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[gimymblert]

I want to point to assassin's creed to support my point. Hoodie + assassin is not new, there is a long tradition, assassin's creed distillate the idea to iconicity. It does this by increasing the relevance as a symbol, they took the concept of an assassin, link it to eagle as predatory, strengthen the symbol with key poses and actions that convey the right images (leap of faith, kill jump, vantage point) and the hood design that push even more the comparison without being too overt (the cut at the bottom that emphasis movement and jump as wing, the little beak of the hood). And the hidden blade which became the whole symbole of attacking a prey just like an eagle open their claws. The game is not literal about it, he is conceptually similar to the metaphor to enhance the identification. It's a huge success. Linking aspect to deeper symbol that link to the core concept and add up to support each other is a great way to create iconic character. The right concept, the right support and the right context for identification. It can happen accidentally when the audience just read more than you expect, but it can be define consciously too.

[Graham-]

too bad he often plays like generic parkour/brawler

[s0]

Okay, that last picture down there is intentionally misleading. 2000's was the decade when Tak, Sackboy, Sly Cooper and Ratchet and Clank were introduced. You can't act like only middle-aged white people were mascots during that time.

most of the characters in the last picture arent even "mascots" lol

[Graham-]

I think someone mentioned Angry Birds earlier. Talking about market research.... Angry Birds I think was a game at the end of a line of several dozen made by the same company, and the product of a serious effort into market research on what was hot in the casual scene. The creators more or less charted trends, found the middle point, and designed characters that fit the mold.

[gimymblert]

 Nop angry bird character was designed first and they worked internally, they do have spend on marketing strategically, going for one market at a time, and then banker thingy happen and helped the product by providing a fitting metaphor.

[Graham-]

"It took Rovio over 50 games to come up with their Angry Birds concept. Hundreds of designs, and three years in development. Lucky break? Sure, but you can’t have a lucky break without failing a few times first."

http://startupwebguide.com/2011/07/19/how-angry-birds-saved-rovio/

[gimymblert]

GP: How did you and the team come up with the concept of Angry Birds, a game where players use a slingshot to launch unhappy birds into structures and enemy pigs?

MH: We were doing work for hire, so our strategy was that it will take a number of titles before we could realistically make one hit. We started taking less contracts to free up our own guys for internally-created projects. Then for the actual game we had a number of proposals coming from the team, and one of them was just this screenshot. Many of the proposals that we got were really well thought out, and then we had this one screenshot of this angry bird character just trudging around on the ground. Everybody in the room really liked the bird characters.

In the first meeting we said 'okay, we should look at this character and come up with gameplay for it.' Prior to this meeting we had set up strict criteria to determine which game we would go with, but we threw that out for the angry bird character.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/206831/the_origins_of_angry_birds.html

[Graham-]

I think you're taking that bit a little out of context.

We had a really small team and simply set out to make the best game we could. We had the opportunity to make one more game, as Rovio didn’t have any more money left. I pitched lots of ideas when we thought about what kind of game we wanted to make. I had dozens and dozens of game ideas with various characters. The birds were originally part of a different concept. I had created a piece of concept art featuring the birds – which everybody loved at the studio – so we settled on using them.

The way that I design games is by drawing pictures. I have to see how the game looks in order to understand it. I try to visualise the gameplay for myself, and drawing it helps. It gives me a feel for what the game’s about. We spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of game we could make that could be a hit. We looked at a lot of games on the web, such as Flash-based games, and we studied what kind of games people liked to play. We wanted to minimise the risks, so to speak, and go with what seemed to work for people. Two-dimensional physics-based games were really popular at the time, especially the kind of games where you launched something in the air. So we decided on that genre and then put the birds that everyone liked into the game. We got the publishing deal for Angry Birds based on that single piece of concept art.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/meet-man-behind-angry-birds/#null

The concept of the birds was a "hit" with the team because of their experience. They had strong intuitions about what would work.

edit:

There is some combination of personal taste and comprehension of the market that combines for success. Both things are important. I did not mean to say the latter was more important than the former.

[gimymblert]

But still wasn't "market effort first on what was hot", no trend charted no found middle ground and then designing the character.

Those help sure, but it's a counter example of the methodology I said. However this is true they are all experiences peoples which has goes through trend charted, which help have confidence and intuition later in gut checking. The way they launch the game with an animation akin to old looney toons show how well they have internalize some approach.

[Graham-]

Well what I mean is that experience does "the charting."