Program Overview
During the externship, we explored gaming and player psychology, focusing on a game genre for potential Mobalytics expansion. Selected participants presented their work directly to Mobalytics founder, Amine. As a leading player analytics platform, Mobalytics is dedicated to helping all players, casual or core gamer, to improve their skills and performance in-game through data-driven insights and personalized recommendations.
My externship at Mobalytics offered a unique opportunity to immerse myself in the intersection of gaming and player experience analysis. Over the short course of the externship, I had the privilege of being one of the four externs to present my findings to Mobalytics founder Amine, while honing in on skills and insights valuable to the gaming industry. This article focuses on the culminating endeavor of the program: the final project and its presentation.
Brief Presentation Outline
In my presentation, I chose to focus on ARPG Gacha games. Specifically, I chose to play Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail for my player psychology research. Through my research, I found overlapping audiences across games, a broader player base, and a demand for an all-in-one tool within the community.
ARPG Gacha Community
Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, both crafted by Mihoyo, stand out as popular adventure role-playing gacha games. In this genre, players spend in-game currency for random virtual items, reminiscent of the real-life “gachapons”. Gachapons are those little spherical capsules you can exchange for a quarter at the entrance of a Walmart or in the middle of the mall. They had random toys inside like sticky rubber hands or small car figurines. The video game genre works the same, except you receive virtual rewards
Ben 10 gachapon machine
Both games garnered immense popularity, with over 20 million downloads each shortly after their release. Genshin Impact, in particular, continues to boast an active player community, earning recognition with the “Still Playing Award” in 2022 and subsequent nominations.
Player Diversity and Overlap
ARPG Gacha games draw a diverse audience compared to other video game genres. For example, Genshin Impact has a 45% female player base, a notable contrast to a game like League of Legends, which only has a 30% female player base. Nearly half of Genshin Impact’s audience is female while many other games lag behind. Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail also have a bigger audience composed of creatives. Mihoyo regularly hosts fan-art competitions for their fan-bases and the community can be largely attributed to it’s massive cosplaying scene.
These players typically play other titles in the genre as well. There are a lot of popular games in this genre including Fate Grand Order, Zenless Zone Zero, Wuthering Waves, Honkai Impact 3rd, and many more. Mihoyo regularly release other games as well. This overlap creates an opportunity for expansion into other ARPG games beyond Genshin and Honkai.
Opportunities for Expansion
ARPG Gacha game players typically seek to manage various in-game aspects such as gacha pity, experience levels, character statistics and many more. Games especially like Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact involve a lot of character building. This forces a lot of players to context-switch regularly while they play the game, switching to a new window every time they’re looking for a certain resource. This presents an opportunity for Mobalytics to develop overlayed displays or all-in-one tools, offering a seamless solution for players’ needs.
(Additional) UI/UX Site Design Samples
My proposed solutions included an all-in-one web tool that included player profile statistics, game guides, character search, and artifact roll ratings.
Site Sample
Though it was not required, I went as far as to create mock ups that portrayed what these solutions would look like applied to the current site.
Profile Statistics Sample
Conclusion
In summary, my Mobalytics externship gave me a deep dive into gaming and player psychology, focusing on ARPG Gacha games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. Through research, I found a diverse community with overlapping interests, suggesting a prime opportunity for Mobalytics to expand its services. My proposed solutions, including an all-in-one web tool, aimed to enhance the gaming experience, providing a seamless solution for players’ needs. For the complete presentation, including detailed insights, findings, and cited sources, please refer to the linked presentation.
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