The Eight Gaming Personas
By: Bryan Finck
Tags: Videogames, Features, Marketing, Gaming, Business

The Eight Gaming Personas

No longer are gamers just “hardcore” or “casual”

For many years, gamers were just people who played games, differentiated mostly by what system they used to enjoy their hobby. The true “hardcore” gamers played on PC, the realm of flight simulators, grand strategy titles, and classic Sierra-style point-and-click adventure games. Everyone else played on consoles like Atari or Nintendo where bouncy platformers and adventure games ruled the day. Fast forward to the Nintendo Wii where the idea of the “casual” gamer really took off, denoting people like your neighbors and grandparents who had never played games before but could suddenly wrap their minds around Wii’s intuitive motion controls.

For years things stood, either hardcore or casual, static and unchanging while the industry itself changed drastically. The tidal wave of cell phone ubiquity and app-gaming led to the ‘super casual’ moniker, but that was really the only addition. As the calendar crept toward the second half of the 2010s though, the ability to gather data from consumers increased. The craving for advanced analytics and understanding consumers, with an eye toward selling them more of everything, has swept across multiple industries. Gaming has exploded as a hobby and an industry, growing to be worth over $160 billion in 2020, and the stakeholders naturally screamed for better ways to understand the target audience.

Enter Newzoo’s Gamer Segmentation report, a new way to look at and understand the nature and habits of gamers around the world. The report is broken down into eight personas, highlighting the core characteristics and habits of each type of gamer, such as where they play and what value they place on playing, watching, and owning the various types of gaming content available to them. Several bits of data are given as part of each persona, including age, reasons for gaming, home situation, and gender split. The reasons for gaming have three survey choices: “exploring worlds/storylines,” “competition,” and “escaping everyday life.” The home situation survey choices were: “alone,” “with my parents/guardians,” “together or alone/with kids,” and “together/no kids.” Let’s dive into the details, shall we?

Animation by Alex Kunchevsky.

The Ultimate Gamer

This persona is the top of the gaming food chain, the gamer who wants to play, watch, and own everything, and makes up 14% of enthusiasts by Newzoo’s calculations. They watch content regularly and are familiar with the goings-on throughout gaming and the esports community. They want to own the latest and greatest hardware and peripherals and have the means to do so. They are typically in the 26–30 age range and have a fairly even split with all three reasons for gaming, with “exploring worlds/storylines” having a relatively small margin over the others. By a wide margin over the others, this persona resides in the “together or alone, with kids” home scenario. The Ultimate Gamer has a 60/40 male to female split, as opposed to the 52/48 male to female split of the gaming audience in general.

This is going to be the early adopter group, the type that will be buying Xbox Series X and PS5 at launch. You will likely see this group with PSVR headsets, possibly driving wheels and other peripherals. They will regularly watch streaming content and may play esports competitively as well. It reasons that these are the gamers who are also consuming content on Twitter and other news services and websites to stay on top of the action. This is the best person for the ‘hardcore’ moniker these days.

The All-Round Enthusiast

This persona is similar to the Ultimate Gamer, but with less of the zeal and passion for pursuing the hobby. Making up 10% of enthusiasts, they are still very serious about gaming and are typically full-time job holders with the ability to purchase the games and hardware they want. They average slightly older than the Ultimate Gamer, at just over 29 years old, and cite “escaping from everyday life” and “to fill time” as tied at the top of their gaming reasons list. Their home situation is also “alone or together, with kids” by a wide margin, and the gender split skews even more towards men here with a 64/36 male to female ratio.

The Subscriber

This persona, formerly called “The Cloud Gamer,” makes up 21% of enthusiasts and is passionate about playing games while being completely hardware-agnostic. They almost never buy hardware, only owning it when necessary for a particular gaming experience or when receiving it as a gift. When they do buy hardware it is with other tasks besides gaming in mind, an important aspect that could inform the types of games they play. The average age for this person is just under 30 years old, and filling time is their main reason for gaming, followed closely by escaping from everyday life. This persona sees a closer balance of gender, with a 57/43 male to female ratio, and leans heavily to the “alone or together, with kids” at home situation.

The subscriber moniker fits this persona perfectly, as they are the most likely to be early adopters of the cloud gaming revolution currently lead by Google Stadia, and the assumed box-less future of both Sony and Microsoft. This persona will be the main target for Microsoft’s xCloud and Game Pass services, allowing them to play on hardware they already have in their pockets and putting a premium on the amount of gaming for the money. It is surely an encouraging sign for those companies that this is one of the largest personas by percentage, and can be expected to grow with time.

The Conventional Player

As Newzoo’s report states, this persona, making up only 3% of enthusiasts, most resembles what the Ultimate Gamer persona looked like a decade ago. Gaming content for viewing was not a thing back then, nor had esports taken off in any large way, so gaming at that time was much more of an insular hobby. This persona doesn’t care to watch content but still consumes news to stay up with the industry, and will purchase whatever hardware and peripherals are needed to play their games of choice. The average age of the persona is almost 32 years old, describes escape from everyday life as their main reason for gaming, and has a 59/41 male to female split.

Animation by Alex Kunchevsky.

