Learn about your audience: Mobile gamer insights

Hi everyone. My name is John. I my senior user experience researcher here at Google Play. I love playing games with my friends. It's a method of staying connected with my brother who lives over two thousand miles apart from me. So after onto a disk or chat, her favorite childhood games, like Age of Empires 2 player games to socialize down for the night. Like a relaxing game of Solitaire games as a way to be someone completely different detached from their everyday lives and use it as a private

getaway. Sure. I study all different types of people who play games and help our team understand mobile Gamers around the world. And today I wanted to share some of these resources sides and stories about the four players with you. I sure or approach how we have looked at different types of mobile, gamers are on the world. So you can look at your players as I share approach. I also share some insight about these Gamers and their behaviors so that you can picture the ecosystem of mobile gamers are on the world that wherever you are in the development process, whether you're

starting out craving your game or create a new event for your game or creating a marketing strategy. You can better tailor to your audience share today. It's from user research from our interviews and the surveys of over 20,000 adults who play games on various devices around the world. I want to start us off with an example. Let's say that we are interested in the overall satisfaction open games on a mobile device. Now and say, something like 93% of mobile gamers are satisfied playing games on their mobile device. It's

interesting only with this one data point is super useful, because there are so many mobile gamers are on the world for the 7% that are not satisfied or differences is satisfaction, depending on the game you play. How about depending on the type of device that used to play many ways to dig into this. As an example. Let's choose one aspect. Let's play country and look at satisfaction differences per country. Then now we start to see some interesting stories. Now, you can see that mobile Gamers from certain countries

like from Japan and South Korea show lower rates of satisfaction compared to others. When we dig a bit deeper and separate overall, Satisfaction by some metrics, we care about likes country, index example, it can help you holding and dive into these differences. For instance. We did additional analysis. And saw that all of those who are not satisfied with mobile gaming in South Korea, and Japan more than one in 10. Respondents said that due to enact purchases, especially those that affect the gameplay.

And you can connect the data points to qualitative data is wall. The topic of microtransaction that affect gameplay came up often during our interview with mobile Gamers as well. During the interviews Gamers talked about microtransaction that give advantages to the gameplay rather than aesthetic changes and this actually discouraged some of the most competitive players to play the game since they felt like they could not separate the skill and the money spent. In addition, when we talked into the drivers of satisfaction, we learned that different countries have different

reasons for liking to play games on their mobile devices. One of the top drivers of satisfaction was mobile game, is survey respondents from United States. And Japan was the content of the game. They charge most about how enjoyable or fun, the game was above all else. That might not be too surprising. However, in Korean, in India, what they valued most or the games that can be played on the go to games, they can play anywhere. And anytime in addition to the contents of the game and in Germany respondents,

noted that games was good performance. That runs smoothly on their devices as well as nice Graphics. What are the top reasons? They're satisfied with mobile gaming. Did country differences can highlight different expectations and cultural norms and help you create a marketing strategy. Unique to these countries. There are many unique mobile Gamers within each country. To classify all of them as just gamers in the United States or gamers in Korea. For example, when we did an Industry Source in South Korea and talk to 21 people. We saw a huge difference and

how each of them are about gaming for some games or something that they wanted to avoid, or it's just an activity to fill in the time. For some gaming was, a core part of their self identity. They cannot imagine a life without me. Like this even among the 21 people we chatted was there were shoes differences on how people play games and thought about games. What is a good way to look at your audience? I talked a bit about the approach with taken to look at mobile Gamers. You can take the similar approach and dissect your games, audience as

well. My recommendation is to try to get a holistic understanding of your audience that sells mobile Gamers. So, not just what they do inside of the game, for what they do outside of the game. What do they think and feel about the games that they play in order to get this holistic understanding of mobile Gamers during our research. We looked at the following factors first, the gameplay Behavior. How often and how much do they play games on Mobile and other platforms? And what type of games do they pray? Then monetary investment. They made in games. How much do they

spend their mobile gaming and peripheral activities actively playing the game? What type of gaming related activities today? /. Take it? Play watch videos or streams on YouTube or look up. And if so, what type of the best games in 2020 or looking up new bills for a speed run? In finally, how do they feel about gaming? Do they consider gaming as a critical part of their daily routine, or is it something to spend time while waiting in the line at a DMV? Why do we do that? Why do we increase the length of our survey to look at all of these

factors? Right? And I look at one factor, like country or draw, two segments, gamers in many cases. When we look at one factor at a time. It's hard to see a full story. As an example. In the most recent survey. We saw that about half of mobile game puzzle, or word games, when you hear that, you might expect these Gamers to be casual players who are not really into gaming. However, and Analysis. And other reports. We found that all types of Gamers play Paolo or word games on mobile, even the most dedicated hard core

