Consider your target players

There’s one key element that every game needs: one or more players. Now that you have your initial idea, it’s time to focus on your target players for the game. If you have no idea who you’re creating your game for, you won’t be able to shape it to meet their needs.

You’ll be prioritizing the needs of players with disabilities as you do this — addressing barriers that that these players may face will have benefits for every potential player of your game.

Before you can connect with your target players and learn more about them, you need to identify a high level profile of your audience. Make a note of your answers to the following questions:

• What sort of players do you think your game might appeal to? Can you break that group into smaller sub-groups (sometimes called user segments)?
• What are other comparative games or experiences that they would find useful, engaging, or enjoyable?
• Why do your target players enjoy this sort of game?
• What might make your target players stop engaging with a game?

Case study example: Target players for Out of Circulation

Here is how we defined the target players for Out of Circulation as though it were only a game:

• Elevator pitch: A small vertical slice of a narrative point-and-click adventure game that includes a community-focused mystery.
• Target users: Causal players who enjoy narrative games and slice-of-life or cozy mystery stories.
• Comparative experiences: Phoenix Wright, Monkey Island, Loop Hero, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, and The Wolf Among Us.
• Key enjoyment aspects: An engaging narrative which has a relatively low level of player peril. Self-expression through dialogue choice and other game elements. A casual game experience which includes story reminders and simple player interactions.

Important: Remember that Out of Circulation has two purposes: it is a vertical slice of a game, but it is also a learning tool.

Now you have a high-level sense of who your target players are, you can begin to connect with potential players to find out more information about them. This doesn’t have to be formal, especially if you’re an individual creator, but it’s an important part of the pre-production process. You might find that your target audience wasn’t who you thought they were, or you might get helpful insights that make you want to take a different approach.

Make sure to record your research in a format that works for you. You might want to include it in your project devlog.

To get feedback from your target players:

1. If you haven’t already done so, complete Community collaboration for accessible design, a module in Gaming accessibility fundamentals on Microsoft Learn. This module contains guidance on connecting and collaborating with the disability community as you work on your game.

2. Reach out to people who fit your target player profile to find out what they think about your concept, and make sure that you include players with disabilities. This is the best way to learn more about what your target players actually want. You could try a survey to get quick opinions or organize more involved feedback conversations with individual players.

3. Explore other resources that relate to your idea and concept. For example, you could review relevant market research or informally evaluate sentiments for similar or comparable experiences using a range of data points (including game reviews and community discussions).

Note: This research is especially useful if you are the primary target audience for your game! Remember, your assumptions as a creator may not be accurate.

One useful tool to help you prioritize accessibility in your design and development process is to define personas for your target players.

Personas are profiles of fictional users — you can think of them as expanded backstories and context for specific user stories. They include information about the user’s background and interests, motivations, goals, and specific frustrations or barriers they might encounter.

Although personas are fictional players, they should be based on what you know about your target audience. Established studios often have user research specialists to find out more about their target players, but as a hobbyist or emerging creator you can use data to support your personas too. You could even create a persona as a synthesis of two or more actual people that you connected with in your target user group to help ensure that you consider their needs in your design and development process.

Important: Although personas can be a useful tool, especially between user feedback cycles, remember that working with a persona cannot replace collaborating with actual players with disabilities.

Next, you’re going to draft player personas for your game concept using the research that you have completed.

To create your own persona:

1. Download and review the example persona for Out of Circulation (.pdf download).

2. Download and review the persona template (.pdf download). Work through and complete the template, using your research to help you. If you can’t complete a section, note down information you’d need to find to help you do so so that you can follow up on it.

3. Add anything else that feels relevant to your persona — this is a tool for you. We’ve provided you with an example template, but there are lots of different approaches to put together a persona.

4. Make as many personas as you need to reflect the different types of player that your game will target.

Now that you've considered your target players, you’re ready to get planning. In the next tutorial, you’ll create a design document for your game and start working on your plan for its development.