Downloadable software - how much is too much?

[Desktop Gaming]

Hello.

Been meddling with my game installer for the last day or two, tweaking and whatnot, like you do.

Originally my installer was 15mb, but I'd kind of set my stall out from day 1 to have a game installer that was below 10mb. That's for the full version.

By replacing standard OGG files with Variable Bit Rate (VBR) ones, and changing a couple of PNG files to JPG with minimal compression, I managed to get it down to 8.7mb - almost half of its original size.

Now... everything looks and sounds the same as it did before. But the question is, was a 15MB download ever really too much in the first place? I appreciate that these things need to be as compact as possible, but for future reference - where is the line drawn?

[ZeHa]

Well I'd say, the bigger your download, the better your screenshots and / or videos have to be ;)

If I'm totally convinced by some product, I'll download it even if it has got 50 MBytes, but of course there are things with 1 or 2 MBytes and they'll have it a lot easier.

So I'd recommend to go on like before, with optimizing your installer as good as you can do it (converting 15 to 8 MByte - good job!), but also make sure that you put enough effort into presenting your download. That way there shouldn't be problems. Perhaps you could say: "Make your presentation so pretty that someone with a 56k modem will go to his DSL friend and download it there" :D

[dburger]

Seems like you did a good job of getting the low hanging fruit, and got a nice size decrease.

The size of the download isn't as critical as it used to be, but most developers still try to get the download as small as possible without sacrificing quality.

We've noticed that an amazingly high percentage of downloads don't finish for one reason or another, regardless of your server reliability. If your download size is smaller it will be more likely to complete the download, and that should translate into a few more conversions/sales.

Good luck with your new game.

[LilGames]

What is your distribution plan?
Some portals have a filter/category that only displays <10mb files.

[AlexN]

By replacing standard OGG files with Variable Bit Rate (VBR) ones, and changing a couple of PNG files to JPG with minimal compression, I managed to get it down to 8.7mb - almost half of its original size.

Now... everything looks and sounds the same as it did before. But the question is, was a 15MB download ever really too much in the first place?

No, 15MB is not too large, I'd rather have a higher quality content than a smaller file size.

[lennard]

What are you using to play back your VBR sound files?

[Desktop Gaming]

I'd rather have a higher quality content than a smaller file size
Quality hasn't suffered at all. If it had, I would have looked at other solutions.

What are you using to play back your VBR sound files?

I use BlitzMax. I'm currently supporting three sound drivers; FreeAudio (Default for Win98/XP/2K), DirectSound and OpenAL (Default for Vista). Variable Bitrate OGGs work fine in all cases.

[JoshuaSmyth]

My personal think twice before downloading for the demo is currently at about 30mb. Of course I have no statistical evidence to extrapolate this into any general claims, maybe someone who runs a web portal will have some evidence for download size vs genre limits.

Its always a good idea to reduce your download size however, because it ends up reducing your bandwidth bill.

[gmcbay]

Interestingly, I think having your download be *too small* might actually prejudice some people against your game because.. how great could it be if its only 5 megs? Note: I'm not saying you can't squeeze an amazing game demo in 5 megs, but I think lots of people subconsciously think that way when it comes to quality of downloadable content these days.

I also think a lot of indies tend to go way overboard when it comes to wanting tiny file sizes and support for horribly ancient videocards and systems. Yeah, there are plenty of people out there still on dialup, and plenty of people with really crappy old PCs, but how many of those people tend to be the kind who pay real money for downloadable games? It seems like the number must be so vanishingly small that any significant amount of time spent on that segment of the market is wasted.

Having said that, if you can knock down the demo size fairly easily with no perceptible loss in quality you might as well do it, but I don't think most people with broadband connections will bat an eyelash if your demo is 50 megs.

[Desktop Gaming]

Interestingly, I think having your download be *too small* might actually prejudice some people against your game because.. how great could it be if its only 5 megs? Note: I'm not saying you can't squeeze an amazing game demo in 5 megs, but I think lots of people subconsciously think that way when it comes to quality of downloadable content these days.


I agree to a point, but I also agree with what Joshua said (above).

For me, there has always been a 10MB 'threshhold' that I try to keep to the lower side of. Maybe its a personal thing but I wouldn't bother downloading anything much bigger than 10MB 'on spec'.

That said, I don't often play games anyway. I think the only game I've played recently is Peggle - and I only tried that because everybody was going on about how great it was.

[Nexic]

15mb is fine. I would only worry if it's over 25mb.

However, if you can get it down without noticably reducing quality - do it.

[Twitchfactor]

Are things like download size really still an issue?

I mean, people will download their favorite songs from where ever, at ~1meg per minute of music and fill their HDs without a care or thought about it. You can pick up a 200gb HD for <$150, yet we're quibbling over 10megs?

