One of the first items at the start of an agile project is to consider the customer (Rubin 2012). A scrum practitioner may do this with user stories in the backlog, or more indirectly describe them in the vision statement.

Having used personas in the past, primarily for technical marketing purposes, I hadn’t thought to try and connect this technique to my game designs. By acknowledging how persona will buy, what will deter them from playing and where do they go to get trusted information from, it allows the practitioner to maintain the focus directly on practical applications. However, there is a risk that these may be tangential to user value, further supporting user value as a critical agile prioritization metric.

Persona - Basics

Ardath lists several components of a buyer persona, two of which should exist within any sufficiently detailed user story.

  • A first-person scenario
  • Objectives

The remaining items are either background, detractors, or indicators used for targets. A practitioner could use these to form specific user stories for increasing adoption and reducing buyer friction.

  • Orientation
  • Obstacles
  • Problems
  • Questions
  • Keywords and Phrases
  • Channels for Engagement
  • Social Media Preferences
  • Engagement scenarios
  • Content preferences

(Ardath, 2020)

Personas in game design

Personas are not only useful at the initial ideation or envisioning stage of a project, but also during the iterative refinement process, once valuable data is available within the artefact.

Persona constructs can be applied both as design-oriented metaphors during the development of games, and as analytical lenses to existing games, e.g. for evaluation of patterns of player behaviour. (Canossa and Drachen 2009)

However, when applying personas using the analytical lens, after the fact, there are some changes to the persona categorization outline recommended previously. Canossa and Drachen go further and suggest the consideration of what, where, and when a player does specific tasks.

the play-persona framework is directly useful in situations where players have more than one way to accomplish a task (Canossa and Drachen 2009)

I support this argument as if the game is entirely linear, and there are little points of differentiation. However, the same paper goes on to identify and categorize several personas based on data related to where and how a character died. I believe this could also apply to highly linear games, where fewer choices are available. By categorizing how effectively the player completes a given level, in comparison to how many times they fail at certain activities.

Personas for analytics

When considering personas as a data analytic framework, there needs to be a sound methodology for gathering that data. Davis et al. 2005 identifies five mechanisms for data gathering from game designs or functional artefacts.

  • Focus Groups - Early Stage designs
  • Retrospective Surveys - Understand the audience
  • Beta Testing - Unstructured, bug finding
  • Usability Testing - Highly structured, actionable feedback.
  • Playtesting - A combination of unstructured limited 1st-hour testing, and targeted survey. Each of these methodologies provides additional qualitative or quantitative feedback, which a practitioner can use to hone in on other aspects of a game design. Some require considerable effort, so may not be perfectly suited to an independent game designer.

Driving factors

When considering a persona, I believe it is vital to consider the driving factors behind a ‘want’, and to categorize it. The grouping of these wants allows an analysis to ensure that a project remains in balance.

The consideration by Lazzaro 2004, results in the identification of 4 key drivers for playing games,

  1. Hard Fun: Players like the opportunities for challenge, strategy, and problem-solving.
  2. Easy Fun: Players enjoy intrigue and curiosity.
  3. Altered States: These players play for internal sensations such as Excitement or Relief from their thoughts and feelings.
  4. The People Factor: Players use games as mechanisms for social experiences.

They go on to identify a relationship between the gameplay reasons and desired emotional outcomes. This mapping would allow a diligent designer to ensure that their game remains emotionally balanced and relevant.

References

  • RUBIN, K.S. 2012. Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process. Pearson Education. Available at: https://books.google.com/books?id=3vGEcOfCkdwC.

  • ARDATH, A. 2020. ‘Buyer Personas’. Marketing Interactions [online]. Available at: https://marketinginteractions.com/buyer-personas/ [accessed 26 Nov 2020].

  • CANOSSA, Alessandro and Anders DRACHEN. 2009. ‘Play-Personas: Behaviours and Belief Systems in User-Centred Game Design’. In Tom GROSS et al. (eds.). Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2009. 510–23.

  • DAVIS, John P, Keith STEURY and Randy PAGULAYAN. 2005. ‘A Survey Method for Assessing Perceptions of a Game: The Consumer Playtest in Game Design’. Game Studies 5(1), 1–13.

  • LAZZARO, Nicole. 2004. ‘Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story’ 8.