Recently, friend and colleague David Edery wrote a nice feature on Gamasutra about how to make trial versions of downloadable software sell more games. He has some good points, including observations about how a trial shouldn’t just be the beginning of the game nor should it give away enough that a purchase is unnecessary.
But there’s something missing from Edery’s analysis, and that’s the larger process we go through to try or buy games provided through digital download. Often people think that digital download makes content more accessible, but that’s not always, or perhaps not often the case. Here’s some anecdotal evidence, albeit from a different digital distribution service than Edery’s Xbox Live.
I’ve been traveling or working nonstop on deadlines or both since early December, so I haven’t really had time to play console videogames at home. Last night I decided to have a go. I wanted to get Pain and Everyday Shooter on the PlayStation Network Store, and then spend a little while with each. I had just finished some work and allocated a half hour or so before bed.
I turn on the PS3.
My component video switcher is on the wrong setting, so I get up, walk over and press the correct one. I hear the PS3’s symphonic start up sound.
I hadn’t set up my Logitech remote to turn off the cable box when I choose PS3 from its menu, so the two optical sources are mixing. I switch it off while I’m over at the television.
The PS3 is set to autorun games, so it boots up The Simpsons Game, which was in the drive already.
Splash screen loads, I pull up the menu to quit The Simpsons. The PS3 reboots.
My controller has a low battery, so the PS3 tells me to plug it in. I do so. Now I’m sitting a foot from the screen.
I try to access the PSN Store from the system menu.
The PS3 tells me I have to install a System Update before I can do this.
Back to the menu. I access the System Update and it starts downloading.
Progress bar. I wait five minutes.
Ok, it’s done. The PS3 reboots.
Now it’s ready to install. It reboots again first for some reason.
Ok, really ready to install. Another progress bar. Five more minutes.
The update finishes installing. PS3 reboots once more.
Now I can acccess the PSN Store. I find the games and add them to my cart. This takes a while because I have no idea what category either game would be in. I guess wrong a few times and then just use the alphabetical lookup.
I’m ready to check out. But, I have no PSN credits. I have to add some.
The service has stored my credit card so a couple screens later I’ve got enough in my account to check out.
Back to the checkout screen. Sale completed, great.
The PS3 prompts me to start downloading. I start the Pain download (200MB).
I navigate back out to the main system screen to look around while I’m waiting. Hmm, I should have queued Everyday Shooter too so it will download after Pain is done. Back to the PSN Store.
I need to access my game downloads. Where is that again? I’m one foot from the screen still so I crane my neck around. Right, top corner there’s a link. I access that and start the second download (30MB).
230MB is enough that this is going to take a while. I wander back out and play Calling All Cars for five minutes or so. I suck at Calling All Cars. What a frustrating game. I think about David’s article and how a trial download would have meant I wouldn’t have bought it at all. Maybe $10 to experiment isn’t so bad.
The download manager notifies me that the downloads are done. I quit Calling All Cars.
I look for the games in the proper section of the PS3 menu but I can’t find them. Where are they? Ah, they’re up above. I access Pain.
The game needs to install. Another progress bar, but only for a couple minutes.
At this point, I figure I might as welll install Everyday Shooter too. Much smaller game, so it installs faster.
Now I’m finally ready to play Pain. Luckily I’ve been sitting at the console for 20 minutes by now and my controller is charged enough to allow me to retire to the couch.
It’s 12:30am, I’m pretty exhausted. Bleary-eyed, I start up Pain.
Pain checks for saved data. It finds none, as this is the first time I ran the game. It tells me it will create a save file. It will save automatically for me, ok? Ok, I tell it.
Now I have to go through the tutorial before I can play. Ok, no problem.
I’m five minutes in. The game seemed simple at first but now it’s feeling pretty nuanced (for a game about breaking things with a human slingshot anyway). There are combo hits. There are drifts and ooches. I’m still not even done with the tutorial.
Yawning, I decide to stop and turn in for the night.
I quit Pain, it autosaves for me.
I press the PS3 button. Turn off console. Yes, really turn off console.
Television off, receiver off, lights out. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.
I’ve picked on PlayStation here but the Xbox and Wii versions aren’t really any better. It’s true that downloadable games don’t suffer from the cost basis, shelf-space, and individual marketing problems of physical media. But when I buy a DVD movie or game, I just pop it in and start playing. No system updates. No reboots. No fuss. How can these download services ever hope to top that?
Comments
Tim!
