Designing for younger audiences whilst marketing for Adults

News & General Discussion
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I’m working with my father on an project of his for an LOZ style adventure game about 3 girls (his granddaughters) and their quest to restore order to a magical castle. Think LOZ style adventuring in 3D + Trine style tag team character switching.

We also plan to market it commercially. Steam would be the initial distribution channel, with hopes of expanding to consoles later.

There’s a few things about this project that are daunting to me. The biggest of which is making a commercially viable game for kids and marketing it to adults who buy games for kids. I can’t help but get the feeling that I’m trying to imitate Pixar here in videogame land.

Extra Credits has an episode on designing for kids, but it’s pretty vague with the advice. “Build a ramp from what kids know to the deeper concepts you want to explore.” and “Teach in as many different ways as possible” are pretty much the takeaway.

I wanted to ask you all for tips/pointers on this. How can I design kid-friendly, and attract adult parents at the same time?

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I think you’re on the right track comparing it to Pixar. If there’s one thing Pixar films do well (other than anthropomorphizing inanimate objects) its appealing widely to children at a base level, with either hidden jokes or underlying meanings that adults can appreciate as well.

Look at WALL-E. For kids, it’s more or less a fun movie about the adventures of an adorable robot. For adults, there’s the message of consumerism, waste, and environmentalism, laziness and obesity, and probably a few more I’m forgetting at the moment.

I think it’s important that your story can be boiled down to a core easy-to-grasp concept. Good vs Evil. Man vs Nature. Something like that. I guess that would apply to everything… Art, UI, controls… Keep it simple (which doesn’t mean it can’t have depth for those looking for it).

I agree, though, the larger a target audience you’re trying to hit, the more challenging it is to hit them all effectively.

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You could always just target your marketing at kids & let pester power take over.

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I am a parent and have been one for quite some time. :slight_smile: When my son was 5, we started buying him computer games to help him learn. Our favorites were games like Putt-Putt because it emphasized problem solving. For a 5 year old, this game was perfect. He spent a great deal of time figuring out how to save the animals who escaped from the zoo and other scenarios.

Fast forward many years later…and Minecraft. When my young daughter, about 10 years old, was introduced to the game, I started watching and asking her questions. She played in the creative mode on a server we set up for her.

She has lots of artistic talent so it didn’t surprise me when she started building beautiful things in Minecraft. After a visit to a Spanish fort while on vacation, she came back and built it in Minecraft. What really impressed me was the problem solving involved. She decided she wanted cannons and wanted to be able to destroy the walls with the canyon. She she spent hours experimenting with various things in the game until she was able to get her cannon to work.

Another game that she likes now is Bad Piggies. In this game, she has to invent things to do things…I haven’t played it but I know from watching her that it is fabulous.

So…as a parent, games that include problem solving, not a lot of violence inappropriate for their age, and are fun for them sell themselves. In my country, kids do not learn a lot of problem solving in school. Instead, they memorize to take a standardized test. Games that will help learn those tools are needed.

I highly suggest that if your game has problem solving, whether that is inventing, creating, or even figuring out the best way to save the Princess, then emphasize that in your marketing. We love our kids learning while playing…and not knowing they are learning because it is so much fun. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the advice Teila! Where do you find games for your children? Do they point games out to you that they want, or do you pick up games you think they will enjoy? And does that change as they get older you think?

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My kids are older now, the two youngest are teens, the two eldest young adults, so things have a changed a lot.

When they were young, I would do a lot of research on games before I would buy them or allow them to buy them. There used to be sites where parents would rate or grade the games and I would look for ones that were fun for the kids, challenging, and had some sort of value (although not necessarily academically oriented). It worked pretty good and the kids were happy for the most part. I remember games like Picman and Harvest Moon, Zelda games (they still love those), Kirby, Spyro…etc. These were are not necessarily games that will teach them something concrete, but overall, they were fun, engaging, low violence, and had some degree of problem solving…if you look hard enough at times. lol So…often I would see games they wanted and do the research and tell them…or sometimes, they would hear of a game from a friend or see it on TV/internet. So a mix of the two I would say. When they were wee little ones, I would pick them.

They have since graduated to Final Fantasy, Minecraft, Portal, and other similar games.

My son just reminded me that one his favorite games as a kid was The Incredible Toon Machine, made by Sierra. He remembers it very fondly. :slight_smile: He loved the problem solving (He said that without any prompting by me! LOL…I am so proud!)

