For the challenge this week, we were asked to choose one of the artefacts we had worked on in the previous two rapid ideation sessions, and create a single persona that might identify with it.
I decided to look for a tool to help me create my user persona, and decided to use the Buyer Persona Generator created by HubSpot; a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform well known to me professionally.
When I started making my game, Mega Knights, I imagined parents and kids playing it together; particularly parents that had been gamers when they were younger. I decided to create the persona of the adult as opposed to the child player, and I did this for a couple of reasons:
Firstly, at the target child player age (7-11) the buyer would very likely be the parent. In my experience of developing products in previous roles, It is important to consider the buying persona of the decision-maker as well as the end user. However, if I were to extend this piece of work, I would also create a persona for the child, Lisa.
Secondly, the style and narrative of the game are targeted at both the adult and the child. In addition to the explicit presented story, there is the second layer about the child having to tidy their room before they can watch TV. This mechanic is also often used in family movies to ensure the adults are entertained as well as the children. If the kids get it too, they feel grown-up and clever. If they don’t they can still enjoy the higher-level narrative and experience. The genre and style of the game deliberately reflect the sorts of games that Marge would have been likely to play when she was younger. In fact, Mario was directly referenced on my planning board as inspiration.
When I was doing some research to support my creation of this profile, I found several studies citing benefits of parents and children gaming together; including decreased aggression, decreased internalising of emotions and increased prosocial behaviour in girls (Coyne et al 2011). I think for Marge, playing games is more than just entertainment. It’s about finding opportunities to bond with her child that nurture an interest in technology in general, so decided to use a quote from Professor Elizabeth Gee, Co-Director of intergeneration play organisation Play2Connect, into my Key Quote for the persona:
‘Gaming with your child offers countless ways to insert your own ‘teaching moment’.’
(ca. 2019)
The process also impacted on my ideas for the design of the game itself and how I could iterate on that. I’m now thinking about turning Jesse the dragon into a secondary playable character so that the game may actually be played two player. This might better meet Marge’s needs and allow for a more shared experience.
An interesting discovery was that when I finished this task and looked at Marge, I realised I had fallen into the well-known trap of designing a game for myself. Marge and I have very similar profiles and although I don’t have children we have aligning views on cross-generational play and games. Is this a problem for this particular project? On reflection probably not, but it is definitely worth noting and being cognisant of as we progress.
With more time, I would also expand on this user persona to gather some market research on my target market such as interviews and data on behavioural trends, in order to strengthen it and start to build a business case for the game.
References:
COYNE, Sarah M. Laura PADILLA-WALKER, Laura STOCKDALE and Randal DAY. 2011. ‘Game On… Girls: Associations Between Co-playing Video Games and Adolescent Behavioural and Family Outcomes’. Journal of Adolescent Health 49(2), 160-165. San Diego: Elsevier.
GEE (formerly HAYES) Elizabeth. 2019. Quotation from ‘Family gaming is a great way to bond with your kids’. Venture Beat [online]. https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/17/family-gaming-is-a-great-way-to-bond-with-your-kids/ [accessed December 18th 2021]
HUBSPOT. 2021. ‘Buyer Persona Generator’ Hubspot [online]. Available at: https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona [accessed 18th December 2021].
HUBSPOT. 2021. ‘The Beginners Guide to User Persona.’ Hubspot [online]. Available at”: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buyer-persona-research [accessed 18th December 2021].
Full list of figures
Figure 1: User Persona: Mama Marge. 2021. Screenshot of a document by the author.
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