products and audiences: Target audience

dark souls 3 product

the age of dark souls would roughly be 16+ because it requires skill to play and a understanding for different builds and requires an in depth understanding of how the game works against or for your build. It also requires Independence because when you're playing dark souls you have to rely on your knowledge and nothing else when building your character hence why I recommend this to be for 16+

class
the class that this product; dark souls 3 appeals for is middle class because it isn't an expensive game and anybody could afford it.

the spending power is high because the game isn't that much, an average working person would be able to buy this product.
somebody who works in argos or a retail job could baseline afford this if they waited a few weeks after it dropped



gender of the audience
the gender of the audience would be dominantly male as the majority of the gender that plays the game is male. not to say that females don't play the game either.

Spending power
The average payer who plays the game would ideally be a young male still in college r attending university earning below 20 thousand a year. Ideally this means that the target audience is aimed at younger males who have a devoted lifestyle to games hence why games aren't that expensive unless you buy them on release date, majority of people tend to wait unless they really like the game.
 The ideal lifestyle of a person who has interest into dark souls would mainly be a younger male, 16 and above who has interests in gaming, console or pc. Like's to watch streams of the souls series, ideally on twitch. Subscribes to big youtubers and watches dark souls related videos and or funny videos. Maintaining a high interest for alternative music and/or music like deftones, artic monkeys and killswitch engage. Their likely profession would be still in education possibly or a low paying job such as argos, retail, being an apprentice construction or still in education such as college or even school. The magazines they would probably read is the console they play on. The product will provide fun, entertainment ofcourse because the game is a very high ascending skillbased game that is rewarding emotionally and physically, so the game offers interest into competitive players for the co-op side, players who love challenges categorising both pvp and single player, and for lore-based fans who delve into the sweet story of the game and brave the truth of the mechanisms that structure the game drastically such as the stories behind the bosses and why the developer made alternate endings, and the backstory behind them, for the players who constantly ask why at the game and want to find out more.

Player may use this as an escape too being a young based audience for the game there's an increased chance players may be experiencing difficulty and often find games as an escape especially dark souls because being stuck on a boss for a long period amount of time it can be very distracting as well as angering hence why the game is good if you want to take your mind off things.

production process

concept and concept art
in order to have the concept and concept art you must have the idea of the game you wan to create so essentially concept art is really important because from there you can change and tweak things.
http://www.iamag.co/features/the-art-of-dark-souls-iii/ this is where i got the concept art from
world materials art i got from http://conceptartworld.com/books/dark-souls-design-works/
the concept art is illustrations from peoples ideas on certain ideas and is used for a base idea stereo typically for a game/book/film

preproduction of dark souls
The preproducton of dark souls 3 basically was inititated by all of these game requirement, the production, alpha & beta.
Borderline the preproduction was basically the idea of the souls series that miyazaki had of dark ouls and dark souls 2 and then obviously bloodborne, that was when miyazaki went to focus on the bloodborne series leaving his developers to solo dark souls 3, when the developers urgently needed his help to finish and add his touch to the content in dark souls 3 quoted by miyazaki, the dark souls 3 game initially started without miyazaki.

production
In order to have a production you need to have concept art, otherwise you wont know what you're producing, you need to have ideas this is where the relationship between the two are important.
Game development, production, or design is a process that starts from an idea or concept. Often the idea is based on a alteration of an existing game concept so basically the concept art of the game is a production, and ofcourse started somewhere. The game idea may fall within one or more genres. Designers often experiment with different genres such as RPG shooters and combat based games.

The production for dark souls/3 Miyazaki is co-directing Dark Souls 3 with Isamu Okano, the director of Steel Battalion: Heavy Armour, but Miyazaki was keen to stress he's overseen every aspect of the present incarnation. “It was quite early. It’s basically been built from the ground up. So there’s no sense of having something that was made which was then touched up.” is what miyazaki said when he realised the creators of dark souls 3 needed his help.

Recently after the dark souls 3 game launched Hidetaka miyazaki stated in an interview (quote)

"It'd be a lie if I said I have no concerns about that. I don't think it'd be the right choice to continue indefinitely creating Souls and Bloodborne games. I'm considering Dark Souls 3 to be the big closure on the series. That's not just limited to me, but From Software and myself together want to aggressively make new things in the future. Dark Souls 3 will mark the last game where the development project began before I became president. The next title will be a game that was conceived while I was president. I believe that From Software has to create new things. There will be new types of games coming from us, and Dark Souls 3 is an important marker in the evolution of From Software."

