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The First Hour Experience: How the Initial Play can Engage (or Lose) New Players

The First Hour Experience: How the Initial Play can Engage (or Lose) New Players

Talk presented at the CHI Play 2014 conference. Initial slides by Gifford Cheung.

Thomas Zimmermann

October 21, 2014
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  1. 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 Nagappan
    Microsoft Research, Redmond

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  2. © Microsoft Corporation
    http://aka.ms/esegroup
    Thomas Debeauvais, Thomas Zimmermann, Nachiappan
    Nagappan, Kevin Carter, Ryan Cooper, Dan Greenawalt,
    Tyson Solberg: An Empirical Study of Driving Skill in Forza
    Motorsports 4. FDG 2014
    Jeff Huang, Thomas Zimmermann, Nachiappan Nagappan,
    Charles Harrison, Bruce C. Phillips: Mastering the art of war:
    how patterns of gameplay influence skill in Halo.
    CHI 2013: 695-704
    Emerson R. Murphy-Hill, Thomas Zimmermann, Nachiappan
    Nagappan: Cowboys, ankle sprains, and keepers of quality:
    how is video game development different from software
    development? ICSE 2014: 1-11

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  3. © Microsoft Corporation
    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

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  4. © Microsoft Corporation
    “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
    a Critical Hour

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  5. © Microsoft Corporation
    What did we know so far?
    • Game Approachability Principles: allow practice of new
    skills/tools, good demonstrations of how to play, feedback,
    offering self-efficacy, scaffolding, clarity, and information
    – Desurvire and Wiberg, 2010. User Experience Design for Inexperienced Gamers: GAP --
    Game Approachability Principles
    • 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, and social interaction lead to continued
    motivation to play
    – Wu et al., 2010, Falling in love with online games: The uses and gratifications perspective
    • Are tutorials effective? For complex games like Foldit, yes.
    Restricted modes don’t help much.
    – Anderson et al., 2012, The impact of tutorials on games of varying complexity

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  6. © Microsoft Corporation
    Data + Methodology

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  7. © Microsoft Corporation
    Player’s Perspective
    Genre Reviews
    Action 28
    Modern First-Person Shooter 32
    Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter 21
    Modern Action Adventure 17
    Role-Playing 16
    Sci-Fi Shooter 16
    Fantasy Action Adventure 10
    Puzzle 9
    Adventure 9
    Rhythm / Music 7
    Sports 6
    Racing 5
    2D Platformer 4
    Shoot-'Em-Up 3
    Strategy 3
    Beat-'Em-Up 3
    Driving 3
    GT / Street Racing 3
    Action Role-Playing 2
    3D Platformer 2
    Wrestling 2
    Football 2
    Snowboarding 2
    2D Fighting 1
    Sci-Fi Action Adventure 1
    Modern Shooter 1
    Historic First-Person Shooter 1
    Rhythm / Dancing 1
    Fantasy Online Role-Playing 1
    Olympic Sports 1
    212 Amazon reviews of Xbox 360 games
    Searching for keywords such as
    “first”, “hour”, “minute”, “start”

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  8. © Microsoft Corporation
    First hour reviews 35 collected, 13
    different authors
    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

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  9. © Microsoft Corporation
    6 Game Industry Professionals
    • Designer A, B, C,
    • Tester A, B, and
    • User Researcher A
    • 10-20 years of experience, AAA titles
    • 3+ major game studios

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  10. © Microsoft Corporation
    Methodology
    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)

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  11. © Microsoft Corporation

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  12. © Microsoft Corporation
    Findings
    First Experience Arc

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  13. © Microsoft Corporation
    The First Experience Arc
    Expectations
    Specific Anticipations
    Experiences
    Momentary & Engaging
    Annoying, Frustrating, or Tedious
    Outcome
    Abandonment
    Continuing
    Exceptions
    Deal-breakers
    Holdouts