[dburger]

I think there is way too much worry here about what people are thinking about the download size before they download. Yea, the top 10% of downloaders who are thinking about this before they click download, like us, make a determination, but the rest just click to download what looks cool and if it takes too long they cancel.

Its really not that hard, just build a cool game and tighten it up when you're done, like he did, and you're cool.

[soniCron]

I agree with Denis. It's critical that you convince the visitor the game is so awesome they must download it. If it looks interesting enough, they'll sit through a 20+MB download. Good copy, plenty of screenshots and art, and even a video or two should do wonders, and be a lot more valuable than shaving off 5MB.

[LilGames]

... except, as I mentioned above, your game won't show up when people look through portal categories such as this one:

http://www.trygames.com/games_under_10_mb/aff=trygames/page=1

[soniCron]

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=7024

[RinkuHero]

I'd be very wary of going from PNG to JPG -- it really reduces image quality, especially with pixel art. But even without pixel art, put a PNG and a JPG of the same image next to each other and you'll see what I mean, JPGs are much more grainy and weird-looking. While some people won't notice the difference consciously, I think the unconscious difference is important. I'd never use a JPG in a game.

[Sharpfish]

Don't forget also that certain formats may be larger on disk but when packing for distribution they actually compress BETTER than already very optimised gfx, This has been discussed numerous times on here including real world tests and explanations on compressing your installer.exe to make it smaller by not pre compressing individual files too much. Be wary of assuming that smaller individual files on your drive will total a smaller download, in many cases better quality/non compressed stuff will compress as a whole package better and give you a smaller download size for the .exe

A search may be useful as it has been debated till the cows come home. :)

[Polycount Productions]

Are things like download size really still an issue?

I mean, people will download their favorite songs from where ever, at ~1meg per minute of music and fill their HDs without a care or thought about it. You can pick up a 200gb HD for <$150, yet we're quibbling over 10megs?

Yep it is... you simply cannot download 100 or 1 gig game demos using ADSL lines - and there's plenty of them in the world :)

We are aiming to 19.99 megs - no more than that

[Desktop Gaming]

I'd be very wary of going from PNG to JPG -- it really reduces image qualityDepends how much compression you use.

I do wedding photography sometimes and although I prefer to shoot in RAW format and edit in TIF format (huge), I'm quite happy to upload photos for printing in JPEG format.

Given that I charge £60 per hour for doing that, and people are happy to pay up after seeing the results, I don't consider JPEG to be a grainy, useless format, IF its used correctly.

However, if you intend to use masking for games, then JPEG format is a definite no-no since you can't guarantee the exact colour of any given pixel.

Don't forget also that certain formats may be larger on disk but when packing for distribution they actually compress BETTER than already very optimised gfxYep - but I did test this to make sure I was actually saving space before I went ahead and finalised it. I saved around 2mb on my installer size.

[RinkuHero]

There's a big difference between a game graphic and a photograph, though. Photographs use so many colors that the compression's not really noticeable. Plus, you're talking about people who aren't used to computer games, and you're talking about large images rather than small ones; jpg icons are particularly bad, the smaller the image size, the worse jpg looks.

From Wikipedia:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Comparison_of_JPEG_and_PNG.png

[soniCron]

By golly, RunkuHero, there is such a thing as photorealistic (http://www.ricochetlostworlds.com/images/screenshots/Water-XMarks.jpg) graphics (http://www.mysterycasefiles.com/images/ravenhearst/screen1.jpg) for which lossy compression is more than suitable! :rolleyes:

[RinkuHero]

I'd have to try those games to see (do they really store their graphics in JPG?); both have pixel-art GUIs though. They don't look very good in the JPG screenshots, but those might have a higher compression than the JPGs used in the game itself.

[soniCron]

I don't imagine he has to use JPG for everything
JPEG compression certainly didn't seem to harm the sales of those two top-sellers

[RinkuHero]

How do you know it didn't harm their sales? Just because they sold well doesn't mean they couldn't have sold better. It's not as if they sold as well as StarCraft or The Sims. It's still fully possible that, if they did use JPG, some people played the games and decided not to buy them after being annoyed by the graininess.

Besides, the reason not to use JPG in a game isn't because it'd prevent sales. Would a novelist point to the weak writing in The DaVinci Code and claim that bad writing is okay because it didn't harm that book's sales?

But this is going off topic; there's not much more to say except to reiterate that JPGs look really bad to me, and I personally would never use them in a game and I try to avoid them even on websites.

