I have, as you might expected, looked at demos for many, many downloadable games recently. It's amazing and somewhat surprising how they vary in terms of reminding people that they can buy the full application. In general, I think a lot of developers are failing to remind downloaders enough, and therefore having fewer conversions (to paying customers) than they otherwise would.

Obviously, you don't want to annoy players by badgering them constantly--but there are a number of non-intrusive things you can and should do.

1. The first thing a player should see when he starts the demo is a screen that provides an opportunity to buy the full game, with a link directly to a purchase url. It should be easy to blow this off and start playing, of course. With most demos that unlock into full games, the unlock solution does this automatically--but when developers provide separate demos (meaning purchase is a separate download and install), they often don't do this. It can be as unobtrusive as an item on the main menu--nobody's going to whine if there's one more item on that menu.

2. The last thing a player should see when he quits out of a demo is a full screen describing all the cool features he gets in the full game--and again, with a live link to the purchase URL.

What's surprising is how many games don't do this--or do, but don't have a live link, just an URL in graphics on the page. Make it easy, please.

3. Similarly, if the player runs up against a limit in the game--runs out of minutes, plays the last level, tries to play online or use some other feature that you don't get in the demo--he should get that screen, too. This is probably your best and last chance to convert this guy to a paying customer--if he's enjoying himself and wants to keep going, well, what's $20 (or whatever) after all?

4. Your demo installer should also install a web link in the game's folder on the Start menu that takes the user to the purchase URL, named something like "Buy {game} now!". If the full game gets installed to the same folder, it's easy enough to blow this away when the full game gets installed. Or change it to a link to your forums, perhaps.

A related peeve: If your demo provides a limited number of levels, then your full game installer should, by default, install to the same folder, and should retain save game information. That way, the user can keep playing from where he left off in the demo, instead of having to replay those levels. This seems obvious, but it doesn't always happen.

The last question, of course, is how should your demo be limited? The casual game sites have a one-size-fits-all answer: All games shall have 60 minutes of free play, no more, no less! This makes it easy on their technical staff--easy to churn out installers when you make no changes from game to game. But frankly, it's dumb. Different games have different requirements.

One of our partners, for instance, requested that the demo provide five hours of free play. This took me aback at first--until I realized that it's a deep and involving RPG, with something like 30 hours of gameplay--and that anyone who gets 5 hours into has a lot invested in the game at that point, and will buy the game.

The trick, of course, is to give them just enough that they're excited about the game, but no so much that they figure they've gotten what they're going to get out of it. I actually think 60 minutes is too much for most casual games; they play fast, many complete in 10 minutes or less--and unless the game is really super, 60 minutes is all of my lifespan I care to spend on such games. And most would probably be better served by feature-limited demos, or demos limited to some number of levels--the problem is that this either means you wind up with two separate installers, rather than an unlockable demo, or you have to do custom code to implement feature unlock. Most unlock schemes out of the box will handle limits by number of minutes, or number of executions, or number of days after first use.

As for us, we're agnostic, and our games are going to behave differently all across the site. There'll be information about what a demo gives you on every game page, but the user experience will vary from game to game. HCI and user-experience gurus won't like this. But I frankly don't give a crap. Each game should work the way that's right for that game, and I will assume my customers are smart enough to understand that.
posted by Greg at 3:27 PM

Okay, I'm a believer. In response to my post on bandwidth, Llew Mason suggested using Amazon's S3 service for hosting our applications--20 cents/gig data transfer, plus 15 cents/gig/month storage. Sounds attractive; S3 is designed for access via SOAP, so it looked as if we might have to build a custom front-end. (Essentially, I want to document and automate the unlock/installer build/deploy process as much as feasible, so it can ultimately be done by underpaid interns instead of, say, me.)

But then, hurrah for filicio.us, which provides a Flash front-end for managing file uploads to S3, with a fairly minimal feature set--but more than adequate for us.

I'm happy.
posted by Greg at 12:40 PM

Music to play NetHack by.

And okay, Nethack. One of two games that has been on the hard drive of every computer I've owned since I first encountered it.
posted by Greg at 6:58 PM

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Dude!!!

