WESTMINSTER INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY IN TASHKENT Game Focus The report aims to deliver space-shooter game discussion, which includes focus of the game, market analysis, target audience, user selling points and revenue models. Chosen genre of the game is the “shooter” game, where the action of the game takes place in space. The player controls the spaceship to fight with other enemy spaceships. The reason for the chosen genre is that this kind of games are getting popular, and moreover as Rigney points out “Other game genres may be growing in popularity on smartphones and PCs, but on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 shooters are number one with a bullet.”(2012) this statement makes it clear that the space shooter game is best but not on smartphones. However, as mentioned devices as Xbox 360 and PlayStation are getting their popularity in market the game is likely to be popular among the users. Moreover, such kind of games are easy to start playing, as their gameplay is not complicated much. Space Shooter game was created with simple gameplay so the user have less time to get to know the controls. For instance, because other actions in game are not required, there are only five controls that users can use: up, down, space for shooting, left and right were developed. The game itself was build using C# and unity3d engine. The game scenario of the space shooter is obvious; there is a player and the enemies that increase from time to time, player has three lives, if the enemy shots the player, the player dies and reborn until the end of his three lives. In addition, the player also dies if it collides with enemy for two times. When the number of lives of the player become less than zero the game comes to end; and the user is offered to restart the game where everything starts from the beginning. The player has the following components: -Transform -Rigid body 2D to apply physics. -Polygon Collider 2D to mark the edges. -Player Shooting (script) -Damage Handler (script) WESTMINSTER INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY IN TASHKENT -Player Movement (script) The enemy has the following components: -Transform -Rigid body 2D to apply physics. -Polygon Collider 2D to mark the edges. -Damage Handler (script) -Enemy Faces Player (Script) -Move Forward(script) -Enemy Shooting (Script) There are also two objects developed: PlayerSpawnerSpot and EnemySpawner. First one is responsible for the start of the game, renewing my player, counting of lives of the player, while the second just fills the scene with enemies. For both of them corresponding scripts were developed called (Player Spawner(script) for PlayerSpawnerSpot and Enemy Spawner(script) for EnemySpawner respectively). In addition, the ships can shoot each other for this reason there is player_bullet prefab that has the following components: -Transform; -Sprite Renderer; -RigidBody 2D; -Box Collider 2D -Damage Handler(script) -Move Forward(script) -Self Destruct(Script). The following UML diagram shows the scripts that make the playable: WESTMINSTER INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY IN TASHKENT WESTMINSTER INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY IN TASHKENT As mentioned the game logic is really simple, the following activity diagram of Space Shooter demonstrates it: Marketing Analysis Before developing any product, it is really important to analyze the market to understand who is your potential customer. Importance is clearly explained by Pond (2017) “Market analysis provides an analytical approach to answering some of your companies most difficult questions: · Who are our customers? · How competitive is the current market landscape? · How risky is entering this market? · How efficient are our branding efforts?” If to assume that space shooter game will be redeveloped for mobile platforms, there are huge number of competitors that space shooter will face. In the play market for instance, there are approximately at least 10 games with similar genre. According to this fact, space shooter game should have all the best features from these games. WESTMINSTER INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY IN TASHKENT First competitor is “Space Shooter: Galaxy attack” game developed by OneSoft Studio with 10 million of downloads. The main revenue company is making using in-app purchases and through the advertisement. According to the feedback given from users, there are areas to develop this product. In addition, these feedbacks may be crucial for our space shooter game, because we can take some ideas from it and develop the product towards the needs of customers. The following picture shows the user interface of the product: From my personal experience of playing this game to “test”, I can mention that the game is professionally developed. Below there is a picture about competitor company: Although, they entered market in 2016, overall downloads of their apps is more than 60 million and not less interesting fact that most downloads are from “Space Shooter: Galaxy attack”. It only means that potential customers want such kind of games like space shooter. WESTMINSTER INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY IN TASHKENT The second competitor is Galaxy Shooter - Space Attack game developed by Space Shooting Company. (Below picture is one of the menus where user can pick favorite ship to fight). With a million of downloads they take the second