Consumer insights teams in gaming are like astronomers charting an evolving universe. They’re experts at spotting patterns and predicting trends, but the gaming industry’s constant changes can make even seasoned pros feel like they’re trying to make sense a galaxy that’s always shifting.
Enter Solsten — a consumer insights platform that’s changing how we understand players, much like how the Webb telescope transformed our view of the cosmos. It doesn’t replace the expertise of CI teams; instead, it enhances their capabilities, revealing intricate constellations of player motivations that were previously difficult to see.
Insights teams are using this tool in exciting and revelatory ways. From delivering answers at light speed to figuring out the “why” behind player behaviors, let’s take a look at some of the biggest challenges CI professionals currently face, and how this psychological insights tool is helping them make sense of it all.
Speed of Insights Generation
The CI challenge: The need for quick turnaround on insights has increased dramatically. Consumer insights teams now need to provide answers to “why” questions almost immediately, sometimes even on weekends, to respond to rapidly changing player behavior.
Solsten’s solution: Solsten’s AI-powered adaptive assessment technology is built for speed. It can be deployed to a game’s entire userbase easily, instantly turning player responses into a quantitative, realtime dashboard. The system learns about respondents as they take the assessment, allowing it to gather deep insights with fewer questions. This adaptive approach means Solsten can provide rapid insights on player psychology. The continuous learning aspect of Solsten’s AI system means it’s constantly improving its speed and accuracy based on new data.
Understanding Player Motivations Beyond Surface-Level Behaviors
The CI challenge: It has never been more important to understand the deeper “why” behind player actions and preferences, not just the “what.” This requires more sophisticated research methods, especially qualitative approaches.
Solsten’s solution: Solsten’s adaptive psychological assessment goes far beyond traditional player surveys or behavioral analytics. It measures over 200 psychological traits, creating multidimensional player profiles that capture nuances traditional methods often miss.
Solsten’s patented psychological clustering technology doesn’t just identify traits; it shows how they interact to form complex motivational structures. This allows game designers to create deeply personalized experiences that resonate on multiple psychological levels simultaneously.
By providing this level of motivational insight, Solsten empowers developers to move beyond simple A/B testing or feature copying. Instead, they can innovate with confidence, creating novel gameplay elements and monetization strategies that align perfectly with their audience’s deepest psychological needs and desires.
Cross-Platform Gaming and Blurred Lines Between Platforms
The CI challenge: The distinction between PC, console, and mobile gaming is becoming less clear. This complicates audience segmentation and requires more nuanced research approaches.
Solsten’s solution: Solsten’s focus on psychological traits rather than platform-specific behaviors makes it ideal for understanding cross-platform players. The system can compare player psychographics across different platforms, helping developers understand the core motivations that drive engagement regardless of the device. This informs cross-platform development strategies and help marketers craft messages that resonate across multiple platforms.
Player Sophistication
The CI challenge: Players across demographics have become much more sophisticated in their understanding of game mechanics and business models. This requires more in-depth and nuanced research approaches.
Solsten’s solution: Solsten’s assessment is designed to adapt to the respondent’s level of sophistication. By measuring over 200 psychological traits, it can capture nuanced differences even among highly sophisticated players. The system’s ability to predict how to understand the user as they take the questionnaire allows it to adjust its complexity accordingly. This adaptability ensures that Solsten can provide valuable insights across diverse player populations, from casual to hardcore gamers.
Balancing Quantitative and Qualitative Insights
The CI challenge: It’s increasingly necessary to combine quantitative data with qualitative insights to get a full picture of player behavior and motivations.
Solsten’s solution: While Solsten’s approach is primarily quantitative, its deep psychological profiling can significantly enhance qualitative research efforts. The traits identified by Solsten can inform the design of qualitative studies, helping researchers ask more targeted questions. Solsten’s persona creation capabilities can also help identify ideal candidates for in-depth interviews and playtest studies, ensuring a diverse range of psychological profiles are represented in qualitative research.
Demonstrating the Value of Consumer Insights to Stakeholders
The CI challenge: Developers and marketers often don’t understand the importance of consumer insights, especially if they’re already skeptical skeptical.
Solsten’s solution: Solsten’s approach is built on scientific rigor, which can help convince skeptical stakeholders. The system achieves high reliability scores (alpha values between 0.7 and 0.95) and validity based on construct validity measures. Solsten’s data is based on millions of respondents from over 250 countries, providing a robust foundation for insights. This scientific approach, combined with the ability to predict business outcomes, can demonstrate the tangible value of consumer insights to stakeholders.
Conducting Effective Research For Early-Stage Concepts
The CI challenge: It’s really difficult to get meaningful insights for games that are still in the early concept phase.
Solsten’s solution: Solsten’s Navigator product is specifically designed for early-stage concept testing. It allows developers to create hypothetical audiences based on genre, game mechanics, art style preferences, interest, and more. This lets teams understand the psychological profile of potential players before significant development has occurred.
Understanding Market Potential Beyond Raw Player Numbers
The CI challenge: High player counts for a genre don’t necessarily translate to market opportunity for new games in that genre.
Solsten’s solution: Solsten goes beyond simple player counts to assess market potential. By creating detailed psychological profiles of players, Solsten can help developers understand the true appetite for new games within a genre. For example, it could identify the psychological traits that make some MOBA players open to trying new games, while others stick exclusively to one title. This nuanced understanding allows for more accurate market potential calculations and can help identify underserved player segments. Additionally, Solsten incorporates estimated market size and LTV data into all personas.
Integrating CI Throughout the Game Development Lifecycle
The CI challenge: Consumer insights should be an ongoing part of the development process, not just something done at specific milestones.
Solsten’s solution: Solsten’s tools are designed for continuous audience understanding throughout the game development lifecycle. The system can track psychological shifts in the player base over time, allowing developers to adjust their strategies as needed. Solsten’s ability to integrate with behavioral play data enables a holistic understanding of players, combining psychological insights with in-game actions for a complete picture of the audience at every stage of development and post-launch.
Making Sense of Your Galaxy
We’ve covered a lot of ground here — from lightning-fast data needs to the complexities of cross-platform play. The gaming world is changing rapidly, and consumer insights teams are racing to keep up.
Solsten is helping them tackle these challenges head-on, offering a fresh approach to understanding players. It’s not just about what players do, but why they do it. This deeper insight is proving to be a game-changer for consumer insights teams.
But don’t just take our word for it. If you’re curious about how Solsten could help your team, why not see it in action? We’d love to show you around and chat about your specific challenges.
Drop us a line for a demo — no pressure, no sales pitch. Just a chance to explore how we might help you better understand your players and make your games even more engaging.
