I had the pleasure of listening to three producers from Electonic Arts (EA) talk about their daily jobs and careers, as they were guest speakers in one of my classes. Each was at a different level (associate producer, producer, and executive producer) and added their own personal flavor to their presentation. One of the most memorable pieces of advice from that evening was the importance of the first 30 minutes of a game. Basically, if you can’t captivate the player in the first 30 minutes, you lose them.

I was incredibly frustrated to experience this first-hand when I began playing the PSP game Daxter with a friend. We were both horribly bored, waiting for an event to start, and had over an hour to kill. I was excited that we had some form of entertainment in the PSP.

I got to play first. There were limited opening cinematics. After a brief introduction, I was set to go on my way. I had never played a PSP before, so I had to get accustomed to the controls. They were fairly intuitive, but I still found myself running in the wrong direction for five minutes before my friend encouraged me to turn back. Why would I do such a thing? The man who gave me my assignment did not help point me in the right direction. I was supposed to go to a hotel, but I did not know that the building I was in was not the hotel. No one told me this.

Aside from the unclear layout of the level (which seemed to get worse, including a very important elevator in the hotel that was placed in a location far to the left), the movement had additional problems. Daxter himself is quite small, and I found myself feeling limited by his narrow view. He seemed to take up a relatively small amount of screen and I found it hard to control him and get the camera in the right spot. While his body movements were animated gracefully, I grew frustrated because I wanted a character that could manipulate the environment more – like Jak.

When my friend took over, he mentioned how ordinary many of the levels felt. He was exactly right. Excluding an unglorified laundry chute (in which you could collect items as you slid down), the platformer seemed conventional to the point of boredom. After finishing this game, what would I have gained? The plot was weak (if not non-existent) and the gameplay wasn’t very engaging. My friend and I both groaned when, ten minutes into the game, we found out that we had to collect power orbs just like in every other Jak game. Daxter’s in-game explanation of this was “Collect the power orbs. It can’t hurt!” That’s really a way to motivate us.

After playing Daxter for a mere 20 minutes or so, my friend and I grew so frustrated that we turned it off. Between running around trying to figure out where to go next and the cookie-cutter conventionality, it simply was not worth our time, not matter how bored we may have been. I would never even complete the first 30 minutes because the first 20 felt like another tired sequel.