Who is your Ideal Player? · Reality Hacker Studios

Who is your Ideal Player?

When’s the last time, if ever, you brainstormed who your ideal player is? Not sure what I mean? In the marketing world, there’s a concept known as the “Ideal Customer Avatar.” Essentially, think of it as the most in-depth character creation screen you’ve ever seen, where you piece together the perfect person that would benefit from your product.

We’ve gone through this exercise with countless business owners, and of course, have done this for ourselves many times. What makes it such a powerful exercise is that you’re left with a compass of everything your product needs to be, and how to present it so that it provides maximum value to your perfect customer. (We’ll get into how to do this in a second.)

I haven’t quite seen anyone discuss this all that much in the game dev space, and it seems like a no-brainer of an exercise. Imagine being able to think, “Would my ideal player like this new mechanic?” or “Would my ideal player respond to this ad?” every time you were making a big decision. Beats the heck out of shooting in the dark and hoping for the best. So, if you’re tired of feeling lost as to what decisions need to be made for your game, let’s talk about your ideal player.

🎮BUILDING OUT THE IDEAL PLAYER🎮

Think of all the characteristics that make up someone who would be a perfect match for your game:

What kind of games do they like?
What’s their personality like?
How old are they?
What social media platforms do they hang out on?
What clichés in the industry tick them off?
What motivates them when they play games?

This description will change and adapt over time. Start out with literally a fantasy version of the ideal person. Chances are, there’s a large group of people that fit that description. Write all of these notes down somewhere and keep them easily accessible so you can refresh yourself on your ideal player when you need guidance.

Finally, and this one is going to sound weird, name them. Achievement Hunter Harry or something catchy and descriptive. This makes them real in your mind.

🔥Where This Exercise Becomes Powerful🔥

In Designing Your Game. 🧑‍💻

Designing game mechanics no longer feels like random ideas you're coming up with just to make the game fun. You now have a real-life person in mind whose opinions and playstyles you understand. So you can make a list of ideas and only focus on the ones that you think Harry would enjoy about the game. Save your time and energy on ones that don't fit the description.

Marketing Your Game 💰

When coming up with social media ads or writing out your Kickstarter campaign copy, you have a better idea of who you’re talking to and how to resonate with them. Harry doesn’t really care about collectibles, so that milestone reward of a signed box art set and a plushy won’t do much. Now Harry LOVES bonus content, so the promise of an exclusive dungeon would be hugely motivating.

Protecting Your Game from Unhelpful Feedback

The one guarantee when you reach playtesting stages is that a massive group of people are going to have negative things to say about it. If you’ve got no compass, it can be an overwhelming force of negativity that leaves you lost with what to do. But, since you now know who exactly your product is made for, you can sift through the valid and invalid feedback a bit more easily. If you know Harry’s main source of entertainment is achievement hunting for those really difficult achievements, then the feedback of “100%-ing this game is too difficult” may not be worth paying attention to.

STAY FOCUSED AND CONFIDENT

The more you know about the ideal person who would love your game, the more focused your efforts will be, the more time you’ll save on generating ideas, and the more confident you’ll be that your game will be an answered prayer to someone out there. I highly recommend you try this exercise out for yourself and see how much clarity you gain on the directions you need to take for the business side of your game.

In our upcoming course, we will be DEEP diving into ideal player creation and understanding that concept. Comment below if you're interested or if you have any questions regarding your ideal player!

Keep crushing it devs! 💪

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