Research into the Space Trade Simulator genre, and Elite.

Elite (1984)

The IP I will be using for my game is Elite. It is regarded as one of the greatest games of all time, and is the father of the modern Space Trade Simulator genre; despite not being the first game of its type (Star Traveller came before it). The game itself is considered the greatest example of its game type, and is the game that almost every other space exploration game is measured against.

The original game, Elite, had the player start off in a Cobra MK III, with 100 credits and one main goal; Make money. They could do this in a number of ways, be it trade, pirating, bounty hunting or mining. The overall idea was to allow the player to essentially make their own way, with only one simple goal to keep them occupied. Because of the way that the game worked, the player could jump between the different methods of monetary gain, simply because of the fact that ship type is the only main difference (and weaponry)

The original game also had a couple of other key aspects, and despite these originally only being there due to technological constraints by the systems they were running on, has actually helped to enhance the gaming experience. The main aspect is that systems had only one star, which was orbited by a single planet, and that in turn was orbited by a single space station. Similarly, its wireframe nature became one of the defining things about the game. And one of the better parts of the game play and the universe was the fact that there was such a rich and deep galaxy that the player could explore; there would be alliances between planets, a stock market that could be affected or even cornered, police ships that monitor your every move and make sure you are kept in line (or try to), and dynamic instances of pirates, traders and other free-flowing things.

Braben and Bell, the creators of the game cite numerous science fiction sources as their inspiration, like Star Wars, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and the original BattleStar Galactica. Despite its numerous similarities to the tabletop Traveller, it was said by Braben that the original game wasn’t based on it.

Important things to remember if I am to create a sequel to this iconic game is the freeform aspect; limiting the player is something which needs to be avoided. Similarly, having a rich galaxy for the player to explore is one of the very key aspects of Elite, making sure that there is a diverse story lying beneath the surface.

The game is one that consumers would be wanting, for a couple of reasons. Recently, on Kickstarter, one of the original creators of the game, David Braben has put up the project of “Elite; Dangerous” this sequel, which is set to be made by him and his new team at Frontier development, reached its funding goal of £1,250,000, and surpassed it even by £250,000. The fact that there was so much interest and that it was funded shows that there is still a dedicated crowd among the fans of Space Sims.

Galaxy on Fire 2 (2012)

I also researched Galaxy on Fire 2, because it is a Space Sim which was created for tablet and phone use. Available on Android and iOS devices, it is a lighter version of the classic Space Trade Simulator genre, in that it is optimized more for portable devices. Being a successful release on the Android app store (4/5 of 4000 votes) it is a good example of the genre on phones and tablets.

The game uses an onscreen GUI, which controls the direction and angle that the ship flies at. This is different from other games of this type, most of which opt for a mouse follow system and controls to modify pitch/yaw. GoF2 opted for this system because it allowed a great deal of control over the ship, in a relatively small space (corners of the screen). This is, as I said, different from other Space Sim games, but being the only real Space Sim on android, it shows how good that specific approach is.

The game is more story driven than Elite, with various missions ushering the player in a certain direction. This is most likely due to the limitations technologically of phone platforms, meaning that larger, more in depth worlds and open ended exploration where too intensive for the system.

So to take from this game, I need to remember to make the control system intuitive or interesting, hopefully not in a way that is awkward to use or hinders game play. Similarly, I will want to take into account the limitations of the platform that the game is being developed for, because it uses a different processing architecture and doesn’t allow for as much to go on. This means that most likely I won’t be able to have a sprawling, open world for the player to explore, and that at best if I want to do that it will all have to be instance based (where it loads it star system by star system). Trade is in this game, but it isn’t the main focus; it is there because it is a key part of the genre, but the game is developed more for a combat/dogfight style of game play. I feel that a more trade centred game, more like Elite, would be something that the market would enjoy. I am not, however, suggesting taking out all of the combat elements. I simply mean to focus more on the trade element.

Target Audience

For this kind of game, audiences will tend to be older, more “nerdy” males. This is partly down to the huge number of Space Sim games that were released in the 70’s and 80’s, but also because there has been a decline in the number of Space Sim games since the 90’s, due to their open-endedness, complex controls and immense detail. Younger generations therefore will be less likely to be interested in a game like this, simply because they didn’t grow up with it to the same extent. I therefore suggest that the Target demographic is Males aged between 25 and 50. I also have questionnaire data to support this. I created the questionnaire, which I sent around to many of my friends, but also asked their parents to answer it, and many of my working colleges were asked as well, contained only a few simple questions. It asked; do you like space simulator games, your age, sex, what platform they would be most likely to play on (Android, iOS or PC, and if they would prefer it on phone or tablet) as well as what specific aspects you enjoyed about space sims, from a list (or, if their answer was no, they didn’t like space sims, what things they didn’t like about them). I collected about 40 different questionnaires, which a range of ages, from 18 upwards. Although a lot of the responses where that they did enjoy space simulator games, the amount of 35-45 year old men who answered yes to that question was quite high. This is important in seeing what platform they would be most likely to play it on as well. Next we need to see what the most common phone owned by people in that age range is, so that the platform can be properly targeted. One study showed that for Males aged between 18-54, it was more often cited that they owned android phones as opposed to iPhones. This suggests that an Android system would be better to develop for, when considering the target audience purely.

The target audience gave me a number of aspects that they particularly enjoyed about this particular genre, those being the combat, as it is exciting and fast paced, the trade as it fills a niche that other games don’t fill, as well as the exploration aspect, that a lot of games of this genre do quite well. Using these as the core 3 aspects I will work on when attempting to implement into my game should hopefully mean I please the largest amount of my target audience, and the data suggests that if I were to make the game for a phone system (which a lot of respondents said they would enjoy) that the Android system would be better received due to the skew in ownership.