Anyway…I think I answered your last question. Because I helped them choose good, quality games early on, I think now that is what they prefer. Yes, there is a little more “action” in the games they play now. My daughters are currently into Minecraft and Assassin’s Creed. My son, between college semesters, plays Elite Dangerous.

So yeah, it changes at they get older. I say what they cannot bring into the house, and they tell me what they want. We discuss the games, decide if they are okay. I am not okay with extreme violence, blood and gore. I know they will play them someday, maybe…but not at my house. It is a line I draw.

Still though…I have some input, either because I tell them I want to have input, or more than likely now, because they know I will be reasonable without our limits. It has worked out well. :slight_smile:

Also…I did and still do for my younger ones, limit game play time. So games that are ultra addicting or where you couldn’t save whenever you wanted, drove me nuts.

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How young are we talking about? After a certain point, they really belong to the “novice gamer” category rather than “child gamer.” You still have to worry about reading comprehension, but in terms of game design, you really only have to fight with the fact that they are novices.

Rather than keeping it simple, which can easily tumble down the slippery slope of treating kids as if they are stupid, the better mindset is to not bring baggage. The baggage in this case mostly being several decades of gaming experience.

I call bullshit. There hasn’t been a good FF game in over a decade… just let that sink in.

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They play older games. :slight_smile: My kids are retro…lol

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My kids used to play the Dora the explorer mini games that came in the disc with the magazine each month. Same sort of thing as @Teila said, problem solving, racing, helping etc while learning stuff (especially Spanish, which isn’t super useful here in Australia but didn’t hurt).

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@zombiegorilla might have some interesting insights into how it’s done.

I’m a parent, but I’m still pretty old school with my game buying choices for my girls. They will play pretty much anything with a princess on the front, or branded with their current favourite Disney characters. Best marketing strategy for kids is to lisence some existing IP that kids love.

That said my kids will also try the games I play. They like building space ships in Kerball.

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Must be nice. My girls were never the Princess type and even hated being called a princess. lol Maybe it was the influence of an older brother, not sure.

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Here’s my takeaway so far- writing this out is as much for my benefit as anyone else’s here, so bear with me if you would.

On the marketing front-
Gamer parents are out there- they are better at choosing a quality gaming experience than parents were when I was growing up, and they look for resources that help them choose better products like review sites with a perspective on what is age-appropriate and substantial content for kids. So in marketing it’s important that the game is presented as quality entertainment for it’s target age that meets a certain standard. (duh.)

Also I need to be scouting some of those sites in preparation for when we start pre-release marketing to get a better picture of my ideal customer and kind of media that I’m hoping to attract. I typed “game reviews” and google suggested “for parents” as the first thing in the list, so this is probably a lot bigger market segment than I suspected.

Parents like to see problem solving elements that challenge kids while being entertaining so the puzzles will play a big role in marketing as well.

The story features 3 girls as the protagonists- 2 sisters and a cousin. I think that might be something significant worth marketing as well, there aren’t a ton of “girls as heroes” games that I can remember really liking when I was a young’un.

On the Mechanics angle-
As was mentioned before, kids are really just inexperienced gamers when it comes down to it. Mario is super accessible for kids, but it doesn’t tone down the difficulty just because there are kids playing it.

I think maybe a navigation-help mechanic might be important. When I watch my nieces play, (heck, when I watch my dad play) they have a tendency to get turned around in levels. I think the “objective arrow” that just hangs out and always points where the next place is might be a little too heavy handed, perhaps if the character just stops and sits idle for a second the path towards your objective will fade in for a second as more of a “hint” than the answer. But I don’t know, LOZ never really had a navigation help like that- maybe that would ruin exploration?

Another mechanic I was considering was drop in/drop out second player. It’s kind of a big feature, but I thought it might be important to parents who want to play with their kids while being able to drop out at any time to go take care of other responsibilities, then come back and pick up without missing a beat. I see Lego games do this quite a bit. And seeing as how the core gameplay involves using different characters abilities to solve problems, I thought it fit well. Would that work in a LOZ design? Would parents actually find that appealing? What about for siblings that want to play for a bit too?

The alternative to drop in/out I thought of was kind of like what Windwaker did with the GBA tie-in where the second player got to fly around as tingle and stun enemies and collect rupees and such. Not quite a second player experience, but still a chance for a second person to jump in and play around for a little bit.

I figure the ability to save the game at any point is really important as well. Parent’s that limit screen time wouldn’t have to wait till the player reached a checkpoint to save their progress. Autosaving is kind of a standard now, so I thought this would be a no-brainer.

