Critical impression duration

[cliffski]

I've been reading some stuff about the book 'Blink' about making snap decisions about stuff (my copies on order...) and it reminded me of how quick I am to make a judgement about playing or buying a game.
We like to think that there are a whole lot of factors that influence the customers decision to download or buy our game, but how long do we have to capture their impression?
When I start playing a new game, I reckon I can tell in maybe 15 seconds from starting a demo whether or not I'll buy it. That's if its a good game. In some cases I'll know its a no-sale in maybe 3 or 4 seconds.
I'm not saying this is rational, and to the people who make games it certainly doesn't seem fair, but I am aware that this seems to be the case for me.
Now 15 seconds doesn't give you long at all. You have time to show a startup splashscreen, a front end menu and maybe 5 seconds of gameplay. If you have a tutorial or backstory then you have the very first paragraph (at most ) of that.
So what I'm suggesting is that the fact that you have some awesome monsters after 10 minutes of gameplay, or that there are 224 different types of powerup is completely irrelevant in terms of achieveing that 'wow' factor you need to capture a sale. Sure there's a chance that you can still lose a sale after 5 minutes by the player realising there is only 1 powerup, but I'm suggesting that maybe 90% of our lost sales are lost because we let the wow factor die in those 15 seconds.
Now I am not suggesting that people play for 15 seconds and then give up, what I suspect is that they play for 15 minutes maybe and then give up, but 'subconciously' we lost them in the first 15 seconds. The 15sec-15 minute period is them just carrying on to see if there is anything interesting in a game that emotionally they have abandoned. Its the equivilant of having a look in each room of a house that you knew from the front door you arent going to buy. (that doesn't mean you aren't curious to see what the kitchen looks like).
What do people think? am I generalising from my own experience? how long does a game have to impress YOU. not rationally, but emotionally?

[Rainer Deyke]

I need at the very least one hour before I decide to buy a game based on the demo, and often as much as a month or more. Occasionally I download a demo, dislike it, keep playing because I am bored, and end up buying it because it managed to hook me several hours into the game. At other times I download the demo, am impressed for about five minutes, but then get bored and uninstall without buying. Usually I don't even bother to download the demo.

[dflash]

It's definitely a delicate balance. Sad but true, snap decisions are made by all of us (some more than others). However, I think it comes down to the old cliche of style vs. substance. I am not saying I am immune to falling for the style, but I won't be a return customer if I have discovered that the 'buzz' of the game only lasted a half hour, and there is nothing underneath it to keep me playing.

Presentation is very important, but ultimately for longevity, I think the substance is more important.

To answer your question, depending on how deep the game is, I might give something 10-15 mins. Other games, maybe a minute or two.

[Andy]

15 seconds - hell! you are harsh enough cliffski!

But you know - I'm affraid you are right really. And that's why this is...sad.
Well. At least we are warned now.
And supposedly I know how to spend that 15 seconds in our upcoming game.

Good point cliffski!

[Andy]

I need at the very least one hour.

I'd read the starting message by a little bit another way - very often I can easily stop/don't start playing in the first 15 seconds (not to decide the opposite) - And there is only uninstall/faraway after that.
This is where we should be very active and prepare some trap to exclude such a sad final at the very beginning.

[Mark Fassett]

I know, usually very early on whether I won't buy something. It's really easy for me to say no. It can take quite awhile for me, if I haven't yet said no, to actually say yes. I don't think I've ever bought a game based on my first 5 minutes of gameplay, however, I've removed tons of games from my harddrive after the first 2 minutes.

The biggest impediment to getting beyond the first 5 minutes is always, always, always, whether things work like I expect. Are the menus intuitive? Is it easy to get in and play? Is there some interesting quality about the presentation? When I get into the game, is it easy to figure out how to play? I'm not going to go to an instructions page and read lots of stuff. I'm going to click "New Game" and try to figure it out. If I can't make the game do something really quick and have some minimal successes, out the door it goes.

