Gaming Personas: Who are they?

Introduction 

The mobile gaming industry has experienced immense growth in the most segmented of themes and genres. Mobile game publishers can see revenue growth in the more well-established genres of Historical and High Fantasy, while also seeing success in more unique themes like Insects and Fashion! Why have games developed such a varied player base over the years? Simple: The idea of what a “gamer” even is has become even more varied than the games they buy.

 

The scope of what makes someone a “gamer”, demographically speaking, is difficult to pin down when just about anyone can get into mobile games at any given time. Around 3 billion mobile gamers have been identified across the globe, meaning your friends, children, neighbors, co-workers, and many others you interact with daily (in any and all age groups) could be committing time to mobile games with any combination of individual focuses. 

 

The sheer volume of people playing mobile games makes it all the more challenging to dig into what exactly will land with the target demographic because said demographic has become so broad in their individual profiles and interests.

 

If you and your business are looking to market a mobile gaming app, nailing down exactly what kind of “gamers” you want to target is vital, but how do you identify who you should target when the range is so immense? 

 

To tackle these questions, you need to develop an understanding and capacity to identify Gaming Personas. What are Gaming Personas exactly? What does a company need to know and do to identify them? 

Let’s break it down:

Gaming Personas: Who are they and why do you want them? 

 

Gaming Personas are fictitiously personified segmentations of the target gaming demographic based on their personal information, behaviors, and interests. 

 

When developing a gaming persona, you are taking a look at a group’s respective individual qualities as people, players, and consumers to categorize and develop one or more core groups in which to guide your marketing for your mobile gaming app.

 

What a Gaming Persona might look like comes down to what you are looking to segment from your broader player base and how big the sample size is. You could have Gaming Personas that fall in line strictly with spending habits, time, and energy committed to gaming, what aspects of your game(s) players are most interested in, or all sorts of combinations of the above and then some!

 

In whatever way your Gaming Personas shape up to be like, the process of identifying them allows for many benefits for both marketing and mobile game development in general, such as:

1. A keen understanding of your game(s) demographics: Gaming Personas allow for a robust framework in which to identify who is playing your game, to what extent, and for what reasons in an easy-to-digest manner that can be acted on efficiently.

 

2.  A leg up on how to best market to your player base: By developing Gaming Personas for your mobile game(s), you can determine the best means by which to tailor your marketing to certain players, which can increase the effectiveness of the marketing 2 to 5 times over than those who do not target specific groups.  

 

3.  A framework in which to guide the development of your game: By using Gaming Personas, you can track what aspects of the game(s) your player base resonate with the most, and steer the development of the games services and marketing to capitalize on that interest in the most efficient manner.

 

In short, making use of Gaming Personas allows for an easier time understanding, communicating, and selling to your core player base. 

 

With all this in mind, what does one have to do to start developing some Gaming Personas? It will require a whole lot of research!

 

 

Crafting a Gaming Persona 

As discussed so far, Gaming Personas are generated by breaking down like-minded members of a game(s) player base into identifiable subgroups you use to personify said groups as a whole. 

 

To even start the process of making a Gaming Persona, you need to gather information from your player base on an individual level and scale up from there. How you go about this can be done through all kinds of means: affinity maps, focus groups, surveys, analytics, and internal data research (just to name a few)!

 

For the sake of ease (and fun), let’s generate an example Gaming Persona using a fictitious individual as the basis, where potential areas of data collection you and your company would be interested in using when making their personas will be highlighted.

1. Name and Aim the Persona:

As gaming personas are goal-oriented creations, defining what you are seeking to do with the gaming persona and how you wish to identify it because of that, is a good first step. How you name it is subjective, but aligning the name of your persona with something easy to grasp that can cover your overall goal sufficiently would be a good start!

 

Example:

 Persona Name- Example 

The Goal of Persona- To show how to make a gaming persona. 

2. Basic Personal Information: 

Personal information from your player base is undeniably vital info for any targeted marketing, so collecting info on your player base’s age, gender, living and financial situation, etc. is where you want to start! Data like this is foundational to the development of gaming personas, as each unique segmentation that might arise from such varied groups, no matter how basic, will require different marketing and design tactics. 

 

Example:

 Quincy Clarence (Age 32, Male, Married with 2 kids, United States, $96,560 Salary, etc.) 

3. App Usage Habits:

How is your user base playing your mobile game? How long are they committing to it? Are they willing to buy in-app purchases? No matter what sort of mobile game(s) you are looking to develop Gaming Personas for, questions like the above are no doubt vital to inform you and your company of the segmented focuses of your user base. 

 

Example: 

Quincy Clarence (I play 2 hours a day on average, I am willing to spend $0.99 to $5 on in-app purchases on average, I play competitive the most, casual the least)

4. Favorite Game Aspects:

We all have our media preferences, and figuring out what your player base prefers will make for a stronger Gaming Persona. You should look for what genres of games your user base is most interested in (Fantasy, Cartoon, Historical, etc.), the exact kind of games they like most (Card Games, Tower Defense, Tycoons, etc.), and the broad reasons we enjoy games (story, gameplay, collecting, etc).

 

Example:

 Quincy Clarence (Favorite Genre-Historical, Game Type-Tower Defense, Reason-Gameplay)

5. Reasons for Gaming: 

The root reasons people engage with games can be more informative than one might expect. A gamer could enjoy a game for the competition of the game, the sense of escapism it affords them, or the socialization and comradery the game can allow. Identifying the personal stake a player has in your game makes it easier for your company to identify what they should be selling in their marketing of your game(s).

 

Example: 

Quincy Clarence (Reasons to Play– Escapism and Competition) 

6. Shape the Gaming Persona:

Now that you have a robust collection of data to work with, compile it, and the numerous other individual user information you would require, and synthesize it into various segments with the most similar ranges of answers! From there, all that is left is for you and your company to utilize said Personas as they would align with your mobile games interests.

 

Now let us take a look at the completed example Gaming Persona!

 

Example:

 Persona Name: Example

Goal of Persona: To Show how to make a gaming persona. 

 Quincy Clarence 

Personal Info: (Age 32, Male, Married with 2 kids, United States, $96,560 Salary, etc.)   

App Usage: (He plays 2 hours a day on average, is willing to spend $0.99 to $5 on in-app purchases on average, he plays competitive the most, and casual the least) 

Favorite Game Aspects: (Favorite Genre- Historical, Game Type-Tower Defense, reason- gameplay)

Reasons for Gaming: (Escapism and Competition) 

 

Now that the example is done, why don’t you and your team try it? Get the Gaming Persona Porotyping document here!

What is next…?

When all is said and done, Gaming Personas are an excellent method in which to guide your company’s mobile game(s) marketing and development, and with them, you can take your game to the next level.

 

But always keep your eyes peeled on Appvertiser for all your growth marketing needs when you are rocketing to the top!