[soniCron]

I admire your purism, RinkuHero, though it seems to a fault. To respond to each of your points in order:

It's not my responsibility to show you the potential harm it didn't do to their sales, it's your responsibility to show the harm it did do. I can't prove a negative.
The reason either game didn't sell as well as Starcraft or The Sims has nothing to do with them using JPG compression on their art assets, but rather target audience and distribution channels, among a plethora of other unrelated facets. Regardless, Starcraft's 8-bit quantized art display (read: 256 colors) and interlaced Bink video are far more lossy compression mechanisms, so I don't see how your example even illustrates the correlation between asset storage quality and sales.
The original poster is apparently concerned with the market and sales impacts of download size, not the artistic implications of such. Your illuminating example is thus of no relevance.
Finally, I dare you to tell me these two images don't illustrate the value in lossy compression of photorealistic graphics: (The one on the left is half the size.)

http://solaristudios.com/share/temp/compress1.jpghttp://solaristudios.com/share/temp/compress2.png

[RinkuHero]

It's not idealism, it's just not something I like to see. It's about as idealistic as not smoking and avoiding second-hand smoke when possible.

It's not clear which is the negative in this situation. You made the positive claim that using JPG instead of PNG didn't affect the sales. I'm not saying it did affect the sales (i.e. I'm not asserting a positive), I only said that those selling well doesn't show that it didn't.

I zoomed in (using a firefox plug in) to 200% and could easily notice the difference. I couldn't notice it at 100% though.

[jimflip]

Our attitude is a game should be as small as possible.

Does make me wonder sometimes how people manage to have such big downloads for simple games...speak of which realarcade is mad, had to wait ages for it to update the other day!

[Desktop Gaming]

I zoomed in (using a firefox plug in) to 200% and could easily notice the difference. I couldn't notice it at 100% though.

What games let you zoom in to 200% on the graphics??

If you're actively looking to pick fault, then no doubt you'll find it eventually. If you're playing a game for the fun of it, then you are not going to be taking screenshots, loading it into photoshop and zooming in as close as you can to find a rogue pixel.

If you are then you're buying games for all the wrong reasons.

[RinkuHero]

And we can't generalize from that one image to all PNG/JPG comparisons. Some are more obvious than that.

I'm not trying to pick fault, it's just something that'd bother me. It would detract from the fun for me to play a game where I noticed JPG compression artifacts.

Most casual players who don't deal with digital images probably wouldn't consciously notice the difference, but I wouldn't risk the unconscious difference.

[Garthy]

I've gone from dialup to broadband to dialup again. I download software to try out from time to time, and this is how I act:

- When on Broadband, I didn't care about the size. 2MB, 20MB, 200MB. I'd click the download, let it save, and come back later on to try it out. Smaller downloads mean I'll probably try it earlier.
- When on dialup, a 20MB download means my connection is going to be rubbish for a while as it chews the limited bandwidth. If I'm about to go do something else offline, I'll get the download going. Otherwise, I might skip it.
- If I really want something, regardless of size or bandwidth available, I'll go out of my way to get it. That means setting up downloads overnight, getting a friend with a better connection to grab it, etc. Download size unimportant. Note that the thing I'm downloading must be new or novel in some way. I wouldn't download a match-3 this way, but I might download a programming game (a personal weakness).
- If I've just bought something (ie. a full version) I'd rather download 50MB now instead of 25MB and have music and graphics stripped or downgraded. But if it was 500MB in size, you'd better have let me know about it beforehand! In fact, some people might think you're cheating them if the product they bought isn't large enough...

I also know that some people won't even bother downloading something, they want to play NOW NOW NOW. Thus they'll either need something browser-based, or additionally if they have broadband a small download (1M-2M) might complete before they lose interest.

Putting this together, here is my thoroughly unscientific conclusion:

- If your audience is using Broadband, they may not be bothered about the difference between 25MB and 20MB. They might between 50MB and 2MB, but maybe not as much as you'd think.
- If your game hooks people BEFORE they download- probably by being quite unique and with a good website- the size may not be that important at all.
- If your audience has a short attention span- you'll know by the type of game you are making- it better be small or you'll lose them.
- I'd tidy up any waste relating to download size in a full version, but wouldn't go crazy. Just trim most of the fat, but leave the meat. You take the meat, and the customer feels cheated.

Hope this helps...

[Thorbrian]

I had previously posted some statistics (http://forums.indiegamer.com/showpost.php?p=124364&postcount=27) from Reflexive's Affiliate system on the impact of download size for games in our catalog.

Basically it said that smaller downloads can lead to marginally more downloads, but the difference in downloads and sales between one game and another is easily 100's of times more significant that the impact of download size, at least up to 80MB or so.

[Bad Sector]

I prefer small files instead of large files, of course. Usually when i'm in "game hungry" mode, i visit some portal kind of site and i download a bunch of games. Then i check them. If these games are 50mb, i'll download half of them if they were 25mb because i'm not going to spend more than some constant kind of time.

That's how i act, usually. Also... i dislike that most of textures in WoW have some kind of jpeg-like artifacts. Not that i won't play the game because of that, i just don't like it :-).