[arcadetown]

Very good summarization and true. People are impatient, they want instant and continued gratification. If it's not drop dead easy to figure out or instantly pleasurable, they'll typically move on to the next game. If you pass that initial hurdle think you're next hurdle is about 5 - 10 minutes later. If you pass that second hurdle your doing well and good chance user will complete the demo.

[Ryan Clark]

I agree with cliffski wholeheartedly, however I think that there is another effect here to be considered. Sure, you can lose a sale within 15 seconds, so it is important to do your best to make a good first impression, but simply "not blowing it" in the first 15 seconds isn't really enough, is it?

If your game doesn't have any substance to it your flash+dash might trick a few buyers, but overall I seriously doubt if your game will attract any sort of following. The best way to attract a following is to develop a game that people get fanatical about. Nobody gets fanatical about 15 seconds :)

An axiom?:

A poor first 15 seconds can ruin a good game, but a good first 15 seconds won't save a bad game.

Add it to your list of "things to make sure you don't screw up" :) There are a great many factors like this that can singlehandedly ruin a good game's sales. Unfortunately there are no factors that will singlehandedly create a hit game :(

[princec]

I've got the logs to back cliffski up :/ Out of about 4000 unique install logs I've got (from all my games) since December, 2000 of them are from people who play the game once and then never again.

Cas :)

[Tertsi]

It takes me anywhere from 10 seconds to 5 minutes to quit the game and to decide to uninstall it but a lot longer to decide to buy it, and if I can't play in short periods of time after 60 minutes or so, I'll propably lose the intention to buy the game unless the last minutes were very exciting but that's just me maybe.

Some factors which influence this in my mind:
The UI - If this isn't decorative with a consistent theme throughout the game and easy enough for me to use, no sale. The UI is in my opinion an important factor when trying to get the player to the game's 'world'.
The texts - I'm sick of seeing typos or typical fonts like Arial/times new roman in the games, just by using a font which matches your game's style makes a huge difference if there are more than a couple of paragraphs of text in your game.
The levels - You got to have at least two difficulty modes in the demo, one for experienced players who don't give a damn about instructions and one for the new players. If I have to go through 10 levels which are only a few percents harder than the one before, I'll be bored -> uninstall. In my option after ten minutes or so you should be able to play a difficult level no matter if you're playing in an easy difficulty or not. Finally, the more different each demo level is, the less chance for me to quit playing before the demo ends.

One suggestion concerning the levels; maybe you could put a level skip selection after the first level so the players could choose which X amount of levels they can play before the demo ends. It would of course be reasonable to disable the last levels of the game completely. This would only work for games where you can determine the difficulty just by looking at the level number. What are your opinions on this?

[Ricardo C]

I've been reading some stuff about the book 'Blink' about making snap decisions about stuff (my copies on order...) and it reminded me of how quick I am to make a judgement about playing or buying a game.
We like to think that there are a whole lot of factors that influence the customers decision to download or buy our game, but how long do we have to capture their impression?
When I start playing a new game, I reckon I can tell in maybe 15 seconds from starting a demo whether or not I'll buy it. That's if its a good game. In some cases I'll know its a no-sale in maybe 3 or 4 seconds.
I'm not saying this is rational, and to the people who make games it certainly doesn't seem fair, but I am aware that this seems to be the case for me.
Now 15 seconds doesn't give you long at all. You have time to show a startup splashscreen, a front end menu and maybe 5 seconds of gameplay. If you have a tutorial or backstory then you have the very first paragraph (at most ) of that.
So what I'm suggesting is that the fact that you have some awesome monsters after 10 minutes of gameplay, or that there are 224 different types of powerup is completely irrelevant in terms of achieveing that 'wow' factor you need to capture a sale. Sure there's a chance that you can still lose a sale after 5 minutes by the player realising there is only 1 powerup, but I'm suggesting that maybe 90% of our lost sales are lost because we let the wow factor die in those 15 seconds.
Now I am not suggesting that people play for 15 seconds and then give up, what I suspect is that they play for 15 minutes maybe and then give up, but 'subconciously' we lost them in the first 15 seconds. The 15sec-15 minute period is them just carrying on to see if there is anything interesting in a game that emotionally they have abandoned. Its the equivilant of having a look in each room of a house that you knew from the front door you arent going to buy. (that doesn't mean you aren't curious to see what the kitchen looks like).
What do people think? am I generalising from my own experience? how long does a game have to impress YOU. not rationally, but emotionally?

