Why do you call it 6o minutes trial ??!

[ppavlovic]

Our game (3D pool sim) has 60 minutes trial. But, in most common cases, users decide to buy game 10-20 days later from the date they've installed it for the first time.

Is this the common behaviour?

[3dben]

I'm not sure what is common, however Thank You for the idea to track time from install to time of purchase. I need to start collecting stats like this.

-=ben

[Black Hydra]

I would never buy something that I had never seen before after only 60 minutes. Even more so by giving my credit card info over the net.

Even if it is a great game, most people would rather think about it for a bit before deciding to purchase.

Thats why you have to give them a lasting impression. If your game looks like every other run-of-the mill freeware/shareware game they won't remember to buy. So by having some uniqueness (at least for the demo) you can keep your game in their memory long enough for them to grab their wallets.

Thats my theory anyways...

[mkovacic]

Our game (3D pool sim) has 60 minutes trial. But, in most common cases, users decide to buy game 10-20 days later from the date they've installed it for the first time.
Is this the common behaviour?
It depends on the game. For us, most purchases seem to come 3-5 days after the download. Also, any spikes in dowloads are also followed by spikes in order page hits about 3 days later. So for this game (Caribbean Puzzle, L&S practicaly doesn't sell at all), people seem to run out of the trial time in about 3 days (they can still play after the trial "expires", we just start nagging *a lot*).

Not that's the profile for the average paying customer, average demo player seems to play the game in short 5-15 min. sessions, and they run out of time in about 5-15 days.

[James C. Smith]

All our games have X minute trial periods. Most are 60 minutes but some are 90 or 120 minutes. Many of the people who buy the game don’t do so until 2 or 3 days after the download. There are always some people who buy it weeks after the download even though the game only has a one or two hour trial period. I have studied this data before but I don’t have it handy right now. I think it was about 55% of the buyers make their purchase the same day of the download and the rest wait at least one day if not longer. Like I said, many wait 2 or 3 days and a some wait even longer than that.

Of course, by 60 minute trial period I mean the potential customer is only allowed to use the game play features for a total of 60 minutes. But it doesn’t expire 60 minutes after they download or install lit. They could download the game Monday, install it on Tuesday and play for 20 minutes, on Wednesday play another 20 minutes, on Thursday use on their last 20 minutes, and Friday go into withdrawal and make the purchase so they can play another 20 minutes.

Also, as I have mention on this forum before, our games are never totally dead after the initial trial period is over. Even after you use up your 60 minutes (or 120 minutes) you can still play a little while longer an infinite number of times. In the case of Ricochet, you get 5 minutes of play each time you launch the game even if you already used up your 120 minutes. This can account for some of the longer times until “conversion”. (a download becoming a sale)

Keep in mind that other people will probably redistribute your demo without your permission. Sometimes other web sites will download your game and then host a copy on their own web site or a “Shareware collection” CD-ROMs will be compiled with your game on it. Things like this can cause old versions of your game to sell even though it has been months or years since they were “downloaded” from your server. We still sell old version of Ricochet that we stopped distributing 3 years ago. If you are not careful about how you do your analysis, it can look like someone download your game and took three years to decide to buy it. In reality, he installed it off a CD-ROM for the first time this morning and purchased it this afternoon.