As a toys to life game, Starlink: Battle for Atlas is going after a young audience, but that doesn’t mean the Skylanders market: it wants to be a game between traditional kids games, and AAA shooters, which are often tailored towards adults.
By making a point not to talk down to its target audience, aged 9 to 12, Starlink has found older players enjoying it in play testing.
“When we started development, we were aiming the game at children aged 8 or 9 to 12, that’s where we started,” Creative Director Laurent Malville told Stevivor.
“As we had more players come in for play tests, we realised two things. The first was that there is a gap in the market between traditional kids games, which tends to be more linear, and big open world AAA games targeting 18 and over.
“Often young players this generations are going to finish more traditional kids games and after that they don’t have a lot of other games to turn to before jumping into an experience that is 18+ they probably shouldn’t be playing.
“We started very early to position the game for younger players, but being sure to not talk down to young players. As a result of that, the second thing we’ve seen in play tests is that older players really enjoy the game, and particularly the open world aspects and the progression system, the mods, the pilots’ skill trees and their levels. So I hope players of all ages have a great time.”
Starlink: Battle for Atlas launches on 16 October 2018 for Xbox One, PS4 and Switch.
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