Kotaku
How long do you play a game before you decide if you like it?
An hour, two, a day? Try 15 minutes.
The first fifteen is all the time a developer gets to convince a gamer that what they're playing is worth the price of admission, or so believes NetDevil's Scott Brown.
Following in the footsteps of the masters of the MMO, Blizzard, NetDevil is breaking away from the norm of game development for their latest pet project, Jumpgate: Evolution. Instead of trying to sketch out a complete world and then going back and filling in the details, giving the game its luster and heart in a soul-killing, deadline-pushing crunch, NetDevil is crafting their space flight massively multiplayer game one gleaming section at a time.
The team, which recently topped ten people, recently wrapped up their initial goal: Building out and polishing the game's first 15 minutes of play.
It may not sound like much, but in a year's time the team had to create the user interface, settle on the look of the game, and work out the games network and artificial intelligence.
They also had to give gamers a way to create their character, ships to fly, enemies to fight and places to go.
While Jumpgate has about 15,000 serious fans, Brown says the team knows that they still have to do a much better job of convincing gamers to stick with their game.
"The original Jumpgate had less than a one percent conversion," he said.
The Evolution team had their first chance to drop the first fifteen on an audience of gamers at this year's Connect in the UK. The results, Brown says, were heartening.
"We had it set up for people to play for 30 minutes, but some people stayed and played all day," Brown said.
In a recent visit to their Louisville, Colorado studios, I got a chance to sit down with a still-in-progress version of the first fifteen, while team members sat nearby taking notes of my experience.
Logging in, I cycled through the fairly limited character choices, quickly selecting a character face and helmet design before launching into the game.
The game's intro flies me through a cloud of space wreckage while touching on the game's rather light backstory.
The game, at least what I saw of it, takes place entirely in your spaceship. I flew through and around asteroid fields, near comets, past bits of space flotsam as I searched out for space pirate's ships.
The keyboard controls were fairly straightforward that seemed to land me in-between hardcore realistic space flight and arcade space shooters.
Brown later told me that as you gain rank and cash you earn access to more complicated space rigs, ones that will include much more complicated controls. It sounds like a neat way to ease people into the mental rigors of true space flight without overwhelming gamers not used to the concept of things like drift and gravitational pull.
While my initial experience with Evolution space flight isn't quite as robust as I'd like (you can't, for instance, do a bootlegger's turn using your afterburner), they are still tweaking and I think I'd be willing to earn my way up to craft that can do some sexy maneuvering.
Targeting in on my first enemy I suddenly realize the game isn't really playing like a role-playing game anymore, I'm actually in a space dogfight.
The weapons aren't flamboyant enough for my taste, but I suspect that the higher level weapons will get quite interesting.
Shooting down enemy craft does result in loot drops, a mixture of money, weapons and minerals.
After completing my first mission, a simple one that had me gunning down a set number of pirate ships, I wing my way back to the space station, a mammoth affair that you need to fly into to dock.
Inside the space statation I find that I can upgrade quite a bit on my ship, from adding things like radar, new engines and shields, to boosting weapons or restocking missiles. I can even choose to buy more ships, if I have the cash.
A level cap prevents gamers from buying into every weapon they can afford, immediately, a bit of an annoyance, but I'd guess that has a lot to do with trying to control the learning curve. I also sell off the mineral-like commodities I collected while out in space.
I was a bit disappointed to discover I couldn't paint up the outside of my ship. Later Brown told me that was something that's come up a lot during focus tests. Something, it sounds like, they might be thinking of adding.
While I enjoyed my playtest, so much so I kept playing when it was over, I find those early missions very easy and never felt I was in danger of exploding.
Once I tried taking on a harder mission, though, I found that the danger of being blown to bits was very real.
In a still unfinished mission I took on a battle station. Once my shield was reduced to zero I didn't even have enough time to get out of range before dying.
Jumpgate looks, at least to the uninitiated, to be shaping up nicely, a game that could potentially offer a killer blend of Eve's hardcore space flight and combat delivered with a learning curve that will help attract and hook the more casual PC gamer.
Now that the first fifteen is nearing completion, the team is continuing to craft their game in baby steps: moving on to craft new maps, expanding the game's single map to five, then pushing to Alpha and eventually introducing things like an auction house, mining and, finally, more robust missions. Bucking a trend to publish first and craft later through updates, all of this will be done before the game goes live.
