The First Hour Experience

How the Initial Play can Engage (or Lose) New Players

Gifford Cheung The Information School, University of Washington

Thomas Zimmermann Nachiappan Nagapan

MSR

the “initial experience”

the “first time user experience”

“tutorial time”

the “5-5-5” (five seconds,

minutes, hours)

“the first 10 seconds, the first

minute, the first ten minutes, the

first hour”

“setting the hook”

also known as

a Critical Hour

“If your game is abandoned in the first hour that’s a pretty low moment. It’s a complete rejection of the game play in all ways, you know, game play, narrative, style. … It’s a pretty catastrophic failure.” Designer C

? Features?Pitfalls?Experiences?

What did we know so far?

High level measurements

Positive/negative reviews don’t affect the first 15 minutes of play (Livingstone et al., 2011, Influencing experience: the effects of reading game reviews on player experience)

achievement, enjoyment, & social interaction lead to continued motivation to play (Wu et al., 2010, Falling in love with online games: The uses and gratifications perspective)

What do we know so far?

A sliver of the first hour

“Are tutorials effective?”“For complex games like Foldit, yes.” (Anderson et al., 2012, The impact of tutorials on games of varying complexity) “Also, restricted modes don’t help much.”

?Games (Xbox 360)Perspectives (Players, Designers)Exploratory Approach (Qualitative Method)

Player’s Perspective212 Amazon reviews of Xbox 360 gamesSearching for “first”, “hour”, “minute”, “start”

Genre ReviewsAction 28Modern First-Person Shooter 32Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter 21Modern Action Adventure 17Role-Playing 16Sci-Fi Shooter 16Fantasy Action Adventure 10Puzzle 9Adventure 9Rhythm / Music 7Sports 6Racing 52D Platformer 4Shoot-'Em-Up 3Strategy 3Beat-'Em-Up 3Driving 3GT / Street Racing 3Action Role-Playing 23D Platformer 2Wrestling 2Football 2Snowboarding 22D Fighting 1Sci-Fi Action Adventure 1Modern Shooter 1Historic First-Person Shooter 1Rhythm / Dancing 1Fantasy Online Role-Playing 1Olympic Sports 1

00 - I click New Game and the first hour of Call of Duty 4 begins. We're looking at a view of Eastern Europe. A voice over is introducing the situation and explaining everything that is going on in the area. The game zooms in to a U.K. training ground. I have control now, a man tells me to take a rifle from the table. He points me to a shooting range and I take aim.

01 - We conduct various aiming exercises. Looks like there's some auto aim built in when you look down the sight.

02 - I knife a watermelon. "Your fruit killing skills are remarkable!“

03 - I follow my objective pointer and meet Captain Price. I have to run an obstacle course now.First hour review of Call of Duty 4

First hour reviews35 Collected, 13 different authors

6 Game Industry Professionals

Designer A, B, C, Test A, B, and User Researcher A

10-20 years of experience, AAA-class games3+ major game studios

Method

Qualitative Method: Grounded Theory- Open, Axial, Selective Analysis (Amazon + First hour reviews)- Invited an auditor to review the process and

emergent categories for comprehensibility and closeness to data.- Used the interviews in part to check the findings

(Selective)

Findings

The First Experience Arc

1) Expectations2) Experiences3) Outcome

Expectations and Anticipated Elements• Franchise, Genre, Predecessors• Gaming community, “Everyone”, Friends, Buzz• Trailers, Rentals, Demoes, Friend’s house

Notable: Specific Anticipation

Positive Experiences

Momentary Engaging

“cool”, “awesome”, “wow”, “exciting”, “fun”, “impressed”, “neat”

“hooked”, “engaged”, “interested”,“addicted”, “immersed”

Condemned: Criminal Origins “I hit Y to reload my gun, only to realize that it doesn't actually get reloaded. Instead, my character checks the amount of rounds in the gun. According to the game, I'm limited to the ammunition that is found in weapons. Hmmm...I'm going to have to be a little bit more conservative with my ammo and quit hosing down these perps with a steady stream of lead. Very interesting game concept...”

