60 minutes?

[techbear]

Looking at the top downloads on bigfish (action/arcade specifically), I'm seeing that most of them seem to have a 60 minute demo time limit.

Is this the new standard for action/arcade games, or is it still a very case-by-case issue?

Thanks!

[Mike Wiering]

I think it really depends on the game and it probably works best with simple games that have a unique concept, but not too much content.

I tried a 100 minute demo for my game Charlie II a while ago, and at first I got a lot more orders, but after a while it went back to normal, and even less, so I changed it back to an unlimited demo (only a limited number of levels).

[Sybixsus]

I guess it must work for some as it's becoming more and more common, but I find it deeply offputting. I often don't even download a demo if I know it's time limited ( so that'll mess with their conversion percentages if they're not counting how many extra people they're putting off from downloading the demo ;) ) because it just saps all the fun to know I'm on the clock. I'd much rather play with a limited number of features or an unlimited time, and I still plan on offering my customers the same because I just don't like applying pressure. I'd rather persuade than coerce.

[Greg Squire]

I believe RealArcade does this with all their demos. I've seen tons more demos that do this lately as well. (Maybe RealArcade is to blame for that? Not sure) I think this kind of time limit can work well if your game isn't level based (chess, solitare, etc.), or if those first levels in the demo are highly replayable (some might be content to play the first levels forever). If not then, I'm not sure adding a time limit would help.

[James C. Smith]

Different approaches work for different types of game. But for the action/arcade games I have made, I am a firm believer in giving away nearly the full game for a limited amount of time rather than letting them play the same few levels over and over. For example, Ricochet Lost Worlds (a breakout clone) has 160 levels. We limit the demo to play only the first 43 levels for 2 hours. If we didn’t have that two hour limit, I would be worried that giving away 43 levels would be giving away too much of the game. I would have probably limited the levels to 15 or 25 levels. But then I would be worried that you didn’t get a chance to play the really cool levels. I want the player to get deep enough into the game to see the really cool stuff but not let them play that cool stuff an infinite number of times. I know a lot of people complete disagree but I have fund this approach to work very well. I was convinced that our older games which had level limits were just letting people play the mediocre level an infinite number of times. Some people didn’t like the game because they never got to the cool levels and other people got their fill playing the mediocre level infinitely.

Our games all have a 60 minute limit (or 90 minute or 120 minute depending on the game). But we don’t implement it the same way RealNetworks does. With RealNetworks, you can play a “60 minute demo” for 24 hours. As long as you never exit the program it never stops you. We cut you off as soon as your time is up rather than waiting for you to exit the program. But we also give you the chance to continue. When time is up we give you to option to exit the demo or pay now and continue right were you left off. This isn’t a save a reload later. You never exit the program. Your game is paused while you fill out the order form. Another difference is we let you play again after your time is up but only for a very short amount of time. For example, in Ricochet when your 2 hours is up you must pay or exit. If you exit you can run the game again and play for an additional 5 minutes. You get an unlimited number of 5 minute sessions. This is just enough time to get a taste for why you like the game but not enough to progress to the next checkpoint. In other games we use small or larger extension such as 2 minutes or 10 minutes depending on the game.

[papillon]

I'm also in the "generally won't download it if I know I have only 60 minutes" camp, but I think I've said that before... Ah, the deja vu! :)

Although it really depends on the size of the download. If it's going to take me more than a minute or two to download it, then limiting my playtime makes it too much work for too little return. A small download, I don't lose much checking it out.

[BongPig]

Its a demo & its free. Why not have a time limit?
In fact, I think we may consider that with our demos.

If you dont know whether you like a game after 60 minutes of play, then assume you wont ever like it.

[techbear]

Sorry, Papillon, I know this time-vs-cripple argument is old. I was just wanting confirmation of my inpression that, for action/arcade games, time-limiting seems to be the current fashion.

But you bring up a good point about download size. Care to opine about what the best download size is, or is it a linear smaller-is-better equation?

[svero]

This has been discussed in another thread but basically 60 minutes is good for some games and not that great for others. A not-time limited spacetaxi2 sold about 4x the number of copies that the time limited demo did. Many of the sales came later... about 2-4 weeks and not much after that.

[Andy]

The question stays where are they going when leave your 60 minutes demo? -Remove your title from their PC and go to play games of your competitors (if you got some)?

Or saying kid played the demo till the end of time and later even can't show how it play to parents to ask it as a gift. ;)

That's why we decided to remove time limit from all (all? :confused: - almost perhaps) our games.

