I tend to mostly write my own pieces inspired by other things, or just given to me in some weird epiphany storm.    Occasionally though I'll come across an article, video, song, etc that I think is too good to not share or at the very least mention here on steemit.   This morning such an article on gaming and the demographics of gamers was shared with me by a co-worker/friend.

I will quote part of the article in this post and provide a little commentary so that this piece is mine.    I do strongly recommend going and reading this article in its entirety.    This is especially true if you are a gamer, or into marketing.

<a href="https://galyonk.in/your-target-audience-doesn-t-exist-999b78aa77ae">
Your target audience doesn't exist (Click here or the image to read the full article)
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The article begins with the following three paragraphs:
>One of the common misconceptions caused by publicly available research is the perceived popularity of certain game genres.
People unfamiliar with how games work, but familiar with marketing research in other industries assume that MOBA is like “cola-flavored soft drink” and MMORPG is “ions-enriched sports drink”.
When marketing research is talking about MOBA popularity and MMORPG decline they automatically assume it should work like in other industries?—?people switching from Gatorade to Coca-Cola, while there is plenty of space for smaller imitators and local brands.

This does somewhat set the tone, but it in no way really reveals the interesting thoughts and information that went into making this article.   It is truly worthy of it's own read.    I am going to only quote a few sections that I found particularly interesting.     They may seem like they are out of context since I'll be grabbing them from various sections within this article.   If you find the context is missing and it lacks something then the obvious solution is to use the links above and read the original.

>I hear people talking about “female gamers” or “core gamers” a lot, but seldom do they realize that these categories don’t technically exist, at least not in any practical way.
The term “female gamers” includes both a woman in her fifties playing Candy Crush Saga on her phone and a college girl enjoying Call of Duty on her Xbox. They’re so far apart from each other, that it makes no sense to try and fit them into the same vaguely defined category. There are many female gamers, they’re different and there are probably dozens of categories you could divide them in.

Basically this can be summed up as generalizations are not always a good way to look at reality.    Yet explaining it as explicitly as the author did is far more useful than simply launching a platitude like my short summary there and expecting the audience to nod and get it.   That generally doesn't work.    We need to expand upon the idea like the author does.

He then talks about how depending upon the favorite game a person played the amount of other games they owned and played seemed to vary a lot.    So while one game style might be very popular, it's players may typically rarely play or own anything else.    This is good for the game in question they like, but it may not be as good as some of the other titles.

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>“Core gamer” is a nice term to flaunt around when talking about your personal habits, but it’s not a viable term for defining your audience. It’s too broad and too vague.

This made the term "*Game of the Year*" flash into my mind.    How many games of the year can we have?    For me GOTY has lost the meaning the words actually should convey.    More likely these days it instead means COMPLETE VERSION.    It seems "*Core Gamer*" is another one of those marketing gimmicks.


>I get it. It makes for a good headline “The rise of MOBA”. “The fall of core gamer”. “The rise of China”. And it’s usually an interesting read, filled with data. Data that’s both well-described and convincing, because if MOBA are on the rise and core gamers are no longer the majority, it makes sense to apply this knowledge somehow, right?

>And of course you should, but don’t target any new market or new audience just because you’ve suddenly realized it exists. Dota 2 audience exists, there are around 55 million gamers that have tried it and 9.5 million gamers have played it in the last two weeks.

>Does it mean they’re enjoying MOBA? Yes.

>Does it mean they will even take a peek at yours? Nope, they’re too busy.

>And same goes for the lucrative Chinese mobile market, by the way.

I found those to be some interesting observations and statements.    I know it is likely true.   I know that when I discovered Neverwinter Nights by Bioware back in the mid-2000s and I got into making my own things for it I went from a frequent game buyer to a sometimes or rare game buyer for about 5 years.   Why?   I was too busy, and satisfied with NWN.    I think Bioware and company realized this too and they stopped making games that were easy to make their own single and multiplayer game experiences for themselves, their friends, and the world.    Why?   I suspect because, they realized overall it's versatility was resulting in less sales of OTHER titles they may produce.    It slowed down the impulse purchases.    This of course has been a long term speculation on my part.    For me that first Neverwinter Nights is still one of the greatest games ever made.    It may not seem that way if you just buy it and try to play the official campaigns.   That is not where it thrived and did wonders.   It thrived and did wonders in all of the community created adventures, stories, game modes, etc.    These were often better than the official content.

>Classic “core gamers”?—?the ones that play most major hits or jump from indie game to indie game?—?are relatively rare when compared to overall gaming audience.

>In fact, 1% of Steam gamers own 33% of all copies of games on Steam. 20% of Steam gamers own 88% of games. That’s even more than Pareto principle suggests.

>So, to be a member of the “1% group” of Steam gamers you have to own 107 games or more. That’s not much considering how Steam is selling games at discount prices and how easy it is to obtain games in bundles.

I may be in the 0.1% or 0.01% based upon those numbers as I currently own 1410 games in my primary steam account and I slowed down my own purchases a lot awhile back.   My steam purchases for some time now have been mostly for other people.   So that 1410 is mostly stuff I have owned for awhile.   I am not wealthy, I just shop smart.

>Various studies suggest that there are 700–800 million of PC gamers. It’s probably true, but it doesn’t mean much for your game. Because if you’re developing a downloadable game for Steam you’re not even fighting for 135M of its active users,

>you’re fighting for the attention of 1.3 million gamers
that are actually buying lots of games.

>The 1% group.

This is likely pretty important to you if you are a game developer.

>I’m not including console audience here because I don’t have enough data to make any claims. I’d guess that console crowd has more gamers that buy several games per year instead of sticking to one hit title, but that’s just it?—?a guess.

It is a good article and if this at all interested you I highly recommend checking it out.    As always thank you for your time.

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