TARGET AUDIENCE RESEARCH
Monday, December 9th
As all three of us agreed on, we are thinking of our project more like a new type of musical instrument than a game. Hence, when thinking of the audience, we shall consider both sides: the project is a music instrument, but in the same time, a video game.
Having no musical background whatsoever, I decided to look into how and when children start beginning to be interested in music and at what age they can actually start playing instruments. Of course, our project is not the typical musical instrument, and could be enjoyed as simply a game, but if we want to make sure this is more than a toy, we must be sure it is oriented to the right people.
"Is There A Lower Age Limit To Learning A Musical Instrument?
Absolutely not! Did you know that you can help your child to take its first steps along its musical journey while it is still in the womb? It is strongly believed that playing music to an unborn child can have a positive impact, in fact, classical music is thought to even improve the intellectual ability of a growing baby, quite a thought!
Once your little bundle of fun has arrived, you will be keen to help that musical journey continue. Evidence suggests that until your child reaches nine years of age, there is a promising window for introducing a musical instrument. Many teachers will not take students until they are at least five years of age. However, this does not mean that your child cannot start to learn before that.
The best way you can help your child to start learning music before he or she reaches an age when they can attend professional music lessons is to expose them to as much music as possible. The aim at this age, is not to introduce them to instruments so that they will master them, but rather to help them develop a relationship and love of music. Even a toddler can fall in love with music!" (Home, 2017)
According to this teacher, children are not being thought to play instruments until they reach 5 years of age, which is still young. If that is when children are capable of learning how to play instruments, then 5+ could be our audience. However, he also says that they can be exposed to music in order to develop a relationship with music. We want our game to be fun to play, if the players don't want to create or play something, and only enjoy the racing part, that is fine too.
Another question we must ask is "When should children be allowed to play video games?". If our project was a physical instrument, or a toy, which we don't want, any kid should be allowed to play with it, as long as it's safe for them, but a video game might have different effects on the development of children, as it has long been discussed. I tried to do some research on the theme, but as I guessed, there are different answers:
"It’s a tech-filled world and I want my kid to grow up tech savvy. But more importantly, I want him to grow up happy and healthy. What’s a mom to do? Adding to the parental perplexity: Many a respected organization has researched the affects modern media technology has on our children — television, video games, the Internet. And while some studies find that they are very, very bad for our kids, others find that they’re not really so bad after all, and still others find that they’re actually pretty good for little boys and girls.
You certainly won’t find agreement when it comes to the question, “How old is old enough to play video games?” At last year’s Consumer Electronics Show, educational psychologist and author Jane Healy grabbed attention and headlines by stating that children should not be allowed to play video games until they’re 7 years old to ensure that their brains develop normally.
But Dr. Don Shifrin, professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and former committee chair for the American Academy of Pediatrics says, “There is no definitive answer. There are only more questions.” (Benedetti, 2019).
Experts cannot agree on an answer to this question. While some say it's bad to introduce children under the age of 7 to video games, some say it can even be good for them. There are a few organisations that, together with videos, cartoons, also target video games to children as young as 9 months old. One such organisation is the non-profit Sesame Workshop: https://www.sesamestreet.org/. The well-known fun program for children has a section on their website called "Games For 2 Year Olds". The games are meant to teach language and logic, patterns and sequencing, analyzing details and more, proving that our project would not be unsuitable for anyone, considering the fact that we don't want to have any explicit content in it. (Goldman, 2012)
The information gathered is too wide to point a target audience, so I decided to research who plays multiplayer games, and how are they enjoyed by different people.
This study identified people's preferences in multiplayer games: co-op and competitive, local and online, women and men. The study shows that co-op games are more appealing to friends than competitive games, and when broken down to gender, it turns out that competitive games are more appealing to men than women.
In addition, the study shows that the gender gap widens when playing with strangers. I think it's fair to say that women enjoy playing with people they know. Out of all types of competitive games, co-located ones are most enjoyed be females.
In regards to age, a point shown in this study is that competitive games are enjoyed more by the youth than the elder. A decrease in interest in competitive games is seen with the increase in the age of the players.
What did I take from this?
It's interesting to see what people think of competitive multiplayer games. I found out that co-op games are overall more enjoyed by players than competitive games, that men enjoy competitive games more that women, playing with friends is more enjoyable than playing with strangers, and that the younger generation enjoys competitive games more than the elder one.
This is great information, in that we can predict who would play the game, and we can tailor the design and development towards that group. However, our project is more than a game, and we want it to be accessible and appealing to everyone, we don't want to make it for just for 12 year old boys with closed circles, but rather to change this perspective and make the game inclusive for everyone.
Instead of pin pointing our target audience to a group of young boys, choosing an age range or gender, I decided to create some psychographic profiles that show who is the potential user of our game, and a bit of background to why they want to play the game. I think this shows better our target audience, and what we mean by saying Everyone. Using these audience profiles will make it clear for us who we are designing for and will inform decisions by remembering their situations and desires.
Therefore, our target audience is Everyone. We want everyone to play the game/instrument, and everyone should be able to enjoy the game, whether they play for the music, or for the fun racing part. Young children, along with professionals should be able to play the game and compose new pieces of art, or play existing songs using the game.
