So what would sell as a mid core genre on the tablet

There are a few games that have done well on the tablet without being casual games designed specifically to waste a few moments, they all fall into the same category:

• Point and click adventure
• Puzzle
• Strategy
• Fixed camera view RPG
• Ant farm or sim style management games

The main issue with most of these games comes with the touch screen interface which completely contrasts to the system mechanics which games are used to when designing these types of games. you cannot really make a game which relies on fast paced finger reactions on this system because the screen becomes obscured when the player uses the interface, if you try to compensate for this by including controller UI in the design it must use up too much of the space and ends up leaving no space for the actual game. 

UI in essence kills most Tablet games.

So what other 'rules' appear on tablets that do not appear in other game systems?

Well it can be said that tablet games cannot really allow for control of a character and control of a camera viewpoint at the same time. Mostly because it feels un-intuitive using a false joystick, but also because you can only really have two touches at once before the player cannot see what they are doing on the tablet. This means that the player either controls just the camera or just the character, or as a third point the camera location is fixed such as in 2d platform games.

However you also need to give the player a lot of depth while keeping player reward loops small and under 30mins to successfully make a good mid core game. So with all of these constraints on the game a lot of classic models no longer appear to be valid for one reason or another. 

So how do you instill depth in a tablet game?

Most likely the same ways you do for other games, you either design the game around a very deep narrative story that captivates the player until the story concludes or you create a perpetual machine for the player to mess around with until it reaches what they believe to be a natural conclusion, other methods include competition, however the mid core genre do not wish to compete with one another, so this becomes challenging the player with puzzles of different kinds.

Appealing to a larger audiance with games

At the moment it can be said that the games industry has a similar attitude towards its audience as fine art does. When an artist creates a piece of art they show it off in an exhibition, only people who have an interest in art attend and only their opinions affect the artist, the artist in a sense caters her works to the opinions shared by art critics and people who are interested in their work. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this system, until somebody outside of sharing the interest attempts to look upon that piece of artwork, now an artist would say that their piece expresses a very simple emotion that all humanity shares, but if that was actually the case everybody who ever looked at that piece of artwork would feel the same emotions and easily decipher its meaning or at least another meaning from it. However the fact of the matter is most people you show a fine art sculpture to will say the same thing:

"It's just a pretty shape."

Obviously that is not all the artist is trying to express with their piece of art, I don't think there is a single piece of artwork this is all face value. They say that art is subjective in this sense, however that doesn't make it more popular and it doesn't make it reach more people, if anything it segregates it.

In a way this has happened in games. Computer games have always had their core market in mind and their target audience has stayed largely the same for the last 40 years. They appeal to the mid-teen white male almost religiously, this has lead to a stagnation in gaming as the themes are overly explored, games compete to see which can get the most action and adrenaline into a title and more importantly other themes are not explored.

So I need to look into things that people to the age range 30-50.

Well there are a lot of things that are appealing to all ages, one prominent thing that appeals to all ages is mystery. Mystery and puzzles are part of human nature and do not have a particular group to which they appeal to more, in that sense they better suit a mid-core game. Another thing that can be marketed to all ages and genders is story and narrative since everybody loves a story!

Summing up: What I have found thus far

So far we have looking into:

• The Mid-core genre
• What about the games industry does not appeal to them
• Peter pan syndrome in gaming
• Which plots make it into the best selling games and why
• What kinds of games appeal to the mid-core

Basically what we have learnt is that the Mid-core genre is made up of people between the age of 30-50 primarily, people who have either fallen out of the hardcore genre for a lack of time to play heavy involvement games, or people who have played casual games and have found them a little lacking in substance for their liking. However to truly make a mid-core game you must also attempt to create new customers and not just people who have played games before and thought they would be interesting. 

We have also learnt that as it stands the game industry has been stuck in an adolescent phase where it only catered to those below the age of 25 as its primary target audience. This has caused a stagnation in games that has as of yet excluded a lot of potential players of games, to some extent including the mid core market. This means that if we want to differentiate from the crowd of games which have been exclusively marketed to  a younger generation then we need to make sure that we do not include the elements that made those games exclusive to that genre.

So to continue my lines of inquiry I will look into what about games at the present makes them exclusive to the younger generations, this will allow us to avoid the pitfalls that at the moment make games inaccessible to the mid core without excluding the other gamer groups.

Games and Peter Pan Syndrome

Recently I caught up on the recent DICE 2013 talks and I feel that I have taken a lot away from it, the first thing that struck me about the talks was then David Cage spoke about Peter Pan syndrome in gaming. It seems interesting that the games industry has seemingly stagnated at the stage of the fairy tales when it comes down to it. Like mentioned in his talk that:

Most games out there are empty, they serve only to trigger a little bit of adrenaline in the player. Which is enough for some players. 

David Cage- Quantic dream

So in that sense a lot of the games created over the last 40 years are at the level of fairy tales. They are (for the most part) blunt when it comes to the point that they are trying to bring across, the purpose of the game is  to make the player feel like a traditional 'hero' to fulfill a power fantasy most people share.  They then usually surmise their game play as a competition between the player and other players in some sort of adrenaline fueled battle of reaction times and tactics which allow one player to feel superior to another and validate themselves either against the game or the other players. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this model of games, it is tried and tried and tried and tested, but it only caters to the younger players within the world, the players who feel a need to compete and validate themselves. However the mid core market comprises primarily of the 30-50 bracket, people who have begun to outgrow these teenager modes of desire to compete. Not to say that these players no longer see the value in this type of game, but more to say that they will respond to other forms of stimulus, such as those found more traditionally with other mediums of entertainment popular with their age groups.