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This is no manga hand drawn bullpuckey, either, but ACTUAL ALIENS ACTUALLY F=CKING YOUNG TEEN GIRLS! Check out this one with a gglrmph (the intelligent species of Pi Pisces IV) with tentacles up ALL a delicious redhead's holes in the recreation bay of its starship:

http://www.tentaspectacular.com/d02387.png

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Check it out! You won't regret it!

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posted by Greg at 9:46 PM

So I thought I'd talk a little about our economics, as it may be enlightening.

Most people aren't used to thinking about the cost of bandwidth, as most people pay a flat monthly fee to their DSL or cablemoden (or dialup) provider. The situation is different if you're a business.

Most businesses have one of two kinds of deals: Either their monthly nut gives then some fixed amount of traffic, and they pay a dollar amount per gigabyte beyond that; or they have a fixed amount of bandwidth (hundred megabits per second, say) and pay a premium whenever they go over that allotment.

I like the first deal better, as its more predictable and calculable, at least at present. My expectation is that our bandwidth usage will peak heavily during evening hours in North America, because even though we'll have a certain number of customers in other Anglophone nations, most will be in this continent, and most will download demos or actual games during evening hours. So I'd rather be paying on the basis of total data transfer than peak useage.

Operations like Akamai and Limelight want to charge you $3/gig, and in exchange offer you servers across the network that are likely to be close (in Internet terms) to users, therefore providing lower latency and better user experiences--along with fat pipes. Three bucks a gig, however, is way too pricey for us, as you'll understand better shortly.

At present, we're looking most closely at options in the 70 cents/gig range; it's possible to do better than that, but only by committing to buying large amounts of bandwidth initially, and I won't do that, since we can't really predict what kind of traffic we'll generate when the doors open.

Why does this matter? Well, consider the usual claim about selling things online: No cost of goods!

Right, we don't have to manufacture boxes and manuals and disks and ship them to stores. But...

I'll take a really bad case to start with. Suppose we have a game that (in the full version) is 1 gigabyte in size. Doom 3 is 1.5 gigs, and we're considering carrying at least two games that are 1 gigabyte or larger. Suppose that this game has a demo version which is considerably smaller--let's say 400 megs.

The casual downloadable game sites--the closest thing, in terms of basic business dynamics, to what Manifesto plans to be--typically see 1-2% conversion rates. That means users download 50 (or 100) demos for every sale they make. Let's say a 2% conversion rate holds for this game. Fifty demos at 400 megabytes each get downloaded for every sale. So there's 21 gigabytes of traffic for one sale; at 70 cents a gig, that's $14.70.

In other words-- our cost of goods is not zero; effectively, it's $14.70. Let's assume that any game this large is a premium product, and supports a $40 price point. We typically pass on 60% of the sale price to the developer, so we keep $16. We also have to pay the DRM provider, and credit card fees; this works out to about 46 cents plus 2.5% of sale, or, in this case, $1.46. So our total cost of sale is $16.16. We actually lose 16 cents. Never mind overhead and marketing.

That's an extreme case, of course. Let's look at a more typical one; the game is 30 megs, and is an unlockable demo. That is, every demo download is 30 megs, purchasers get an unlock code and unlock it without having to do another download. If we continue to assume a 2% conversion, that's 1.5 gigs of data traffic per sale. This is more probably a $20 sale, so our gross after paying the developer is $8. 1.5 gigs costs us $1.05; DRM plus credit card fees cost us 96 cents. So our margin is $5.99. Much better.

So... How do we deal with really large apps? The answer is: we don't offer a demo for games in the gigabyte range (which will take way long for you to download even over broadband, anyway). Instead, we offer a money back guarantee for games that large, so if you decide it sucks you aren't completely screwed. But the onus is on you to ask for the money back, instead of on us to get you to convert from the demo, so our data traffic cost should be much smaller.

And I'm hoping to do better on conversion rate than the casual downloadable sites--but it's prudent to assume we're operating in the same ballpark.

The games we'll offer will typically fall into three categories. Anything under 100 megs is an unlockable demo. Anything between say 100 and 500 megs has a separate demo which is considerably smaller than the actual game. Anything over 500 megs requires upfront purchase.

Make sense? Reasonable? Other ideas?

