Effective marketing to increase user acquisition. Optimizing gameplay to improve user engagement and boost LTV. Knowing what grabs your audience’s attention and motivates them to download your game and keep playing beyond day 1, 7, 30 and 90 is…everything.
Problem is, gathering player feedback has traditionally been a slow, painfully tedious process. And as fast as player preferences can change, such a passive process is enough to drive publishers insane.
So we set out to get some answers about what motivated simulation gamers to play simulation games. Using our Market Insights tool, we were able to get player feedback directly from simulation players within a few hours.
The results of the survey are below. Let’s take a look.
We surveyed nearly 3,915 mobile game users balanced to the US Census, of which nearly 12% consider themselves simulation gamers. The survey was complete in just a few hours and we had some compelling insights.
The survey started with a simple question to self identify their favorite game genre, each respondent could only choose one and all respondents who chose “simulation” continued. The trend here shows a significant correlation between age and casual-based games.
The data reveals that generally speaking, over 40% of Gen-X and even Boomers, play simulation games to simply relax and pass the time. Compare that to the Gen-Z and Millennials who primarily play simulation games as a means to enjoy a sense of accomplishment and to be creative and express themselves.
Predictably, a common motivator among all age groups was that many said they play simulation games as a means to immerse themselves in another world or explore new worlds because they love the thrill of discovery.
Interestingly, Boomers significantly outnumbered the rest of the field when saying they played simulation games to beat other players and achieve victory.
Want to know what motivates YOUR players? Click here to contact a TapResearch professional today.
Of course, you likely have some ideas about how to apply this data to your game(s). That said, we’d like to point out a few key takeaways that can potentially help you improve engagement and reduce churn.
Key takeaways marketers and user acquisition teams can use in the advertising and marketing strategies.
“Crush Crush. It's a simple dating Sim, but endearing. Been playing it daily for over two years now. No competitions with other players, no leaderboards, just a simple and easy to follow progression system and plenty of entertaining encouragement from the characters.” - 49 y/o female
“Roblox because it's very diverse and there are so many opportunities and games to connect with and socialize with others.” - 19 y/o male
“Black and White. That game is awesome. You play as God, can build your own society, design your cities and settlements. grow you civilization/followers, cast miracles, you have a hand that can collect people and throw them over mountains, you can choose to be good or evil based on your actions, go to war with other rival civilizations. Highly underrated, honestly not sure why no one talks about it!” - 28 y/o male
“The best simulation game I ever played is the Sims because it was so customizable and so fun. I would spend countless hours designing my homes. It was my first simulation game and got me into all of this.” - 33 y/o female
“Dragon city, it's addictive. I started it just to reach a certain level for another requirement for a different program, but once I started I've done spent to much money.” - 34 y/o male
“TrainStation2 - play as little or as often as you want. Zero ads required to play. Creative new worlds/levels to play. Creative trains as well as real world trains. Fun and challenging little get away.” - 52 y/o male
Answering “why” questions is generally quite difficult. For example,
When framed around “why”, survey-based research can uncover valuable insights to inform “what” to help you build from a product lens or create marketing messages that resonate with your audience.
If you’re interested in learning more about what motivates players in your games, we have some exciting mobile solutions that top game companies like PeopleFun, PocketGems, Supersonic, IMVU and more are using to learn, iterate and grow engagement and LTV of their games. Read about their success stories here.
If you would like to learn more about how TapResearch can help your marketing & user acquisition team acquire more users, and help your product team optimize gameplay to better engage and retain those users then Click here to connect with a TapResearch professional or create your Free Account here to get started right away.
