Chapter 20. The Starting and Ending Points of the FTUE

The FTUE ends not when the tutorial is complete, but when the user first feels, “Ah, so this is what makes it good.”

They press the tutorial's final arrow and a “Complete” message appears. We mark this as the end of the first experience. Yet the moment when the user first feels, “Ah, this is fun,” comes much later, after closing that completion screen. Where we declared it finished, the real first pleasure has not even begun.

“How far does our game's FTUE extend?”

Ask this in a meeting and every answer differs. One person says, “Until the tutorial ends.” Another says, “Until the user spends money.” Someone else says, “From the moment the app launches.” Each speaks while holding a map of their own work. Under this book's working definition of FTUE, however, payment is not the end of the first experience. It is a business output the first experience may produce, not the first experience's own endpoint. One person is drawing the first thirty seconds while another is drawing the first week. Because the same word points to different territories, everyone can easily agree to improve the FTUE while never agreeing on what to improve.

Chapter 3 divided “first” into eleven thresholds, from T0, first rumor, to T10, first return. On those coordinates, we defined FTUE as T1 through T8, from first exposure to first reward. Chapter 2 established that FTUE is broader than a tutorial and narrower than UX. This chapter pushes the conclusions of those chapters one step farther and turns them into a tangible declaration. The eleven thresholds are a ruler common to every game, but the exact marks at which our game's first experience begins and ends differ by game. Clearly identifying those two marks is the whole task of this chapter. Chapter 21 will take over the time design that fills the space between them minute by minute.

The Same Game Produces Different Endpoints

Let us return to the imaginary mobile game about collecting characters, talking with them, and watching short videos. The team gathers and each person writes down where they believe the first experience ends.

The planner writes, “When the player wins the first battle.” They see the system: because combat is the game's core loop, the user must win one round to understand the game. The art lead writes, “When the player acquires the first character.” They see the joy of collecting. The marketer writes, “When the player watches the first video to the end and presses the next one.” They see the moment when a user accustomed to short-form video decides to watch one more. The scenario writer writes, “When the player first exchanges words with a character.” They see the first signal of a relationship.

Four people looking at the same game have written four endpoints. Who is right? The answer is “the one point where the user first tastes our game's core pleasure,” and where that point lies depends on what we intend to use to hold people. If this is ultimately a game that brings people back every day by making them attached to characters, the endpoint is not the first battle. It is the moment they acquire their first character and exchange a word with them. Combat is depth that follows; it is not the finish line of the first pleasure. Conversely, if the game competes on the feel of its combat, the endpoint is the first victory. A different endpoint requires an entirely different road before it. If the endpoint is a character, the first five minutes go to choosing, petting, and naming that character. If it is combat, the first five minutes go to moving fingers and winning a round. Designing the first five minutes without choosing an endpoint is laying a road with no destination.

MEJE Aidong World made this declaration early. The starting point is when a fan first sees an Aidong through an ad, social media, or a friend's recommendation. The endpoint is when the fan brings home their first favorite Aidong, names it, and begins caring for it. Once they can say, “I have my Aidong,” the first experience has done its job. Placement, group matching, and daily care belong to the story afterward.

Starting Point: The First Ad or the First Launch?

A boundary has two points: a starting point and an endpoint. Let us begin with the starting point.

A common trap is defining the start as “the moment the app launches.” Because the game cannot begin until it is opened, this feels intuitive. Yet as Chapter 3 showed, users meet us long before launching the app: through a friend's recommendation, an ad, store screenshots, or a trailer. At all those points, they form an image of our game and decide what to expect. When the app launches, they do not arrive empty-handed but carrying a bundle of expectations. Set the starting point at first launch and we place the entire origin of that bundle outside our field of view.

Not every team can take responsibility from the first ad, and this is where the boundary differs. For a team that directly runs advertising and marketing, the starting point is first exposure, T1. When store screenshots promise one thing and the actual first screen returns another, users feel deceived and leave. That mismatch was planted before the game even launched, so examining only the first screen can never reveal it. A team responsible only for the inside of the first screen may set the start at first entry, T3, but must accept “the expectations users bring with them” as an input condition. If that sounds vague, use Chapter 18's deliverable directly as an input document. The first-impression worksheet that spreads out promises by channel, audience layer, and moment is the specification of expectations the first screen must receive and keep. The principle is the same either way: wherever we place the starting point, the first screen must not betray expectations planted before it.