Negative Experiences

Annoying Frustrating Tedious

Outcomes

Abandonment ContinueWHOLE & IN PART (Music, Narrative, Voice-Acting, Levels, Mini-games, etc…)

Deal-breakersFrustrations that supercede all positives.“An UNSKIPPABLE cut scene. Annoying. So, we continue playing and now there are UNSKIPPABLE cut scenes every few plays of the players taunting each other before the ball is hiked! Really? I needed to see his defenseman saying something foul to my running back RIGHT NOW! NO, I don't! We made it through the rest of the game some how and decided that it was one of the worst playing experiences of any game we've ever played. Reselling this ASAP!

BTW, the football game play was actually pretty good. Running, throwing and fielding all seemed to work well. In fact, I would say that it worked better than Madden. Its such a shame that they made the rest of the game so unplayable.” (Blitz: The League, Amazon Review)

Holdouts: Why play a game you hate?Anticipated Elements“I can't stop before meeting some aliens, right?”. Crysis 2

A good game mechanic“Would I keep playing? I guess so. I really do like the combat system, which captures Captain America's acrobatic grace and power quite well, but the limited enemy variety is allowing that repetitious feeling to sink in. … I'll soldier on for a bit, but I don't expect to finish this fight.” First hour review of Captain America: Super Soldier

NarrativeCompletionists (External)Social reasons (External)

ExpectationsSpecific Anticipations

ExperiencesMomentary & EngagingAnnoying, Frustrating, or Tedious

OutcomeAbandonmentContinuing

ExceptionsDeal-breakersHoldouts

Figuring out the Game

Acquiring the SkillsGetting the Point of the Game

Gateway to Attachment“once you get the hang of it you won't be able to pull yourself away” Far Cry 3, Amazon Review

Or Not“once the patterns were figured out, the enthusiasm died down quickly.” Kung Fu Panda 2 (Kinect), Amazon Review

Acquiring the Basic Skills to Play

Understanding the Point of the Game

Acquiring the Basic Skills to Play

Understanding the Point of the Game

From fun to real fun

“You need to look at it and go, “Oh, that looks like it’s for me and that looks fun.” Then when you actually play it, I as a designer either need to have lured you in with that and that is exactly what you get to do or I lure you in with that because you’re familiar with it. Then I transition you into the things that are actually more fun.” (Designer A)

FRUSTRATION

Direction vs. Discovery

DISCOVERED!Easter EggsBeautyPlayer Abilities (“I can double jump!”)

FUN

DIRECTIONS, PLEASE.LostImpasseConfusionMistakes

Pitfall: Mistaken Information

…but wait, you *can* skip cutscenes.

Player AgencyThe Blame Game (“more than a little embarrassed my video game skills are less than that of a 2YO child.”)

Pre-play work and Practice Death is expected and accepted. Slow Respawns on the other hand…

Skipping ahead (to play the actual game)

Design Elements

First ElementsLocked Elements

Slow StartsRewards

Rewards

ENGAGING

FUN

Self-DiscoveryFiguring out the GameExperiencing the Core Game play

Working out (Kinect games)Sneaking Past a Guard (Deus Ex: Human Revolution)

New Weapons!New Powers!New Play ModesCoins, In-game Resources

Emotively Neutral?I hit some airlock controls and unlock the Daddy's Home achievement. Bioshock 2I zoom in on a guy and get the Close Up Achievement after killing him. Bionic CommandoWe get a "morality-" for that, but then two "morality+"s for saving the civilians, so, obviously, we're the good guys. Army of Two: 40th day I walk over and tap A in time with on screen prompts to start the generator. I get 10 Gamerscore points for the "Let There Be Light" achievement Alan Wake I hop in and get another achievement, this game is just doling them out. Assassin’s Creed 2Haha! The game is telling me how to control the baby, A moves the legs, Y the head, and X and B the arms. The baby cries, and I get the Birth of an Assassin achievement. Well, that was tough. Assassin’s Creed 2Achievement called “Albus Percival Wulfric Brian” is unlocked. Woo! LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7I’m definitely not obsessed with achievements, but going a whole hour and not unlocking any? Seems a bit odd, but maybe they really are going for the real “you have achieved something actually hard” route.

Tasks in the First Hour

Directions are checkboxesFormal Achievements as neutral messagingMisinformation to be avoided (e.g., Blitz: The League)Making a bee-line for the heart of the game

So… oddly enough, in conclusion…

Takeaway

Fun is not the answer to a good first hour.(not completely)

Instead, focus onInformation & Intrigue

to quickly on-ramp the players and to convince them to keep playing.