It is not only important that we know our own game and the competitor's features but the audiences. At the end of the day, we make our game FOR the players who return on D2, make purchases, talk about us, etc.

Understanding our own audience and what other games could be appealing to them. This gives us vital information on how we can improve:

At GameRefinery, we track two user data points: Player motivations and demographics.

Here at GameRefinery, we have our own motivational model, which is created with mobile games in mind. In short, we track 12 motivational drivers, out of which we extract eight player archetypes! There is a good article about our motivational drivers on our blog. Additionally, all motivational drivers and archetypes are explained in our Data Glossary.

We can find the game's audience and similar kinds of games from two places:

Game Overview page:

Clash of Clans' motivational drivers are available on the Game Overview page

On the Game Overview page you will find the full breakdown of:

We see that the game's strengths lie in the management and social aspect of the game and thus resonate really well with Networkers (27%) and Strategists (25%).

How to find this data from the Game Overview page:

Now, this is the data we can take to the Market Explorer!

When creating segments, we can find all the eight archetypes as sliding options under the 3rd Adjust Filters.

This means we can identify other games with a similar range of Networkers and Strategists.

We will set the range +/- 10% of each archetype we are after.

You now have a segment dedicated to games which have similar archetypes as yours.

How to set motivational drivers as a filtering option in Market Explorer

To help us make the identification easier, we can also add Clash of Clans as its own segment. This way, we can always keep watching the data from the point of view of our own original game.

Clash of Clans vs. games with Strategist and Networker player archetypes as a player base

After setting the segment, we've found 100 games.

Using additional filters under the Games Data, we can start ranking the games based on their audiences, motivational drivers, or any other data points we find important.

Games with Strategists and Networker player archetypes as a player base listed out

Creating segments using Player Archetypes can help you identify new titles with a similar audience to your game's archetypes and improve the games selected for whitelists submitted for networks to improve user acquisition targeting.

This also works the other way around. Instead of the most fitting archetype, you can create segments for the least fitting archetype for blacklists you'd submit for networks.

Player demographics

Where motivations help you to understand WHY players like to play certain games, demographics help you to understand their age and gender. In short, WHO. We collect this data from the implemented features in the game - thus, the demographic preference of the game can change if features are added in the future.

Like motivations, this data is available in two places:

Clash of Clans' summary page, which can be found in the Overview tab

Demographic data can be found under the overview section when scrolled down to the Summary part. Here is an example link to the Clash of Clans' overview page.

You are able to see the users by:

Demographic data is a segment filter in Market Explorer which means that:

To access the data:

5. You have now created a segment filtering in games with a specific demographic range in mind.

Midcore games with a high percentage of male players selected in Market Explorer

We can now begin filtering these games in two places in Market Explorer:

Male player-oriented Midcore games visualized in Market Explorer - X-axis changed to male demography.

Male-oriented Midcore games listed on the Games Data tab