Chapter 4
Customers as Players
In this Chapter, you’ll learn:
- How thinking of customers as “players” can help you transform your business relationships for the better
- How to use the power of myth as a creative tool to explore customer beliefs
- Methods online games use to classify different players
- How to create a player persona to guide your development efforts
What if there was a way you could think of your customer in a fresh, new way—one that reveals their deepest hopes, dreams, and desires? Part of this transformation requires a little bit of magic, so I’ll share a simple incantation you can use. Repeat it to yourself from time to time to help you reframe how you think about your customer: My customer is a player.
A player persona is a fictional character that attempts to capture the personality, attitudes, and attributes of the real-life customers who play your game. A player persona enables you to prioritize product features based on what customers have the most fun with—which can lead to greater engagement and more profitable relationships. This chapter will equip you with a set of tools for constructing these personas, including interviewing techniques, motivational psychology and mythical archetypes.
The process of creating a persona includes the following steps:
- Identifying your best customers
- Collecting information about customers through research and interviews
- Organizing information into descriptions, motivations and goals
- Repeating as necessary based on what you ...