Returning to the imaginary game, the marketer's endpoint—“when the user watches the first video to the end”—is actually closer to a starting point. A first screen that looks like short-form video plants the expectation, “This will be free and light, like YouTube.” That expectation is the beginning. If we lure the person with a video and then suddenly impose a long tutorial and combat, what the first screen promised conflicts with what comes next. Consistently keeping the expectation planted at the starting point until the endpoint is the real reason to declare the boundary.

Endpoint: Where Is the First Core Pleasure?

The endpoint is first reward, T8: the one point where the user first feels the game's core pleasure, the very moment Chapter 3 called the aha moment. Choose the wrong endpoint and the entire first experience runs toward the wrong place, making endpoint selection the weightiest decision in declaring the boundary.

People who grew products outside games are also known for first identifying this one point. Facebook's early growth team is a frequently repeated example. They reportedly found a signal that new users who made seven friends within their first ten days remained much longer, and afterward refined the first experience with that point almost exclusively in view. The numbers need not be exactly seven or ten days. What matters is that the team first identified “the one point where this product's real pleasure switches on.” Once it did, the entire registration process was redesigned to help people find friends quickly. In our terms, placing the endpoint relays the entire first screen before it. One caution is necessary: do not immediately read the number as causal. Forcing someone to add seven friends may not raise retention. People who found the product suitable enough to make seven friends may simply have been the ones who stayed. Part V's dashboard returns to the distinction between correlation and causation.

Choosing the endpoint is the same as deciding our game's first core pleasure. It may be victory in the first battle, the moment of building a first deck, completing a first character, finishing a first customization, first cooperating with someone, or completing a first trade. It differs by game and even by whom the same game treats as its first user. The participant types from Chapter 7 and the migration candidates from Chapters 8 and 9 operate again here. Someone arriving from idol fandom and someone arriving from combat games encounter their first pleasure at different points in the same game. If layers differ, the question naturally follows: by whose standard should we narrow it to one? We have already chosen the answer. Use the primary migration candidate from Chapter 9, the audience layer our world decided to welcome first. Choose one endpoint by that layer's first pleasure. Build secondary paths toward the first pleasures of other layers, but do not make them the finish line.

Choose one endpoint, but do not place it too far away. The longer the path to the first reward, the more people leak out along the way—this is time to value. The endpoint should therefore not be “our game's true, deep pleasure,” but “the earliest achievement that foreshadows that deep pleasure.” Deep strategy may take considerable time to reveal itself, but the first round that hints at its flavor must arrive within the opening minutes. Put the endpoint not in distant depth but in an early premonition. Ask one question of every candidate: Is this achievement a trailer for the deep pleasure, or merely an easy task that ends quickly? Does completing the first customization truly foreshadow the pleasure of later collection and relationships, or is it simply an assignment trimmed to finish fast? An achievement without that premonition cannot serve as the endpoint, however early it arrives.

The Genre Orthodoxy That “The First Goal Is Clearing the First Round”

Now that we have discussed endpoints, an old game convention enters the checkpoint: the genre orthodoxy that “a game's first goal is defeating the first boss, clearing the first dungeon, or completing the first round.”

First examine its premise. Games measure progress by how many things have been “cleared”: the first stage, the first boss, the first dungeon. Action games, role-playing games, and puzzle games alike set first goals through this kind of breakthrough. It is a deep grammar that grew from the era of inserting a coin in an arcade cabinet and clearing the first stage. To gamers, the first clear is not mere passage but the first proof that “I know how to handle this game.” Clearing opens what comes next, teaches the rules, and culminates in defeating a boss; that whole process is a familiar framework of pleasure. Game creators therefore naturally place the endpoint at victory in the first battle or completion of the first round, and other possible endpoints barely occur to them.

Ordinary people do not share that premise. Someone arriving because they love idol characters finds first pleasure not in defeating a boss but in acquiring a favorite and keeping them close. Someone drifting in from a drama finds it not in clearing a round but in becoming curious about the next piece of the story. A webtoon reader first enjoys becoming attached to a character; someone who likes customization first enjoys completing something in their own taste. Impose the endpoint “the game begins only after defeating the first boss,” and their real first pleasure is hidden behind that boss. If they tire before reaching it, they leave without ever meeting the moment they would have loved. Gamers read the first battle as “entry”; newcomers read it as “a test.”

