Week 11
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Abstract Our learning objectives for the week were:
The Marking rubric states the following in regards to Market and Audience Awareness
Evidence of rigorous market research.
Significant depth of insight into the market and commercial viability
Significant insight from the underpinning market research used to construct a persuasive business case. Insights suggest a highly appropriate level of commercial awareness.
The target audience is well-defined and justifiably mapped to the design.
A USP is evident and signposted.
Where possible, user testing has been carried out to inform the design of the artefact.
So I just had to redo my slides slightly and pull in aspects into them, rephrasing the script.
Slide 1
Hi, we’re sim-yew-like-rum games and we're here to ask for £250,000 funding, in return for 15% equity in the company
Slide 2
Asimov is a 2.5D isometric roguelike game, targeted at the 18-49 old demographic. Players are tasked to work their way through various areas to uncover what has happened to the world following a catastrophic global event.
Our game blends skill-based, high-speed gameplay with storytelling, portrayed through the characters and the world itself.
Presenting an immersive and intense gameplay experience.
Slide 3
Our world embraces the punk and early hacker subcultures, taking influences from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) Neuromancer (Gibson, 2018) and neo-noir cyberpunk classic Ghost in the shell (Jun'ichi Fujisaku and Camillia Nieh, 2006)
It follows the story of Asimov, an AR clothing, environment and memory engineer for Monkii Corporation.
Monkii Corporation is an authoritarian corporate company that rose to power at the peak of the information age—distinguishing itself by making logic circuits using biopolymers.
These microprocessors represented a notable advance in technology as the natural polymers were produced by the cells of living organisms and could be implanted into any biological material.
Users of these implants could replay memories, quickly look up information, and download and subscribe to skills.
Unbeknown to the user, these Monkii smart chips, commonly known as 'Mooks', induced chemical manipulation.
Blocking normal sensory input, distorting memories, weakening reason, logic and emotion. Creating addiction. Eroding democracy and created a Single totalitarian State run by Gaal Laas Geel, Monkii's CEO.
Over time, Asimov began to feel murmurations of past memories but dismissed them as dreams or Déjà vu. These murmurations at times became crippling, and Asimov began to investigate.
Looking into the subroutines performed by the chips in his head, he discovered Monkii had implanted these murmurations to control him.
Asimov secretly begins to create a patch. However, this patch works too well and plunges the world into chaos.
The next section was the investment slides
Slide 1
Our game development process has involved several rounds of qualitative and quantitative research.
To gather relevant market insight, we put together several surveys with a view they would:
give us an idea of commercial viability
underpin our business case
an idea of our target audience
Our results indicated our game should:
Appeal to 18-49
PC gamers
11-20 pound pricepoint
Slide 2
On Steam, Rogue-lites are listed in both the Action and RPG genres, which constitute 42% of Steam's library.
Our game looks to tap into that popularity and lean into the characteristics which made similar games so popular.
Games like Hades (2018), Dead Cells (2017) and The Binding of Issac (2011) all have a strong story, well-defined characters, are face-paced and have accessible pickup and play gameplay.
For us to compete in this genre, we feel a need to scale up over the next year to bring the game to mass-market.
Slide 3
Currently, our team comprises of the five of us on the Flexible Falmouth MA program. With the assistance of a freelance music producer.
Project wise we're in the concept development phase and working towards building a playable slice with around 4-6 hours of gameplay.
Slide 4
With investment, we can run parallel workstreams for playtesting and community building.
Playtesting will allow us to gain feedback and improve the game.
And community building will allow us to tell the story within the game and develop affinity around our characters.
After this period we'll start marketing and promotion and taking payments for early access.
Again gaining feedback to improve the game and expand the play hours to around 12-16 hours.
Ramping up our team like this would mean increasing our monthly burn rate to £17,142.05. We estimate the project would take 11 months to complete requiring a project budget of around £190k
Slide 5
With the project budget in mind, we are seeking a region of 250k investment. Leaving us with a 60K buffer for any unexpected costs.
Initially, we aim to price the game at 12.99 and publish it on Steam estimating sales of 30,000 during the first launch phase on the platform
Bringing us a 50% return on your investment straight off the bat.
We will get a better idea of if this sales target is realistic as we begin playtesting, alpha and beta launches and as early access sales begin to gather.
As a team, we know these figures are ambitious, but believe our game is unique enough and addictive enough to stand out in the market.
Thank you
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I started to record the video in Vidyard (2021), but realised I couldn't donwload the video, so I had to change to Loom (2019) and notified the team of the change of platform.
I've embedded the videos here
References
Scott, Ridley. (1982). Blade Runner [Film]
Jun'ichi Fujisaku and Camillia Nieh (2006). Ghost in the shell:stand alone complex. Milwaukie, Or: Dh Press.
Gibson, W. (2018). Neuromancer. New York: Ace.
Hades. (2018). Supergiant Games, Private Division, Take-Two Interactive
Dead Cells. (2017). Motion Twin. Playdigious, Merge Games
The Binding of Issac. (2011). Edmund McMillen, Florian Himsl
Loom (2019). Loom | Video recording, simplified. [online] Loom.com. Available at: https://www.loom.com/.
Vidyard (2021). Vidyard - Online Video Hosting for Business. [online] Vidyard. Available at: https://www.vidyard.com/.
