10 player segments emerged when conducting a clustering analysis of the roughly 500,000 gamers who took the Gamer Motivation Profile survey conducted by Quantic Foundry. They are:
- The Acrobat
- The Gardener
- The Slayer
- The Sightseer
- The Gladiator
- The Ninja
- The Bounty Hunter
- The Architect
- The Bard
(Tag yourself.)
The Acrobat is a solo gamer who primarily wants to take on challenging gameplay, practicing over and over again until they can take on the most difficult missions and bosses. They enjoy games like Spelunky, Celeste, Super Metroid, and Tetris.
The Gardener is a gamer looking for quiet, relaxing task completion. They want games where the rules are presented upfront, as directly as possible, and the gameplay itself is spontaneous rather than planned out in advance. The vibes are chill and the beats are lo-fi. They enjoy games like Candy Crush Saga, Solitaire, and Animal Crossing.
The Slayer is a gamer who wants curated cinematic destruction. They feel a rush from chaos and mayhem in the context of a rich game world with an overarching story. They typically enjoy on-rails action-adventure games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider.
The Sightseer is a lot like the Slayer, but with a preference for less violence. Artisanal story experiences like Firewatch, INSIDE, or Telltale’s The Walking Dead are favorites of the Sightseer. (This is my own distinction, not mentioned in the QF article.)
The Skirmisher wants fast-paced, social action games they can easily pick up and play. They probably enjoy online shooters such as Call of Duty or Counter-Strike, but don’t take the competitive aspects too seriously. They are fine with match-based games where everything resets each match.
The Gladiator is a self-described “hardcore” gamer who wants an experience that’s truly epic. Their ideal game has a broad spectrum of features including: power progression, team arenas, fast-paced play, challenges that require strategic thinking, and a rich world with tons of lore. They often enjoy games like Destiny, Gears of War, Monster Hunter, or Black Desert Online.
The Ninja is a gamer who wants to take on difficult challenges that also involve strategic decision making, fast-paced play, and competition. They don’t care as much about in-game progression as they do skill-based mastery and their own accomplishments. They might play games like StarCraft, Street Fighter, Super Smash Brothers, osu!, or League of Legends.
The Bounty Hunter wants an open game world that they can make their own. They want to explore stuff, build stuff, and power up their characters in the context of the world. Popular games for the Bounty Hunter include Saints Row, Mass Effect, Far Cry, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout.
The Architect wants planning and decision-making that leads to progression and task completion, often in a game with an interesting setting or story. Maybe you are putting together a functional craft economy on Mars, playing politics in a medieval monarchy, or figuring out just the right combination of abilities and party members to exorcise the wretched sea ghosts from the pirates’ den. The Architect strongly prefers solo gameplay with games that are slow-paced, relaxing, or serene. They often play games like Civilization, Europa Universalis, Banished, or Pillars of Eternity.
The Bard is a social gamer who wants to chat and interact with other players in game worlds that are rich with lore, stories, discovery, and customization. They care little about power progression and task completion. They just want to experience the game world organically. Their popular games include titles like The Secret World, Final Fantasy XIV, and Animal Crossing.
(Games for the Bard are usually multiplayer, but games that have a big emphasis on sharing your own creations or participating in an online fandom are also appealing to the Bard.)
Limitations
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all player segment model that works for every situation.
The player profiles we describe here are more like paint colors you can mix together than separate buckets. This segment model provides a broad taxonomy for gamers as a whole, but they read like caricatures of genres—you lose nuance and granularity when you try to segment all gamers. If you’re making an Open World Action-Adventure game then the largest block of players in your audience will be Bounty Hunters—but so what? You probably already knew that. You will need more data if you’re working within a specific genre or a specific game title. They suggest working with just a sample of players who care about your genre or franchise.