was released on September 17th 2012 and currently has roughly  7,287,019 ± 76,845 owners according the steam.


Audience Research

The game is stated to be targeted at an age range of 25 - 39 year olds I think that the main buyers of the game would range from 18 - 25 year olds due to the cell-shaded graphics and over the top violence. The majority of people that play Borderlands 2 are male, this is also shown from the over sexualise characters. I believe that Borderlands 2 is made for the A,B,C1 this includes people that have the money to spend on games however I don't think the game was made with a social class in mind due to the fact that the game doesn't take itself very seriously.


Market Research

One of the major competitors for Borderlands is Battleborn, this is mainly due to the wacky characters with different abilities and weapons considering the game modes are nothing alike. Both games however see you shooting stuff with a wide variety of odd weapons. The game was actually advertised in a slightly different way, in addition to the usual TV advertisements a four issue comic was released detailing how the four main protagonists came together in the first place.


Production Research

The game was obviously released on steam and in major stores quite globally, this is in order to get the game out to as many people as possible. According to an interview with one of the developers for Borderlands 2 the game cost roughly $30 - $35 million dollars to make.



http://uk.ign.com/games/borderlands-2/pc-94190
http://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649

The Binding of Isaac Rebirth

Primary Research

The developer Edward McMillan said in an interview that the game is so odd hes unsure why people find it appealing "But I don't think many people see the themes in that way. I mean, what's so appealing about a naked abused child crying on shit? I guess the real appeal is the fact that you can play it endlessly." Personally the reason i play the second game is because i enjoyed the first one so much, the advertisement for The Binding of Isaac Rebirth I actually find quite disturbing, as you can see ion the link below.
http://toucharcade.com/2016/11/01/binding-of-isaac-beta-testers/

Secondary Research

The ratings that The Binding of Isaac received were pretty great all round, receiving an average score of 86 on metacritic and a score of 9 on IGN. The game costs $14.99 and about $10 - $15 for the DLC. It was released on November 4th 2014 has currently sold 1,789,248 ± 37,858 according to steam.

Audience Research

According to multiple sources The Binding of Isaac wasn't made with a specific target audience in mind however the game is rated for mature audiences so the game definitely not aimed at children. The story behind the game is actually based on a story form the bible and some of the aspects of the game can be quite gruesome, for example an item that you can pick up makes Isaac appear to have a wire coat hanger sticking through his head. For this reason I think that it is targeted towards ages 15 - 25.

Market Research

One of the major competitors for the Binding of Isaac is Enter the Gungeon, a very similar game on multiple levels. Both games have different characters that you can play as and see you moving from room to room fighting enemies and picking up items. Each game also has bosses that you have to fight at the end of the level. The Binding of Isaac was advertised in a very strange way, the advert was a fully animated version of Isaac running into various enemies with gameplay weaved in between.

Production Research

The main place the game was released was on steam, I don't think any hard copies of the game exist, however the game is also available on the Xbox and PlayStation store. I can't find how much the game cost to develop however due to it being an indie developer I imagine that the budget wasn't as much.