Summary

Boardible is a mobile game startup closing the significant physical distance between board game publishers and their passionate fan-base. However, it seems not all board games, or board game players are made equal, so Boardible engaged my team to find out:

• Why do console gamers play games, and what do they want from games?

• How can Boardible serve their needs?

To better understand the underlying motivations of this group, we:

• Defined the target console gamer market through activities & behaviours they are likely to engage in (rather than demographics) and posted a casting call to source research interview participants.

• Formed hypotheses about likely motivators and designed an interview guide to (dis)prove our theories.

• Conducted ethnographies & segmented the cohort; identifying key motivators and psychographic insight that drive purchasing decisions within the cohort.

• Devised strategies that will help Boardible become a compelling choice in the target gamers’ libraries.

Insight & Customer Targeting

A key insight I uncovered through our ethnographies disproved the founders’ limiting beliefs that their app couldn’t be sufficiently complex for console gamers. While console gamers may choose a first person shooter or a complex RPG to reaffirm existing relationships, they would choose social games to learn more about new friends - technically simple games well within the reach of the startup.

Boardible was able to gain clarity on their desired target market and have revised their growth strategies in response.