I’m not convinced. The first 1/3 of your story is the same if you want to play a different disc based game than the one in the system (and the stuff about your switches and controller is true even if you wanted to play the Simpsons). For a year I had no XBLA and just about every second new disc game made me update my system using a patch that was on the disc before I could play.
Once we get past the irritating start up which would have been true whether or not you were popping in a disc or playing a downloadable game, we get to the real comparison.
In this bit, you are comparing the experience of buying a new game online to playing a disc game you already own. I dunno if you were paying attention while you wrote this but you just bought two new games on impulse AT MIDNIGHT. GameStop is not open at midnight.
The real comparison here should be sale to sale or boot-and-play to boot-and-play.
1) Compare the experience of putting on your coat and trudging to a store during business hours (or ordering from Amazon and waiting for delivery) to the experience of sitting through some random reboots and downloading at any hour of day or night.
2) Compare the experience of digging through your shelves for a disc that hopefully your idiot roommates didn’t lose or scratch, popping it in and playing to browsing a list of games you own and starting to play.
I think that in both cases the download to console, system-as-jukebox model comes out ahead for convenience. Are there annoyances with downloading? Yes. Are there annoyances with buying from a store and maintaining a collection of discs? Also yes.
Ian Bogost
One difference, at least, is in the familiarity of the activities. Convenience is not just a matter of minimizing total time. It is also a matter of perceived familiarity and comfort.
Shopping is an activity I know how to do. I may not like it all the time but I’m familiar with it. Game shopping need not be an isolated activity. And Amazon serves me well; I use the Prime shipping and get everything in two days. I’m fine waiting two days, which I can invest in other activities.
Or take converting real money into PSN (or XBL, or Wii) credits. The process may be fairly simple, but why can’t it just charge my card? Amazon.com doesn’t make me add AmazonPoints.
Of course, there is the matter of reduced cost that comes from direct digital sales. But one point I can’t develop much in this comment is this: there’s very little movement toward distribution and sales methods somewhere in between PSN digital sales and full-retail ones.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never had a disk-based game ask me to run a software update before running it. And I know I’ve never had a bricks-and-mortar store ask me to update my sneakers before entering, or a website ask me to update my eyeballs.
Joshua Strully
But what about a website asking to update Flash (or whatever) before loading the page? Or how about, I just bought Guitar Hero III for the 360, and it required a game update before I could even play it. Granted, these are temporary inconveniences that probably wouldn’t deter me from using the product, but they do exist nonetheless.
Certainly, the games-as-downloads system isn’t perfect right now, but given time I’m sure it will become much more streamlined, and eventually games on physical media will fall by the wayside.
Tim!
I get what you’re saying about familiarity, but pretty soon, digital downloads will be familiar to people. They’re already pretty familiar to the millions of people using Yahoo Games and Big Fish and whatnot.
I agree that the $ to points thing is ridiculous and I think that platform holders will eventually have to work out a better way of dealing with that.
In the end, I look at the plummeting sales of CDs and the rise of MP3 players. It seems to me to be extremely likely that games will follow a similar path.
Ian Bogost
@Josh
The GHIII update example is a symptom of a similar problem, and I agree with Jose (below; I approved these comments in the wrong order) that this is a concern… one of the primary benefits of a standardized platform is lost here). That said, at least what you were updating was *the game itself* rather than random system software. The PS3 update I ran provided no features I care about (some new video thing? I don’t even know) but yet I couldn’t even access the PSN store without running it. If updates are going to be necessary, Internet-delivered ones are not a bad approach. But examples like this one sure are. As for the websites that ask you to update Flash (or more likely these days, to use Firefox), I’d suggest that web developers have long had an understanding of the implications of such demands, making them relatively rare. In any case, at least I have other choices in such situations. Yet, the only place I can buy Everyday Shooter is on the PSN Store.
@Tim!
Digital downloads may become second nature eventually, but I think the game industry overestimates the degree to which they actually are already. This is especially true among broader markets… for example, I wonder how many Wii owners have bought from the Wii Store… my guess is relatively few of the non-traditional demographics the sales and marketing data celebrates.
In any case, experiences like that on the PS3 are not helping. I think apologizing for them is a mistake. The walled garden is bad enough already, but having to find the passphrase, so to speak, even to visit it is irrational.
Jose Zagal
Install the update before you play is becoming an alarming trend for console games and even handhelds. I remember having to update when I played Sid Meir’s Pirates on my PSP.