January Blog: Target Audiences

This month, I've decided to focus my project on video games. This is my essential question:

What is most important in creating a graphic design that will persuade someone to purchase a game?

By graphic design, I mean the cover of the game itself. I had a talk with my mentor earlier in the month about how to go about answering my essential question. There are many contributing factors in creating an attractive game cover, and it often varies on a case-to-case basis. We decided to narrow it down to three things: target audience, composition of the cover, and packaging materials.

So through the month, I've had to research what makes a video game cover appealing to certain audiences. Since I didn't know where to start, I asked my mentor for help. These are the demographics we agreed to research on:

• Age Group (children, teens, and adults)
• Gender (boys, girls, or both)
• Play Style (casual or hardcore)

I definitely know which categories I fall under and what games appeal to me, but I wanted to see if that was true for others as well. This curiosity like this is kind of what motivates me to research further into my topic.