Jaime Griesmer’s “30 seconds of fun” quote still holds true.
Jaime Griesmer was a designer for Halo 1 and 2. His job was to tune many of the mechanics in both games. He worked on the weapons, vehicles, characters, AI, controls, camera, multiplayer, single-player difficulty, “all the stuff [he] called ‘sandbox gameplay'”.
In an interview for Halo 1, he said his famous statement: “In Halo 1, there was maybe 30 seconds of fun that happened over and over and over and over again. And so, if you can get 30 seconds of fun, you can pretty much stretch that out to be an entire game.”
There has always been some misunderstanding about what “30 seconds of fun” means. It’s not a strict rule but a general guideline. It’s a general principle to keep designers’ focused on what matters in a game.
Just as a novel needs a solid sentence-by-sentence prose style to propel the reader through many chapters, a game needs a solid gameplay loop to keep the player engaged through many levels.
We could easily replace Jaime’s 30-second idea with the idea of a short demo. Metal Gear Solid V, for example, would be well represented by a demo set in a small military outpost. Such a demo would nicely demonstrate the game’s excellent movement mechanics, weapon mechanics, stealth system, AI, and environmental interactions. It would be a fun little game in itself, something you could play over and over again. Remember when games used to have demos?
A game must have a good core gameplay loop to make a demo enjoyable. A fun demo doesn’t guarantee the full game will be good, but it does signal potential.
Contrary to what some people assume, the 30-second rule does not mean the exact same 30 seconds of gameplay should be repeated ad nauseam. Most games, especially long ones, would grow boring if nothing changed.
The best way to dispel repetition is to present players with new challenges, forcing them to use the same mechanics in new ways. Portal offers increasingly more difficult puzzles. Thief offers increasingly more difficult stealth sections. Outer Wilds offers a number of planets, each of which must be navigated in wildly different ways.
Games can also iterate upon core mechanics. Crash Bandicoot, for example, is all about platforming, smashing boxes, and jumping on and evading enemies. The first 30 seconds of every Crash game display these features well. Crash 3 builds upon the series core mechanics with new abilities: a slide followed by a crawl, a double jump, a super spin, and a bazooka. None of these abilities fundamentally change how you play the game—they just add another layer of progression onto that provided by the increasingly challenging levels.
Games can also occasionally switch out the core mechanics for something entirely different. If the 30 seconds of fun rule holds, why not two sets of 30 seconds of fun? There are plenty of great games out there that occasionally give players new controls to play with. Spyro 1 focused entirely on Spyro’s core mechanics. Spyro 2 introduced short minigame sections with entirely different controls. Spyro 3 doubled down on this idea by introducing even more minigames and three new playable characters. Some of these minigames were terrible, but even the bad ones added a refreshing diversity to the gameplay experience. At the very least, they made you thankful for how well-designed Spyro’s core mechanics were.
There are exceptions to the 30 seconds of fun rule. You can’t get much out of a strategy game in 30 seconds. Same with a game like Euro Truck Simulator 2—30 seconds isn’t even enough to connect the trailer! Ultimately, the 30-second rule is more of a loose principle than a concrete time requirement.
Jaime intended the rule to focus developers on the moment-to-moment gameplay, not to limit how many mechanics and iterations upon those mechanics a game could have. It’s useful to gamers too, though.
A game developer can use it to focus their efforts on making the core gameplay loop fun. A gamer can use it to determine whether a game is worth their time. Many games have terrible gameplay loops but distract you with pretty graphics and the promise that the game will get better. Too often, developers excuse weak game mechanics because they assume the game’s graphics, story, or size will carry it.
How many people would have stopped playing certain games if they focused on the gameplay for 30 seconds and asked themselves whether they wanted to repeat this loop for hundreds of hours?
The main reason anyone plays video games, instead of watching a movie, a graphics demo, or wandering around in a digital art installation, is to enjoy some gameplay. Solid mechanics can carry a game and make the moment-to-moment experience enjoyable, even if nothing else holds up.
Just like an essayist should be able to state their thesis in a single sentence, a game should demonstrate why it is fun or engaging to its target audience within roughly 30 seconds. The 30 seconds of fun rule focuses developers and gamers on what is really important.