me wrote:
I suspect there's an arms race going on between designer and player in both cases too. If designers know that players are using certain tools, techniques or tricks, then they can create situations that are challenging even if you are using those tools (and near impossible if you're not)
Appealing to the masses is making sure you give the masses the easily palatable stuff (at first). (I might expand on this in the relevant thread.)
This thread is relevant/recent enough.
(this rant also ended up longer than I thought it would be. It also ended up being kind of a rant)
If you want to appeal to the masses, you have to make things as easy as possible for the masses. Once people are hooked, then they are going to be more disposed to spend time, effort (and hopefully money). But before that, you need to make it as easy as possible for someone to experience and enjoy the game.
There are two things that I think stand in the way of drawing someone into the game.
The first is that you have to download the game to play it. Ever since flash (and increased speed) became ubiquitous across the net, I am extremely resistant to downloading stuff. I used to download games to try out all the time - within the past couple of years I can probably count the games I've downloaded on one hand (maybe two). Downloading takes time. Downloading takes up space on my computer. Downloading has the risk of viruses or spyware. Downloading I can't do if I am procrastinating at work or using someone else's computer.
A browser game I can just open and play. If I don't like it, I just close the page to be rid of it.
Games that I
have downloaded fall into a couple of categories.
* I'm already invested in the franchise (DROD:RPG, the Penny Arcade game)
* I've played an online version (PopCap)
* It's been highly recommended. (Hexahop, Curator Defence, TotS - sheesh, those first two are from forum posts from 2006)
In short, the bar that must be reached before I'll download a game is
much higher than it used to be. So! I am all for the flash-drod plan. Get something that people can play in one click and more people will play it.
----
The second barrier is the effort required to find good beginner to medium level holds.
Say someone downloads the demo, plays the three or four levels of puzzles and enjoys them. I just did that to remind myself what happens. Once you finish the demo
there is little to no indication of what you can do now other than buy the full version. (I didn't see anything, anyway)
But what
does someone do next? Say their interest is peaked to try to play some more. They have to find out what holds to play next. How do they do that? They hopefully reach the forum or the main caravelgames page.
- There are currently
358 holds on the holds page. They are not all of the same difficulty, they are not all of the same quality and there is too much choice to choose, and sorting doesn't help. (The top ranked holds are not beginner-friendly and the easiest holds are mostly not very good.)
- Or, they could try finding the answer on the forum. Then they need to sign up for an account and ask what to do next, or try to find out someone who has already asked the question. And then hope that the holds suggested are of the appropriate level (and not snake manipulating, stalwart spinning, slayer slaying rooms that the hard core fans love)
You are going to lose people at the point where they think the demo is over.
You are going to lose people at the point where they need to leave the program to find new content.
You are going to lose people when they need to find where the holds page or forum is.
You are going to lose people when they need to sign up for the forum when they don't want to.
You are going to lose people when they pick a hold and it is too hard or not fun
You are going to lose people when they take someone's suggestion and that suggestion is too hard or not fun.
Sure, these things are not that terrible individually but little inconveninces can add up and I can't see a reason for not making things smoother for people.
My suggestion:
Make an
official list of holds that new people to DROD should play. These holds should be good quality, not require in depth knowledge to solve and an engaging story is a plus. It doesn't matter if non-official people make the list, Caravel has to
own it.
Use this list! The best thing would be to
include the holds with the demo. i.e when you go to "
Change Location"
there should already be options there to keep people playing. The extra holds won't have speech and custom graphics so they shouldn't overly increase the size of the demo.
OR make a page on the caravel site with just these holds on it. Something along the lines of "
I've finished the demo. Now what? --- Well, if you're not quite ready to buy the full game, then try out some of the hundreds of holds that the DROD community have made. You can import these into your game like this *description* Here are the holds we recommend *insert list*
And make sure that there is a pointer to that page from the demo.
But make sure the page is on the caravelgames site and not on the forum. Definitely include a link to the forum - but the 'what now?' page should be separate - for one, this will make the page permanent, and secondly it will appear more official.
As opposed to something some random guy is blathering on about in a forum post.
<
/forumpost>
), i enjoy the work put into this little game. The game is lurking on my harddisk, and i continue to play a few rooms, or torture my brain over one room, whenever i feel the need to put the thinking cap on. I love to have a good challenge, and DROD provides this very well.
/dy
