In today’s overcrowded gaming market, it’s hard for gamers to know which games are worth their time, and even harder for developers to capture and keep that attention.
The market is oversaturated, with new games releasing constantly. The gaming public can’t keep up with the onslaught of fresh releases, growing backlogs, and the sheer volume of other media distractions competing for their increasingly limited time and attention.
Game developers need to hook players right away and never let go. It’s no longer enough to build a solid but slow-to-develop experience that only becomes fun after hours of investment. Games must be compelling from the start, or no one will stick around long enough to experience that amazing moment that happens 10 hours in.
First Impressions is a segment devoted to analyzing how well developers capture and hold players’ attention. I’ll be covering roughly the first 30–60 minutes of a game—from the initial onboarding process through to the first level or boss fight—to determine: does this game hook us in effectively, or should we throw it back?
When I was a child, games were few and far between, so you cherished every one you got your little hands on. I was lucky if I received a couple of games a year. Birthdays and holidays were the only times you’d receive something cool like a new game, so you played the hell out of what you had, because it was a long wait until the next special occasion.
But today’s gaming market is oversaturated. Between Steam sales, Epic Games giveaways, the PlayStation Plus catalog, Xbox Game Pass, Humble Bundles, free-to-play games, and the occasional day-one impulse buy, my backlog—like many others—has swollen to an unmanageable size. We live in a world where personal entertainment options are almost too abundant.
In this environment, hooking gamers quickly and keeping their attention is more crucial than ever. With so many choices, your game is competing with hundreds of others for limited time. Game designers must find ways to engage players from the get-go, or no one will ever experience the cool moments buried deep in the endgame.
I’m no longer that kid who spent nine months stuck with a disappointing game just because it looked cool in Nintendo Power. My gaming time is limited, and so is my attention span. If a game doesn’t grab me right away, I’m always tempted to quit and move on. The importance of making a strong first impression cannot be overstated.
Too often, I start playing a game, and it takes 30 minutes just to get to a place where I can control the main character. Slow story buildups filled with cutscenes have become relics that need to go. A good game puts you in the driver’s seat right from the start. Want to tell me a story? Fine, but let me play through the exposition. Nothing kills my enthusiasm faster than watching dead-eyed, uncanny valley 3D characters act out a trite drama. That might have been cool 30 years ago when I had no other game to play, but not anymore. If you bore me, I will delete you so fast and move on to the next competitor for my limited attention.
What I want to explore is which games get it right and which fall short. There are valuable lessons to be learned from studying a game’s opening. How does it onboard you? Do the designers create strong hooks, or do they take your attention for granted? Does the game guide you through the basics, or does it drop you into the action? Is hand-holding better, or should there be more freedom to explore? How do the characters and world make you feel? Is the game’s concept strong enough to make you stick through a potentially boring intro? What do I learn about the game and its mechanics in those first critical moments?
Stay tuned as I try to answer these question and more while burning through my backlog in our new semi-regular feature “First Impressions”.