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Hi All:-)
I am about to launch our game in unity. i have a question for the experienced Unity users:
How many users do you loose when they have to download the web player?
If you have documented your conversion rate when requiring the user to download Unity web player before playing your Unity game then plz let me know. If it´s high number we have to take measures to increase the conversion rate before launching.
Thank you!
PS. We will soon we announcing our launch in this forum:-)
Cheers,
Thor
there are not number out there about this i think and it would be very hard to measure this.
I think it is only a matter of time that the unity player will be a standart. Look at flash, now it is standart.
lesfundi
Fundi
This would be a difficult statistic to gather. You'd need records of who went to the website, looked around, was *intending* to play and then didn't based on the download. It's near impossible to tell what a visitor's intent was unless you explicitly ask them when they visit.
Considering it's something like a 3MB download, I'd hope most people wouldn't have an issue with it... but everyone has their pet peeves.
My experience from working with similar products is that the conversion rate is pretty bad. I think generally you will lose maybe half of the users in the plugin installation phase.
I think the conversion rate is very dependent on how the publisher of the plugin is portrayed - whether the company profile looks reliable or not.
It isn't difficult to track this, actually. You can use analytics packages to set markers at each point in the install process.
Our install conversion rate at Blurst is around 50%. Different traffic converts differently. A blog post that speaks very highly of us, and specifically vouches for the Unity player, will convert better than a more mainstream article.
Our funnel conversion is around 30%. These are people who make it through the process in one sitting. They keep the Play page open the entire time (the other 20% close Blurst during the download or visit different pages in the meantime). Many users try to play multiple games before realizing the Unity player is required for all of them.
It greatly depends on the type of content. Good content, that people actually want to play, that has a very good presentation for the plugin installation process can do very well. Some customers told us about success stories of 70-75%, in some of the high profile titles made with Unity.
If you look at the installation process offered at Blurst, Fusionfall, or Paradise Paintball you can see they all have either a screenshot of the game, what you will be missing out on, or a quick video. Some text telling people that it's safe and awesome. And a very non-generic presentation for the plugin download, except for the actual button. I'd say, take a good look at how those sites have done it and design something similar that fits the specific game or site you are designing.
Getting the presentation of the plugin install process right is incredibly important for achieving a high conversion rate.
Joachim Ante
I would agree with what has been said, make it clear what they need to do and that it is safe. Most folks don't mind downloading installers for games.
Unity 3.0 Pro
Windows 7
Unity Script
I disagree. While playing RC Lazer Warrior on Shockwave.com, I read the comments. A lot of people said the game sucked just because they had to get the webplayer. Needless to say, they never actually played the game.Originally Posted by Merries
Time is an illusion
Lunchtime, doubly so
Hum perhaps I should rephrase that. For games like Conan or even WoW they have to download the game files which take alot of time, that is what I was referring to not so much the player.
It would seem odd to me they are willing to download a huge file but not a webplayer?
Unity 3.0 Pro
Windows 7
Unity Script
Time is an illusion
Lunchtime, doubly so
Actually I think lots of Windows users are wary of installing downloads - not just those that are paranoid. Whenever I use Windows I am very careful of downloading anything. And even my tech savvy friends have been difficult to convince to download the Unity webplayer simply because they are against plugins.
This won't matter eventually since the Unity webplayer will likely reach critical mass. But I also think this wariness of web plugins in general will persist for a long time.
Good thing is that Paradise Paintball is a facebook game.
You can be pretty sure, that it will help Unity to get more webplayer installations out there actually.
I've seen much more concerning stuff spreading viraly thanks to facebook
Hmmmm. I'm one of those paranoid installers.
Actually the issue isn't with the plugin as such, it's more a bandwidth consideration. If you download something that's going to stream content you never know how much data is going to be coming down during play. Is it going to cache data properly, is it going to interfere with the gameplay experience, are levels going to take forever to load over a 3G connection? Those kinds of questions.
When you download a standalone installer, at least you have a good idea of the total download size and you can budget for it if you're in a bandwidth restricted region.
Those stats actually don't look too bad, all things considered. A lot of people might just not like the look of a game or they might not be in to the genre.
I'm weird about installing plugins, too. For me it mostly has to do with not cluttering my computer with useless junk. Whenever I go to a page that has a required plugin download, I worry that I'm 1) never going to come back to this site and 2) never going to encounter any other sites using this technology. So if I install it, I'm likely to have some possibly junky application gumming up the works until the next time I stumble upon its name in the add/remove programs window/OSX equivalent.
As more and more Unity content finds its way out to the web, especially high-profile stuff like Flashbang's work, this becomes less of an issue.
Hi Matthew,
I'm just wondering how you measure the general conversion rate (the one you cite at aroun 50%), as opposed to the funnel conversion rate.
Is it done by tracking using cookies, so that you can tell if a non-unity-installed user ever returns as a unity-installed user?
I wonder what emerging plugin-less graphics APIs like WebGL ( http://www.khronos.org/webgl/ )will do to Unity and Garage Games plugin required to play models? Maybe some UT folks could chime in. It is still in its' infancy, but I am sure as specification is more widely adopted by all browsers (currently requires beta downloads of either FireFox or Safari) full blown engine middleware will be available...perhaps within the next year. Cross platform out of the box.
Yeah but then you've just pushed the problem onto making people download new browsers.
Average users hate being told their browser isn't cool enough just as much as they hate being asked to click on boxes to download plugins so it's not like you're going to end up with a 100% install base anyway.
Don't know. At least I don't consider 200k lines in JS to run on an acceptable performance anymore... but perhaps I miss something(thats what WebGL is about, graphical capabilities in the range of an iphone 3GS available to JS in the browser some day)
But for unity that already runs on a more performant and capable platform (SM3+) than WebGL likely will run with its initial standard at all, it would be a pretty significant step backward.
Also the WebGL drafts were released in dec 2009
By the common speed of the GL consortium that means the first real standard won't happen before 2012
http://www.khronos.org/webgl/
Hmmmm. According to Kronos (its developer) the spec is a little over a month old, not a year =).
But in any case, it is very interesting, and at least it is another tool potentially in the box of developers. It looks like it is gaining a lot of momentum. The list of browser support has grown since I first stumbled on WebGL a couple of weeks ago.
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