"We're applying the lessons learned from Auto Assault on Jumpgate: Evolution," Brown said.
As the team pushes the game to launch, piece-by-piece, we will be there, checking in on them to see how those pieces fit together and whether NetDevil will deliver the sort of game that Blizzard managed to create using the same process.
Comments
Any in-game screens? reference sketches are nice and all, but some actual game shots would be fantastic.
Thats a pretty strange way to go about making a game...but I can applaud them with trying something new.
I think the "winning us over in 15 minutes thing" mostly applies to bad games as opposed to newer and more interesting games. It only takes 15 minutes to tell you hate a game, but id say it takes a good hour to know you love a game.
This game looks very, very intriguing. I'd play it for more than 15 minutes.
Speaking of, that is an interesting statistic. I'd love to see some quantitative data that supports the 15 minute theory (as pertaining specifically to video games - we've seen television studies before). I would also be interested to see if this applies differently to certain genres. I get the feeling that RPG players tend to be a little more patient.
I know I have been prone to this 15 minute theory. There was a copy of Morrowind that made its way around a bunch of friends until it got to me. I played for 10 minutes, got killed by a crab and turned it off for a year. When I then played an hour, I was hooked for the next 99. But it seems to me that unless your attention is grabbed right away (Silent Hill anyone?), you run the risk of bored gamers with short attention spans putting in something else.
Some of the ship designs remind me of Babylon 5 ships.I can usually tell pretty quickly myself if I'm going to like a game,but I think it's longer than 15ms..Maybe a hour or so,unless it's just terrible.
The problem with most space sims is that feel that need a joystick, and all i have is a mouse and a keyboard.
@enewtabie: I usually give it more than 15 minutes but most of the time, I've still formed my opinion in the first 10 minutes of actual gameplay.
It also sounds like NetDevil is really using the power of feedback to craft their game. Sometimes I really wonder how many game developers are using gamer feedback to make changes to their game, when they come out to poor reviews and lackluster sales.
On the other hand it sounds like this is a much slower process. I hope the game is all the better for it later.
The 15 minutes refers to the time it takes the average ADHD addled kid to become bored and do something else
This reminds me of the Fable developers when they said people only play the first 8 hours of a game and therefore they trimmed 32 hours out of their massive game. So they said.
I guess for alot of games, the first 15 minutes are what either hook you or not. But this isn't a universal law. Alot of genres of games start out slowly for a reason and we still play them. Take most RPGs for example. Or take Twilight Princess (which I just recently got re-obsessed with so every comment I make seems to reference it now).
It takes about 1 hour in TP to get to the first dungeon of the game. That is a pretty boring hour. But I find that it's necessary to establish Link's character and it helps bring about a sense of awe in the adventures he's about to partake on. The first hour of the game is incredibly boring and lame, and it only makes the rest of the game seem that much more ridiculously awesome.
It's what establishes Link as the "underdog" character that is necessary for any Zelda game to have legs.
I would also like to see some in-game screen. Unfortunately, at the moment, this game sounds a bit stale. How many other space-based games (where you can't get out of your ship) begin with a training mission that includes shooting down satellites/probes/space pirates, and then docking? Sure, the first 15 minutes could be great, but if they're 15 minutes I've played 4 times before, I'll be less inclined to pick it up.
they should bring back something like steel battalion back but for spaceflight...ok loads of peripherals, and huge ones too, but loads of peripherals are in atm with rock band, guitar hero, wii peripheral-ness like wii cesarian for example
If this game has near the easy learning curve of Freelancer but the economic and political depth of EVE Online and the X series, I'm sold. I'll be watching this one closely. I really want a good space-based MMO that doesn't harken back to EQ-style timesinks.
Admittedly, that's about how long I played it before saying "nope, not for me."
However, it was so long ago, I don't even remember what I liked or didn't like about it.
I used to play JG back in the day. Was an ASL with a squad and all (anyone from -=CYGNUS=- around these parts?).
It was a great game - twitch controls which meant your aim determined your accuracy, not some dice roll.
Ships were very fragile - you had to be careful flying these things. And a very vibrant community.
Looking forward to returning.
Sounds interesting.
There have been games I put down after 15 minutes, but it usually takes at least twice as long to at least go through a tutorial.
I usually wait until the tutorial is over before I decide whether to stop or keep going.
