Casual Games size limit - blown out the door?

[Chaster]

I just noticed that one of the current (as of today) top 10 Real Arcade games is over 250 megabytes ( :eek: ). The game is ISpy.

This surprises me because while I believed that casual games could be bigger than 5 megs, I didn't think a 250+ meg casual game would sell well just because it's frickin' huge... Heck, I have a 4 mbps cable connection and *I* don't want to download it!...

What do you folks think about this?

Chaster

[princec]

Who are you, one of the Double Take Brothers??? That 5mb limit was another Pavlina myth that everyone latched onto years ago. It seemed like no-one noticed when he started releasing 10mb games.

Cas :)

[Jim Buck]

A) Never forget that there are rules and exceptions to the rules.
B) Does "Top 10 Games" actually mean anything on RealArcade? (Or, perhaps, they are trying to test the water?)

[Dan MacDonald]

ISpy (http://www.scholastic.com/ispy/) is a known franchise from the huge book selling company "Scholastic". If anything it shows the power of a known brand....

[ManuelFLara]

B) Does "Top 10 Games" actually mean anything on RealArcade? (Or, perhaps, they are trying to test the water?)
I think it's Top DOWNLOADED Games so it means something.

[gpetersz]

The 5M or even the 10M barrier is not any more I think. With the spreading of broadband it crawled higher. 25? 50?
250 seems a bit insane, but not impossible. If it would be something I want badly than I might give it a "download".

[cliffski]

I agree that 5MB is not an upper limit any more. I think you are looking at maybe 30 meg for a casual spur-of-the-moment download. maybe you can go as high as 50MB if the screenshots look great and reviews are good.
But a 250MB downlaod is probably reserved just for known franchises. Im sure Age Of Empires 3 can get many downloads at 250MB, not so sure about any of our games.

[svero]

I have to say its surprised me a bit. 250mb is a pretty healthy download. More than I'm willing to sit for. There have been similar examples in the past though. Roller Coaster tycoon was a pretty big download that made it into the top 10. Also a known brand.

[dan]

Well, to be fair to anyone who claimed such a rule, all tech limit rules come with an expiration date.

250M is a lot, but I wouldn't be surprised if some popular casual games started creeping up to 20M or 30M. Cutting off the dialups is a smaller issue as time goes on.

[Yarlen]

At 250MB I would expect one heck of a game. ;)

With the spread of broadband, I think many people are open to larger download sizes. Until you really get up there, the difference in size only equates to another few seconds/minutes of download time to the end-user on a fast connection. Of course, people will also expect more from a game too with the increased size (i.e., better graphics, sound, etc.).

[gpetersz]

Yes you are right in our point of view (ie. so called experts).
But the secretary for example will not even know what a byte is...

[terin]

I've never believed in the mythical download limit.

People will download good games. I downloaded 100 meg games back when the fastest modem was 14.4 and I certainly wasn't the only one.

-Joe

[cliffski]

but was that a casual game you saw a screenshot of and had never heard of/ or was it the next quake? That's the difference.
I'd download a Cossacks 2 demo if it was 500MB (although god knows who would be paying for that bandwidth) but if its a game I haven't heard of that's a different matter entirely. Longer downlaods also give the custoemr more opportunity to say 'sod it' and cancel it to download/play something else.

[James C. Smith]

A large download size can reduce the number of units you sell because fewer customers who will try your demo. (you all know that part already) But it can also decrease the profits of each unit sold by increasing the hosting coasts. It is expensive to serve such large files especially if you one get 1% of the downloads to turn into a $20 sale. (or in Real’s case, as $13 sale if you average in the discounted game pass sales). A game that big has to maintain a very high conversion ratio or the partial will either stop selling the game or subtract the hosting coasts out of the royalties paid. My point it, it is possible that even though ISpy is the number 3 seller, it could easily be the #40 profit generator because it has much higher coasts.

When you are a little Indie hosting a few games on your web site it is easy to get $4 per month web hosting from eDataRack.com which includes 60 GB of Data Transfer. Or for $55 per month you could get 400 GB of Data Transfer per month. That would be enough to serve up 1,600 copies of ISpy. But eDataRack.com can only offer that price because they are betting that most of their customers won’t use all that Data Transfer every month. They don’t offer plans with 10 times the Data Transfer for 10 times the price. When you are serving up many terabytes of data every month you have to pay at least $.20 or $.30 cents per GB. If you assume you get a 20 cent per GB deal, and you have a 1% conversion ratio, that means your hosting coats for ISpy would be $4.88 per copy sold. (To get 1 sale you serve up 100 demos at 250 MB each totaling 24.41 GB of data at $0.20 per GB = $4.88) .

