Crafting a great experience that resonates with a diverse audience is a constant challenge for designers. Player typologies offer a tool to bridge this gap — by delving into player behavior and motivations, they create a framework for examining your game through different lenses or design perspectives.
This approach goes beyond traditional segmentation by helping you anticipate player needs, predict social interactions, identify potential friction points, and ultimately refine your design to create a more inclusive and engaging experience for everyone.
The author developed this tool and has employed it extensively across multiple games to support more exclusive experiences and gain valuable insights into player dynamics.
What are player typologies?
Player typologies do more than just categorize players by their preferences. They help you plan for how players with different motivations will encounter your designs and, crucially, encounter each other within those designs. Specifically, they can help you:
- Anticipate player behavior — By understanding how players with different motivations approach the game, you can identify areas that support diverse playstyles and pinpoint potential friction points before they arise.
- Promote healthy player dynamics — You can model interactions, allowing you to design features that minimize conflict, encourage prosociality, and be perceived as more successful by players.
- Improve representation — Typologies help you create lenses for different perspectives and identities, ensuring that you are giving them appropriate weight in your design decisions.
Distinguishing typologies from other approaches
While player segmentation is a common practice, player typologies offer a particular understanding of your audience:
- Player behavior — Player typologies explore why and how players play, analyzing motivations and play styles within the specific context of your game. This focus helps you create designs that cater to diverse ways of engaging with the game and even how that can change over time.
- Player-to-player interactions — Typologies provide a framework for examining how players with different motivations may encounter each other in the context of your designs.
- Actionable insights — Player typologies go beyond thought experiments, demographics, or broad categories. They provide actionable insights to refine your game and ensure that features cater to a variety of players
In comparison, other approaches include:
- Market segmentation — Prioritize external goals like acquisition and monetization, often relying heavily on traditional demographics. Does not include the diversity of motivations within and across those segments.
- Player personas — Fictional characters with detailed backstories commonly used in UX design. Player typologies share the most with player personas but intentionally bring the focus to core player behaviors and motivations rather than a fictional profile.
- Barlow’s needs framework — Explores the fundamental human needs that players seek to fulfill across various games (e.g., achievement, fellowship, competition, discovery). Player typologies build upon this foundation by examining how these needs manifest in specific cross sections within your unique game world.
How to create a typology: Step by step
1. Choose an aspect of inquiry
Identify a specific aspect of your game that you want to examine, such as social mechanics, in-game economy, matchmaking, or your onboarding experience. This might be where you are currently experiencing problems in a live game or an area you would like to explore in your current designs. This will inform the player perspectives and motivations you assess.
2. Brainstorm lenses
Aim for 3-6 key player perspectives that address your chosen inquiry. Consider factors like:
- Player goals — What drives players to succeed in your game? What alternative goals may exist? In what ways might those goals conflict?
- Skills and experience — How do new players approach the player differently from veterans? How can you support mentorship? How can you design onboarding experiences that cater to different skill levels?
- Social needs — What motivates players to connect with others? How can you cater to varying social wants? How might individual players’ social needs vary in different situations?
Typologies are not meant to be rigorously exhaustive, nor is each lens necessarily exclusive (some players may belong to more than one). The idea is to create a tool that allows you to reliably and consistently consider the perspectives that are most valuable to you.
3. Give each lens a name
Descriptive names like “Weathered Veteran” or “Steam Blower” make these perspective groups more relatable, easier to use, and memorable.
4. Using your typology
Typologies are incredibly versatile. Apply them to different aspects of your game, like social systems, progression, or onboarding. Specifically, use typologies:
- In conjunction with experience maps or player journeys to examine the entire player experience through different lenses.
- To identify potential problem areas where different player lenses might clash.
- To evaluate the impact of design decisions on various player types.
- To articulate your goals with your team and with stakeholders.
5. Create more!
Create multiple typologies to examine your game from the perspectives of marginalized players, those with varying skill levels, or many other useful viewpoints. Each one creates its own purpose-built tool to hold space for the most important perspectives to your team.
Sample typology
The following is a simple typology with some notes on the motivations behind each perspective group, which can help improve its application to design.
Keep in mind
- Actively seek out underrepresented perspectives and how they might encounter your game world. Typologies can be used to intentionally hold space for under-represented identities.
- Consider collaborating with diversity experts to identify potential blind spots and ensure a wider range of player motivations are considered
- Player typologies are not a “one and done.” Revisit and refine them as your game evolves and as you learn more about your player needs and how they’re expressed.
Diversity-minded design can help us welcome a wide range of players.
Demographics and typologies: A recipe for exclusion
Resist the urge to rely solely on demographics to understand players. This approach paints an inaccurate picture of player motivations and reinforces harmful stereotypes. It can lead to assumptions like “female players enjoy casual games,” which can fuel gatekeeping.
When a game leans into demographic assumptions, it sends a subconscious message to certain player segments. They might feel like they don’t belong or need to conform to a certain stereotype to be accepted. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy — if a game seems designed for a specific demographic, players outside that group may disengage, reinforcing the initial assumption.
Design tips:
- Prioritize diverse playtesting — Get feedback from a wide range of players. This exposes potential biases and ensures your game caters to a broader audience.
- Challenge assumptions — Question if your design choices are based on data or unconscious stereotypes. Aim to understand what players want, not what you think they should want based on demographics.
- Build a diverse team — A team with varied backgrounds can identify and address potential biases throughout development and help you hold each other accountable.
- Psychographics — Focus on understanding player motivations, values, and playstyles. This will help reveal what truly drives players, not just superficial labels.
DEI is a powerful tool for creating more engaging games, building stronger communities, and fostering a more vibrant gaming landscape.
Unlocking the power of player typologies
Player typologies can offer game designers a powerful tool for creating more inclusive and engaging experiences.
- Build for everyone — Understanding distinct player types pinpoints potential friction points and allows you to design solutions that cater to a wider audience.
- Speak the same language — Typologies give your team a shared vocabulary to discuss player needs, streamlining design conversations.
- Smart design decisions — Use typologies as a guide to ensure your game addresses different motivations and playstyles, making design choices more focused and efficient.
Player typologies offer a tool to “see” your game through the eyes of different player motivations. By applying the same typology (or typologies) across development you can also ensure greater design consistency. These insights can help you craft games that resonate with a diverse audience, leading to a happier and more engaged community.
Player Typologies: A Case Study in Social Gameplay
Walk through applying a player typology for an existing online game.
Now what?
See related content for more!
Further reading
- Schell, J. (2008). The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.
