A ‘player’ is defined as a person that is taking part in a sport or game. A ‘persona’ is identified as the aspect of someone’s character that is perceived by others. When combined together, a ‘player persona’ is actually the representation of player profile types based on players’ behavioural data like gameplay preferences, motivations to play, etc. Player personas are built to assist player-centric game design and targeted marketing.
Creating player personas is also part of a designing process called ‘gamification’ where designers insert gameplay into non-gaming settings. This enhances user engagement with the service or product.
Why Should You Create A Persona?
Games, in general, are appealing to a specific group of people. Creating a player persona helps you clarify with yourself and fellow game developers on how the game should look like. As simple as the layout of your game, there has to be a distinctive feature or pattern that can be differentiated from the rest of the games. How do you identify this distinctive feature? What should it look like? What can be done, so that it appeals to your target players or audience? All these can be answered by creating a player persona.
Collect and Solidify
The data on your target audiences and players that you have collected beforehand should come in handy in this first step. Evident data like gender, geographics, ages of players, habitual stats, in-game spendings, gaming behaviors, can be simplified and condensed to create a personality or even several personalities in order for you to draw out a bigger picture of your ‘person’.
Retrieve Research from Other Platforms
Platforms like the Apple app store, Steam, Google Playstore, and Google themself will alert you whenever your game is mentioned on any sites or forms of social media. There are gaming hubs like Discord where a huge amount of gaming enthusiasts come together, and where discussions are bound to happen. These are the places where you are able to collect insights, comments, and find out the different motivations of your audience.
Brain Racking
This is the moment where you’ll need all hands on deck in order to figure out the path and specifically the design of the player persona. Do not be afraid to go wild with your ideas, as you are able to narrow down the specifications of this persona. There are certain types of aesthetic, pattern, layout, personality, image, and vibe of the persona that are compiled from all the previous data-collecting and research. If you have trouble during the creation of this persona, asking yourself questions from the perspective of a gamer, instead of a creator would help open up new approaches to better connect with your audience.
Narrow It Down
There will be commonalities between each persona that you have created. Group those together and you will be able to figure out the core segments of your audience, hence, also finding out the direction of your game design. Bear in mind that you are finding similarities from differences, however, if there is too much commonality, try taking into account blending resembling personas into one.
Bringing the Personas into Life
The fun part of the process is when it comes to shaping and creating your personas. It’s great to include a little sense of humour into your personas, but try not to go overboard, as ease of communication is what you’re trying to achieve with these personas. Keep in mind the key elements of the personas, which comprises of:-
- Demographics
- Social Background
- Technology & Devices Used
- Gaming Motivation
- Non-Gaming Interests
- Goals & Aspirations
- Visual Representation
Once you have your key elements organized, it is always ideal to add a sense of ambition to your personas, their hopes, and dreams, something that they can achieve when they play your game.
Personas are fun and help you organize your creativity into something more vivid, and most importantly, they allow you to envision your users onto pen and paper. Consequently, if you have upcoming campaigns or marketing strategies, even new games and updates, these personas can come in handy in order to remind you of the direction of the marketing flow or suitable update.
In order to build great games, understanding your player’s mind and developing detailed personas is what it takes.