How Understanding Gamers Can Help us Get to Grips with Gen Z’s Diversity

What is a gamer? It’s a simple question, with a surprisingly complicated answer. Even our client, Activision Blizzard King, asked it, and came up with six different definitions which we visualised in an immersive online experience.

One of the key messages to come out of that project was the huge number of people who play games and find genuine enjoyment within them, but who don’t describe themselves as ‘gamers’. That might be because the term itself - still, in the year 2023 - carries a degree of cultural baggage that is entirely unrepresentative of the enormous, multigenerational, and diverse group of people who actually play games. 

In reality, a gamer is not only someone who dedicates hundreds of hours to perfecting their kill-death ratio in Fortnite. It’s also a group of friends laughing their way around a course in Mario Kart - it’s even the commuter whiling away a distracted five minutes on Wordle. With such a variety in both the people who play games and their motivations for playing them, perhaps it’s no wonder that a clear picture of ‘gamers’ has always been nebulous and abstract. 

For whatever reason, this multifaceted reality of gaming as a medium has been a difficult picture for many to grasp up until this point. But the smartest brands have learned it. Whereas gaming campaigns and activations in the past might have leaned into unimaginative stereotypes (a Mountain Dew-branded Xbox, anyone?), more recent examples have demonstrated an authentic understanding of gamers that fosters genuine connections between the brand and its intended audience. 

One standout example is Heinz’s “Hidden Spots” campaign. Leaning into the insight that stopping to take a bite of a snack can often lead to unintentional failure in online games, the company worked with Call of Duty to locate ‘safe spots’ in a selection of the game’s maps. As a result, gamers were able to take refuge and refuel with some refreshing grub (Heinz branded, naturally). It was a light-hearted, but also authentic campaign - geared towards a community as it was, rather than an imagined stereotype. 

When looking through the data behind our research report focused on gen z , I couldn’t help but think about this journey that many brands had been on with gaming over the past decade or so. That’s because one of the standout takeaways from the report is the sheer diversity of this generation. Far from being defined by the topics that tend to get the most noise in the media (activism, an obsession with smartphones, and a perceived ‘lack of resilience’ to name three), this is a generation that is a great deal more nuanced than stereotypes would suggest. 

In fact, it seems as though ‘gen z’ has become a term weighed down by cultural baggage that is entirely unrepresentative of the enormous, multifaceted, and diverse reality of the millions of people born between the 1990's and the 2010's. Does that sound familiar? 

The way that we talk about ‘gen z’ is a lot like the way we’ve historically talked about ‘gamers’. Too much so. It’s a categorisation that is replete with stereotyping and assumptions, to the detriment of understanding a generation that is about to become a hugely influential part of the world’s adult population. 

Shaking off assumptions was the first step towards success in gaming for many brands and marketers. And it’s exactly the same when it comes to gen z. Disowning stereotypes - be they the idea of a gamer as a teenager shooting aliens in their parents’ basement until 4am or that of a gen z-er glued to TikTok - is essential. In both instances, understanding your audience for who they really are is going to help you identify and make a success of opportunities much more easily. 

From the intensity of Call of Duty, to the slapstick hilarity of Fall Guys, Five by Five has an understanding of gaming’s variety and complexity baked-in. Now, in part thanks to our whitepaper, the same is true for gen z. 

Our success is built on the knowledge of how nuanced and diverse modern audiences are, rather than a reliance on stereotypes that too often go unquestioned. 

In order to forge genuine connections with the next generation, it’s time to put in the hard yards and get to know them. In the world of gaming, there’s no shortage of examples of brands who did exactly that and reaped the rewards. So when it comes to gen z, that’s the blueprint we need to follow.