![]() ![]() Our context in this case was the United States, although the games that resulted were also released in other regions, due to the broad international reach of the characters. So we set about doing a study to answer the query: What could we expect preschoolers to be capable of in the context of hand-held game play, and how might the child development literature inform us as we proceeded with the creation of a new outlet for this age group? ![]() What exactly preschoolers could do with the system, however, was a bit of a mystery. There were a few games on the market at the time which had characters that appealed to the younger set, but our game producers did not think that the game mechanics or design were appropriate for preschoolers. In the spring of 2007, our preschool-game production team at Nickelodeon had a hunch that the Nintendo DS - with its new features, such as the microphone, small size and portability, and its relatively low price point - was a ripe gaming platform for preschoolers. Instead, exploratory and formative research has to be undertaken in order to truly understand those audiences, their abilities, their perspective, and their needs.ģ. While both of those types of research are important, and may be appropriate for dealing with adult consumers, neither of them aids in designing better games, especially when it comes to designing for an audience that may have particular needs, such as preschoolers or senior citizens. Research in the video game market is typically done at two stages: some time close to the end of the product cycle, in order to get feedback from consumers, so that a marketing strategy can be developed and at the very end of the product cycle to ‘fix bugs’ in the game. Portable systems have done a particularly good job of penetrating the younger market.Ģ. Although the majority of gaming equipment is still designed for a much older target audience, once a game system enters the household it is potentially available for all family members, including the youngest. Given young children’s insatiable eagerness to learn, coupled with the fact that they are clearly surrounded by these media, we predict that preschoolers will both continue and increasingly begin to adopt video games for personal enjoyment. In 2006, Rideout and Hamel reported that as many as 29 percent of preschool children (children between two and six years old) in the United States had played console video games, and 18 percent had played hand-held ones. Although video games were first developed for adults, they are no longer exclusively reserved for the grown ups in the home. ![]()
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