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You always have maps you could use, plus that’s teaching map reading skills which is always worthwhile. In most case you don’t even need objective markers, since the objective is usually the place you haven’t been.

Unless you’ve got solid ideas, it’s probably better to avoid it. Either you have to deal with dynamically balancing for a variable number of players, or you deal with trying to make two concurrent game modes interesting all the way through the game. Both of which take away from what you really need to work on.

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@RockoDyne -Really good thoughts, you’re definitely right about multiplayer. I’ll give the map-reading mechanic some thought. Thanks!

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Ok, as a parent of a 10yr old boy & 14yr old girl you are spot on with parents deciding games but I stopped caring as much when each hit about 8. I still vetted the games but once they showed they could distinguish between game reality & real world reality I eased back a bit, though sex & swearing still weighs heavily on my approval process.

My son plays hitman, assassins creed, rainbow six, minecraft, octodad & some others. He likes running around/driving around & crashing into things & destroying them while also solving puzzles or even just tactical decisions (ive overheard him & his friend planning a raid in rainbow six, deciding who would breach with flash bangs but only when the other was in position to breach from behind the enemy etc), & building machinery, disco rooms (multicolour flashing dance floors & lights with different music boxes playing) etc in minecraft.

My daughter prefers quicker games & is really good at those twitch games like where you tap to bounce a coloured ball up through rotating coloured rings but has recently discovered that co-op game Lovers in a dangerous space time which she has been playing with her friends that don’t game.

As for guiding, everyone loves a dog. I’ve always been a fan of just having a dog behave like a dog who is off the leash. When we walk our dog he runs around sniffing, wanders ahead sniffing, & if we are to slow he wanders back onto the path in the direction we normally goes & turns to wait for us, occasionally running back to us happily before turning around & racing ahead along the path we normally walk. This kind of behaviour can be used effectively to guide the player as well as giving the player another emotional attachment to the game. I’ve always preferred this kind of ‘natural’ guidance to the glowing path kind, & a simple introductory level where the dog races ahead, looks back & barks, runs back to the player, dances around them, then races ahead barking again should work for most new gamers.

Anyway, just my long post attempting to help (increase) your scope creep :slight_smile:

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You develop games. Most parents do not. As LMan found through his google search, parents do care and do want a say in the games that come into their house. The vast majority of these parents are not even gamers, just mom’s and dad’s who want to help their kids make good choices.

I am often asked about games by the parents of my kids’ friends. We spend a great deal of time talking about this, what games are good, which ones are too addicting, which ones have any redeeming value at all.

And these are parents of 10-15 year olds…so much older than 8 and yet…they still care. So…he asked marketing kids’ games and if he wants to sell games particularly to children, then paying attention to the non-gamer parents as well as the gamer-parents is a very good idea. :slight_smile: Your kids are playing games that are created for adults…which is fine if it is fine with you. But that does not seem to be the kind of game LMan was asking about. :slight_smile:

I am a gamer and a game developer and my kids are much much older than yours, and I still have input in what games come into my house. We are all different and that is why marketing kids’ games is a challenge.

However…if people would make really fun games that appeal to both parents and kids, they will sell more. I often suggest such games on my Facebook page or to my friends. Unfortunately, there are not many of them around.

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I didn’t mean to say parents don’t care, & if that’s how it came across then I apologise. What I was trying to say is that, & I’m ignoring those that have strong religious or other viewpoints on what is acceptable, what parents will be looking for will vary over time. Before I started learning how to make games my views were similar to now but the strictness is loosening over time. I still use review sites for things I have no knowledge of like safe minecraft servers for kids & when they were younger I used them for things like investigating sexual content or swearing etc… As a research tool they are useful for reading the user posts as well to see what they find important.

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Oh, I agree with that. You have to filter. Just to let you know, I am not religious and none of the parents I talked to are religious. :slight_smile: Those parents are are completely different subset. lol

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Hahaha you are absolutely right, when companion systems go right, they add SO MUCH to the experience and cohesion of the world.

I think it might be a little too much to squeeze into this project, but I’ve recently been studying companion systems in some other games. I might start another topic at some point just to talk about it lol. Thanks for the input Ted!

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To narrow things down, this project is aimed around 7+ kids. I’m really just trying to wrap my head around how I’m going to start marketing. So while Parents on the whole hear about games through similar channels as everyone else, my thinking is that I might have a better chance if I focus on the channels that cater more exclusively to parents/family/kids. I’m under no delusions but I do hope to have more success in marketing vs. my last attempt.

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