Having reviewed all of my market research, I can see that between a few of them, they hold similarities that I think make them effective and appealing. Firstly all of the games specifically know their target audience. The reason I say this is because when you look at little big planet they clearly have a distinct target market being a younger age group. This can be seen by all the bright vibrant colours and nature of the game. You essentially play as soft toys in an imaginative world. However looking at a game such as GTA they have very different approach as they feature weapons girls and violence on the front cover. This intrigues a older audience but also males as they have attractive females too. One thing that I realise in almost all modern games is the ability to do more than required. This means that you don't simply have to do the main missions but can do extra missions or simply explore yourself, this allows you to progress further in some cases but in others just allows you to have fun and takes away from the seriousness of most situations. Therefore, one thing I really need focus on and ensure would be a necessity is having an element of free roam or own decision making. Games that are well known for this are those such as Minecraft and Skyrim. These games are heavily open whereas games such as The last of Us allow for personal discovery but at the same time in order to progress you need to pass and complete objectives. A lot of the time spending these extra time of gameplay are often rewarded with collectibles or more value such as in Thief I found out that the more you explore and look down alleys the more gold you find which can be useful for upgrading weapons and abilities etc.
Summing up my competitor analysis I would say that all of the action adventure games have very unique features. These are what majorly sell the games as having also read reviews online the main thing they discuss is this, and so for The last of us they talk about the amazing graphic and griping storyline, In LBP they discus the fun environment and new generation platform game for all ages. For Thief is said to be all about the atmosphere with being an intruder and also it has lots of options to make it easier, more challenging or simply more specific with lots of settings that you can change. They also show consistency throught with the game style linking to its storyline, its advertising and characters. One thing that they all do is have twists and turns which keep the game progressing and getting deeper than first anticipated.
The oldest trick in book when it comes to video games is having a sudden plot twist, these always have and will always remain in games. Dating back to games such as Metroid when you find out the whole time you were playing as a girl to when you get betrayed in Modern Warfare 2. So when I'm coming up with the whole storyline I need to ensure there is a twist... Or two! This allows for the game to continue to be interesting and add a new level of intimacy to the game.
For my particular game I think I am going to create one more to the style of Skyrim rather than Mario Kart. Therefore if you look at other games relating to that then you can see that one technique they use is often allow you to sway one of two ways. Frequently this is either good or bad but more recently there are different choices. For example, in gang games such as GTA you can often gain loyalty or respect by doing more missions and actually choosing them over lifestyle such as in GTA IV where you have a girlfriend and you can choose which one to prioritise.
Having looking at all of my competitors it is clear that there are a very wide and extensive amount of games which is why I need to have a unique and original story line. I have found that in order for my game to improve on others I need to keep it interesting throughout but also have a lot of variation which makes it feel like the player is in control constantly. Some common occuracnces that I found out amonst my cometitors is that they often involve a lot of free will and so decision making and free play elements are key for also establishing charatcer.
This research that I carried out was all my own known as Primary and so I can vouge that the reliability of what I found out was backed up by me researching else where rather than relying on one source. Furthermore, I have played all of the games myself and so I have a first hand experience with them all. One way I could improve on these products is to challenge more typical conventions of a game therefor making it truely unique and creative. The games I evaluated were global games and therefore were aiming to attract the masses, However, Little Big Planet had Stephen Fry as the narrator and therefor was aimed at a more of a UK audience and so because of this i might be more enclined to like the game and so I would have to take sources of information from a wide array of sources.
The final stage was my secondary research. In this stage not only did I look at how to write storylines for video games but I also looked at some that explained how more recently game companies have challenged it in various ways, an example from my research being 'Gone Home' which is really heavily focused on its storyline in fact its known as an interactive book as the element of what used to be classed as stereotypical gameplay was very minimalistic. Another thing I found out that will influence the way I write my game is through learning that successful games are so due to their emphasis on escapism. A game can be made to pick up and play for 5 minutes but actual, thought through video games set not only the scene but also give backstory, everything that is displayed gives insight and has meaning behind every action. One way in which I could have improved my secondary research was by gaining a sheer larger amount of it. I could have also improved it by gathering research from more indy articles and blogger forums. By doing this I would have been eliminating the chances of getting a possibly biased article as my articles might have been wrote for the sheer promotion of a companies gameplay.
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