But the point to take away here is--"cost of goods" for online sale is not zero. It is effectively dependent on demo size and conversion rate. The Internet is cool, but it's not a panacea.
posted by Greg at 8:53 PM

Took me a fair bit of time to figure this out, and I figure I'd post it here, if only so Google will index it and someone searching in future may be able to figure this out in less time than it took me. (Essentially, Aladdin doesn't support InstallShield, and Macrovision doesn't support HASP SL, so nobody provides documentation to tell you how to do this.)

Basic issue is: The HASP SL prv_setup.exe file created by the Usage Builder must be automatically run (once) at the end of installation.

So:

1. Use the Aladdin Usage Builder to inject your exes or dlls; if you get a warning injecting any single file, remove it from your protected files and don't inject it.

2. When building your installer using InstallShild, include the protected files, and also the prv_setup.exe file (as well as all other files needed by the application).

3. Your InstallShield project MUST be an MSI project; you can't use an InstallScript or compact project (more's the pity), because you will of necessity need to create a custom action to run prv_setup.exe.

4. In the project assistant, under Application Shortcuts, delete the prv_setup.exe from the list... No need for the user to run this manually, so no need for shortcuts to it on the Start menu or desktop.

5. After completing the project assistant, but before building, scroll the Workspace panel, and click "custom action." In the middle pane that now appears, right-click "Custom Action" and select the Custom Action Wizard.
a. Enter a name for your custom action (e.g, HASP_setup), click next.
b. In the Type drop-down, select "Launch an executable". Under the Location drop-down, select "Installed with the product". Click Next.
c. The Action Parameters dialog appears. Click the Browse button. In the Select Files dialog box that appears, drop down the Component list, and select the prv_setup.exe file. Click OK. Do not enter anything under "Target"; click Next.
d. The Additional Options dialog appears. "Execution Scheduling" should say "Always Execute," click Next.
e. The Insert Into Sequence dialog appears. Change Install Execute Sequence to "After InstallFinalize", click next.
f. In the Summary dialog, check to make sure that everything looks right, and click Finish.

Not done yet; if you leave it like this, when the user UNinstalls, Windows Installer will try to run your (now removed) prv_setup.exe, and the user will get a scary (but meaningless) error message. To prevent this, click on the name of the custom action you just created in the middle pane; right pane shows info about it. Click the line that says "Install Exec Condition," then on the ellipsis button that appears at right. In the dialog box that appears, type "Not Installed", then hit OK. This will ensure that the prv_setup.exe is run only on first installation, not on uninstall (or maintenance).

Now build the damn thing, and bob's your uncle.
posted by Greg at 4:15 PM

...as I said to Jonathan Blow, whom I discovered in the lobby of the sleazoid motel where we penny-pinching entrepreneurs were staying. "All good people do," he responded.

Games: the most important and liveliest artform to emerge from the confluence of technology and imagination, the revolutionary endeavor to merge creativity and audience participation, creating experiences never previously possible. And how do we celebrate them?

With pounding music, three thousand games with virtually identical art styles and nothing new to offer blaring away on monstrous screens, brainless smiling bimbos dancing on stages while drooling fanboys take innumerable snapshots, and with huge crowds assembling not to hear the greatest auteurs of the age, but to drool at--Paris fucking Hilton. (Not kidding; apparently one of the mobile publishers is doing a Paris Hilton-branded Bejewelled clone--guess you need some kind of branding to differentiate it from the real thing, not that Paris Hilton is necessarily the best brand to appeal to middle-aged women, eh? Huge crowds showed up to see the wench.)

I spent some time fantasizing about writing an article, possibly for The Escapist called "The Non-Booth Babes of E3". Interview people like Kathy Schoback and Elonka Dunin and Terri Perkins who have real and important roles in the industry, photograph them at their companies' booths, make the point that it is possible to be female and more than a smile and a pair of tits and have a role in the game industry. How many women are deterred from working in the industry because of its objectification of women, both in its products and at its trade shows?

Three things we all know about E3, right? 1. No booth babes any more. 2. Open to the trade only. 3. No one under 18 admitted. Horse shit.

