Download Size
Here’s an excellent post from somebody at Reflexive, with links to a lot of data on the impact of download size on game sales and such.
The key graphs:
Size vs. percentage of initiated downloads that are completed
Size vs. ratio of downloads by modem users
Size vs sales and conversion rates
Slightly further down, he notes that modem users are 40% more likely to buy, per game downloaded, than broadband users, presumably because modem users don’t sample as many different games.
My conclusions:
The 2nd graph is the most informative. At very low sizes (~2-5 MB), modem users are moderately significant – 12-22% of downloads, and, if we take into account their higher purchase rates, ~15-30% of sales.
But once you go past 5MB, the graph flattens out – modem users are about 6-9% of downloads, and the incremental impact of a 10MB download vs. a 20MB download (or even 40MB) is quite modest. It’s pretty hard to deliver modern production values in the 2-5 MB range, so if you’re going to go to 10MB, it’s not so bad to go to 20…
My takeaway? For my current game, I’ve been debating using OGG for music, which allows regular songs to be compressed, rather than MIDI/XM, which is limited to rather digital sounding songs. But using OGG would put me in the 15-20MB download range. Now, though, I think that’s probably acceptable…
May 2nd, 2006 at 7:24 pm
It’s funny how perceptions change depending on what platform you’re on. People working on consoles would scoff at the idea of making a game that takes less than a few hundred megabytes. You’re working on a casual game on PC and you feel 10 megabytes is the lower limit. I’m working on mobile games and I jumped for joy when my executive producer told me we could use up to 300 KB for the game. It’s all relative 🙂
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:10 am
>presumably because modem users don’t sample as many different games
Perhaps another way of saying the same thing would be: presumably because the modem user pool has a higher percentage of people that have already made a decision to buy the game. i.e. You’ve culled a bunch of the ‘whimsical trial’ folks that you’d find on broadband.
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:04 am
Broadband users can more easily ‘graze’. With 3-10 new casual games per week, they can download most or all of them, and get their gaming thrills from the 60 minute trial of each – that’s 3-10 hours of gaming a week – more than enough for some folks.
Modem users can’t graze so readily. At 40 Kbps (~ effective rate for a 56K modem user), it takes about half an hour to download a 10MB game. That’s a lot more time spent waiting for downloads as opposed to playing, and incentivizes the modem user to buy rather than rely on 60 minute trials.
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:38 pm
For music there are many ways (though slightly more involved) to achieve
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Seems my comment was eaten somehow.
Summary:
Best size/quality/effort compromise is to do the song as usual, chop the invidual tracks repeated parts into samples and embed a tracker type sample playback engine to play these.
With minimal effort you’ll get 1/2 size and with few days work a 1/10 size of ogg is within reach.
I don’t have a name of free embeddable tracker engine on hand right now but fifteen minutes at wikipedia will certainly yield few.
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:43 pm
(the few days work includes learning and research)
A tracker pro would do it in no time obviously.