Hey everybody! I have been thinking about the design of my nag screen. I figure there are few routes that I could take. Most games seem to use a static splash screen. Some games use splash screens that reorganize themselves.

A third option that I have been considering is using an animated nag screen. The nag screen in “Unipong” is animated, and it really caught my attention. There are words and paddles flying all over the place with a cool theme song playing. I think that an animated nag screen would have an advantage over a static screen because it would be better able to captivate the viewer. The main disadvantages that I see are longer development time and possibly bigger file size.

Do other shareware programs use the animated approach? Do you think that this type of nag screen would be effective? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Cool nag screens may increase the sales, but it's probably not enough.
In my experience, it's more important to make the demo expire after x tries/days (in combination with some crippling).

... of course, overkill on the crippling and limited uses can irritate a user into refusing to give you the satisfaction of a sale. :)

(My other half is notoriously touchy about software developers that he feels are rude. You should hear him rant about retail games (which he won't pay for)... OTOH, he just registered Pax Solaris, which he found remarkably polite for a demo.)

Another interesting route to take is to make a dynamic nag screen. Let it show a prerecorded game play from the full version, and add some text with strong user benefits over it. This way, in addition to what you write on the nag screen, the user will see what waits her in the full version. It could mean a lot if the prerecorded demos are appealing.

I personally hate nag screens and "BUY NOW !!! BUY NOW!!" crap all over shareware games .. that just doesnt give me a good feeling about the game at all..

I'd prefer it be a bit more subtle, like a "Register" and "Visit my site" options in the main menu, and just let the game sell itself.

Later

Originally posted by Blain
I'd prefer it be a bit more subtle, like a "Register" and "Visit my site" options in the main menu, and just let the game sell itself.

Later

I agree generally with the concept of the game selling itself, however I don't think the use of the term buy now is bad. In fact I think your suggested terms are worse. My father knows what "buy now" means but he's never heard the term "register". You have to think of these things from a customers standpoint, and that means all customers including people who aren't familiar with industry terms. In fact I'd say that's probably most people. Register simply doesn't mean anything outside of shareware circles or experienced downloader/buyers.

Visit my site is ok, but while people know what it means to visit a site, once they've made the decision to buy I don't think you want them hunting for a way to do that.

Personally I think most customers generally appeciate a direct honest approach to marketing. If you mean buy, then say buy. The concept of switching to "get it now" or some other phrase that obfuscates what they're going to do doesn't really sit well with me. I think at the end of the day the game sells itself or it doesn't and once that happens the terms you use on your nag screen and web site should be simple and direct. I don't think we get too many customers trying to trick people into a false sense of security. We get customers because they want to play more.

That being said of course games can go over the top constantly hitting you with nag screens and so on... but I think that's the minority of titles. I could be wrong I suppose, but I doubt that approach works too well. Having a conveniently placed buy button everywhere in the game is a good idea though because it takes advantage of impulse buying.

I saw two takes on the nag screen thing and chose the simple one which is largely how Dweep's and many other shareware games look - a few screenies of the full game in action, and a list of all the benefits of buying the full game. It's easy and small and probably just as effective as a movie.

On the other hand... have a look at Crimsonland's nag screens - they're not just nag screens, they're huge adverts for the rest of the game: they actually show prerecorded in-game movies of the game being played with all the new stuff in. Powerfully compelling. However it requires that all the full game features are downloaded with the demo which will substantially increase the size of the demo if you're not careful. Having said that it enables the user to instantly buy and unlock the game, which I'm going to put into Alien Flux next month. It'll increase the demo to 10MB but I suspect my conversion rate will more than double. It certainly helped me buy Crimsonland in a trice which impressed me greatly. I didn't even have to leave the game.

Cas :)

Originally posted by papillon
... of course, overkill on the crippling and limited uses can irritate a user into refusing to give you the satisfaction of a sale. :)

Actually, I disagree.

We did a little experiment on an old game of ours last year.
We came to believe we were nagging too much (the nagging increased gradually for 30 days, even I thought it was extremely annoying), so we removed all nag screens except for one polite buy now screen (which was nice looking and showed what you would get in the full version).

The sales decreased dramatically!


(Our latest game sells very well, and it expires after 10 sessions.)

Originally posted by Norbyte
Actually, I disagree.

We did a little experiment on an old game of ours last year.
We came to believe we were nagging too much (the nagging increased gradually for 30 days, even I thought it was extremely annoying), so we removed all nag screens except for one polite buy now screen (which was nice looking and showed what you would get in the full version).

The sales decreased dramatically!


(Our latest game sells very well, and it expires after 10 sessions.)

You have to be careful how your cripple though. I think in some games severly limiting or crippling is actually better than in other games. That is, I doubt there's one good way to cripple a game. I think you have to evaluate it on a game by game basis. For instance with a game like Frozzics Revenge there are set puzzles to complete. Once a puzzle is solved it has limited replay value. So merely locking out the extra puzzles works ok. If you take a game like Twilight Mahjongg, I could lock out some features, but the user could almost just play one version of the game forever. So in that game I have time limitations and nags. I just used what was appropriate for the given game.