This is why I believe in custom demos, rather than just giving someone the first couple levels from a game. Throw them in a more advanced level, fully powered up, so they can get a taste of the "real" game, instead of having them use up their demo time/content leveling up so that they can try to enjoy the experience. Take a cue from movie trailers and give them a taste of the most exciting parts of the game, and they will be more likely to want to see more.

[Jay_Kyburz]

An axiom?:

A poor first 15 seconds can ruin a good game, but a good first 15 seconds won't save a bad game.
:(

This is great!, I totaly agree.

If I can play a game for and hour for free (or for 30 days, or with limited content or whatever) then I'm not going to make my decision to buy until I hit that limit.

I do tend to decide I don't like a game in the first 30 seconds or so.

[dan]

I would agree with those that say 15 seconds or thereabouts is merely enough time to decide not to buy a game (or continue playing).

There's been quite a lot of research on how long it takes people to make a positive buying decision on "something new," which a game would certainly be. It varies by the investment, of course, as well as other variables, but 10 minutes, give or take a bit, is generally the mark.

So I suppose the remaining 50 minutes of the proverbial 1 hour demo is mostly there to convince the player that enough game exists.

In writing, this is better known as "the coffee table test." The general idea there is that people only give you 3 or 4 sentences before you've lost your chance to hook them, and the mag hits the coffee table. That isn't much, and there's not even a monetary investment.

The corollary to this, I guess, is that some demos are needlessly long.

[Triple_Fox]

It depends on the player. I can spend a long time with a lousy game trying to figure out if there's anything worthwhile in there, because I also play to learn about the development process, to look for telltale signs of where things went right or wrong.

My roommate, on the other hand, is the type of gamer that likes to have his games come on a silver platter. Uneven, "raw," slow-to-start or otherwise seemingly unpolished games are anathemia to him; he doesn't yell "this sucks" or anything, but simply plays silently and then stops and rids himself of the game entirely with an uninstall within five or ten minutes. I'm pretty sure he is about as archetypical as a "hardcore gamer" gets - he is also a total whore for all the biggest retail titles out there.

Now, that's *one* kind of gamer. He's the market that the retail world has carefully attracted over time - originally a console player, and still to some extent obsessed with the technological advancements of new titles. We also know about the more casual players - an older demographic, more demanding of simple, easy-to-grasp yet addictive gameplay. These are the two biggest and most obvious markets so it makes sense that we would be thinking in terms of them.

The reason why these markets are so demanding, though, is because they know exactly what they want and everyone's trying to give it to them, so the bar is raised incredibly high. No wonder my roommate gives up in about five minutes.

It's niche markets that you're going to keep around if your game is hard to get into - not a bad thing really, if the niche is big enough ;)

[Coyote]

In the console game world, the "First Five Minutes" or "First Fifteen Minutes" (varied depending on who was doing the talking) was beaten into my head again and again. I don't know about fifteen seconds... I doubt you are really going to get a "sale" decision at that point. But I expect that it will color their perception of much of their initial gameplay experience. That's probably why big-budget games invest so much into the opening cutscene.

I look at it this way - there are a TON of games out there vying for my attention and my money. When I try out a new game demo, I'm not looking for a reason to buy - I'm looking for a reason to move on to the next game. Because for some reason the game I haven't played yet always sounds cooler, prettier, and more fun than the one I have in front of me. After about 15-30 minutes (for me), if I haven't found a reason NOT to keep playing it and the demo limitations leave me worried I'll have to give it all up soon - well, you've probably made your sale.