[svero]

You can't try to reason it out logically. Some games do indeed sell much better with a 60 minute limit. It would be a mistake to just remove the time limit for some arbitrary ideas.

- S

[Valen]

The question stays where are they going when leave your 60 minutes demo? -Remove your title from their PC and go to play games of your competitors (if you got some)?


And what good does it do you if they keep playing the demo and never buy anyway? There's more than one side to this (as for most things). The real question is, does the player make the decision whether or not to buy within the first 60 minutes? Depending on the game this may or may not be the case. A person has to get a feel for what the game is about.

For simple games, where the concept is clear from the beginning and all that remains are variations on the same theme (such levels in a breakout game), it makes sense to have a 60 minute trial. If the player can't decide to buy the game within 60 minutes, all they want is to play the free levels once in a while. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with taking them away because the player didn't pay for them. That said, I haven't gotten around to adding the 60 minute trial to my breakout game yet. Big Fish Games did put a 60 minute trial on it, and I will soon find out how well it's been working out. :)



Or saying kid played the demo till the end of time and later even can't show how it play to parents to ask it as a gift. ;)

THAT is a valid point. The folks at Reflexive seem to have found an elegant way to get around this (see James C. Smith's post above).

[Andy]

And what good does it do you if they keep playing the demo and never buy anyway?

That does pretty well for us:
1. They keep playing demo.
2. They don't go to our competitors (as the best of course).

Specifically there is the situation - somebody plays demo in office, another one is able to see him playing it, etc.

Sure, everything is specific and requires specific adjustments. We have found that no time limit is working pretty well for us. Again - ask yourself what the prospects who didn't buy the game do when the time limit is expired? I don't see any good scenario for our game here. :confused:

[svero]

I tried to say this before... but it doensn't really matter what you think. Run an a/b split test on it. If it sells better with a 60 minute demo then keep it. If not get rid of it. Don't try to 2nd guess what your customers are doing. That's just ridiculous.

[EpicBoy]

See, I had an opposite experience to some people on this thread. I had a puzzle game I was selling with an unlimited demo and it barely moved. I switched it over to be limited to 15 runs only, and sales shot up.

Every game is different...

[Andy]

I switched it over to be limited to 15 runs only, and sales shot up. Every game is different...

Agreed on the last one. :)

And I never said that we didn't use any limitation - we limit games by levels (points?). So, I just shared with our experience about time limitation.

@steve: All that a/b splits - you need really good number of downloads to get correct results from this experiment. So, you always recommendation doesn't work for most of guys from here (while they are still growing) ;)
(Probably I just hate that always stupid marketing slogan - "Test, test, test, test, test..." :D )

Thanks,

[James C. Smith]

Sorry, Papillon, I know this time-vs-cripple argument is old. I was just wanting confirmation of my inpression that, for action/arcade games, time-limiting seems to be the current fashion.

Yes. I do see this happening more and more. I believe it is a trend and not a fashion. I think it is used by every major games portal (Real, Yahoo, MSN, Shockwave, and the like) and I wouldn’t be surprised if some Indies are starting to see the value in a time limited demo. The portals all use stupid wrappers but as an Indie you can integrate a much better solutions that is time based. You can do things like have separate timers for each mode of play to make sure the player doesn’t use up all their time in story mode and never play challenge mode. (In my opinion we made a big mistake in Wik by not doing this.) You can make sure the player can always run your program and watch the attract mode (recoded game play) even if their demo time is used up. You can pause game play when the timer runs out and ask for a reg code to continue. These are all better ways to implement time limiting that is not possible with most of the portal’s wrappers.

In know this an old topic and has been debated around and around again. But I only hear people debate what the consumer thinks he wants, and what tests developers have tried. In my opinion, this isn’t something you change after the fact. You design your levels and your product with this in mind. It is not just a question of “how long does it take before the player decides to buy”. It’s not just about “will he play again after he finished the demo levels once”. A time limit is a tool a game designer can use to allow himself to give more of the game away in the demo. Otherwise the game designer/level designer it asked to make some levels so fun and so compelling they will get the player to purchase the game, but don’t make them good enough that a player could be satisfied replaying those levels over and over. This is a very difficult position to be in. It is nearly imposable to find a good balance. If you want to use level limits then story based games have it easier. Stop part way through the story and if it was a good enough story people will want to continue. They won’t want to replay the same story over and over. Puzzle games without level layouts have it much harder to use level limits. When you are playing Supper Collapse you usually start at level 1 and replay the same old levels even after you buy the game. A level locked super collapse would be hard to make. Sure, you could lock other features like high score posting or alternate games modes but then you get into the area of paying for features you never got to try. My problem is that any game with decent replay value will always give away too much or too little in a level locked version. Putting a time limit on the game isn’t just a greedy way for the developer/publisher to try to force a sale sooner. It is a god send to the level designer who wants to show off his best stuff in the demo without giving away the farm.

