Some teams spend hours defining their playtest recruitment criteria, obsessing over getting the perfect mix of ages, genders and geographic locations.
The issue with this approach is that they recruit the right demographics, but can end up getting the wrong feedback. When testing how players experience your game, it’s important to focus more on their inherent profiles.
Let me explain why this matters and when each approach makes sense.
Build The Problem With Demographics-First Thinking
When you lead with demographics, you’re making assumptions about what matters for your feedback. You’re saying “we need players aged 25-35 from North America” without asking a more important question:
What behaviours and experiences matter for what we’re testing?
I’ve seen teams recruit perfectly on demographic criteria and end up with players who barely engage with their genre. They would test a strategy game with people who primarily play FPS titles. So the feedback ends up being surface-level because these players lack the reference points to give valuable input.
The fundamental problem is that demographics tell you who someone is, but player profiles tell you how they play. When you’re testing game mechanics, flow or core experience, how someone plays matters infinitely more than how old they are or where they live.
Think about it this way: if you’re testing the difficulty curve in a roguelike, would you rather have feedback from a 45-year-old who’s played hundreds of hours of Hades, Risk of Rain 2 and Dead Cells or a 25-year-old who primarily plays FIFA?
What to Focus on Instead
When I talk about player profiles, I mean the characteristics that directly relate to how someone will experience your game. Here’re some elements we look for when helping studios playtest their games:
Genre Expertise
Do they regularly play games in your genre? Someone who’s never touched a 4X strategy game won’t understand why your resource management feels off compared to genre conventions. But someone who’s played Civilization Stellaris, and Humankind will immediately recognize when something doesn’t feel right.
This doesn’t mean you only want experts. Sometimes you specifically need players new to the genre to test accessibility. But you need to be intentional about that choice, not end up with genre newcomers by accident.
Player Type: Casual vs Hardcore
Are you targeting players who play 2 hours a week or 20 hours a week? This fundamentally changes how they approach your game. Hardcore players notice optimization opportunities and exploit systems in ways casual players never will. Casual players care more about clarity and accessibility.
Testing a hardcore game with casual players (or vice versa) generates feedback that pushes you toward the wrong audience. You’ll end up simplifying systems that should be complex or adding depth that overwhelms your target players.
Player Archetype
Are they:
- Explorers who want to discover every secret?
- Achievers who optimize and compete?
- Socializers who care most about multiplayer interaction?
- Killers who focus on dominating other players?
These archetypes (based on Bartle’s taxonomy) predict how players will engage with your systems. If you’re testing exploration mechanics but recruit primarily achievers, you’ll get feedback about progression speed and optimization, not about the joy of discovery you’re actually trying to create.
Understanding these archetypes ensures your feedback comes from players who will engage with your game the way you intend it to be played. That’s when you get max value.
When Demographics Do Matter
Of course I’m not saying demographics are useless.
There are absolutely cases where age, location, gender or other factors should drive your recruitment.
Localization and Cultural Context
If you’re testing whether your game’s narrative themes land correctly in different markets, you need players from those specific regions. A story that works in the US might fall completely flat in Japan but because of cultural context.
Platform and Hardware
Testing age and income demographics often correlate with device ownership. If you’re testing a mobile game that needs to run on older Android devices common in emerging markets, you need players from those regions who use those devices.
Monetization and Pricing
When you’re testing IAP strategies, pricing models or premium features, regional purchasing power and age-related income levels matter significantly. What seems reasonably priced to a 30-year-old professional in the US might be very expensive for your target market in Southeast Asia.
Accessibility Features
If you’re specifically testing accessibility options for players with disabilities or age-appropriate content for younger players, demographics become primary criteria. You need players who will use those features to validate that they work.
Marketing and Positioning
When you’re testing how your game is perceived in the market or if your marketing materials resonate, demographic alignment matters more. You’re not testing the game itself, you’re testing how it’s communicated to specific audience segments.
The key is matching your recruitment criteria to what you’re testing. Demographics matter when the demographic itself is relevant to the feedback you need.
The Bottom Line
Before you define recruitment criteria for your next playtest, ask yourself “what am I actually testing here?”
If you’re testing core gameplay, mechanics, difficulty, flow or user experience, player profiles should be your primary focus. Find people who play games like yours, who have the genre knowledge to give informed feedback, and who represent the player type you’re designing for.
Save the demographic focus for when you’re testing things that demographics influence, things like localization, pricing or cultural resonance.
The easiest way to waste a playtest is getting feedback from the wrong players. If you need help figuring out the right recruitment criteria for your study, we’re here to help!
We worked with studios like Remedy, Giants Software and Bandai Namco to find the exact players they needed for each test.
