Press start
I hadn’t touched a video game in 20 years. Back then, we hauled 15kg of equipment to LAN parties to play pixelated shooters. Mount a CD, click the icon, shoot things. Easy.
Last week I found myself alone in a game room after 11pm with an Xbox. Nostalgia kicked in. I fired up Battlefield.
I couldn’t play it.
Not “couldn’t complete a mission”. Couldn’t start a game. The interface offered tutorials, extensions, season passes, and upgrade paths. It explained one thing clearly: I needed to spend more money before I could have fun.
I switched to GTA V. Better graphics, same problem. Minutes of loading. Then endless driving with no clear objective. Many features are locked. The game’s value proposition is buried under friction and monetization.
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This is what happens when products optimize for extraction before experience. Your users aren’t asking for tutorials on features they haven’t needed yet. They aren’t asking for upsells before they’ve felt value. They’re asking for the thing they came for.
Time-to-value inflation. Every layer between “I want this” and “I’m doing this” is taxing. Loading screens. Onboarding flows. Permission requests. Just let me use it!
Premature monetization. Asking for more money before delivering on the first promise breaks trust. It signals that revenue matters more than experience.
Feature overload. When everything is surfaced, nothing is clear. The core experience drowns in options. Users don’t need a map of your product. They need a path to the outcome they wanted.
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No wonder adults moved on to board games, wine, and yoga. Those experiences deliver value with no hassling.
Great products let the user “play first and pay later”. They make the core loop obvious and satisfying.
Can a new user get value in under 60 seconds — without reading, paying, or choosing?
Let them just “press start”.