Unlocking Player Motivations to Create Engaging Games

Have you ever wondered why you enjoy certain games? Can you put your finger on what makes them appealing? Most gamers can't, and it's a challenge even for game developers. While players can identify elements they like, such as colors, puzzles, or characters, they rarely know why these elements appeal to them. As game developers, understanding what players like is only half the battle - we also need to grasp the why behind it. Various methods can help answer these questions, including traditional approaches like playtests, player surveys, market research, and in-game analytics, which are useful for understanding what people enjoy playing. However, understanding why a particular audience enjoys a game is more complex and requires insights into individual motivations. Luckily, this field of study is not new, and concepts like Meyers-Briggs, heuristics, and personality tests can help. In gaming, terms like player personas, player archetypes, or Bartle Player Types might be familiar. But how can you integrate these concepts into your game development? At Metacore, we believe that players are the closest thing to a boss. To create a game that truly resonates with players, identifying the audience before diving into detailed game design is crucial. We approach this in two ways: starting with an idea for a game mechanic, world, or genre and then identifying which players would enjoy this concept, or creating a new game for a specific audience. Both approaches are valid and should be the initial step. Focus on discovering the potential audience or the gameplay they are likely to enjoy using powerful market research tools like Game Refinery. This platform analyzes millions of mobile gaming data points to form clusters of player behaviors, categorized into 12 motivations and eight player archetypes. If we have an idea for a new merge game, we can examine the player motivation breakdowns for popular merge games using Game Refinery. For example, in our game Merge Mansion, Game Refinery shows player motivations to include completing milestones, solving puzzles, and escapism, with less interest in strategy or competition. Knowing this, we could design our game to emphasize a progressive rewards system instead of a competitive PvP mode. A common pitfall for designers is investing time in building features they believe are fun without checking if the audience agrees. Tools like Game Refinery help identify where players find the fun, ensuring every part of your game pitch aligns with audience preferences. Once you have a live game, you now have access to real players and no longer need to rely solely on competitors' market data to refine your game. Real player data becomes your most valuable resource for actionable insights. Through data analysis, you can pinpoint which parts of the game resonate most with players and identify areas that are less enjoyable. Clustering player behaviors based on likes and dislikes will generate archetypes or player personas specific to your audience. Player interviews based on this behavioral segmentation will reveal patterns in each group's motivations. You can create your own player persona models or use third-party frameworks. Magic: The Gathering exemplifies the first approach with their 'Timmys, Johnnys, and Spikes' model, which clusters player behaviors based on three personas, each with their own motivations. Proprietary models are great because they only consider players who are actually actively playing your game. However, they don't consider players who don't play your game, nor do they help understand who the players are as people outside the game. If you want to expand your audiences or deepen the connection to an existing one, you might consider using newer data-driven platforms, such as Solsten. Solsten uses cognitive science and AI to create detailed psychological profiles, leveraging models like The Big Five to analyze player behavior and preferences. We've been using Solsten's 'Traits' platform to gain insights into our players' motivations in gaming and in life. For instance, understanding that our players value 'Mastery' and 'Completing Milestones' has informed our design and marketing strategies. Solsten helps us understand how these motivations translate into the real world, such as the affinity our players are likely to have with other game mechanics, other media preferences, and marketing messaging. Often, people are motivated by similar things in games as they are in life. Understanding what drives players, both the who and the why, is an essential north star when driving your game development. The application of psychographic frameworks to game development isn't particularly new - we have come a long way since Bartle's Player Types. We can now leverage academic and scientific methodologies alongside game data and AI to learn more about our players than ever before. What drives your audience as people should be driving your game development. Integrating player insights, motivations, and psychographic frameworks allows you to design games that resonate with players' motivations, ensuring greater engagement and retention. Asking the right questions, understanding player psychology, and utilizing relevant frameworks can help create games where every player persona finds something that speaks to them, keeping them captivated and entertained for years to come.