I''m designing a 2D racing game right now and debating if I should add violent weapons as part of the gameplay (think of missiles, bombs...). I know that a lot of retail games have violence, but they can have a very different audience than shareware games, for example, Steve said 40% of Dexterity''s audience is female. Anyways, I was wondering how big of a factor violence is to the success of shareware games? Would violence turn away some potential customers (ei: parents buying for their young kids), or is it really not that big of a deal?

I dont know but I though Wolfenstine and Doom were pretty good Think about the age group and gender that you envision playing your game, ask yourself if they would like some volent weapons in your game. If they would then go for it. You need to know your customer, your customers may not be the same people as steve''s customers. There''s lots of people out there who wouldn''t look twice at a puzzle game like Dweep and still others that love it.

Know who your customers are and go out of your way to delight them and you''ll do fine.
(admittedly this is harder then it sounds)

Hmmmm. My sister used to love Doom more than I did.

It depends how graphic the violence is, and your target audience. I mean, trying to satisfy everbody might actually lose customers, as the game could be too general. I personally would be more likely to buy a racing game with violence, because I''m not a pure racing fan. I''d say for every violent game, make a non-violent game, instead of trying to cater for 2 audiences at once.

Those are all good points, but it does depend on your target audience. Steve said that his games can be described as "Lapware". When kids sit on their grandparents'' lap and play games together. I don''t know about you, but my grandparets sure didn''t want me playing violent games . Although it would be probably best for Will O to add weapons because it would make the game more fun, it will make up for the loss of sale due to violence.

Hope this helps!

Whether or not the violence keeps parents from buying it would depend on the parents.

You could put in a parental lock and make the game no more than a race.

Adding weapons does change the feel of the game and the general goals along the way of winning the race. The option to turn off weapons hopefully wouldn't change the nature of the game so much as to change what would be necessary to round out the experience. For instance, putting in little ramps to get past obstacles or acquire speed boosts might be too much if the use of weapons also exists in the game.


[edited by - Waverider on July 6, 2002 9:12:10 AM]

Thanks for your input! The violence would probably change the feel a bit, because I would add a hp bar, you could blow up your oponents for more points and then you could get blown up by other cars. I was also thinking of adding an "arena death match" mode, where you have to kill all the other cars to win (now this is plain racing anymore ^_^).
So about the target audience, what kind of people like racing games (lol)? Or does it depend on the game itself?

Sorry, that was me!

Have you thought about non-violent weapons? Although I have no research to back this up, my gut tells me that a lot of the parents that have problems with missles and explosions would not have a problem with oil slicks or confusion weapons like weapons that turn the controls (so up is left, left is down, etc) or blur the screen. Stuff like that can add a lot of the fun of weapons while still keeping things mostly non-violent.

Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Coming July 2002

LordKronos: that''s a good idea! I was planning on adding oil slicks and some "power ups" (speed boost, invincability...), but I never really thought of "non-violent" weapons. One problem is that the weapons would also have to effect the AI cars, so unfortunately the blur or confusion would have much of an effect.

For those who like racing games (or want to give some input), do you think multiplayer is an important feature in racing games? In one Steve''s article, he says that it is not worth the effort. I think this is true for puzzle games, but I doubt it is for racing games. And what kind of (non/barely-violent)weapons or power-ups would you like to see in a racing game?