Eventually I decided to run with my initial concept for my first game. It's probably going to take some getting used to when transitioning from game engine development to actual game development.
The target audience is going to be fathers-and-sons. The former in the age 25-40, the latter in age 2-4. In doing so I have to side-step my long-term intent on making games with political content to get something out there. I haven’t done any real market research, I have to do that when the game’s (almost) done. But I won’t let disastrous sales get me down - there is so much to be learnt here: I’ll talk to toy shops, game stores, established distributors and game critics. Heck, I’ll even try to sell directly to end-users to sharpen my arguments and to realize what is working and what not, and how to improve the product. Plus, I’ll never reach any of the grandfathers online. Grandfathers might be the shit, time will tell.
So I did some prototyping of the concept on a target user (i.e. my son Loke). He didn’t want to play my game for very long and, difficult as it is interviewing him about things that are of no interest, I think the main flaw was that the truck he was testing could flip over on its side. Conclusion should have been “simplify steering”, not to mention “customer’s always right” and “be an understanding father”.
But then a couple of days ago a friend (Simon Finne from Finland who just turned single again) got himself a radio controlled toy helicopter. I’ve wanted one of those since I was a kid, but never got one. He crashed it once (with me looking on in fascination), bought some spare parts and crashed it again (wow again!). Simon’s even more into aerodynamics than me, he's got a flying certificate and all, and he showed me X-Plane. I had to make a mini-version:
(Never mind the buggy graphics, I’m fiddling with mesh instancing transformations.)
Mmm… Hmm… The product is far from mainstream. My uninitiated guess is that no other game produced for 2-4 year-olds contains a helicopter flight simulator. That’s what I mean when I say that it will take time to ease over from engine to game development. I might be heading in the wrong direction and I don't know if the end product will fly, but hey - the dads need something to play with too, right?