The Hardware Enthusiast

This persona, making up 9% of gaming enthusiasts, wants the best possible hardware no matter what game they want to play. Gaming is not their primary motivation as their interests extend beyond that, but they will stay up to date on trends and news in service of their hardware obsession. Their primary reason for playing games is to fill time, by a larger than usual margin over the other reasons. The average age of this persona is almost 32 years old, with a heavy lean towards having kids at home and skewing 59/41 to male gamers.

These are your PC builders, putting together the impressive-looking boxes with the RGB lights and water-cooled desktop towers. They will spend whatever amount needed to get the latest pieces of tech, graphics cards ruling the day lately, and likely having VR headsets to go along with all that horsepower. It would be interesting to know how much of the gaming that is done with this persona is VR, the most tech-heavy gaming that can be done right now.

The Popcorn Gamer

This persona, making up 14% of the enthusiast pool, doesn’t play games very often, but they are constantly watching gaming content and esports online. They will watch with friends and alone, while also consuming lots of television and online videos. If they do play games they are usually of the casual variety, likely on mobile platforms. The average age is just over 31 years old, and cite filling time as their main reason for gaming by a large margin. This group is less likely than most to have kids at home but still lists that higher than all other options per survey results. Interestingly this is almost an even split in gender, with a 51/49 male to female ratio.

This is one of the groups driving the explosive growth of streaming content, both of the gaming type and non-gaming related videos on YouTube. This persona is highly coveted by advertisers and game companies alike, who they expect are likely to see a game on Twitch or YouTube and be influenced to play it as one of their few gaming experiences each month. A recent panel of publishers stated that most gamers play two games a year, and they likely fall into this persona, so the competition to make a game the choice of this persona is likely to grow ever more fierce.

The Backseat Viewer

This persona, comprising 6% of enthusiasts, almost never plays games. They used to, but life gets in the way and other commitments remove their ability or monetary capabilities to do so. Some of this persona will watch major gaming events and pick up games for a time as a result, but they aren’t likely to buy hardware and thus would likely resemble the Subscriber for that time period. This persona is analogous to the traditional sports fans, who enjoy watching the sport played at the highest level but don’t attempt it themselves.

Newzoo asked this group if they were intending to play games in the next 6 months, with 51% answering yes. This is another group that skews toward having kids, so it is likely that some portion of the content they consume is done peripherally with whatever the kids are watching. With both of those facts in mind, it stands to reason that this would be another target group for advertisers and publishers, looking to be the company that entices them back to the hobby even if for a short time. This is also another close gender split, at 56/44 male to female.

The Time Filler

The last persona is the biggest group of them all at 23% of the enthusiast pool. With the massive uptick in the global market of mobile devices and mobile gaming, it’s not surprising to see a persona that is largely built on mobile experiences. This persona doesn’t care about watching content or owning hardware, and they only game when they have downtime due to a commute or are at social events where a game is being played. The average age of this persona is almost 38 years old, but surprisingly it is the first persona where the largest number of individuals are in the 51–65 age group. This does fit with the phenomenon that older folks are starting to game in larger numbers than ever before.

Unsurprisingly, 70% of this group cites the desire to fill time as its main reason to play games. This group is also the first to skew towards females, with the gender split 60/40 for females to males. This group also has a majority with kids, and some of what they play is likely influenced by the games their kids are playing at the time. This group, directly or not, is a target audience for app developers and associated companies that place advertisements in those popular games this persona is likely playing.

The report has one final category, but it isn’t included as a persona because this category doesn’t actually play games. Known as “The Lapsed Gamer,” these are people who played games in the past but no longer participate due to various other commitments or monetary restrictions. Newzoo’s study concluded that 15% of the total urban online population falls into this category. When asked if they would consider gaming in the next 6 months, only 28% said yes, but more than half said they were aware of esports. At an average age of 39, this is another category where the largest number of people reside in the 51–65 age group, and the gender split is once again favoring women at a 56/44 ratio.

This is likely to be the biggest target audience for gaming companies out of all the personas. The reason is that any lapsed gamer who can be successfully reactivated is “new money,” and would likely require a new subscription or hardware purchase along with it. New customers are the holy grail for any company, so it’s not hard to guess where a company’s priority will lie. We can already see this in the model that Microsoft is adopting for their next-generation consoles, the Xbox Series S and Series X. The Series S has a very low price point compared to most recent consoles, at $299, and both systems will offer monthly payment programs which will include the company’s Gamepass service. This is essentially acting as a subscription service which gives the lapsed gamer both the hardware and a great deal of software to play. Whether they end up playing or not, Microsoft still wins with every subscription they get.

So what does all this data and categorization tell us? Well for one, it should put to rest once and for all the misguided characterization of gamers as lonely social degenerates. With every group reporting a larger percentage of having kids than any other familial setting, it’s clear that the kids who grew up gaming are still by and large keeping with the hobby as they age and have their own families.

It also gives additional truth to the data showing women are becoming a much larger part of the gaming demographic, now accounting for almost half of all gamers and roughly 40% of the most dedicated group. And it gives everyone throughout the industry the tools to better understand their audiences and refine the marketing and creation processes to fit those who will eventually consume those products. That’s a win for everyone involved.