The point is, just because ISpy is the #3 seller this week that doesn’t mean it is very profitable. It has MUCH higher coasts than a 5 MB game.

[terin]

I really don't believe there is much point to making casual games without one hell of a good product and a good plan. In which case, if you have those, once again I think the Download limit doesn't apply.

If you make an ok game that is 250 megs it will do worse than an ok game that is 10. That's obvious to me: The portals came up with the size rule because there aren't enough great games to justify large sizes, so they are forced to take ok or 'good' games.

That's my bet :-) If you're making a great product then you can ignore that size barrier... but honestly, great products are few and far between and every judge views great in a different way.

I was speaking in reference to the entire Kesmai series of games in the early 90s and I think the original Multiplayer Battletech.

-Joe

[TomSpilman]

Out of curiosity i looked up the latest broadband penetration info (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0503/). It comes down to US broadband adoption being 56.3% and worldwide broadband adoption at 62%. Both impressive numbers.

[Chaster]

As the original Poster, I feel like I need to clarify what I said:

"...while I believed that casual games could be bigger than 5 megs, I didn't think a 250+ meg casual game would sell well just because it's frickin' huge..."

Just to repeat - I do NOT think casual games have to be 5 megs or less. (heck, our last game was over 5 megs). I just have thought that to be a hit selling CASUAL game, they need to be less than ohhh, about 30 megs... (currently - obviously, as broadband gets more penetration and gets broader, this number goes up)...

I was just suprised that a purely casual game (I've seen the game, it's no Quake/Half life) which was OVER 250 MEGS, could be successful in the download market.

Note that I'm not saying I disbelieve my eyes, I'm merely *surprised*...

Chaster

[Greg Squire]

The "I Spy" game (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=6936809&type=product&id=1097582016945) was originally a CD-ROM game that is now being sold through RealArcade. There are a number of others like this that they sell as well, such as RollerCoaster Tycoon (97Mb), Tonka Construction 2 (124Mb), Monopoly 3 (230Mb), etc. They are large because "Downloadable Size" wasn't even a consideration when those games were made. The only size consideration may have been "will it fit on a CD?".

[Jack Norton]

Out of curiosity i looked up the latest broadband penetration info (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0503/). It comes down to US broadband adoption being 56.3% and worldwide broadband adoption at 62%. Both impressive numbers.
hmm interesting. why Italy is only 42% then? ;)

[terin]

Because the rest of the world is picking up your slack :-P LOL

-Joe

[Dan Prigg]

A couple quick comments I just wanted to pipe in on here. I SPY is number 3 on our service due to revenue, our service is very draconian in that aspect (good and bad).

We have had huge games on our service and they do do well if they have a casual focus, i.e. they are targeted towards the right market.

The reason we picked this game is that to us, it was not only a child's game, it followed a lot of the same kinds of rules that Casual games do. Its just fun for adults and kids.

[Matthew]

The anecdotal numbers I've heard on incomplete downloads have three dropoffs:

~6MB, ~12MB, and ~250MB

I've heard Trymedia people quote these numbers. They have a huge amount of data to pull from, since their download system uses a stub/client that initiates the actual download. They're able to pull out a ton of stats from this.

Apparently, incomplete stats on a 7MB file are roughly the same as a 12MB file, and likewise between a 20MB file and a 250MB file. Of course, these are failed downloads; I'm sure initiated downloads are affected by perception and feasibility (a modem user might not even start to download a 250MB file, or someone might choose to download a 9.95MB file over a 10MB file).

Disclaimer: these are numbers I've heard in at GDC sessions over the years. My memory might be mangling them.

[Jim Buck]

Though, I'm highly suspect of that 62% number for worldwide (they polled ~6000 people in key global markets - not exactly representative of the world as a whole), even if it's pretty accurate, that's still 38% of the market you are turning away due to large file size. (Except for, of course, the very tiny hardcore % that are willing to download such a large file through a modem.)

[Vorax]

Though, I'm highly suspect of that 62% number for worldwide (they polled ~6000 people in key global markets - not exactly representative of the world as a whole), even if it's pretty accurate, that's still 38% of the market you are turning away due to large file size. (Except for, of course, the very tiny hardcore % that are willing to download such a large file through a modem.)