The most expensive price this convention charges ordinary people is the wrongly chosen endpoint. Every road in the first experience leads toward that endpoint. Put it at victory in the first battle and the first five minutes teach combat controls, the first screen is filled with combat tension, and the first reward is tied to a victory sequence. But if our users did not come for combat, none of those five minutes are for them. When one endpoint is wrong, all design before it is wrong. The endpoint must therefore be chosen first and with the greatest care.

Keep one essential quality: the sense of achievement delivered by a breakthrough. Discard only the inertia that says the achievement must be a combat victory. Our game's first endpoint may be completing a first character rather than winning a first battle; having a first conversation rather than defeating a first boss; finishing a first customization rather than clearing a first round. Borrow the framework of achievement, but choose what counts as achievement anew from what our users will love. The pleasure of deep combat can arrive much later, after the user already likes this world enough. The first experience is responsible for one point where they first feel, “Ah, I like this,” not for a gamer's rite of passage.

▶ Three Things to Apply to Your Screen

Have we defined the endpoint as tutorial completion, or as the one point where a person first tastes the core pleasure?

How many minutes after the start does that first pleasure arrive? Does it come long after the tutorial is over?

Have we moved the starting point ahead of first launch, back to when a person first forms an expectation through an ad or recommendation? If the endpoint is tied to tutorial completion rather than the first pleasure, relay every road before it.

Therefore, Capture the Two Points in One Sentence

Once the starting point and endpoint are chosen, first-experience design suddenly becomes clear. The starting point becomes a promise not to betray expectations planted before it, while the endpoint becomes the destination of every road. The space between those points is the FTUE territory for which we are responsible; what lies outside belongs to other chapters. NUX takes the return visits and relationships after the endpoint, while business events such as payment are much later outputs discussed separately in Part V's dashboard.

This boundary leads to measurement. When the endpoint is defined as one clear point, “the percentage of people who reached it” becomes a number that reflects the success of the first experience. This is the activation introduced in Chapter 3. A vague endpoint produces a vague number. We cannot count “Do people like our game?” but we can count “What percentage completed and saved their first character?” Defining the boundary in one sentence is therefore what makes the first experience measurable.

Reference Content

Examples from other media that reveal the concepts in this chapter.

Video Games

The first flagpole in Super Mario Bros. World 1-1: The first mushroom, first jump, and first stomp on a Goomba are arranged within one screen. Reaching the flagpole draws a clear finish line where “I understand this game” becomes complete.
Acquiring the first Portal Gun in Portal: At first the player can fire only a blue portal. When the dual-portal gun arrives, directly linking the two entrances once produces the feeling, “Ah, so this is what makes it good.” The endpoint is not a deep puzzle but the pleasure of that first connection.
The first morning in Disco Elysium: There is no combat at all. The first pleasure comes when the hungover detective passes a first conversation and a first skill check. This is a clear counterexample showing that an endpoint need not be “victory in the first battle.”

Games / Visual Novels

Doki Doki Literature Club!: It intentionally plants an entire first impression of a cute dating simulation, then overturns it later. It is often cited as a bait-and-switch that uses color, genre, music, and marketing to plant false expectations before shifting into horror. It shows how deeply the promise at the starting point can be imprinted.

Real-World Workflows

Slack's “roughly 2,000 messages” threshold: Slack is said to have identified the point at which a team exchanging a certain number of messages signaled long-term use, then redesigned its entire onboarding to reach that point sooner. It is a real example of one endpoint relaying all the design before it.

The remaining reference content is collected in the “Chapter 20 Appendix” at the end of this chapter (grouped as Appendix D in the book edition).

Design Note ▶ Try It Yourself

Define our game's FTUE boundary in two clauses.

“Our FTUE begins at (　　　　　) and ends at (　　　　　).”

