Acceptable size for a game?

[Winterfire]

Little backstory: From reading the various comments in games I have noticed that people do not really like games over 1GB so back when I was designing the game, I made sure that the final version would be around that size.

However, I made a mistake: Animations weight more than I had anticipated and compression without losing quality is not as easy in Unity3D compared to Ren'Py so I fear the final version of my game might go well over 1GB.

Granted that the download will not be over 1GB since zip archives lower the size of unity games a lot, how much space are you willing to "give" to a game you might be interested in?

This question is of course aimed mostly to those people that have small HDDs like mine (currently have 23GB free in C: and 28GB free in D: )

 

[Finsit]

Depends if you talk about experienced users or newbies.

Anyone seasoned here can probably tell you the quality of a game just looking at the first page and the size of the files.

Animation, 3D CG, 2D CG, raster art, vector art, Ren'Py, RPGM, Unity, UE, age of the project.
All of those are factors to multiply the file size with and you will get a pretty good estimation of the content in the game.

Example : animation + 3D CG raster (not raytraced), Ren'Py
A game light in content will probably be around 1.2GB.

the reason is that Animation is easier on 3D raster CG, because they probably use an engine that already can some, so more images per animation, images easy to render at high since it's raster and not raytraced. So pretty bloated.


It' doesn't grow linearly either. The bigger the game the more it's likely as you realize yourself that the creator will try to mitigate the size creep.


My point, while it's important to compress things or at least not bloat. Beware of game anorexia don't try to compress too early in the game evolution, file size is an important information for the player.
I would say it's like early optimisation : if it run fine on weak hardware don't optimise.
So if the game is downloaded quickly enough on weak connection, don't compress.

Oh, and when you compress be sure to also ship an uncompressed version : nobody will take it but it show that you have content and that you are file size conscious.

 

[TCMS]

To be honest it totally depends on the thread. The overview, the engine, the previews, the genres, etc.
If it's under 1GB i'll mostly download everything (well not everything but anything semi-appealing). 1GB -> 2GB it must stand out a bit. 2GB+ only games I really like or that really stand out.
I don't really have problems with speeds or anything of the sorts, but it's just plain annoying to download something that's extremely large just to play a bit and see that it's totally not the type of game I enjoy. Also most of the times with large files I'll just assume that the game's dev doesn't know how to optimize his files which will most likely put me off from downloading said game.

 

[Winterfire]

That is what I feared I did optimize but I am fairly sure it will end up weighting quite a bit once it is completed

 

[Finsit]

Animated games are big.

But I find it strange that you cannot play any type of video on Unity. And surely compression animated stuff is very light.

 

[Winterfire]

Compression is more efficient in Ren'Py given the nature of the engine, in Unity3D what matters the most is texture size and while you can compress those assets without any noticeable loss of quality, some images will suffer a quality loss so you have to kind of compromise.

 

[u z i]

if there is a lot of animations i don't mind a heavy game but in general i prefer if they are within the range of 2GB.

 

[vnAdult]

Use external resources and release different packages. Sd and hd pack.

 

[icesun]

I'm on the exact other end of the spectrum - when I open a download link and see something with 300MB I get sceptical that there's a decent amount of content available; and when I see a title with 3GB I get my hopes up...
My "kinky games folder" (and I keep that cleaned up pretty well) is 101GB at the moment...

 

[recreation]

Why don't you make animated movies? Convert your animations to webm for example and they will shrink in size drastically without loosing much quality.

 

[freedom.call]

Not about space for me, if I can download in one go from mega or other links I'm good.

 

[freedom.call]

Having said that, 1Gb+ 0.0.1 I probably won't download.

 

[Xalenda]

Since I mostly play RPGMaker games, it's a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to file sizes.

The system itself is usually fairly hefty without any major additions to the CGs, while adding in pictures (~250ish kb/per) really doesn't amount to a whole lot of space being wasted. The biggest, and probably the worse additions to try and compress, are the maps.

Since they're created using the in-game map editor, they need to Run-Time Package to work properly, and that thing just eats up memory. If you've got a big map, the RTP doesn't run very smoothly without additional scripts and/or other ways to increase frames, and adding in the events to make everything work properly... just forget it. And even more annoying, they also eat up memory.

So while a "small" filesize RMVXA game might run like a fat kid in quicksand, and "large" games might have upwards of 2-3 GB allocated, you're never quite sure which game will be better, making the entire thing a gamble.

I've seen big games that only have a few songs, 2 CGs, and 1 sex scene in it, simply due to less-than-ideal compression and all those hand-drawn maps; and then I've seen games that looked small, around the 300MB area, that play smoothly, have lots of pics and events and scenes in them, and feel like a game that Steam would put on their Greenlight service.


TL;DR - Don't fret too much over final file size. People may complain at first, but if it's a good game, then that's really what matters in the end.

 

[Fliptoynk]

How about this:
Think carefully about how you present the events in the game with minimal cg's in mind.
Example for sex scene:
1 cg for foreplay
1 animation loop
1 cg for climax

For non-sexual scenes:
1 sprite per npc during talks
1 cg and a wall of texts to elaborate what had been the outcome of the conversation.

Just don't use too many cg's that aren't reusable in future events. The game engines are mostly bulky already since I see some unused sprites and i bet some functions and objects in its library arent used as well. Keep it up

 

[smnb]

Size doesn't matter that much. Give me few good preview images and if I like them, I'll gladly download almost anything. Unless the size is something ridiculous, which for me is say 5GB+. Of course there's a difference if it's something known to have tons of content, or just something where author doesn't know how to do things and every image is 10MB uncompressed bitmap.

One annoying aspect of larger games is the usual lack of incremental updates. I don't really care that final version is 2GB. But downloading 500MB version 1, 700MB version 2, 700MB version 2 bugfix, 900MB version 3, 900MB version 3 bugfix, ... in other words, downloading largely the same thing over and over again, that's not amusing.

 

[Drakan47]

It depends on the amount of content, people with slow download speeds generally won't start a multiple hour download unless they know what they're downloading will last them more than half an hour.

As you mentioned, for users with limited HDD space, if you're uploading a compressed file I'd suggest adding some info on the post-extraction size.

 

[polywog]

 

[cowboybebop]

max size is around 2gb
720p is enough, some people have difficulty to play 1080p or above especialy people like me with laptop :V :V

 

[CavDaKnight]

If the CG's are top notch, artwork sweet AF, or using real porn. I don't much mind the game size too much if there is a stable site like Mega to dl from. Though if your padding a game with useless art like having 7 frames of someone walking where 2 or 3 would suffice, than I not gunna bother downloading your game again, as your just inflating the game size for no reason it seems. Also not a fan of honey select CG's or that other weird one that Beggar of Net uses. Creepy AF looking characters imo

 

[RedPillBlues]

I'll download a game of almost any size if it looks interesting, in fact I keep downloading the disappointment that is The Northwood Lair monthly, and its like a 4GB DL with it being 11GB unpacked.