[Ryan Clark]

@Coyote: I think that the console world is different than the downloadable games world in this respect. Afterall, when you download a game, you've invested nothing other than the minute or two it took to download. No money has changed hands, and you wouldn't have to drive back to the store to get a refund if you don't like the game. As a result, I imagine that the 15 seconds would be extended, and "First Five Minutes" does seem more reasonable, you're right.

[Nauris]

I dont think its that simple. cliffski might be right that first 15 seconds are important, yet, player doesnt make a buy/not buy decision during that time - he/she simply decides whether its worth to give demo a shot during those seconds. So, you have to have enough hooks to keep the initial interest (there has been some, since player has downloaded demo), then some hooks that promise that game will be getting constantly more and more interesting (varied content, more goodies, something fresh time after time) etc.
Basically, starting from the moment when potential customer has entered your site, you should calculate hooks player will stumble upon in certain time periods (appetizing screenshot, catchy summary of game, some customer feedback, BAM! I`m downloading, download, easy install, during which perhaps some teaser screens/info is added, BAM! I`m launching the game, easy menu navigation, easy to start game, BAM! I`m in here, now what do i do, ah, that looks cool, BAM! I`ll spend some minutes with this puppy to see if its any good.) and so on.

So, yes, those 15 seconds are important, but the decision process doesnt really start there and doesnt really end there.

Plus, I`d guess it depends heavily on the genre of game, some have shorter window of opportunity, some longer. Perhaps, even download size influences the size of the window. If download is pretty large, people have invested something in the game already and might be willing secretly that the investment pays off.

well, just throwing around two pennies, of course.

[Indiepath]

Took me 3 months to play Battlefield 1942... and after that I purchased it. That was downloadable demo (altough quite big) ;)

$0.02 :)

[BongPig]

Depending on the game, I can agree with everything thats been said. Nauris makes some fine points about that initial 15 second blast. I agree that the 15 second spell is in essence a quick demo of the demo! Thats the period where we decide if we're even gonna give the demo a chance! Hehe. Thats quite funny really as the big chop happens to me with around 80% of the games I play. Install, start, glance at game for 5 seconds, quickly uninstall while singing a 'what a poo game' ditty.

But, thinking about it, I like action games. These games rely on the feel of the controls just as much as any content. So, in this case, you really can tell within the first few seconds whether you can bear it or not.

However, I simply cant apply the same process to an adventure, RPG or puzzle game (even if i want to!). These games need the extra time to get at the good bits, unlike action games.

So, the point?
We, who write action games, have a much harder job hooking players then writers of other genres. We're the ones who suffer from the 15 second chop far more then say a puzzle game developer.
So, from now on, im not taking any more advice from anybody unless they develop action games!! ;)

[Savant]

This is a lot like dating. A girl knows if she's going to sleep with a guy within the first 5 seconds of meeting him. The rest of the date either continues to seal the deal or make her more sure of her decision to get away from him.

I've often had this experience with games ... I know within the 15 seconds of playing a game if it's going to be one I want to keep. If the menu looks shoddy or the install was a pain in the butt, you're already behind the 8 ball and we're probably down to you having 5 seconds left to impress me.

Gamers have tons of options these days. If your game is a hassle or is unpolished in any way, they'll just move on to the next one.

[Martoon]

Here's a thought:

What if your demo started with a short demo of the demo?

The first time the user runs the demo, they don't get a front menu with the usual Options, Buy Now, Exit, etc. They just get one big Play! button, or maybe it drops them right into the game. This way the user doesn't spend any of that precious 15-second impression looking over the front menu and saying, "Let's see, where am I, what do I need to click on..."

This first demo level would be carefully constructed to be as accessible yet as compelling as possible. Pick and choose which game elements to include, and how they're presented in this very first demo level.

I realize this would work better for some types of games than others, but it might be something to consider.