And as I said before and other members emphasized, you never want your game to completely “expire”. Why would you force the player to uninstall your program or not allow a kid to show it to his parents? At least let them watch the attract mode if not play a little.

[Andy]

@James: Valen is right - your "another five minutes" idea is pretty bright and should work just fine when you still need to use time limit for demo.

Speaking about the levels you want to show. Yeah - this is very hard (and most important) to decide this correctly. We were considering here to build special demo row of levels - pretty easy to implement in level based games - but didn't tried this option yet...

[svero]

@James -- yah I almost didnt try challenge mode and imho it's the best part of the game. Seperate timers and something pushing my in that direction would have been nicer.

[James C. Smith]

Svero, when you ran an a/b split test on one of your games did it have any limits other that time? I assume you started with a game that had a level limit and you added a 60 minute limit. Did you remove or increase the level limit or any other limits? In other words, did the 60 minute version let them play any feature or level that wasn’t available in the original level locked demo? Or was there a reason this wasn’t appropriate for the type of game you were running your test on?

[svero]

Svero, when you ran an a/b split test on one of your games did it have any limits other that time? I assume you started with a game that had a level limit and you added a 60 minute limit. Did you remove or increase the level limit or any other limits? In other words, did the 60 minute version let them play any feature or level that wasn’t available in the original level locked demo? Or was there a reason this wasn’t appropriate for the type of game you were running your test on?

In the case where I tested it I had a demo with 8 levels. At the end of that demo there was a teaser for the next set of levels (the 2nd planet) -- The 60 minute limited demo was limited to the same 8 levels. The main reason for that wasn't that I wanted to keep the level limit in though. It was purely motivated by the filesize. The demo with only 8 levels could be kept under 10mb whereas with the full set it would be 30mb and I really doubt most people could complete the first 8 levels in an hr anyway. So no.. the timed demo didnt really give you access to stuff you couldnt see in the level limited demo.

My feeling is that content driven games probably do better with unlimited demos and games that are gameplay driven and have little variation or content probably do better with a timed demo. That is... if the player can still derive a lot of fun by replaying the levels, or if the focus of the game is replay, it might be best to time limit it. Mahjongg is a good example. Limiting only content in Mahjongg is not effective because you can just keep playing the same board with the same tiles and it's still fun. But in a puzzle game like Aargon where each puzzle is unique what's left if you don't have any new puzzles? You need the extra content to keep enjoying the game. While space taxi had a little of both I feel it leans more towards content as the main player motivator.

[James C. Smith]

You make a good point. Time limits are more important to game play driven games than content driven games. But even in a content driven game, I think a time limit can allow the designer to be comfortable with allowing the player to sample more of the content. But I can see how this would be a problem if it would increase the size of the download. In a case like this, I can’t see how a time limit would help and you proved it didn’t. Playing 8 levels for a limited about of time isn’t going to be more convincing that play 8 levels over and over. But it is always worth a try just to be sure.

[Nemesis]

I remember Cas from PuppyGames had a novel idea to implement a sophisticated system with a number of game crippling parameters configured for every download in order to identify the combination that yields the best C/R.

I think there's a thread on here somewhere.. but I'm too lazy to look it up. I wonder what's the status quo..

[svero]

@James : And it wasn't equivalent either. The non-timed one sold about 4x the number of copies many sales coming in after a fairly long time like 1 month. Maybe to some extent timed and untimed in my case were equivalent in so much as 8 levels was more than the average player could complete in an hr. So to my way of thinking the timed demo was in most cases 4-5 levels. Maybe a 2hr demo would have done just as well as the untimed.. I'm not sure. It could just be that in many cases 1hr is not enough. To a certain extent I've always felt the 1hr demos were a bit of a cop-out... Like placing them in games was a way of saying "This game is boring after 3 or 4 hrs so we're forcing you to decide early while it still seems fresh"

- S