Business plan analysis

 

Business plan analysis

 

Executive Summary: An executive summary is a summary of the key points and sections within your business plan. It’s put at the start of your plan so that different businesses can read it and see what is in each section, and where they are in your plan. This includes sections such as: Introduction, Role and strength, Need/Problem and Unique Solution. Most if not all games companies will use and produce business plans when creating new games or IP’s.

 

Company Description: A company description is describing what your company is, who it is marketing to and the goals surrounding it. For example, you would write about the different products and services you are offering with your business, the name, the target customers and the advantages that you would have within the market. Big companies such as Blizzard have these company descriptions and overviews which go as follows: “Activision Blizzard Inc (Activision Blizzard), a subsidiary of Microsoft Corp, is a gaming company that develops and publishes interactive software products, entertainment content, and services for mobile devices, video game consoles, and personal computers.”

 

Market Analysis: A market analysis is a more detailed assessment of the target customers that your product is trying to appeal to. It investigates the market as a whole and the competitive advantages and disadvantages that may come with your product. It lets you and the other businesses see how likely your product is to work withing the area you are selling in. This is again, something that big companies will usually do if they are expanding out into a new market, or from a starting company that needs to analyse the landscape around them.

 

Organization and Management: Organization and Management refers to two different sections within the business plan, the organization section referring to how the plan will be structured, and the people involved with it. The management section referring to the managers and what they will be doing for the business, and how they can each help the business in a unique way. Companies may have sections on their websites which display the different managers and what they do. Activision, EA and CD Projekt Red are some good examples of this.

 

Products or Services: The products and services are two sections which talk about the different products that you will be selling to your target customers. It’s mainly a clarification for the aspects of your product/service, for example how much it sells for, how much estimated money you will gain. For games, this would be describing how much the game itself cost, and if it has any in-game purchases, and how much those would cost. An example being items in the Fortnite shop, a in game battle pass etc.

 

Marketing and Sales Strategy: This section goes into how you plan to market your idea, as well as the details on how you’re going to gain profit from your product. Its your plan for taking the everyday customer and seeing how you could make them buy your product instead of anyone else’s. These are usually done by charts which show how much a person might need this item during their daily lives. Games companies will find many ways to do this, examples being advertisements on YouTube or other social media, or even on the sides of busses and IRL promotional events. Going to places like E3 and conventions can give huge traction to new game releases coming.

 

Financial Projections: The financial projections are ways of using existing or estimated data to see how well your business would become in the future. This tends to be done by looking through different routes your company could take and how much that would change your entire plan, this could be anything from increasing to decreasing the price of your product. This is all done to see how much it would affect the profit that you would end up making and is also helpful in testing your product in different finical areas.

 

Game Concept and Development: Game concepting and developing is the main way to start thinking and developing on an idea. There are a lot of different ways that businesses might go about coming up with different concepts for a certain idea, developing them in new ways to see which one would work best as a game. Thought it’s hard to find examples, this is a stage pretty much all games companies will go through as they are developing ideas. During development, companies will also have to look at the different platforms that they could be developing for.

 

Technology and Platforms: A lot of research has gone into the different platforms and technology that games can be run on. And there is a huge market for each platform, the mobile market being the biggest, with PC and Consoles following behind. Businesses will need to do this research to see which platform their game would work the best on, if it’s a smaller game with simple mechanics, it could work better for mobile. But if it’s a big game with hours of content then it might be better to put it on console or PC. With a lot of new platforms coming out, and VR getting more expansive, there is going to be new technology which developers can start creating and promoting games on.

 

Monetization Strategy: Games companies will have many ways to monetize their game, but it also must fit with their game as well. For example, it can’t be a game with a subscription model which would just be pay to win. This is why a lot of game companies and developers go with customization, they put item shops into their games in which players can customize parts of their character or in-game items. Mobile games will use ad monetization more than anything, but console and PC games will usually have some sort of in-game currency which you have to buy.

 

Market Trends and Audience Analysis: This is where companies look at what games have been trending recently and will make decisions relating to that. For example, if 2D pixel platformers have been big in the market recently, then companies will see that and hop on the trend. They’ll quickly try to push out a game whilst it’s still trendy, though this can also happen for expansions for games or just game updates in general. A great example being Fortnite and how they are constantly adding new and trendy thing to their game to keep players involved.

 

Competitive Analysis: Different companies will do this to analyse the competitors and what might compete with their games. It’s a way to see their weaknesses and their strengths, which can be used to find a gap in the market which they are not meeting. This can also be used to size up the area that you’re going into, if a company is looking into battle royal type games, they might want to reconsider seeing how big the market and competition around it is.

 

 Intellectual Property Considerations: When considering different aspects of your IP, there is a lot to think about. It could be thinking about if your IP is too like someone else’s that it might come off as a copy which could get you into legal trouble with a much more popular IP. The consideration could also come from using someone’s IP, if you were making a game about the Simpson’s for example, if you completely changed how one of the characters looked and acted, you would be changing the IP which could lead into being sued.

 

 Community and Social Engagement: With games and promoting them, there are usually different managers that are given the role to engage with the community and on social media. This could be anything from running social media events and livestreams, to just posting on the account and keeping people updated about the game. If the game is coming out within a tightly knit community, it could be posting of specific forums to give your community updates on the progress or upcoming updates. For example, Elden ring has a Instagram, which posts updates and new things that are to come to the game (patch notes etc)

 

User Acquisition and Retention: Companies have a lot of strategies to get and keep customers, when marketing to them, they will use strategies such as pre-ordering to get players interested even if the game is not out yet. Adding bonuses along with a pre-order can persuade more customers to buy it early and get invested. When it comes to keeping them, constantly updating your game and keeping your community engaged is the key, releasing patch notes and even setting up events for your players to take part in.

 

 Game Lifecycle and Updates: The lifecycle of games can vary quite a lot depending on how they are approached. Many games now are going into early access and are then released in a better state later, they do this to gain support and money for further development. Additionally, games are having a lot of expansions added to them if the original games do very well. Though the expansions may come in the form of big content updates.