place in the play market in this genre. WESTMINSTER INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY IN TASHKENT Answering the third question “How risky is entering this market?” it is clear if the space shooter will take all of the advantages of at least top three games, it will be successful in the market. Target audience In order to get customers, space shooter game should be a good product itself. However as Manoharan states “Designing and producing the game is not enough, in order to reach the large audience and make it popular among players a marketing strategy has to be implemented.” (2016) Therefore, to get customers space shooter game marketing technique called STP model would be useful. STP stands for Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. First, segmentation, “Your organization, product or brand can't be all things to all people. This is why you need to use market segmentation to divide your customers into groups of people with common characteristics and needs.” The above statement means that not every person will like space shooter game; for example, it will not be suitable for the old. As there different approaches of segmenting the target market, space shooter game will for the young people at 10-35 of age. This is called Demographic segmentation. “Demographic – By personal attributes such as age, marital status, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, education, or occupation.” Finally, after deciding that space shooter game will be played by young people. The next step is targeting, i.e. criteria size, difference, money, accessibility and focus on different benefits are the main criteria to target the each segment (Hanlon, 2016).And the last action is to position your product, outlining the benefits, features of the product. User Selling Points The Space Shooter game is developed in order to lead in the market, however, it is not professionally developed yet, and there are many features that were not added. For example, user cannot pause; it is bad because if he/she wants to interrupt to something else he/she will not be able to that. The second thing that could be considered as a user selling point is good graphics, which is not implemented. This space shooter game need a lot of development and testing to go to the market. Furthermore, scoring is not implemented, but it also would be a good user selling point because people tend to compete with each other and the scoring in the game one of the examples of that. WESTMINSTER INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY IN TASHKENT If space shooter game will be developed further, these and more features will be implemented. Revenue Models Revenue models for the space shooter game may be different. To begin with, the first revenue model that can be implemented is “Pay to Play” model. “Pay to Play” means that the user pays for the game and buys the subscription to it. Pros according to ANDRONICUS are “ Subscribers are more likely to return and play the game on a long term basis Passionate and experienced gamers will stay subscribed Gamers get to enjoy the full content of the game” (2014). In other hand, there are also cons such as: those who does not want to pay are trying to hack the game or find another not ethical ways of getting the product and this can really make company the to lose the revenue if those people will success in their intention. Another model that worth considering is Free to Play (F2P). “Free to Play payment models usually come with a cash shop. The company make money from players who are willing to spend money on cash shop (microtransaction). This payment model is adopted by popular MOBA titles such as Dota 2, League of Legends and World of Tanks” explains ANDRONICUS. The picture with statistics below clearly shows the revenue of the games with F2P model: WESTMINSTER INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY IN TASHKENT However, space shooter game should be developed much to implement such revenue model, for instance to make the game playable by two persons via the internet connection, and to develop new attractive more powerful spaceships so the users will be interested in buying them. One of the example may be World of Tanks which let the user either to buy or to play so much so your coins will be enough to buy the tanks. In addition to all mentioned revenue models , there is another one that can be used, “DLC” which stands for Downloadable Content. As Huskie, developer and consultant in game industry, comments “It is additional content for the base game that was produced separately from the main game and commands a much smaller price tag in exchange for access to the new experiences in the game. It is an optional purchase for consumers.”(2016) For instance, user wants to play the full game, however, the game company provides only the part of the game for free and full game is not free, so to purchase the full game user pays the money. Finally the last revenue model is to make game fully free but using advertisement while playing or in pause mode. However, this approach may annoy the user and make him to choose another game company. In conclusion, the space shooter game needs further development to be competitive in the game industry. In addition, this game can have it is own segmentation, its own users. And if it comes to revenue model, it would be better for the Space Shooter game follow such games as League Of legends, DOTA2 and implement F2P revenue model.
