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FTUE: How not to onboard
Key insights
5 takeaways- 01Requesting push notification permissions before a player has interacted with the game is perceived as premature and impolite, negatively impacting initial user sentiment.
- 02Forcing users to endure lengthy mandatory downloads and intrusive permission requests immediately upon launch creates unnecessary friction that alienates Western audiences.
- 03Prioritizing technical convenience over user engagement through massive initial data downloads and meaningless animations creates a significant barrier to entry for new players.
- 04Poor FTUE design causes high abandonment rates before players ever reach core gameplay, effectively wasting the entire budget allocated to user acquisition.
- 05Developers should implement modular asset loading to allow players to begin tutorials or limited gameplay sessions while the remainder of the game downloads in the background.
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Transcript
hello and welcome to Pocket Gamer up busies youtube channel I'm John Jordan and this is our first time user experience playlist so we're playing kingdom hearts x which is immediately asked us to if you want push notifications which i think is a very impolite thing to do the first thing you see very bad for some user experience so yes in this case because I'm a generous kind of guy but I think it's much better ways of integrating push notifications if into your game at least that people get through this tutorial and maybe have a game capture say do you want to get messages from us and then pop up that province very odd I think to get a very generic prompts it suggests to me the developers anyhow so square enix game license from Disney kingdom hearts been massive in Japan for a number of years on platforms from way back to the PlayStation so this is a kingdom hearts
x and changes being out in japan for quite a while being pretty successful was out in the states a bit earlier this year and is now gone global so again I mean it's legally do they have to have this who knows and also you have to have this in pc games you'd have this and a lot of this kind of mobile games now kind of taking an inspiration from pc online games but then this will be done in the settings bit up to me again this is an odd thing but progressively more common for mobile as you download the game and then you spend ages downloading load of other guff to actually play it again for structural reasons happen on Android a lot more because Google Play just and download last our brains bit order more peculiar
is happening more and more on iOS so I guess this is it because we would just go cross-platform I'm not really caring too much about the introduces the platform themselves but basically I want to play kingdom hearts I delve 8x Unchained and what's happening mountain to keep it for themselves I'd be not sufficient vacations I've been asked complicating things about services every care or know about and now i'm waiting and you can see it's not going to be very quick as it so I've got eight it's telling me there's eight things to download affiliate files and I'm ten percent through the first one yeah now square now this situation you're kind of asking quite a lot of your audience but you mean it to somebody they've liked your game because they've downloaded it and then they fight it out because they want to play it and now you're saying well yeah that's great but this is really meaningless kind of little animation thing going on which clearly ice you know it's just I pointless while the download happens with these
pregnancy again this is kind of common in well asian games and particularly Japan and Korea where you tend to have quite fast the network's message to go over Wi-Fi anyway so it's not slow but it just seems again a little bit like the developer hasn't really cared about what using explosives clearly what's gonna happen is you're going to lose a certain mount of people at this point so your day one retention is going to be a wonderful even can this is Dave our intentions as the people haven't even they've open the app and immediately kind of come out delete it and it's really odd particularly if you're looking to spend kind of use acquisition money on acquiring downloads so those people who don't necessarily know very much about your game but they see your ad Vogue girl that looks nice let's go let's go Mickey Mouse in else I mean you know who knows why they decide to download it and then they get this as bonkers it's just yeah all the thousands
of hours means of dollars have been spent developing this game and now basically being kind of flushed down the toilet the other thing is technically you don't need to do this you don't need what do we want for the first of his experience we want to go through a tutorial which should be should explain something about the game give you some idea of the gameplay but it's not by any means the ice it's unlimited kind of or should be limited feature set really the game to introduce you and then for the next hour if people playing all the next hour of gameplay stuff is unlocked and deepened I don't need to wait for all this I don't need to download the full game it's just absolutely bonkers to me and it is half the savings a few of these that will be done there for some user experience videos where it's just being like this and Western developers I wouldn't say would never do this but wasn't of a little I was very very think of a Wesen development done this for the last few Korean and Japanese games have
just here done this then you know I guess they've come to vote was wonder why they're not doing bear well they've got like a really popular gaming career or Japan and why it's just not being popular in the West and it's also which is why that might be the case i mean the audience style the gameplay style can be pretty different but this is that will do with gameplay or if this is just sitting around waiting so well with five minutes in so yeah see there's an order for these festivals experience videos relieving for 10 minutes so we'll see how far we get inseminated
you
Summary
Poor first-time user experience (FTUE) design significantly undermines player retention and wastes user acquisition investment. By forcing players to endure lengthy, mandatory downloads and intrusive permission requests immediately upon launching an application, developers create unnecessary friction that leads to high abandonment rates before the core gameplay is even experienced. These practices, while increasingly common in mobile titles ported from Asian markets, represent a fundamental failure to respect the player's time and interest.
The primary issue stems from prioritizing technical convenience over user engagement. Requesting push notification permissions before a player has interacted with the game is perceived as impolite and premature. Furthermore, requiring users to download massive additional data files—often accompanied by meaningless animations—before accessing the tutorial creates a barrier that discourages new players. This approach is particularly detrimental for titles that rely on paid user acquisition, as the marketing spend is effectively wasted when users delete the app during the initial loading phase.
Effective onboarding should focus on immediate value delivery. Developers should utilize modular asset loading, allowing players to begin a tutorial or limited gameplay session while the remainder of the game downloads in the background. By failing to implement such strategies, developers risk alienating Western audiences who expect a seamless entry into the game. Ultimately, the success of a global launch depends on recognizing that the first few minutes of interaction are critical; if a game forces a user to wait for extended periods without providing any meaningful gameplay, it risks losing its audience before the experience has even begun.
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