Marketing Personas
Marketing personas are essentially made up people, designed to represent a specific demographic. They are generally based on market research, which if done propery, will reveal key insights into the market you're dealing with. In this game, it was mobile games. The personas we created ended up being critical in designing SpaceRace. Our market research revealed many things, from small things like games with rounded corners on their icons did better in the store, to key things like the fact that women play just as many, if not more mobile games than men. So began the first persona.
I had design goals with my personas. I created them based on people I knew in real life, and were viewed through the lense of what I know of psychology and game design. Our market research had taught us some interesting things about how women tended to play mobile games, and so our female persona, Veronica, was a reflection of that. She had longer play sessions, was more interested in cosmetic purchases than progression based purchases or achievements, and was more likely to watch ads. The game's design was made around our findings, and had ad support. There were no IAPs in the final product unfortunately, but if there were, they would not have been progression based. They would have existed for purely cosmetic purposes. This is partly due to my own ethical code, but I'll handle that in a different post. For now, we had one persona.
The second one was designed with the same research, but the gender had been flipped and the age bumped up a notch. Gary was a 30-something gamer who played for achievements. He wasn't done with a game until 100%, and while the same wasn't necesarily true for mobile games, if the right one caught him, he was hooked. SpaceRace intended to have a lot to unlock. Mainly cosmetics, but achievements and secrets as well. Gary would have shorter play sessions, but he would play just as often. Gary would spend more money in SpaceRace but Veronica would watch more ads. According to our market research, ads are all but essential in mobile games. The amount of people who actually make purchases is so minute, that ads are needed to keep a business afloat until the proverbial million downloads.
This is why we made a space game. Space is cosmetic. It's gorgeous, and unknown and wonderful, but the best thing is that it's unisex. Everyone can respect and even admire the beauty of deep space. Space games are typically male catered. With all the hyper-masculine space marines in armour that looks like they're just wearing a car, all talking about how much they like to stomp on the heads of other intelligent life. I can smell the testosterone from here. So how do we make a space game for women? Set it in the most aesthetic parts of space, nebulae, remove any and all combat and go on the easier side of difficulty. Fill it full of cosmetics and art, and remove death as a mechanic. Simple really.
Our game didn't make it to the audience. We had some of the steps taken to make sure it did, But with the stress of the project mounting, I just tapered off. Had we managed to get the audience, I know what I would have tested for.
I'd start with tracking what purchases people are buying the most of. I'd analyse which gender was making the most purchases and how long they'd had the game before making any purchases. These are just some of the metrics I'd track for purchasing habits. These would tell me whether I'd succeeded in the design of the game. I would also measure when people watch rewarded ads and what rewards they are choosing. Are they watching ads to continue a successful run? I would find out. I suspect that, with a finished game, we would have successfully reached our audience, and that any analysis of metrics would only prove it. If of course, we ever managed the downloads. If, for whatever reason, we didn't successfully reach our target market, metrics and data like this would prove critical in changing that fact. Knowing these things about our player base means that we can update and tweak the game, remove things that aren't working, change things that could be working, improve things that are working and generally make the game a better experience.
A lot went awry with this project. i wish it had went better, but I know what needs to change in order for the next one to go better. Proper planning, timelines, pipelines, spreadhseets, the whole thing. A proper set of market research, numerical data, hard facts, psychology. A marketing plan, complete with all assets and requirements, consistent marketing and online presence. A dedicated team, of skilled professionals who will all work for free. Oh wait, I'm dreaming again.
