Creative Brief
In the 2023 games market, mobile games earned $196.65 billion in revenue[1]. A major impetus for this project is to tap into this profit. As described in Hooked, the most profitable apps are most effective when people have created habits involving them. With the impetus of achieving passive income, Zodiacathon aims to create a habit among the target audience to play the game when they are triggered by boredom. To do this, I will research the games within the casual mobile games market, identify what makes them fun and effective, and use this research to create the “ultimate” mobile game.
What I mean by the “ultimate” mobile game is one that applies all of the strategies that mobile games use to create a highly addictive experience. Specifically, the experience I want to evoke is an endlessly replayable and easy-to-learn-but-hard-to-master casual mobile game. The testing audience of this project will be children between the ages of 7 and 12, but the target audience for the game as a whole will be children and American adults who earn up to $250k a year. The combination of new media that Project M requires are:
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Game Development
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Human-Computer Interaction
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Asset Creation
Most of the time will be spent on step 1 (Game Development). Due to the constrained timeline for Project M, the main deliverable is a mobile game prototype that runs correctly and smoothly on mobile phones, emphasizing a well-designed core gameplay loop. Zodiacathon's vibe is a cute, quirky, endless runner emphasizing rogue-lite buffs, a skill tree, and customization. The following mood board visually describes the intended vibe as well.
[1] Inkwood Research. "Global video gaming revenue from 2022 to 2032, by platform (in billion U.S. dollars)." Chart. February 6, 2024. Statista. Accessed October 8, 2024.
Sample of Researched Games
The full list of games played as part of the research can be found in both the Market Research Presentation and the Design Blueprint Document.