I want to be shown that there is a bit of enjoyable, high-quality meat to the game in the first fifteen minutes. Not everything, just enough to believe the promise of a great game.
However, some games are exceptions to this rule. Lunar Knights had a lackluster beginning, and the only reason I played past 15 minutes was because it got great reviews.
I played the original jumpgate for a while before I was too busy to stay with it. Great game, and I really hoped Eve would be something like that. Unfortunately it wasn't. I love the X series and Freelancer was good too. I'm really hoping this game stays true to the original while attempting to draw in more people. Another great game is Vendetta Online, but it just develops at such a slow pace and doesn't have the grand scale of the X series that it can't keep my attention for more than a month or two.
Sounds interesting so long as it doesn't allow you to choose to go somewhere and then wait an hour to get there like EVE. I mean Eve just doezzzZZZZZZZzZZzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZzz
I hope this does better than Auto Assault...
@JamesKilton:
I was looking for someone to bring up Freelancer. Amazing game, even now with all the mods people have up and running on their servers.
You haven't lived until you had a huge space battle with 32 vs. 32 fighting over control of an nebula filled star system (player made) that acted as a huge smuggler shortcut and happened to have all sorts of hidden bases with a bunch of rare, user made weapons for sale.
I may just have to go reinstall this when I get home now. Should fill the two weeks between now and the GTA release.
@dowingba:
The beginning of any piece of entertainment doesn't have to suffer for the sake of exposition.
Look at Blade Runner - it's a slow-paced movie with tons of characterization but it begins by drawing you into a VK test and ending with violence.
In TP, they could have dumped you into a dungeon (or some other exciting event) to start with and once you had a firm grasp of the game, eased you into the slower parts. The first part doesn't has to be heroic to establish a hook for less attentive gamers, it just has to be exciting and engaging.
@Spoony Bard: I think you're definitely on the right track there. Gamers who are more likely to play epic RPG's, MMO's, and RTS's will absolutely have more patience when they're beginning a game experience. However, it's up to the game developers to find the right balance of challenge gameplay mechanics without letting the players completely drown within the first few minutes of the game. I too, would like to see some statistics on this claim though. Very interesting.
Great write up.
While I appreciate their dedication to detail, I'm worried we won't be seeing this game until 2025. My last space-sim fix was "Freelancer", and I could never get into EVE... I fear this game may be my "only hope."
@Koztah: In my opinion, as it is the classic "small" character dumped into a situation/world that's bigger than them, the TP opening absolutely had to be as boring as possible. There's a reason you have to herd goats twice before you get to any meat in the game.
This is the same device that is used in books like Lord of the Rings. And I like to see it in games.
Anyway this is horribly off-topic as TP has very little in the way of space combat.
@dowingba: Absolutely. If you want to emphasize the fact that what the character does is exciting, you need to show what routine is for him. If Link started out fighting all sorts of cool monsters, the rest of the game would simply seem like just another day at the job rather than the adventure of a lifetime.
I was lurking the official forums and when I heard some of the Devs were as big of Freelancer fans as I am I was all over this game.
Space dogfighting action gameplaying is so much better than top down point and clickfests. While I have a joystick personally I would prefer solid mouse and keyboard controls.
Btw, there's some ingame footage at the game's web site:
[www.jumpgateevolution.com]
Has anyone played Tachyon: The Fringe? Sometimes i feel like the only person that ever thinks of that game.
I don't know about 15 minutes. But there IS a crucial time in which you must prove yourself as a worthy game.
Conversely, sometimes infatuation comes quickly and without warning: when I saw Prince of Persia: Sands of Time at a friend's house, it took only about five seconds for ultimate desire to take seed. It was the Prince doing a single wall-run.
I think some of their strategies make a huge amount of sense. Certainly the decision to have features everyone "expects" from an MMO already in place should be a requirement. The "we'll add it later in an update" concept that was popular with a number of games just seemed like a recipe for disaster.
I've been on betas for more than one MMO that tried that, and knowing what they were releasing with, had no desire to buy the game on release. The promised eventual feature set sounded wonderful, but I wouldn't be willing to sit through (and pay for) months of crippled gameplay. And then because everyone else had the same idea, those games never succeeded to the point where they could implement all of their promised features.