@prince - I tried animated sell screens which are recorded in game demos with both Aargon and A Snake's Life and didn't notice much difference. They look pretty flashy, but at the end of the day it probably comes down to whether the user wants to play more or not. Unless the animated screen shows something different and very enticing or captivating I'm not sure it's worth the effort. I didn't notice much change when I did it.

*shrug* Not saying it isn't potentially offset by gains from people who need lots of nagging, just saying that there ARE people who get irked into never-buying-ever by sufficient nagging and crippling. Hard to disagree with that, since I've got the example sitting here. :)

Me personally, if I load up a new game/software and the *very first thing it says* is 'You now have x uses remaining', this can make me annoyed enough to immediately uninstall without playing, depending on how interested I was in the game in the first place. If I was looking for, say, a utility, knew exactly what I wanted it for, and am downloading the trial to find out how easy it is to use, I have no objection to limited uses. Those uses should be enough for me to get the answer to my questions about ease of use (and frequency of use) and enable me to decide whether or not to buy.

But if I've downloaded something out of vague curiousity - and a game is usually going to fall into this category - then if I'm immediately greeted with "You now have five uses remaining", my first response is "Who said I wanted to play your stupid game anyway?" It sets up a confrontational feeling. Particularly as I'm likely to load up a game and barely even look at it the first time - the first load is often just to figure out what kind of game it is and make sure it runs okay on my system, not really to tuck in and play. Highly limited uses sets up the feeling of "You play this game now or you play it never!" - so I pick never.

Unlike a utility, a game isn't something I *need*... it's a luxury, it's something I'm only going to spend money on if it makes me happy. I need to feel good about the purchase and about the people I'm giving the money to. If the developers come across as rude or arrogant, then it's pretty unlikely I'm going to give them my money. (However, a game that started off on first-use very polite and got gradually more naggy on subsequent uses would seem 'fair' to me. Perception is a funny thing. But if it's the tenth time I've loaded the game up, I must enjoy something about it, so it's fair for the game to point out to me that I really ought to buy it. Being pushy on first load when I haven't even played it yet makes less sense.)

Now, as I said, my other half is ridiculously oversensitive... he was playing an arcade game demo that disabled save/load and automatically ended each game after twenty minutes' play. This seems plenty fair to *me* - if you've been playing the game for twenty minutes straight, you should know whether or not you liked it enough to pay for it.... and you could still start over and have another go if you wanted more tryout. But he thought it was rude and ranted about it a lot.

People are weird.

I would aim for the nag screen that actually shows
what you get when you actually buy the game.
if you get the player to reach a certain climax,
and then actually show him what he can get
when the computer "plays" a bought level,
the player (like the junky analog i used in the past)
is filled with "I want more of this stuff", like
seeing the game at a friends house.

I think ive seen it in the "planetary defense" demo.

Originally posted by papillon

Me personally, if I load up a new game/software and the *very first thing it says* is 'You now have x uses remaining', this can make me annoyed enough to immediately uninstall without playing, depending on how interested I was in the game in the first place.

Nobody says you have to be "in your face" about this. A simple medium profile (so it's noticeable) "10 uses remaining" line of text somewhere in the main menu shouldn't offend anyone. The reason this is necessary, is that some games may have enough replay value in the demo levels such that users can just keep replaying the demo indefinitely without getting too bored. Here, you need a better way of nudging them to buy the game than just nag screens. I've played demos of games with 10 limited runs and it only took me like 3-4 runs to decide whether I want to buy them. So if a user finds themselves wanting to play the game for the 11th time, it means they like the game enough that they should be buying it. You just need to confront them about this at that point. :)

You could time actual playing time which might be a bit more sensible. An hour should be enough, I'd guess. And there's no need to advertise the fact; just warn when there's only 5 minutes of playing time left. Don't abruptly end the game either; just politely decline to execute next time the game is fired up.

Cas :)

Well the problem with timing is that the user might not be able to play a full hour in one sitting. You can have interruptions and such; you play for 10 minutes and then you get a phone call, your boss comes in the room, time for lunch, etc.. So keeping track of total time played is bad in that sense. You could try to time a full 1 hour session, but a user might not ever play that long. That's why limited runs are a good compromise. The demo doesn't expire after X days whether or not the user is playing it (in case the user forgets about the game for a month or two), and at the same time it gives the user ample opportunity to play through the demo a few times. Of course, it does depend on the type of game. There's no single solution to everything.

Thanks for all the replies.

Svero: it’s interesting to hear that you tried in game demos and didn’t notice much difference. But you did notice some difference?

It’s pretty clear that good registration incentives are more important than the nag screen. But the design of the nag screen must hold some importance. Every little bit helps, right?

A lot of successful games use plain looking nag screen (princec mentioned Dweep). So maybe the best way to go is just to make it easy to read and straight to the point. Of course, it probably depends on you target audience as well.