But what percent of them are still using modems because they can't afford broadband connections, or could simply care less about downloading anything? In either case, they aren't missed sales because they wouldn't be buying anyways. I would bet at least half fall into that category, probably more.

[Sybixsus]

But what percent of them are still using modems because they can't afford broadband connections, or could simply care less about downloading anything? In either case, they aren't missed sales because they wouldn't be buying anyways. I would bet at least half fall into that category, probably more.

That works the other way around, of course. How many of those who have broadband have broadband to play hardcore online games like World of Warcraft and Unreal Tournament 200X? How many of them have broadband so that they can warez all their favourite games from FTP, IRC and P2P?

[Jim Buck]

I think the majority that have dial-up either can't afford it or just couldn't be bothered to look into a technology they don't understand ("what I have works good enough for what I do").

I think either audience would be up for buying the occasional game. Not a few per month, mind you.

[Anthony Flack]

That's very encouraging!

I have a feeling that I'm about a 20Mb man, myself. With all the compression tricks in the world, that's about the size I need to deliver all the content I want to in a game.

[Sharpfish]

I download ANY size of anything I am interested in. atm I have 1.5mb cable - and a T1 at work.. I downloaded the Juiced Demo yesterday @ work which was around 250mb - and it took about 5 minutes (my how times change). For me if I like the look of a demo I don't think twice about d/ling it no matter what size it is - though I am a "hardcore" user I guess.

When it comes to making games to sell over the internet though, I wouldn't be so careless as to start using bmps instead of compressed tgas or pngs.. or not optimising where I can or whatever. I would still try to keep the sizes as lean as possible out of courtesy to the downloader - maybe he has the speed but doesn't want to give up the HD space?

Having said this, for the kind of games I am developing they are already on the larger size of the theoretical "limit" for good sales - but I just could not make the games I want/need to make to the best of my abilities if It meant scaling back too much. Art assets and sounds content are used liberally in my games to make the experience what I envisage.. If I want to "chop off" 50% of my game to fit the downloaders cut off points then I probably wouldn't get any sales anyway, as I had limited the content from what I felt was a value for money point to some small scale derivative. And that market is saturated already.

[aiosup]

The anecdotal numbers I've heard on incomplete downloads have three dropoffs:
~6MB, ~12MB, and ~250MB
[...]Apparently, incomplete stats on a 7MB file are roughly the same as a 12MB file, and likewise between a 20MB file and a 250MB file.
I think these numbers should be read like this (this is the bit of salt -- the Broadband salt):

1) most casual gamers would probably try a game if it downloads instantly. One minute seems a fair shot for what instantly means on a secretarial computer, and 6MB is most probably the amount of data you download at 10KBps (~100Kbps) aka Broadband.

2) another class of downloaders would probably be happy to play a game that gets there until they find another interesting target. This assumes users of this class typically browse on google or some directory service and start download the game that appeals the best to them. If no other game appears until they have finished downloading, they try this game. Two minutes equates (again, the 100Kbps) to roughly 12MB.

3) Finally, one who specifically wants a game, or doesn't care how much it takes for it to download, at least if it gets downloaded *by* the lunch time (starting in the idle 9ish hours), would probably download as much as 1GB of data.

It's amazing how much you can delude yourself with statistics :o

[Alex]

I was just reading the 2004 IGDA whitepaper linked from another thread herabouts, and something that caught my attention was this:

There is some worry in the web and downloadable game segment that the increasing installed base of broadband will damage the viability of the segment. The theory goes that broadband customers aren’t as concerned about file size and will opt for the downloadable games in the upper end of the spectrum (100 MB+) that are beginning to be offered by the major game publishers. With over 40%8 of US households on broadband and nearly all office PCs on fast networks, there hardly seems to be an impact at this point. If anything, broadband may be to blame for the decreasing conversion rates that some publishers have started to indicate. When downloading a new game is easy and consumers have dozens of titles to choose from, there can be less of an incentive to purchase any of them. It is unclear if broadband is the major cause, but there is a very serious concern about falling conversion rates. One indicator that broadband is good for games is a recent study from ComScore/OPA9 which shows that 66.7% of users purchasing content related to Sports, Games and Entertainment online have broadband – the highest of any of the categories of content surveyed.

