Games People Play

The Challenge

How did an electronic gaming company identify how well its new smartphone game app targeted at retired males would resonate with this desirable new demographic?

The Solution

An electronic gaming company was expanding its product line by creating new mobile app games designed specifically for people in retirement who now had more leisure time. It wanted to test how a prototype game performed when used by men between age 55 and 70 who had entered retirement.

The solution was to watch each individual play the game using Civicom See Me Navigate, a tool that enables a researcher to view a respondent’s smartphone activity live on the researcher’s computer screen, as the mobile device is navigated by a respondent located elsewhere. See Me Navigate also enables the researcher and respondent to see each other via webcams and to talk freely in conversation while the respondent plays the game at the same time. The research team decided to conduct fifteen See Me Navigate interviews for each of three segments of the target population. Civicom Facilitators set up each respondent with the capability to project their smart phone screen to the researcher’s computer screen, and monitored each interview remotely while also video and audio recording it.

The interviews produced findings that enabled the researcher to determine what the individuals liked about the game and which features were most attractive, which also pinpointing areas within the game that were hard to maneuver, or where timing to complete an action was too short or too long. This helped the researcher predict what would get users to buy the game and to potentially seek additional purchases of a similar nature from the electronic gaming company. Using Civicom Glide, the researcher reviewed the 45 video files from the study and made clips of important moments which were then included in the researcher’s final report to the electronic gaming client.