[casual_games] The 10 meg file limit

[Tom Park]

What everyone has been saying makes plenty of sense, but I was just curious:

How much engineering analysis/effort is put into the optimizing the download size?

For a small indie team of one or a few people, maybe it's just impossible to justify spending much time to doing an analysis. Perhaps the only effort that can be spent is ensuring that there's no unused files included in the deliverable, and the rest is left to the installer's compression.

However, I'm wondering who can answer relevant questions about their titles like:
1) What is the overhead of the installer?
2) What is the size of the executable versus the size of the assets?
3) If you use a custom scripting engine, what is the overhead of the runtime module and how much space is saved by the scripts?
4) What is the ratio of the number of asset files to the total size of the assets?
5) What is size distribution of the runtime assets?

In my industry (mobile), there are hard limits to the download size (e.g. 64K, 100K, 128K, etc), so you can imagine we are forced to put a lot of engineering effort into the download size. We have a fairly sophisticated build system and asset pipeline that must target 100's of devices and their relative limits.

Tom

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Daniel Bernstein 
  To: george at infiknowledge.com ; 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List' ; mitzim at tikgames.com 
  Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 8:02 PM
  Subject: RE: [casual_games] The 10 meg file limit


  I completely agree that the 10 Meg download is arbitrary, although if you have a web game, try to keep it under 2 MB. The expectation is different when you are playing a game online vs. downloading.

   

  Daniel Bernstein

  President/CEO

  Sandlot Games

   


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of George Donovan
  Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 4:47 PM
  To: mitzim at tikgames.com; 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
  Subject: RE: [casual_games] The 10 meg file limit

   

  ISpy was over 100 megs and it did great on Real Arcade's channel. I think there is a Risk of a game being downloaded less and possibly having a higher conversion rate, but if the game is very good, Word of Mouth will Rule and people will wait for it to play and hopefully buy.

   


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Mitzi McGilvray
  Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 8:45 PM
  To: 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
  Subject: RE: [casual_games] The 10 meg file limit

   

   

  Go look at Fate from Wild Tangent.  It's a stunning game and it blows the 10 MB boundary out the door.

   

   

  We have one title that had a nice run on the Top 10 lists and it was 15 MB. It's called Cinema Tycoon.  However, our rule of thumb is still to stay within the 10 MB boundary as that is what our partners have asked us for.  I wouldn't get to freaky about that last MB.  I don't think that will make a big difference.

   

   

  -Mitzi

   

  GM, Casual Games

   

  TikGames

   

  650.403.0123 x2005

   

   

   

   

  ================================================

   

  In the past, there was an unwritten rule of casual games that you shouldn't go over 10 megs for the download.  While it wasn't a hard and fast rule - I had heard from a number of portals that cracking ten megs would noticeably impact your sales and downloads.

   

  I'm wondering if you all think that is still the case - 

   

  We just finished up a game and it weighs in at a hefty 11megs.  Squeezing that last meg out looks like a very very difficult task - I'm wondering if it is worth it.

   

  Thanks!

  James Baker
  Principal
  WDDG/Inferno/Funtank
  212-219-9222
  james at wddg.com
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