Now I'm no business analyst, but maybe making games bigger is a good thing. For one, more people have broadband than before. Also, a bigger download will play on the psychology of the person - bigger file must mean more stuff - more stuff means value for money - therefore it must be worth a look in. I'm not saying go crazy with 300Mb demo's, for a start where are you going to get all that content from? But I wouldn't be worried about 50Mb downloads - yes I have broadband. I am one of those people who will find a game, play it until its time limit runs out, then never touch it again. Sure it was kind of fun, but the sheer quantity of small games available means I can find some other diversion pretty quickly, it takes a minute or so to download another casual game, thats nothing. Perhaps larger files will make people think twice about demo-hopping (is that a term for it??)

Anyway, like I said, I'm no analyst, but it would be interesting to see what the overall effect of increasing file sizes has on conversion. In my web business I didn't get any customers because I was too cheap ($20 per hour), so I went up to $45 per hour and people thought that for that kind of money I must know what I'm doing. Weird hey?

[aiosup]

it would be interesting to see what the overall effect of increasing file sizes has on conversion.
The market is too segmented to be sure on this issue.

I was monitoring a bit the illegal file sharing world, and the results of that look like this (http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~iosup/p2pview.html): the market is *very* segmented, and different segments have *very* different patterns. Now, I would dare betting on the same thing happening for the Indie games market.

[Locoweed]

Thanks for this topic, I find it very interesting how indie developers have created a "size limit" for their games, which I am sure was absolutely necessary a while back when there was little available but 56k phone connections, but 56k phone connections are becoming a thing of the past, except for Baby Boomers, who just use their computer to look at their financial accounts, get e-mails from their grand children, etc, who, by the way, never played computer games anyway.

Maybe it's time for a new indie strategy other than the Pavlina one. It's just a matter of time before indie games grow more sophisticated. If you time it right it could be very rewarding I would imagine, although a much riskier endeaver than the status quo too I guess.

About this 5mb limit, personally I think that is more limitting than good. I would much rather download a 50mb decent game demo than ten 5mb average/poor game demos that I only play once or twice and then have to delete from my computer. Defragmenting takes time too you know. Not that a 5mb game can't be entertaining and not that a 50mb game can't be a total bust, but I think it may be a good strategy to get out of this indie "norm" that somehow this industry has fallen into.

So you will probably be seeing me at the poor house, lol. ;)

[Sharpfish]

About this 5mb limit, personally I think that is more limitting than good. I would much rather download a 50mb decent game demo than ten 5mb average/poor game demos that I only play once or twice and then have to delete from my computer. Defragmenting takes time too you know.

That is the same way I see it, that and I would really be put off paying $20 for a few mb of game in this day and age.. I want CONTENT!!

Having said this, that is not the way to go about selling well, but as a games PLAYER that is my tastes. I would pay $20 for a 50mb GREAT GAME.

[aiosup]

That is the same way I see it, that and I would really be put off paying $20 for a few mb of game in this day and age.. I want CONTENT!!

Having said this, that is not the way to go about selling well, but as a games PLAYER that is my tastes. I would pay $20 for a 50mb GREAT GAME.
The thing is you can easily put a whole RPG world in a couple of MBs, wo/ special GFX & SFX. Then you get to the point where you have to buy/produce the latter, and you find that it's nearly impossible to complete a 50MB game in time and cheaply. So you keep the game small mainly because of the resources needed to make it decently bigger.

[tentons]

...a bigger download will play on the psychology of the person - bigger file must mean more stuff - more stuff means value for money - therefore it must be worth a look in.

I am one of those people who will find a game, play it until its time limit runs out, then never touch it again. Sure it was kind of fun, but the sheer quantity of small games available means I can find some other diversion pretty quickly....
If a game gets deleted after the expiration and you don't think twice, chances are it wasn't a very good game. I doubt it has any correlation to file size or amount of content. A good game will compel you to play more and is worth paying for. Shovel-fulls of drivel will always get passed over, even in a 50mb package.

[Sharpfish]

The thing is you can easily put a whole RPG world in a couple of MBs, wo/ special GFX & SFX. Then you get to the point where you have to buy/produce the latter, and you find that it's nearly impossible to complete a 50MB game in time and cheaply. So you keep the game small mainly because of the resources needed to make it decently bigger.


Well, yes - in that case you are paying for a story or more precisley a lot of text and some set pieces.. for that game style I can see your point.