PC or console gamers are very enthusiastic about gaming. Don't let me take the type of holistic approach, to look at many of these factors together. We started meaningful distinct. Groups emerge in our case. We saw four types of mobile gamers in dizziest busy hobbyist, persistent puzzlers and Outdoors. Enthusiasts are passionate mobile. Gamers who spent a lot of time and money on gaming across platforms, particularly in action role-playing games. As well as partaking in gaming, peripheral activities, such as reading blog

articles or watching gameplay videos. Busy hobbyist are proud and engaged mobile, Gamers who participate in prayer for activities and spend money on games, but they do not take much time and actually, playing the game persons and puzzlers, invest a lot of time in playing the game, but they're not as emotionally invested. No, spend much money in gaming dollars invested in gaming and they're more indifferent. They spent little time or money on mobile gaming. What's really interesting about these groups is that there are distinct differences

that we would have missed if it did not. Look at all the factors together. If we only looked at gameplay time, we would have treated into these and persistent puzzlers the same. However, these two groups have very different attitudes towards gaming and play different type of games. So, how are you at the market to these two groups will be different. Similarly, we would not have been able to tease apart. These fizzy hobbyist. MBC hobbyist is a very interesting group because they're very similar to dabblers with no gaming hours per week.

However, in terms of their spending and sentiment towards gaming, there were more similar to the Enthusiast. What happened to the group of Gamers who are dedicated and still love playing games, but certain circumstances happen, the most common ones I've heard was marriage and kids and they were not able to invest much of their time in playing the game. One of the gamers have interviewed has captured the sentiment. They said, College days. We used to meet four to five times a week and play together. Many of my friends have moved away for their jobs or

got busy starting their own family. So instead they tried to optimize their game play Time by either spending money or looking up gameplay videos or reading of blog articles. Why is it important to distinguish these groups? It's because how they interact with your game will be different. Let's say that you're planning to launch a new in game event. To celebrate the New Year's. Who do you think we're engaged most with your content? European socialist and process and Potter's to spend the most time playing your games.

Selling their survey was that an in-game event will be much more likely to be engaged by enthusiasts and busy hobbyist rather than persistent puzzlers and Albers. Only half of the enthusiasts reported participating weekly or more than an in-game event while the majority of the persistent puzzlers and Doppler say that they have never participated in an in-game event. Similarly. There is a significant impact on how you should reach your target audience, when marketing your game as well. To set some context here year-over-year, Gamers. Tell us

that they learn about new games through word-of-mouth. Followed by a game at gaming videos, drug search and social media. This year. We decided to Deep dive into social media of servais, mobile Gamers, enter social media, or online, forums about half of enthusiasts, learn about new mobile games through this message. That was a new event is launching effective ways to reach decent through this. Maybe through social media or online forums. Now there are so many ways. You can learn about your audience, who played your games, your marketing strategy, and your in-game event will be much

more successful. If you understand your audience and create a targeted strategy for them and to understand your audience. I encourage you to take a holistic approach of looking at your data. Look at their be sentiment and even more about that context outside of gaming. I want to leave you with a couple of thoughts has grown dramatically over the past couple of years, and it's really encouraging to see how excited mobile gamers are for the future over half of the survey mobile Gamers noted that the quality as well as Innovation and

creativity of mobile gaming is changing for the better. Play a big role in people's lives from Denver, told us gaming is very important to me. It's helpful emotionally, and it's more like a therapy where I can disconnect from Troubles of the real world. I hope this talk helped you understand mobile Gamers and give you different ideas on how you can get into your data to understand your audience. Thank you.