Secrets of the Game Business (Game Development Series)

To get the most upsells, you need to achieve a perfect balance between compulsion and boredom. Give your players a large enough demo of your game so that they're compelled to play and get hooked on it—but if you give them too much, they'll get tired of it before they register.

Several different strategies have been employed by games distributed online:

• Time-lock. Allow the demo version of your game to be played for a certain length of time, and then force players to register to continue playing. This works well for highly addictive puzzle games.

• Date-lock. Give potential customers a certain number of calendar days (usually 30) to play the game without restriction. If they want to play for more than a month, then they must register. This method works better for applications than for games, since it's very possible that a huge fan of your game will complete it within a month.

• Tokens. This is a variant on the time-lock method. Allow potential customers to play your game 20, 30, or 40 times before requiring registration.

• Episodes. In this scenario, your demo allows unrestricted access to the first few levels of the game, and allows the player to purchase more levels. This is the method id Software got very rich on with their shareware games.

• Donations. When it comes to games distributed online, asking for a donation typically does not work; either use a different method, or just release your game as freeware.

Resist pricing your game too high. Games sold online typically cost half of what a game in the store would; $10 or $15 will work well, since games are impulse buys for many people, especially online. Also remember that most of the people who purchase games online typically would not spend $50 on a videogame, even if it was something they liked.