How to Understand the Gaming Audience

3 weeks
0 hours per week
Digital certificate when eligible
Introductory level

Find out more about how to join this course

Better understand your audience with creative empathy

While the audience sits at the heart of any successful communication, the community you build is what supercharges gaming. Often called the new social media, this medium is where people want to interact, engage, and spend their time.

On this three-week course from D&AD, you’ll explore how to build and engage a gaming audience, maintain their attention, and empower them to do good.

Whether you’re inserting your brand into a game, or being inspired by the power of gaming to enhance an existing experience, knowing the steps your audience will take is vital.

You’ll learn to see the power of games through the eyes of your audience; what’s their character, perspective, and identity, and how does this affect their experience?

Explore gamification and how it can improve creative communications

By deploying multiple techniques and tools, games successfully create a place where people want to spend their time.

On this course, you’ll learn how gamification can enrich your advertising and marketing comms, and how the social aspect of maintaining a community can positively impact all areas of creative communications.

Create an authentic audience experience

Creating an authentic experience starts with understanding and empathize with your audience.

In this section, you’ll move to the next step and learn how to create an authentic gaming experience based on audience motivations and player types, plus understand the importance of characters and know how to overcome the uncertainty in gaming.

Learn from experts in the field

This course is led by D&AD and features content created by a variety of experts in the field from top companies in the industry such as Massive Entertainment and Phantom.

Syllabus

Week 1
Understanding Your Audience
- Welcome
  Welcome to D&AD's course exploring the gamer at the heart of the gaming industry, their mission and motivations.
- Current Context
  The gaming industry is a vast landscape of platforms, streaming, games developers, and more. Recap the current context we're in and being to dive deeper into the audiences within.
- Empathy and Your Audience
  Whether you're designing a gaming solution or creating a brand-led engagement within a game, understanding why games are compelling is key.
- Play
  With gaming, creating a story and experience that has the element of interactivity and play is essential. Explore the different mechanisms utilised to create playful - and playable - games.
Week 2
Engage and Entertain
- Player Types
  Explore why gamers game through the role of player types and the power and agency of players.
- Gamification and Engagement
  Regardless of the outcome, gaming is a powerful tool to engage people, keep them interested and achieve a design goal. Explore the ways of engaging and building a community through gamification.
- Gaming for Good
  While the principles of gaming can be employed for fun, communication, and more, they are also put to use for education, health and more, which we'll explore here.
Week 3
Gameplay, Character and Uncertainty
- Gearing for Gameplay
  Gameplay isn't always pre-prescribed. It's a combination of theme, character, experience, story, and much more. In these steps we explore some of these building blocks
- Authentic Engagement
  With a discerning community, already skeptical about brand involvement, explore how to approach engagement with authenticity, relevance and in the right way.
- Wrap-up
  A final reflection of this course and what you've covered

When would you like to start?

Start straight away and join a global classroom of learners. If the course hasn’t started yet you’ll see the future date listed below.

Available now

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

Explore who gamers are and the principles that engage them in games
Apply empathy and persona mapping to get under the skin of your audience
Assess the use of gamification in creative communications
Investigate how to create authentic connections with different audiences

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for creatives that want to tap into the power of gaming for their communications, marketing, and advertising.

Whether you’re a brand builder, social media executive, or business owner, this course will guide you through how to harness gaming and use immersive storytelling to create a community for your customers.

If you want to explore this subject further, you may be interested in these courses, from the same provider, which share the same subject and overall learning outcomes:

Who developed the course?

D&AD

Since 1962, D&AD has been inspiring a community of creative thinkers by celebrating and stimulating the finest in design and advertising.


Ways to learn	Buy this course	Subscribe & save	Limited access
Choose the best way to learn for you!	$94/one-off payment	$19.99 For the first month. Automatically renews	Free
	Fulfill your current learning need	Develop skills to further your career	Sample the course materials
Access to this course	tick	tick	Access expires 12 Apr 2023
Access to 1,000+ courses	cross	tick	cross
Learn at your own pace	tick	tick	cross
Discuss your learning in comments	tick	tick	tick
Certificate when you're eligible	Printed and digital	Digital only	cross
	Continue & Upgrade
		Cancel for free anytime

Ways to learn

Choose the best way to learn for you!

Subscribe & save

$19.99

For the first month. Automatically renews

Develop skills to further your career

Access to this course
Access to 1,000+ courses
Learn at your own pace
Discuss your learning in comments
Digital certificate when you're eligible

Cancel for free anytime

Buy this course

$94/one-off payment

Fulfill your current learning need

Access to this course
Learn at your own pace
Discuss your learning in comments
Printed and digital certificate when you’re eligible

Continue & Upgrade

Limited access

Free

Sample the course materials

Access expires 12 Apr 2023

Find out more about certificates, Unlimited or buying a course (Upgrades)

T&Cs apply.

Find out more about certificates, Unlimited or buying a course (Upgrades)

T&Cs apply.

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Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate

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