Target Audience Research

How age range is effecting our target audience?

Bandito is set to be a horror adventure game with a primary target audience of 12-16 year olds. This means we need to stylise our characters to be appropriate to the age range.

To start of my research I looked at the Pathfinder books (Vaughan and Reynolds, 2008) which resemble the type of horror we pictured. The drawings are incredibly detailed which makes them seem more realistic and then in turn makes them scarier. For it to be successful in the horror theme, I believe we could keep the realistic element. Therefore meaning that our enemies could more than likely be real. This made me look back at my target audience and re-evaluate what I needed the assets to look like. I want to keep the creepy and scary assets but simplify it so it wasn’t as horrific to our audience.

This led me to look at existing products that were aimed at our audience, yet still fit the theme and genre. The first product is a film released in 2014 called (The Book of Life, 2014) .It follows a bullfighter who, on the day of the dead festival, goes on an adventure through the afterlife. The film is set during the day of the dead festival on 2nd of November which fits our cultural theme. It was a PG film is acceptable for our audience.

Looking at the style of it, it’s very rounded in shape. The characters have big heads, round eyes and simple features. The anatomy of the people is very childish too. They are bounded together like wooden dolls and actually have a wooden texture to their skin. The only intricate details are in the clothing and masks for the day of the dead festival which are incredibly colourful and very bright. This is very child friendly and bright colour keeps their attention as well as represents the festival very well. I believe this is a very good reference to look at due to the appropriate age rating, ideal art style and accurate cultural representations.

The Book of Life lead me on to look at another film which is quite similar: (The Nightmare before Christmas, 1994) .Our character concept art has already been heavily influenced by the protagonist Jack Skellington. It has the slender and lanky body of Jack but with the Mexican fusion of culture. It’s a Disney film aimed at a younger audience yet still has some scary elements and characters. The whole of Halloween town is a bit creepy which is quite interesting considering the target audience. They do by making them sing and dance but also take make bright colours pop and faces rounded. Much like Book of Life.

Overall with Bandito we aim to have a simplistic style of art which in turn will be child friendly. By doing this it will keep our game rating low and our target audience suitably related to the game. With the added culture of the game it also means it could be classed as educational and for children learning about Mexico or the day of the dead. Looking at all of this helps us strategically craft our game to be as successful as possible. Hopefully the finish product will reflect this.