I am not saying small games are bad or can't be good, I am saying that sometimes you NEED the extra space IF you have made the extra (worthwhile) content... and from *my* point of view (if I was going to pay for a game) I would definatley feel better paying the $20 for something over 3mb - i'm not talking size for size sake - I can tell what the extra size brings based on the demo. I *may* be more put off if I feel there is only another *1mb* of game for my $20, but as I keep pointing out that is just for me personally and I am more of a retail games buyer so not relevent to indie games *SALES*

[DGuy]

Interesting comments (http://developer.popcap.com/viewtopic.php?t=95) from Popcap Developer Forums (made by a PopCap programmer):

As for a limit on our games, we try to MAX out at 10MB, but we really desire to be less than that. That said, our latest games have been averaging around 7 or so MB. As for a 100MB game, well, I'm not sure. If this were something pretty bad ass then I'm sure we'd be interested in looking at it, but then again, I'm a programmer, not a producer. Course, distributing a 100MB file on our site would probably not be something we'd want to do, but again, if something is good enough and really warrants it, who knows. Tho I doubt a 100MB game is really much in the way of casual, considering that last I heard around 40-50% of our customers still have 56K modems and don't have a compatible 3D graphics card.DGuy

[Jim Buck]

I think the last statement was the most interesting. But it's pretty much what a lot of the regulars have been saying here.. yeah, more people are using broadband, but do you really want to eliminate 40% of your potential market? (just in reference to online speed.. taking into account the "don't have a compatible 3D graphics card" even accentuates it even more..)

[Anthony Flack]

Certainly you wouldn't want to for no reason. But then again, in most cases the best will in the world can't turn a 50Mb 3d game into a 5Mb software-rendered game.

You may lose some customers (56k users) - and you may gain some customers (if the game is really lush and impressive). Hard to say... what this suggests to me is that large games are certainly becoming viable at least.

[Evak]

I often go to the PCgameworld shareware section to see the weekly download stats and the top 10 Downloaded games.

Most of the top 10 downloaded games are less than 6mb, which accumulate 1000's of downloads a week, allthough how many they actually sell is another matter entirely :)

[tentons]

Well, I'm just glad that everyone else seems to be targeting the very casual players (ie, match-3 games). :D That's a nice market and all, but it's way too crowded, and I see other markets being ignored. Besides that, I don't like those kinds of games, so I wouldn't produce quality stuff for them anyway. Passion's not there.

[aiosup]

That's a nice market and all, but it's way too crowded, and I see other markets being ignored.
*lol* Did we say this?

[princec]

I think the last statement was the most interesting. But it's pretty much what a lot of the regulars have been saying here.. yeah, more people are using broadband, but do you really want to eliminate 40% of your potential market? (just in reference to online speed.. taking into account the "don't have a compatible 3D graphics card" even accentuates it even more..)
That's a FUD statistic. You can tell by the fact he's vaguely bandied about a figure with 10% variance and referring to two unrelated groups of customers with the same number. There will be an exact figure, which he doesn't know, and it'll actually be... 35% for graphics cards, and some unknown figure for broadband usage as they can't actually collect reliable statistics on broadband usage from their site.

Cas :)

[aiosup]

That's a FUD statistic.
Yes, but so are any statistics I can think of...

[Jim Buck]

Actually, there was a report someone posted a link to here not that long ago that did state broadband % (not sure if it was worldwide or U.S.-only) had finally crossed the 50% mark. My only point is that, though a lot of developers are saying that we can finally ignore 56k, would you really want to ignore what is still a pretty large % (even if that % is less than 50%)? (The same logic applies to the 3d card or, as seems to be the true issue, drivers for 3d cards. I don't even try to figure out the numbers of the cross-sections of broadband&3dcard. My head would explode. :) )

[princec]

It seems you are making a distinction between broadband and 56k users like one bunch live on the moon and the others under the sea. The 56k users are not unable to download 30mb games, they're just a bit less likely to do so. You aren't cutting off 50% of your market by any means.

Cas :)

[Jim Buck]

I think it's a matter of "likely cutoff". A bit less likely to do it can mean the difference between 5% of the people waiting for the full download and 80% of the people waiting for the full download. Yes, of course I pulled those numbers out of my ass.. and, yes, 56k'ers *definitely* are the ones that live on the moon. :)

[Evak]

I'm more interested in cutting off old hardware like pre Geforce2 generation cards. and sub 400mhz computers. Doing this would significantly improve the quality and polish of my games.

