Poll: How much does demo/full game size matter to you?

[x4000]

So, I'm just wanting to find out a little bit about the feelings that folks have about game sizes.  AI War is about 200mb for the full game, and that also doubles as the demo.  Each expansion is about that or half that. 

For Tidalis, the full version and the demo (which again are the same) are about 400mb.  It's possible that this was one of many factors why Tidalis did not do as well as AI War, but I don't know to what degree folks care about that sort of thing (it certainly has never mattered to me -- many AAA demos are 1gb+, which I've always felt was fine unless it's a 15 minute experience).

For AVWW, right now we already have 90mb of images alone.  From the look of things, by the time we hit 1.0, the full game is going to be 1gb or more.  It's simply got a lot of art (with an infinite world, you wouldn't want it any other way, eh?), and quite a lot of music, too. 

There's enough music that we're thinking of doing HQ versions of the music, plus variations on the specific themes, as a separate download (sort of an optional bonus pack), since those HQ files and variations could be 500mb to a GB just for the music itself.

To say that this game is the largest we've ever done is a bit of an understatement, and I'm just curious as to what folk's reactions are.  Feel free to leave more detailed comments below, if you care to.

[eRe4s3r]

Whats this thing called size you talk about? Game demos have a size? I'd have an opinion about it if it were something I'd want to archive but demos are download, install, play, delete. As long as its not 10gb+ (my absolute limit i'd be willing to download (for a demo)) i don't care

[x4000]

Well, I know some folks either have download limits, or else just lose interest if the download would take too long.  But I'm with you.

[Morslok]

I'm unmetered and have plenty of space, but I don't want to wait for a demo to download for too long. For a full game I would wait for as long as I had to, since i already bought it.

[Ixiohm]

I have to agree that I care more about the distribution channel and download times especially for demos, than I do about the space it takes up on my computer. If the assets are of good quality - as I'm sure they will be for AVWW - then I pretty much feel like, the bigger (more content) the better

[superking]

A terrabyte of HD space is like £50. I dont care how large games are, I only care about the quantity and quality of content. starcraft 2 was over 9000 gigs, but that was fine because it was full of video, music and general awesomeness. Likewise, I expect games to be a few gigs these days- AI war being small was a bonus, not somthing I would expect.

My internet is considered slow  - I download at 150kbps.
I have no problem downloading files of 2gb or greater, so long as they are single files that I can leave downloading without interuption. I commonly download files of such size when trying out games. While a degree of portability is good for multiplayer games (esp for lans), for single player games I just want lots of content.

[Echo35]

Whats this thing called size you talk about? Game demos have a size? I'd have an opinion about it if it were something I'd want to archive but demos are download, install, play, delete. As long as its not 10gb+ (my absolute limit i'd be willing to download (for a demo)) i don't care

With the exception of gaming systems where my storage capacity is very limited (My XBox 360 or PSP for example) I agree with eRe4s3r. I honestly can't even remember the last time I looked at a PC game and was concerned about the size of either the demo or the game (Or even NOTICED the size for that matter. Ask me how big any of my games are. I probably couldn't even tell you), and I don't even have a super huge hard drive internally.

[Zhaine]

Just voted for don't care how big the game's files are. It's never been a factor for me in deciding whether to buy.

As for demos, I don't even play them these days. I'll generally have a pretty clear idea whether I'll like a game before I buy, and if I don't I'd rather wait until a sale and take a chance on by buying it cheap.

[c4sc4]

starcraft 2 was over 9000 gigs, but that was fine because it was full of video, music and general awesomeness.

Over 9000 GBs, wow.

Anyway, I don't really care about the size of games, although sometimes I have to make room for really large games, 9GBs+, because my laptop only has a 320GB HD with ~90+ games installed at a time.

[Mánagarmr]

I generally don't care much. If the game seems awesome enough, size isn't an issue. Though 1Gb+ demos tend to make me raise an eyebrow unless it's a AAA type game.

[Teal_Blue]

The size of a game is really not a true measure of whether or not it is a good game. I downloaded FFXI several years ago on a modem and the game installed within an hour or so from the cd onto a vista machine. But when i connected it updated automatically, which took another 24 hours. Long wait, and it wasn't as interesting as i had hoped, so i wound up deleting the game and putting the cd into the closet, where i think it still is.

On the reverse side the original Prince of Persia on Dos, which i played and still play  on my XP machine, was less than a meg.



 
-Teal

[x4000]

Note that the really big decision point here for me is whether or not to include all the full game content in the demo, as we do with AI War and Tidalis, given how large the main game itself will be.  For people that wind up buying the game, or for people who want to have mixed fullversion + trial testing experiences, this is undoubtedly very helpful.  For those that try and don't buy, of course it's a waste of download bandwidth if the demo is 10x larger than it has to be.

On the other hand, there's the balance of how much work it takes us to do in order to split out all those unneeded files in the first place when it comes to the demo, as well as having two complete sets of the game code floating around out there -- demo and fullversion.  We've essentially been using the shareware model of old for past projects, and that's something I really prefer, but when the full game is a gig or more, making the demo that size is... questionable.

It sounds like it wouldn't bother most people here, so at least that's some good data.

[Teal_Blue]

It is nice of you to ask, but just my opinion i would say do what is easiest. Is it easier to keep a single codebase and let the likers and non-likers sort themselves out?

A gig is alot, but i would still download it, and todays machines, even my old XP machine could probably do it in a couple of hours. 

But that is just my side, there are probably people that have other situations and feel differently.

But if there aren't TOO many of them, it might be easier to have 1 version and wrestle with that.




Of course i'm not a game developer, so i really don't 'know' which is easier.




Just a thought,

-Teal

[wyvern83]

I dislike it when files take way over one hour to download with high-speed internet but I'll still try it. If I like it, of course I'll also buy it so I marked both of the 'I didn't mind' options.

[Nalgas]

I do care about the size of demos, because the longer it takes between impulsively clicking on the button and actually being able to try it, the more likely I am to lose interest in the meantime.  If it's too ridiculously huge, I sometimes don't bother in the first place.

As far as the size of full games, though, I am very close to being able to say I don't care at all.  I have a ton of disk space, and more is cheap.  Once I have the game installed, whatever; I can play it as much as I want, and even on DSL downloading a game is usually faster than waiting for a retail box to get here from Amazon.

The only thing that keeps me from saying that completely unqualified and unconditionally is The Force Unleashed, which was nearly 30 GB for the PC version (and an incredibly mediocre game on top of that, but vaguely entertaining enough to be mostly worth it on sale at 75% off).  At 100 k/s, it took me literally five times longer to install it from Steam than I spent playing the entire game from start to finish.  Some smartass decided it would be a good idea to have all the cutscenes as prerendered 720p video (which generally looked worse than the in-engine stuff on my computer) and then have a separate copy of each of them for each language the game was available in, from what I heard...

Considering that you've demonstrated that you're not completely and hopelessly incompetent like that, though, I suspect anything you come up with will be fine.  Heh.