No doubt I’ll end up experimenting with a few options to see which works best. The only method that I probably won’t try, at least for a while, is the in game demo. It would mean a fair amount of work and a substantial increase in file size.

Unlike papillon I'm fine with 'You now have x uses remaining'.

Ok. I'll simply use some examples to explain what worked for me as been a customer and what annoyed me to hell. Most of the games you will already know therefore you'll be able to compare your own opinions and experiences with mine. If you agree it's nice and if not it's even better :)

Mutant Strom (PomPom)

I really like robotron-ish games and I just got a nice gamepad (Saitek P880) wich I just had to try out. I beat the demo twice in a row without dying once. Then I started a new game because I was curious how it looks like if you die.

I was a bit dissapointed, because it was (imo) too easy. It wasn't like that I played perfectly, because my coordination apparently sucked.

I was wondering... how the hard levels may look like... if they would be hard enough to force me getting better... why I read so many times that the game is too hard? And, ofcorse default question #1; should I buy it? Then I clicked on exit...

A browser window popped up wich I closed immediately. Damn I was so angry! I already payed for the time I was online to download the demo and then they forced me to pay for their "nag screen".

Well just some cents but that isn't the point. I just don't like to pay for something I hadn't asked for. Needless to say that I didn't played it again thus the question if I should buy it didn't crossed my mind again.

Marble Blast (GarageGames)

I didn't felt nagged at all in this game.

There is a "buy now" button in the lower right corner of the main menu wich isn't annoying at all - infact it's a good feeling to have it there.

Two things wich really catched my interest are the level selection screenshots (you can see 2 or 3 other levels wich aren't included in the demo) and the ingame instructions, wich even explain items and powerups wich are a part of the full version.

And even the exit nag screen was more interesting than annoying.

As far as "10 uses remaining" goes... I can't imagine that I would buy a game after a handfull tries. I think I played the Marble Blast demo about 20-30 times... each time I got better and better... and each time the urge to buy it got bigger and bigger.

Btw if Marble Blast would have been limited to 10 uses my little bro would have been unable to see it. He wouldn't have installed it and the other kids wouldn't have seen it too.

But... as everything else... it depends. I can imagine that it works quite well with puzzle games.

---

Something I would like to try out in games wich aren't limited in uses is displaying a MOTD (=message of the day) based on the number of runs or other statistics. Just a line of text somewere in the main menu or on the loading screen.

Eg. if a player beats his own highscore (or best time) several times you can inform him/her that it's much more fun to challenge the world (online hiscores ;)) or after 50 runs *and* 10hours playing time you can display something like "Hey! Still playing the demo? Come on... get the fullversion you'll even get a 5$ discount :)" this way you might even convince the handfull of guys who like it but think it's too expensive.

Well, like I said elsewhere in my post, it's not the limited number of uses so much as it is being smacked in the face with the limited number of uses *when I haven't even played the first time yet*.

My gripe could be completely nullified by setting a flag so that the message isn't shown until the user has at least played it once. Give me a chance to like your product before you start the hard sell.

Especially, like you said, if the game responds to how often and how well I'm playing and nags me on the grounds that I obviously like the game so why haven't I bought it yet?

I'm being faced with frustration trying to figure out what to present as a demo for my little game which just doesn't break up into levels well... I can't really make a truly playable version of the game without the whole game being there. So I'm looking at having the demo be just enough to give you an idea what the game is about, whether it's your cup of tea, and whether it will run on your computer - but not really having that much to play. This probably won't be as conversion-helpful as a demo that you're likely to play multiple times and have fun with, slowly building up the desire to buy it, but then, I'm in a niche of my own, so I don't have to directly compete with anything... if you like this sort of game, you don't have much choice other than me. :) (BAH that they STILL won't release Princess Maker in English! Graduation was ported, but with terrible voice acting. It has no minigame elements, either. It gets dull.)

Originally posted by Dingo
[B]Svero: it’s interesting to hear that you tried in game demos and didn’t notice much difference. But you did notice some difference?

It’s pretty clear that good registration incentives are more important than the nag screen. But the design of the nag screen must hold some importance. Every little bit helps, right?


Not really any difference nom, but I think in my case the reason to register was already pretty clear so the animated demos didn't really tell the player much that they didn't know already. I guess in my mind it's something like 95% of the sales come from the game itself, and what you get by tweaking nag screen text, or buy button color, etc... is a refinement of the other 5%.

I'm assuming though that your registration incentives are already clear and that you aren't doing something really stupid on the nag screen that's alienating all your customers. Incidentally the registration incentives being clear is a really important thing, but I think that has to happen outside the nag screen itself. If it's not clear what they get by purchasing and you merely tell them that as text on the nag screen, a lot of people won't bother to read, and you will lose customers. Many times I've played a game where I'm at level 6 and I die and then I get to a screen that says "buy now!" but doesn't tell me if there are more levels, how many more levels there are etc... That sort of thing will really kill sales. Another equivalent game might have 6 levels per planet and show you a galaxy with 10 planets and you can see clearly that you've played planet 1. That sort of thing is better.