In the starting-point field, write the earliest point for which we take responsibility. If we run advertising, use first exposure; if we are responsible only for the inside of the first screen, use first entry. In the endpoint field, write the one point where the user first tastes our game's core pleasure. Choose only one: victory in the first battle, completion of a first character, a first conversation, a first customization, or first cooperation. If you want to write more than one, ask, “Without which of these has the person not truly played this game?” and narrow it down. If it still will not narrow, retrieve Chapter 9's primary migration candidate, choose by that layer's first pleasure, and list the others as secondary paths.

After filling the fields, add one more line to the endpoint: “Is the endpoint I wrote a gamer's rite of passage, or a moment our users will truly love?” If the endpoint says “victory in the first battle” or “clearing the first boss” but our users did not come for combat, rewrite it. Appendix A contains a blank map for placing these two points on the eleven thresholds and coloring the territory between them.

Move the endpoint from tutorial completion to the moment of first pleasure, and the first experience finally runs toward a place the user will love.

In One Line: FTUE is not one point but the territory between two. The starting point is where the user first forms an expectation of us, and the endpoint is the one point where they first taste the core pleasure. The genre orthodoxy that “a game's first goal is the first boss, first dungeon, or first-round clear” may diverge from an ordinary person's first pleasure. Our game's endpoint may be completing a first character or having a first conversation rather than fighting a first battle. The moment that one point is chosen, the direction of the entire first experience is set. Next Chapter: With the boundary set, it is time to fill the inside. How many minutes run from starting point to endpoint, and what should we give at thirty seconds, three minutes, and thirty minutes? The next chapter divides that territory into units of time.

Chapter 20 Appendix: Reference Content Collection

These examples from other media show how to declare in one sentence where a first experience begins and ends: pulling the starting point ahead of first launch, and placing the endpoint at the first moment of “Ah, so this is what makes it good.” They mix the first boss of a game with film openings, television pilots, the first three chapters of serialized manga, a restaurant's first bite, and product packaging. Each item ends with a “What to examine” note. Read each case against the chapter's two questions: How far forward should the starting point move, and at which achievement should the endpoint be placed?

Video Games

The first Genichiro battle in Sekiro (FromSoftware, 2019): The enemy encountered at the end of the introduction is a fight designed to be lost rather than won. Through that defeat the protagonist loses an arm, receives a prosthetic, and the main story finally begins. Unlike the orthodoxy that entry requires defeating the first boss, the finish line here lies not in victory but in learning the feel of deflecting a blade. What to examine: It shows that an endpoint can be defined independently of winning or losing. Ask whether our game's finish line truly needs to be “winning.”
The introduction and first griffin contract in The Witcher 3 (CD Projekt Red, 2015): Before releasing the player into the main open world, the short introductory region of White Orchard lets them complete one monster contract from clue investigation through preparation and combat. The endpoint is not the vast world but the feeling of completing one witcher's job. What to examine: This design makes one full turn of the core loop its endpoint. Identify our game's “one job” and where it is first completed.
The first day in Animal Crossing: The endpoint is not defeating a boss but choosing where to pitch a tent on a deserted island, naming it, and gaining a place of one's own. The same first experience draws a different finish line. What to examine: The endpoint of settlement determines the entire path of the first day, showing that a different endpoint creates a different road before it.
The first harvest in Stardew Valley: The first core pleasure lies not in combat but in the first handful of crops harvested, an achievement that takes several in-game days of waiting. What to examine: If harvest after a wait is the endpoint, small hooks are needed to sustain people in between. Examine both the distance to the endpoint and the stepping stones along the way.

Live-Action Film

The married-life montage in Up (Pixar, 2009): In a few dialogue-free minutes, it completes the story from Carl and Ellie's meeting through aging and separation by death, finishing one full story before the feature itself has begun. What to examine: The introduction provides a complete reward in itself while becoming motivation for the feature. Ask whether our introductory segment stands as a self-contained first paragraph.
The point where opening credits end and the feature begins: It separates how far the introduction extends from where the main work starts. What to examine: Audiences feel the boundary in their bodies and adjust their posture. Ask whether our first experience has a signal that says, “The main experience starts here.”