As far as size goes I still believe that 5-10mb is probably ideal, and over 20 is going to turn people off of a lot of non commercial games. But thats just my opinion :)

[adamw]

I just thought of another observation. We released one of our games as "charity-ware" a few years back. It was around 20Mb and had 100,000+ downloads over (I think) about 6 months. How does this fit into the "10Mb download limit" group think? You might say the free status of the game got more people to give it a look, but one could also argue that the game itself was attractive to a certain niche. I think it's akin to a shareware demo. Is 100K downloads alot in 6 mos? I dunno. It seems like alot to me.

I wonder if one could mine the download stats of Sourceforge and see what size is attractive these days? Maybe we could get some real numbers to set up against the common (mis)conceptions?

[Jim Buck]

Sourceforge downloaders are not the target market of many of the developers here.

[adamw]

I'd like to see some hard data on downloads anyhow - from whatever source. I'd like to know if a person shops/decides differently based on the expected size of the item. All we have is heresay right now. Failed downloads doesn't cut it. I mean, that can have all types of causes - most likely network failings.

I've also noticed that some portals don't even post the size of the download. So how does a person decide to download or not based on size? It isn't available until they get the grey box of "do you want to run or save this file". And who really notices size there?

And further, doesn't it follow that if the player is "casual" that they have no idea what a "megabyte" is? Sure, 200 is bigger than 20, but is 17 really so much worse than 12? I don't know of any casual gamer that gives this a passing thought. I know my wife doesn't. Her sisters don't. In fact, the only people who do are those who *are* computer geeks. And they are a small sector indeed and are likely *attracted* to large file size because it implies more game, better graphics, etc.

And another thing: people who have 56K modems are arguably *used* to things taking a long time. My mother-in-law knows that *pictures* take along time. Virus updates. Spam updates. E-mail. Not to mention *Windows* updates. Games? Of *course* they take along time.

I'll go out on a limb. The only benefit of small size (and I'm talking the difference between like 10Mb and 30Mb) is the cost of bandwidth. I don't think that small of size difference impacts sales a single bit. Not a bit. I think it's all urban legend now.

[Jim Buck]

The Internet Explorer downloading box most certainly tells the size of the file it is downloading.. and, more importantly, it tells the expected amount of time before the download will be finished. The bigger the file, the longer they will have to wait. Another factor is of course how many k/sec they are getting which is related to connection speed and their connection to the download site (and, perhaps, the bandwidth already being used up by the spyware and virii on the potential customer's machine :) ). But those things are not in the developer's control (except to perhaps have a solid server), so the thing they can control is download size.

I would say the biggest thing that causes a failed download is when the person sees how long the download will take once they fire it off. I myself do this all the time even from my T1 connection at work - in my case, if I won't have it in 60 seconds, I will cancel it. It's just not worth my time. Unless it's Half-Life 3. :)

[Sharpfish]

Something I realised the other day was the *INSTALLED SIZE* on many well known/respected "puesdo casual" games was 20mb+. Check out some of reflexives better known stuff.

<SNIP>

Make it as small as you can while retaining the polish/fun/essence of the game. Streamline and deliver the product you want to deliver while not be sloppy with filesizes etc and you can't really go wrong. Making the game in the first place is more important than worrying about the filesize before you even know what it will be.. imo. ;)

[svero]

So if Ricochet is 25mb-ish and sells well, Breakquest is around that (Can't check while I am at work), then obviously there is nothing wrong with the 25mb mark (full product)

Well the question also has to be.. would those games have made 50% more if they were smaller downloads? The fact that a game can potentially sell enough if its big doesnt necessarily mean that it isn't worthwhile restricting it to 10mb for other reasons.

[Jim Buck]

BreakQuest demo is 7.8 meg.
Ricochet Recharged is 9.42 meg.
Ricochet Lost Worlds is 12.7 meg.
Ricochet Xtreme is 7.09 meg.

Are you referring to download size or installed size? Download size is the topic here.

Also, as with most things in life, there is the rule and exceptions to the rule. Just because someone can name a few examples, it doesn't make it the rule - the examples could be the exception. (But, in this case, the examples, except Lost Worlds, are less than 10 meg.)

[Sharpfish]

erm.. now you mention it.... installed sized actually... (whoops)

I kind of went off track a little when I was looking through add/remove programs (listed by file size) and was struck by the "smaller" games taking up more room. I feel a little stupid admitting that I forgot all about the *download* size (and compression) due to "external pressures" beyond gaming for the last couple of days .. lol.

So yes, as d/l size is what is MAINLY being discussed here - scrub what I said. And thanks for correcting me before I started spouting that BS over other forums thinking I was contributing valid info ;)

erm... "i'll get me coat". ;)