Player motivation is the heart of gaming, until you distill what exactly makes the user tick in your game, it’s so hard to create new features for your users. Some people get a kick out of looking into astrological birth charts and I like analyzing games’ user motivations. At Gamesforum Seattle in 2022, I had a chance to present my process of Feature Prioritization with the help of User Motivations, and I wanted to share the deck as the first post on my Blog.

Trying to understand what the gamer wants out of your game is a tough but rewarding task. Do they like 1) Exploring new things, 2) Competing with other users or 3) plain Destructive fun? Or perhaps a combination of all. I utilize the Quantic Foundry Gamer Motivation chart, as it is quite comprehensive. Once you determine the exact motivations, and I recommend scoring them, it can even help you identify your user demographic. 

This deck also touches on Feature Prioritization and how to approach it analytically. Every cook will have a different recipe so please feel free to adapt it to your game, but here is my formula.

Hope these slides help you as much as they have helped me. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.