Player Segmentation: How to Personalize Game Experiences

Creating engaging games isn’t just about coming up with a fun idea and cool gameplay features. Long after releasing your game, you must understand who’s playing their game, and to what capacity. This is better known as player segmentation.

What decisions are your players making? How about their reasons for purchasing the game? What kind of players are interacting with it? How much are they spending? How old are they?

You can use these important questions to divide your user base into segments. Let’s break down player segmentation, its benefits, and strategies for personalizing your player experience.

What is player segmentation?

Player segmentation is a classic strategy for dividing a game’s user base into groups. These groups are differentiated by criteria like player behavior and unique preferences.

Generally, player segmentation is a fluid strategy. Initially, players are added to a segment based on matching criteria. But they may be automatically moved to a different segment as their player profile or behavior changes.

Why is player segmentation important?

Player segments are beneficial both for game development and for game marketing. This method informs future decisions for feature prioritization, live ops, and game design.

Common types of player segments include:

• Core gamers: Passionate players who spend a lot of money and time on games.
• Casual gamers: Users who play purely for light entertainment rather than as a deep hobby.
• Explorers: Also known as “spades,” explorers enjoy “digging” around a game to discover new content.
• Socializers: Known as “hearts,” these users play games to interact with other players.
• Whales: Players who spend a lot of money in a game, contributing significantly to its revenue.

The benefits of player segmentation 

Out of all the benefits of segmenting players, these are the three most important, in our opinion.

Personalized gaming experiences

Segmenting players helps create engaging experiences tailor-made to a specific player type. It provides them with more attainable goals. Developers can use player preferences to personalize in-game content, marketing, and ads.

This aligns more accurately with each target audience’s expectations. Personalized player experiences help to connect players to your game more meaningfully, improving player satisfaction, engagement, and retention.

Improving player retention and reducing churn

Player retention and churn are two KPIs that game developers constantly need to track. Player segmentation can positively impact both metrics. 

Pinpointing unique pain points in specific player groups is crucial. This helps you customize support, promotions, and loyalty programs to improve RR and reduce churn.  

For example, you might notice that your “socializer” segment has a high churn rate. So prioritizing in-game social events might help to address this problem.

While you’re here, find out why analyzing player behavior is more important than standard churn analysis.

Optimizing monetization

Maximizing monetization potential is essential for making any game sustainable. Developers can segment players to pinpoint high-value players. They can then use their preferences to customize monetization strategies. 

For example: Identify players who are likelier to make in-app purchases. Then you can tailor offerings and distribute resources more easily.

Player segmentation not only improves conversion rates. It also makes marketing more targeted, boosting ROI in the process.

Different types of player segmentation

While player segmentation is important, not every developer should implement the same strategy. Different developers have different priorities when segmenting their player base. Here are some popular strategies:

Behavioral segmentation

This strategy divides players based on gaming behavior. It focuses on factors like preferred games, spending habits, and session length.

Typical behavioral segments: 

• Social butterflies
• Daily active players
• Completionists.

While behavioral segmentation paints a clearer picture of what your players did, the next strategy focuses on what they might do.

Psychological segmentation

This segmentation type helps developers better understand player motivations, attitudes, and personality traits.

Typical psychological segments:

• Story-driven players
• Competitive players
• Escapists.

Demographic segmentation

This strategy focuses on the kinds of people engaging with your game. Segmenting demographics helps studios adjust in-game content and marketing for each group.

Typical demographic segments: 

• Age groups (teens, young adults, senior adults)
• Gender (male, female, non-binary)
• Income level (high-income, mid-income, low-income).

It’s important not to purely segment based on demographics. This only gives a limited impression of your user base. 

Monetization segmentation

Although only a small percentage of players make in-app purchases (1.83%, according to Unity), these spenders can drive a huge chunk of a game’s revenue (Business of Apps claims 48.2% of mobile app earnings). This makes monetization segmentation very useful, as it categorizes users based on how likely they make in-app purchases and other spending habits. 

Monetization segmentation helps you offer options for a wider spectrum of spenders.

Typical monetization segments:

• High-spenders
• Moderate-spenders
• Low-spenders
• Non-spenders.

We recommend combining this strategy with psychological segmentation. This way, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the motivation behind each monetization segment.

Other player segmentation types

Here are some other strategies for segmenting players that could be more relevant to your studio’s current needs:

• Lifecycle segmentation: Each stage of the player lifecycle (new players, regular players, churned players).
• Technographic segmentation: Players’ preferred devices and platforms (mobile, console, PC)
• Multi-dimensional segmentation: Categorizing players based on various factors (in-game behavior, demographics, monetization).

How to store data for player segmentation

Tracking a lot of data is a goldmine for creating meaningful segments. And it’s important to track more data than not enough.

When storing data for player segmentation, here are some things to consider:

• What key engagement metrics are you measuring?
• How often do you want users to interact with your game?
• What’s the most critical data for segmenting players?

It’s worth gathering data from player registration, gameplay behavior, transactions, and surveys. 

However, make sure to handle this data responsibly and in compliance with privacy regulations such as PIIA (Proprietary Information and Inventions Agreement) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Ensure that any personal data collected is done with the user’s consent, informing them about how their data could be used. Implement data protection measures to safeguard this kind of information.

Additionally, consider using machine learning tools for data analysis while keeping personal data anonymous to reinforce privacy.

Maximize your user base with player segmentation

Player segmentation is a surefire way to reduce churn, retain players, and maintain a strong user base. Using some of the above segmentation strategies will help you create personalized experiences. It will also maximize monetization potential. 

As player preferences change, make sure to continuously track data and perform iterative testing. Developers that segment players effectively can tailor their game experiences more meaningfully.