WOTC'S New SW: TCG Target Audience

Over at Rebelscum there is information about the upcoming Star Wars TCG. Interestingly enough the target audience is supposedly 10 to 17 year olds. I may be wrong, but that definately doesn't seem to be the age group formally targeted by the Decipher game.

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Audience:

* Males ages 10-17
* There are approximately 7 million fans in this target demographic. This number is a subset of 72 million elf-proclaimed Star Wars fans and collectors
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Check it out at:
http://www.rebelscum.com/article.asp?i=7955

Restrainingbolt

Looks like the same target audience for Young Jedi.

Hmmmmmmm

So much for the other 90.27% of us.

Seams the ever brilliant number crunchers at LFL forgot one other detail in there calculation. Those in the 10 to 15 age group usually require parental assistance whether Financial or transport. I have 4 Boys 2 are starting to play SWCCG they will not get a cent toward the new game and if they wish to play they can continue to learn SWCCG and go to Tournaments with me.

Doesn't mean a thing. Same target audience as LOTR and that is a great game for even old people like me.

Curious where you're finding that LOTR's has that same target audience? Is that the audience all ccg's are aimed at? Doesn't seem to be the age group of player's I'm used to seeing playing Wars or Rings for that matter, although granted that Rings does seem to be pulling in a number of younger adolescent girls in the cicles I frequent. I suppose Legolas has something to do with that!

Restrainingbolt

Males ages 10-17

Uhh, if you ever go to ANY CCG's tournaments, you'll find that most players fall within that age group. However, the only ones who ever win big tend to be older players who have jobs and money.

What should they have said? 18-25? 20-30?

(And what did Decipher target with SWCCG? Anyone have any hard proof that they aimed higher?)

Had they said either of those, vendors would have come to the conclusion that it's either too difficult for high school kids, or - erm - too mature.

There's also the fact that, right or wrong, the perception is that kids buy these games more than college students and up. By saying that they're targeting this group, they're admitting they're going for a large market.

The info was there to get vendors to sell and prominently display the product, not to convince older guys to not buy it.

(And it's NOT for the pre-teens, which is yet more proof that it'll be a little more sophisticated than, say, Pokemon.)

Personally I would have thought the target age group would have run from 10 to 22 (or 12 to 25) year olds. In most tournament circles I've frequented the age group for Wars was pretty much 15 to 25 year olds. There are definately older people playing the game as well (your's truely included). I rarely saw (see) kids younger than that showing up at tournaments. It just seems to me the 10 to 17 year old age group is aimed more at the pokemon crowd. At the least that's the age group I see of players playing that ccg in Malls and Gaming stores.

I'm not questioning the fact that the new game wouldn't draw in older players, I'm just personally surprised the older group of players is left out of the Target audience. Was Decipher targeting the same age group, perhaps. I'm just curious if anyone knows for sure?

Restrainingbolt

Don't know where you've been. In Star Wars tournaments there was a majority of players 11-16 years old, with one or two guys in their mid-20's coming down to rip everybody a new arse

Well sure the CCG pulled in an Older crowd...look at its complexity level. It was very unfriendly to new/inexperienced/young CCG players. When I first started buying the CCG (during Premier) I tried for months to teach myself how to play and never could get a grasp on the rules, eventually I just collected until I met someone who was nice enough to take me step by step through everything. The TCG is a much more streamlined game, much like Jedi Knights was. Thus the lower age target makes sense. Will this make the game suck? I doubt it. I am 24 and think the game looks like alot of fun even if it does not have as much going on as the ccg.

1stAD
Half the people at tournaments around here are over 21 and some of us are over 30.

A-Bubba
Last time I checked 10 - 12 was preteen.

and My 8 year old can play SWCCG so do not tell me that it is to difficult.

Once again the younger population requires mom and dads money to play most parents are not going to be interested in shelling out hundreds of dollars for another game when the card the kid already has are still being played.

I personally can not afford another game. Also as a collector the cards stink they have a DragonBallZ/ Pokedemon look to them.

Correction: not SOLELY for pre-teens. That is, 10-18 is an obviously different market than 6-12.

