1.2 Stakeholders
Customer Role
The customers are a really useful souce of improvement for a game and lots of games use their community to identify problems and bugs with the game as it allows in-depth first hand experience with the product and may flag up things that a development team might not find.
Additionally the player base could help to add ideas and to help develop ideas over time and they might be able to influence where the ideas take the game and this might mean that the game is able to reach more players and then this would add even more people to add ideas.
Tailoring to Different Players
There are many different ways that someone might go about playing a game. Some like to complete the game as fast as possible, some like to explore everything the game offers, other's like to have the best loadout they can find, and others like to grind for hours to get one thing for their player. This variation in players is what allows players to stay engrossed in a game and allows the player to do a range of things within the virtual world they are playing in. To make a game successful you need to make different sections of the game appeal to all audiences, as this prolongs how long people play for and how likely they are to want to complete that thing you've added.
Bartle's Player Type categorises different player's into different groups and states the percentage of players that are fall into those categories, through a test which asks you questions about what you would do in different situations and then uses your answers to find what sort of player you are. I took the test and got 73% killer, 43% achiever, 53% explorer, and 17% socialiser. What do you think you'd get? Are the results similar or wildly different? This is why there needs to be a balance of each part of the game and how it might interact with each player differently.
Demographics
PEGI is the international standard for age ratings and is able to categorise different aspects of games into different types of content descriptions that may not be suitable, and then they also have ratings for different ages: PEGI 3, PEGI 7, PEGI 12, PEGI 16 and PEGI 18. (PEGI 2017). The different content descriptors are:
Violence - The game contains depictions of violence in varying intensities and realisims. In games rated PEGI 7 this can only be non-realistic or non-detailed violence. Games rated PEGI 12 can include violence in a fantasy environment or non-realistic violence towards human-like characters, whereas games rated PEGI 16 or 18 have increasingly more realistic-looking violence.
Bad Language - The game contains bad language and the descriptor can be found on games with a PEGI 12 (mild swearing), PEGI 16 (e.g. sexual expletives or blasphemy) or PEGI 18 rating (e.g. sexual expletives or blasphemy).
Fear - This descriptor may appear as 'Fear' on games with a PEGI 7 if it contains pictures or sounds that may be frightening or scary to young children and comes in two varients: Fear in terms of scares or fright and sustained gory or disturbing images.
Gambling - The game contains elements that encourage or teach gambling. These simulations of gambling refer to games of chance that are normally carried out in casinos or gambling halls. New games are always now given PEGI 18 ratings, but some older ones may be PEGI 12 or PEGI 16.
Sex - can accompany a PEGI 12 rating if the game includes sexual posturing or innuendo, a PEGI 16 rating if there is erotic nudity or sexual intercourse without visible genitals or a PEGI 18 rating if there is explicit sexual activity in the game.
Drugs - depicts the use of illegal drugs, alcohol or tobacco and converts games with this content descriptor as PEGI 16 or PEGI 18. (PEGI 2017)
Discrimination - depictions of different religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations. This always akes a game a PEGI 18.
In-Game Purchases - The game offers players the option to purchase digital goods or services with real-world currency.
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