Of course there were booth babes. If there was any difference from previous years, I think it was only that that less cleavage was on display. Tiny skirts, high heels, short-shorts skimpy enough to display a bit of ass curve, and bared midriffs are all okay, apparently. I loathe this, and always have; are we here to look at games or bimbos? The whole thing just plays into the stereotype of gamers as drooling neurotic nerds who can't get laid. And you know, if you actually did want to get laid (and E3, unlike GDC, attracts plenty of people from the marketing side, who are more likely to be female than developers), the highly sexualized nature of the whole endeavor makes it that much harder to have a civil conversation with someone of the female gender.

Open to the trade only? Hah. On the third day, I saw the manager of the Italian restaurant I'd eaten at previously on the show floor. Cadged a badge from someone, right? And on the last day, there were plenty of people who were obviously not 18 wandering about, mostly with badges saying something like "Guest of LACC" or "Guest of ESA". In other words, "trade only" and "no one under 18" are rules never enforced, and exist only for the purpose of deterrance. You can get in, you just have to find the right person to schmooze.

Here's my E3 fantasy for a Manifesto Games booth: bare concrete floor. Metal folding chairs. Bare tables with computers on them running games. Signs saying things like: "Gameplay Over Glitz" and "Pardon Our Appearance, We Spend Our Money on Games, Not Bullshit" and "No Booth Babes Here, Move Along." And our shwag: Manifesto Games branded earplugs, so you can screen out all the pounding music from all the other booths.

Okay, never mind the rant. "Was it a good show for you?"

Yep. In a sense, E3 is largely irrelevant to us, since we're operating in a different sphere, and most of the developers whose games we want to carry are not going to display their wares there. But it is a convenient place to meet, and we had dozens of meetings, all of which helped to cement relationships--not a one went badly. We also spent a fair bit of time prowling Kentia--the lower hall, where marginal players are located, and where we're more likely to find people who might be interested in working with us--and the national pavilions (UK, Australia, Scandinavia, etc.) in West Hall, where we're more likely to find products that are unlikely to show up in the US except through something like Manifesto. Some useful connections there, too.

One frustration: We have a regularly scheduled IRC chat with the developers on Tuesday (7 PM Eastern, but 4 Pacific) and I figured, no biggie, I'll use the free WiFi at the convention center to participate. But I get online, say about three sentences, and the WiFi goes down. Spent about an hour trying to get it to work again, but no dice. Sigh.

Parties? No interest in the big ones; IGDA, Minna Mingle, the Themis party, one for MOGN (an as yet unlaunched IGN competitor). The last was a bizarre conflict of cultures, held at an uber-hip Hollywood night club, with the geeks confined to a balcony and the floor filled with fabboo clubbers gyrating to incredibly loud techno. Can you imagine, say, Brian Green in this setting? Holding a conversation under these circumstances requires you to scream yourself hoarse. We shan't be holding any such party any time soon. Or ever.

We did it on the cheap; not only staying in a motel, but one that you apparently can't book over the Internet. Which was probably why it had rooms when I called, since it was within walking distance of the convention center--and also within walking distance of the Blue Line. We treated LA like New Yorkers--no car rental, taking the Metro to and from the airport, walking or cabbing as necessary.

Four days of little sleep, back home, arriving at midnight, asleep at 2--and up at 6 to take care of the two year-old, getting on the train to the Jersey Shore to attend a bas mitzvah of one of Karen's relatives, not getting back home till midnight again... And up early with the little one the next day.

Only now really recovering. But hey. No complaints, really.
posted by Greg at 12:01 PM

When the ESRB re-rated Oblivion, I was tempted to post, but well, time is in short supply these days. And perhaps it's just as well that I didn't, since like others, my post would have been along the lines of "Hot coffee was bad, because they had the content on the disc; this was just some external mod with new content." With the obvious corrallary: That all PC games that permit any kind of mod need to be re-rated as M. I can see it now; the bdsm mod for Civ IV, with the Marquis de Sade (new French leader) facing off against Tarl Cabot (Gorean civilization) and Pauline Reage (the forces of O). I don't think I even want to talk about what the new units look like.

But is that the actual story?

Patricia Vance of the ESRB says "When we brought the topless female images to Bethesda Softworks' attention, they confirmed that the art file existed in a fully rendered form in the code on the game disc."

In other words, if Ms. Vance is to be believed, the situation is virtually identical to the Hot Coffee situation. And Bethesda is clearly a bunch of idiots, since Hot Coffee predated Oblivion's release, and they should have known better.
posted by Greg at 9:10 PM