The link for dark souls official trailer 2015 E3 http://dai.ly/x2u2kxq

alpha & beta

lead developer hidetaka miyazai at the world premier launch of dark souls 3


The alpha and beta of the game
The alpha is basically a version of the game before the Beta, and the Beta is a version of the game before the official launch of the game, dark souls 3 in this instance.
there wasnt an alpha for any of the dark souls series especially 3 but there was a beta for dark souls 3 and players adored it, obviously crtitics claiming that it's too hard and unfair aren't familiar with the dark souls gameplay or Hidetaka miyazaki done extremely well in his last souls game.
The alpha and beta are important in game production because it gives the developer a chance to hear what th community and fanbase have to say about the game and gives honest feedback, hidetaka miyazaki would want his game to be the best it can be and listening to his fans was the right way to go about it. The relationships between game production and alpha and beta is solemnly important because if we compare alpha and beta to the development, the alpha and eta in this case improve the game development and they have a very strong relationship together in game production, if you can listen to your fans and solve bugs and glitches in the alpha and beta's of the game it's going to improve your development either way.

post-production
post production is basically part of the progress that it takes for game-making, and serves a part in game making importantly because it's sort of a line that has all your ideas pinned onto parts of the line, that needs to just be joined up by extra content, story-line, lore or just the buildup to a main event. It's crucial because it's where ll your ideas are, sort of near the end of the actual production just needing a few additional parts. It serves an important role in dark souls because dark souls 3 is infact the last of the souls series to be made and I think hidetaka miyazaki would want his game to be memorable in a special way such as challenging. And i feel that Hidetaka miyazaki lived upto the challenging aspect as the game offers some of the hardest bosses and advanced gameplay.

developer
The developer of dark souls is fromsoftware and without the developer in this game design, the game wouldn't really exist unless somebody or another company came along and invested in dark souls. The developer role is crucial in game development and is basically the main bond that holds everything together, it's important in dark souls 3 because the game is very complex and this part of gamemaking would've served a useful strategy to them and ofcourse made the game turn out how it had. 

directors of dark souls

Hidetaka miyazaki is the ongoing main director of dark souls and his creativity of games perpetuates a forbidden style as Miyazaki's games often invoke the use of high difficulty, strong visual and environmental storytelling, and providing a large amount of the game's setting and character lore through mostly vague text, with the Souls series in particular being notable for it, the souls series anticipated a detailed lore which attracts many players.

His game styles and inspiration concluded from Ico, the early dragon quest games, the legend of zelda and the king fields video game series.

Manga series such as beserk, saint seya, JoJo's bizzare adventures, and devil man.

Literary works such as H.P lovecraft, Bram stoker, and George R.R Martin, gamebooks such as Sorcery and runequest.

Miyazaki is also inspired by European architecture and uses it as a way of environmental storytelling.

 

Miyazaki was inspired by european architecture such as the Milan cathedral in Italy, modelling a central game after it. 

dark souls purpose
The souls series was created because players of the gaming community were not yet faced with a more advanced game that required in-depth character builds and an ascending difficulty against AI, that was when miyazaki gave the gaming community what they wanted.
who made darks souls have a purpose? Bandai namco
what made dark souls have a purpose? the fans made dark souls have a purpose because they were the ones who wanted this game after the original release of scholar of the first sin, the souls fans demanded a series and therefore got what they wanted. The community is what made dark souls have a purose, especially dark souls 3 because Miyazaki created 3 when the fans loved bloodborne.

distribution & promotion

what is distribution?
distribution is how something is shared and what way it is shared across people.

what is promotion?
Promotion is publishing a product so it is seen among people.

what do distributors do?
Distributors take on an act of marketing the product, they can also sell the product to other clients.

what to promoters do?
Promoters encourage the sales of their product, answering questions about the product and explaining the use of it. T

Where did they distribute the product to?
Where can you buy it *dark souls 3*?
They distributed the product across all platforms with a beta, and a competition to get to play the alpha of the game, they also had a convention at E3 and input adverts all of social media to get the game across, interviews were released before the launch of dark souls 3, and after to get people's attention. The magazines that would advertise would obviously be game magazines such as official playstation magazine, steam magazine and xbox magazine. They would carry this out because the magazine would be advertising a game, they would be displayed on billboards, game events such as E3 or insomnia and there were featured interviews with hidetaka miyazaki at e3 for the launch of dark souls 3, and there was alot of interviews with Hidetaka miyazaki with IGN and other game interviewers: dark souls interview hidetaka miyazaki
You can access the game on steam, playstation store and the Xbox store.
Print ads would be found in stores and game stores mainly, same as the locations of the accessibility, I think they used this idea to promote their game because interviews are very effective and a lot of the gaming community watch them, an interview with another creator would blow up and be highly interesting, also they used posters, deals and teaser trailers for the game launched at E3 because this would make the fans of dark souls and just ordinary gamers appeal to them, it would make somebody who has never played the souls series but the game, and it would hype the fans up making hidetaka miyazaki more money. They promoted the products in these ways so everybody would see them, even if they necessarily don't buy the product reaching their target audience by advertising in gaming conventions such as insomnia and E3, on their fanpage, social media and in game stores and retail stores such as argos and tesco.
dark souls 3 trailer