And the fact that they're targeting kids who don't have their own source of income means little; after all, how many kids have Playstations, Gamecubes, and XBoxes?

Further, a large number of kids buying a small number of packs probably results in more revenue than a small number of college kids buying hundreds of dollars of cards.

(Honestly: you think X-Men sells so frigging well as a comic book because of college kids? Nope; it's the kids.)

  One thing to keep in mind - "Target Audience" is a term that manufacturers use to describe the game in it's simplest terms to distributors, retailers, and the like.  So by saying that a Target Audience is 10 - 17 year old boys simply means that the game has a certain reading level, a certain amount of competition, a certain amount of violence, etc.  It basically rounds out to about a PG-13 rating if it were a movie.  It IN NO WAY means that an eight year old boy can't understand it, nor does it mean that a 30 year old woman won't like it.  It just puts a quick tag on it so people that are in the business of selling products like these know what they're getting.
 
_M

I don't know... Hasbro Star Wars toys are marketed to a 4 and up audience, ...the last time I checked. I'm not saying the target audience shouldn't be 10 to 17 year old males. It just struck me at first glance as a narrow age group to be working with. I don't really have a clue as to what the Decipher game was targeted at, or what games like The Lord of the Rings, Magic, or Pokemon are aimed at.

I was just wondering if the game was marketed primarily for a younger audience which the target audience seemed to imply. For those who say that Wars players are primarily in this younger target audience in their areas, I suppose that's what makes the world go around. In my area ...the players are more so college kids or older adults with a smattering of teenagers, my son included. Now if we're talking Pokemon... the crowds I see playing that game are definately in the 8 to 15 or 17 year old age group. I'm not super informed here given I don't play the game, but I've definately come to that opinion judging the places where I've seen the game played. The fact that the game " might be targeted" for a somewhat younger crowd, doesn't mean that it "sucks." I play JK along with my son and daughter who are 17 and 14 respectively, and it's a fun game although definately not aimed at the same target group as Wars, in my opinion. I agree that "Wars" was definately a complicated game to get to know, especially for new players. Understanding things like attrition and the like made the learning curve definately more complicated.

I would be curious to know if Magic and Pokemon have similar target audiences as the new TCG game. Any specific information from the Wizards representative (or any Decipher representative in the know with respect to YJ, Jk or Wars) would be interesting to know.

Restrainingbolt

Agreed, Mr. Bolt:

ANY official information on the so-called "target audience" for other games would be very much appreciated.

I honestly can't imagine the Decipher SW game having that much higher an age group, nor can I imagine Pokemon actually being targeted toward high school kids.

Either way, thanks for the post, Michael. Glad to see I'm once again fairly close to the truth.

See, everyone, I can see things before they happen. It's a Jedi trait.

Well, I'm off to test my midichlorian count...

Well after you get done testing that midiclorian count ...(sure you must be in the same league as the "chosen one" ), I'd be curious in knowing whether or not you feel that YJ and Wars were targeted at the same age group?

If they weren't, does that make one game necessarily better than the other? Perhaps it's a simple fact that two different demographic groups were targeted when Decipher developed the later game? There are plenty of Young Jedi players who love that game, as well as many who swear by Wars. Some, as I'm sure you know, played both. I personally believe that Decipher had a different group of players in mind when they released YJ. That isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Restrainingbolt

I would guess that YJ was targeted slightly lower than SWCCG, but I'm not sure the following two ranges are equivalent:

- The age group that a company tells its vendors they're targeting.

- The age group they're ACTUALLY targeting.

I'm sure some CCG's announced target audience is younger (like Pokemon), and I'd bet games with more intense imagery have higher announced target audiences.

But I *suspect* the other games shoot for more or less the same audience: late elementary to high school. That way, the companies tell vendors they're target what the vendors perceive as the key demographic, and they react by displaying the games more prominently.

>>>There are approximately 7 million fans in this target demographic. This number is a subset of 72 million elf-proclaimed Star Wars fans and collectors.<<<

Elf proclaimed?!? What the hell do elves have to do with the card game demographic?

Sheesh!