@Zenian: That's how what'shisface made Super Mario Galaxy. He puts a mario in some locationless field in the middle of nowhere, and messes around endlessly until it's right. The levels get built later. Sid Meier also iterates on a basic model ad infinitum until they get what they like and then adds in all the rest of the bells and whistles.
If Wow had taken that approach, there might actually be a game to play, there, under the hood. Instead of a nearly noninteractive nightmarish mining simulator. Game first, then you can add the addictive stuff later.
This is a beautiful looking game, and after playing Auto Assault I'm confident that Netdevil can make a great game out of it. AA was fantastic, and it was a shame it didn't get more recognition.
I also agree about the 15 minutes. I got Dark Sector recently, and by the third level I was bored out of my skull, and turned it off. It's the same reason you'll reach a certain point in a game and decide to stop playing; you grabbed onto the hook earlier in the game, and now you've reached the end of its line, and all you can do is wander forward until you find another hook. Most people won't spend more than 15 minutes trying to decide if they really enjoy something, and any kind of game-stopping event (such as death) will cut them off even before the 15. Those first 15 have to be engrossing and enjoyable, but at the same time introducing the player to the concepts and not punishing the player for doing something wrong.
I'll give an MMO about a month.
So far this reminds me a lot of Eve Online by the description, but that's cool. My main problem with Eve was the wait-to-train system. That, and massive amount of time watching my ship autopilot or mine.
I'm definitely intrigued by this.
Am I the only one who kinda likes EVE? That being said, the promise of more fluid and interesting flight controls in Jumpgate Evolution sounds nice. That being said, it's the economic and political factors of EVE that appeal to me most.
Sounds cool... it's interior cockpit view, right? You compare it to EVE but that's more like a point and click affair...
The trouble inherent in EVE is that the only really enjoyable combat comes from joining a player run corporation. The game *relies* on community drama to fuel the storyline. They may have broken away from the traditional MMO style, but there's still a reason that style is so popular.
This, on the other hand, I have very high hopes for. I loved Freelancer, and it's rare that an enjoyable space shooter comes along that isn't too complex or difficult to sink your teeth into (X3 was fun, but it was designed for its own niche of the market).
@WalkingTheCow:
I actually picked up the 14 day trial and am enjoying it. Of course, I'm not currently doing the boring stuff...i went combat and am happy to go on missions and blow crap up!
I've been playing EVE almost non-stop for 6 months now, and I agree with Walking the Crow- it's the economy and politics that are most appealing. The ship battles are epic, but not in the twitch gaming sense, because it's more about what ship to bring to the fight and how to equip it than fast reflexes.
I find the training model to be superior to all other MMOs -- no online grinding means a more casual player can still advance. And I have'nt done any mining since the tutorials. There are too many other things that are much more fun: missions, trading, exploration, wars, heck even manufacturing is incredibly deep. And I never use Autopilot -- that's the slow afk way to fly.
But yes, the learning curve is VERY steep because the game is VERY deep. Probably ways to improve that, but it might be difficult to do without alienating the existing player base...
Oh my lord, they need to make the inside of your ship customisable too. You should be able to walk around it and have a cool living area you can get objects for and stuff =D
One of those really unimportant things that would make me fall in love with the game, like painting the outside.
I'd agree with the first fifteen minutes comment. If I hate a game after the first fifteen minutes, I'll probably never pick it up again. But in general, it takes me an hour to decide whether I love the game, like the game, or decide to toss it
No bootleg turns?! For shame, Netdevil, for shame!
Next you'll be telling me my ship can't do J-Turns or, god forbid, Scandinavian Flicks!
Many games to day take beyond 15 minutes to get past the tutorial, or the introductory cutscene.
Those either are, or are very similar to the screenshots they showed at GCAP '07. Interesting guys that delivered an interesting talk.
I hope very much that this works out for them. I know I'll be giving them at least 15 minutes of my time.
@Corncob:
I suspect there are others who've played Tachyon, but they're too embarrassed to admit it. :P
I'm not too embarrassed, just disappointed. Except for choosing the ship and weapon loadout, there was remarkably little to provide any solid connection with the Privateer-ish game promised by the game's premise. Heck, once all the plot missions are finished, you can't launch at all. That doesn't sound like any "Privateer" I know of.
As for the article, I have high hopes for JGE, but being a JGC (Classic, i.e. current Jumpgate) player (if sporadically, the past year or so), I may be a little bit biased.
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