"think about your friends who don't play. Think about your parents. Do they play console games? Most of the time they don't play video games. They barely know they exist. But you can talk about books, movies, TV, with them, because those mediums are perceived as being for everyone."

David Cage- Quantic dream

This is an interesting point, lets expand on this by comparing the basic game genres to the basic plots of a story, since almost every game ever made has some form of story to it and books, movies, comics, nearly all other forms of creative entertainment require a story.If that is the case I am sure I can define each of the basic plots of a story and find a game, book and film which follows those examples.

Basically stories can be traced back to 7 basic plots:

1 - Overcoming the monster Example: David and Goliath
2 - Rags to riches Example: Cinderella
3 - The Quest Example: Watership down
4 - Voyage and return Example: Alice in wonderland
5 - Comedy Example: Loves labours lost
6 - Tragedy Example: Carmen
7 - Rebirth Example: The snow queen

Each of these Basic plots is identified by 5 identifiable stages, I will try to explain these 5 stages for each of the seven basic plots in following posts.

what have learnt that the main plots of a game usually boil down to quest, overcoming the monster and voyage and return, mostly because those are the plots that best feed the gameplay. We have also learnt that games as concepts have only ever catered to a young audience and have been stuck in a 'fairytale' mindset, in the sense that they have only ever been marketed to the younger audience which has caused the medium to suffer. To expand into a more adult audience we need to start considering the other forms which a story can take as our focal point, or at least attempt to remove the elements from our game that exclude non-gamers.

First Question, Whats a Mid core game?

Like most things it is always important to consider the audience to which you are making your product for. So with that in mind what is this market which we call the 'mid-core'?

I mean it sounds quite obvious really, somewhere between casual and hardcore games...

But there is a lot more to consider then that! So lets expand slowly on this genre, what if we had to describe the differences between the three genres in a few sentences?

At People Fun we segment the gaming audience by lifestyle patterns:

(1) Hardcore arranges their schedules around their gaming.

(2) Mid-core arranges their gaming around their daily schedule.

(3) Casual entertains self with games when time presents itself.

Tony Goodman, co-founder, Ensemble Studios, founder, PeopleFun

So a key difference we can start with between the three genres is when they play games.

It seems that the mid-core market are the gamers that want to play games however do not have the time to dedicate to long games with opening trawls, 80hr play times and take long amounts of time to get into.

But Who are these gamers?

The potential for mid-core games is often backed up by the fact that former core players who, as they start families and careers, no longer have as much time to devote to playing and also includes casual gamers who desire a more immersive experience.

Peter Warman, CEO Newzoo

So it seems that at least a portion of mid-core gamers are the grown-up version of the Hard-core gamers, those who now have far too many other things going on in their lives to afford the time to comfortably loose themselves in a hard-core title which demands a lot of time and effort. These gamers still hold true to their standards of what makes a game good, however they wish to play a game which fits around their schedule. One that is easily picked up and played, one that has a loop of 20-30 minutes or maybe even an hour, but does not sacrifice on any amount of quality or depth to it.

It's really about distilling what you'd consider a 'hardcore' game down to its core essence, without making concessions on production quality, themes and gameplay mechanics.

Frederic Descamps, general manager of Team Solstice (Solstice Arena), Zynga

So what is a mid-core game?

Since it is a new term it is found to be quite hard to define, seeing as at the moment companies are pioneering their own perspectives of mid core gaming. The only way to correctly define mid-core gaming will be when the dust has settled on the first few titles and the best definitions of a mid-core game are decided. However for the moment we are all sure on what a mid-core game is not:

• Mid-core is not a demographic. Mid-core games, like a diamond’s beauty, are for everyone to enjoy.
• Mid-core is not a statement of depth. Mechanics of strategy are not removed in mid-core games, they are carefully distilled into their finest essence.
• Mid-core is not a balance of new and old. Novel concepts can be the subject of a mid-core game, but careful attention must be given to the final cut since no blueprint exists.

Andrew Pellerano -To his Blog

I think we have a slightly better understanding of what a Mid core gamer is, to sum up what we have so far:

• The mid core demographic has a core element of gamers between the age of 30-50, gamers who cannot give the sort of time that they used to give to gaming that they used to. These gamers do not necessarily want to compete with others as much and also do not simply desire an adrenaline rush, they want more complex emotional rewards.
• Other people who wish to play mid-core games include anybody who falls into the hard core genre however does not have the time to invest in the 60hr games or MMO games which require routine playing.

So there we have it!

So I think it would be good to now take a brief look into the market trends of entertainment on other mediums  the 30-50yr olds...

Statement of Intent

The intention of this blog is to record my design work for CCP Games Newcastle.
Over the course of my Masters degree I plan to contribute design work to the new CCP Games Newcastle project. Hopefully by the end of the project I will have a considerable portfolio of design documents, pitch documents and assets which will have contributed to a game which CCP Games will be publishing in the near future. All of this work will therefore be critiqued at an industry standard

This entire blog and the content therein is subject to an NDA.