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  14. © Microsoft Corporation
    Expectations
    Franchise, Genre, Predecessors
    Gaming community, “Everyone”, Friends, Buzz
    Trailers, Rentals, Demoes, Friend’s house
    Notable: Specific Anticipation

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  15. © Microsoft Corporation

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  16. © Microsoft Corporation
    Positive Experiences
    Engaging
    “hooked”, “engaged”, “interested”,
    “addicted”, “immersed”
    “cool”, “awesome”, “wow”, “exciting”,
    “fun”, “impressed”, “neat”
    Momentary

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  17. © Microsoft Corporation
    Positive Experiences
    Engaging
    “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...”
    “cool”, “awesome”, “wow”, “exciting”,
    “fun”, “impressed”, “neat”
    Momentary

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  18. © Microsoft Corporation
    Negative Experiences
    Annoying Frustrating Tedious

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  19. © Microsoft Corporation
    Outcomes
    WHOLE & IN PART (Music, Narrative,
    Voice-Acting, Levels, Mini-games, etc.)
    Abandonment Continue

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  20. © Microsoft Corporation
    Deal-breakers: Frustrations that
    supersede 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)

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  21. © Microsoft Corporation
    Holdouts: Playing 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)
    Narrative
    Completionists (External)
    Social reasons (External)

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  22. © Microsoft Corporation
    Findings
    Figuring out the Game

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  23. © Microsoft Corporation
    Figuring out the Game
    Acquiring the basic skills
    to play
    Understanding
    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 to Disinterest
    “once the patterns were figured out, the
    enthusiasm died down quickly.”
    (Kung Fu Panda 2 Kinect, Amazon Review)

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  24. © Microsoft Corporation
    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)

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  25. © Microsoft Corporation
    Costly Mistakes in Understanding
    …but wait, you *can* skip cut scenes.
    “yes cut scenes are annoying but all you gotta do is hit the
    B button on your Xbox controller”
    (Blitz: The League, Comment on the Amazon Review)

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  26. © Microsoft Corporation
    FRUSTRATION
    Direction vs. Discovery
    DISCOVERED!
    Easter Eggs
    Beauty
    Player Abilities (“I can double jump!”)
    FUN
    DIRECTIONS, PLEASE.
    Lost
    Impasse
    Confusion
    Mistakes

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  27. © Microsoft Corporation
    Findings
    Player Agency

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  28. © Microsoft Corporation
    Player Agency
    Doing your homework
    “If you read all of the in-game instructions and you aren’t afraid to dig
    around in the menus, you’ll work through the learning curve quickly.”
    (Create, Amazon review)
    “At first it was hard to play and I got my butt handed to me, but that was
    because I just went straight into the match and tried it right away. Then i
    studied the controls and figured it out.” (WWE '13, Amazon Review)
    Death is expected and accepted.
    Players do not complain about dying but about the
    precision of the controls and slow loading times between
    deaths.

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  29. © Microsoft Corporation
    Player Agency
    Skipping ahead
    Players take a direct route to the action, skipping
    tutorials, levels, and other decision branches.
    Adjusting to the game
    To improve their experience of the game, players tinker
    with the difficulty level.

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  30. © Microsoft Corporation
    Implications

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  31. © Microsoft Corporation
    Intrigue trumps Enjoyment
    Inspire greater engagement, spark interest of a
    player, show strengths of gameplay to come.
    Be more than a momentary enjoyable experience.
    Existing design principles (where this prioritization is applied):
    – Unaffordable items in store
    – Initial taste of power
    Design the first hour to emphasize direction.
    Save room for discovery after the first hour.

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  32. © Microsoft Corporation
    The First Experience
    Expectations
    Specific Anticipations
    Experiences
    Momentary & Engaging
    Annoying, Frustrating, or Tedious
    Outcome
    Abandonment
    Continuing
    Exceptions
    Deal-breakers
    Holdouts
    Acquisition of the basic
    skills to play
    Understanding
    the point of
    the game
    Player Agency
    http://aka.ms/esegroup

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  33. © Microsoft Corporation
    Thank you!

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