Live-Action TV / Drama

The cold open of the Breaking Bad pilot (2008): An RV stopped in the desert and a protagonist in a gas mask and underwear imprint within episode one the tone and color that will span five seasons. A single pilot declares, “This work begins here.” What to examine: Declaring a starting point is declaring identity. Ask what tone our first screen declares.
Pilot episodes of series: Episode one separates introducing the world from settling people into it afterward. What to examine: Just as a pilot and a main series have different standards of success, the scorecard for a first experience must differ from the scorecard for later settlement.
A season's first point of immersion: The episode of which a viewer says, “This is where I got hooked,” becomes the endpoint. What to examine: If that episode differs by person, endpoints differ by group. Recall the chapter's principle of choosing one by the primary group we intend to welcome.

Literature

The first three chapters of a Weekly Shonen Jump serialization: Reader-postcard survey rankings begin immediately after debut, and low rankings can cause early cancellation. Authors and editors are therefore known to design together what will capture readers within the first three chapters. What to examine: This is a harsh case in which the survival of the work depends on where its first-experience finish line lies. Measure how much of our work corresponds to “the first three chapters.”
The last chapter of volume one—the chapter that calls for the next volume: It draws the line where the first experience for which one volume is responsible ends. What to examine: The finish line has a dual role, providing completion while also serving as a hook for what follows.

Board Games

The clear condition of an introductory scenario: Instead of making players read the entire rulebook, it lets them finish a first game with reduced rules and places the endpoint at the point where “So this is what the game is like” arrives. What to examine: The finish line is completing one game, not learning all the rules. The endpoint lies in “tasting,” not “knowing everything.”

Music

“Speak to Me,” the first track of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973): Beginning with a heartbeat, it lays out a collage of clocks, cash registers, and laughter that will return later, previewing the whole album's identity in an overture of barely a minute. What to examine: The first track itself declares the starting point. Ask what our first screen lets people hear in advance from the experience to come.

Real-World Workflows

A new hire's first result—the first completed task: Settlement begins not with equipment setup or training, but at the point where they first complete real work. What to examine: Place the onboarding endpoint at a first result rather than training completion, then compare what changes with the difference between tutorial completion and first pleasure.

App / Device UX

Duolingo's first question before sign-up: It delays account creation, asks for language and goals, then immediately presents the first translation question, letting people feel “the pleasure of learning” before the threshold of registration. What to examine: This arrangement pulls the endpoint of first pleasure ahead of the starting threshold. Ask whether our sign-up process truly has a reason to precede first pleasure.
Early Twitter's “follow 30 people”: The early growth team reportedly traced frequent returners backward and found a signal that people who followed around thirty accounts rarely left. Josh Elman, who was on the team, has said the post-registration flow was then redesigned to first help people find accounts to follow. What to examine: Choosing one endpoint caused the whole onboarding to be relaid toward it, echoing the Facebook story in the chapter.
Dropbox's first file: In early growth discussions, Dropbox's activation point is often described as the moment someone first placed one file in a folder. A person who finished installation without adding a file had never seen the product's value. What to examine: Installation completion and experiencing value are different points. Find the false endpoint in our game that merely looks like “installation complete.”

Offline / Everyday Life

Apple's packaging design: Inside Apple (2012) recounts a dedicated room stacked with hundreds of packaging prototypes where designers spent months refining only the experience of opening a box. The first experience began at unboxing, before the product was even turned on. What to examine: This pulls the starting point far ahead of first launch. Ask whether our starting point should reach back to the store screen or installation-wait screen.
Main Street, U.S.A. at Disneyland: After passing the front gate, visitors do not immediately encounter a ride but walk through a street from an idealized old America. Walt Disney is said to have designed entering the park like entering a movie theater. The castle visible at the street's end draws the eye and pulls visitors inward. What to examine: This starting-point design introduces a ritual for crossing into the world instead of immediately imposing the main experience. Draw the “street” laid before our first screen.
The amuse-bouche in a course meal: This chef's bite arrives at the very beginning even though it was not ordered, giving an advance taste of the meal's character and awakening the palate. What to examine: A small but complete first reward calibrates expectations for the whole meal. A starting-point declaration and first reward can share one plate.

Sports / Game Rules

A race's starting and finish lines: A record can exist only after deciding where timing begins and what counts as finished. What to examine: Without both lines, measurement itself is impossible. This is the most compressed image of the chapter's conclusion that declaring boundaries is a prerequisite for measurement.
The definition of finishing a marathon: Where the endpoint is placed redesigns every training plan before it. What to examine: This is the athletic version of the proposition that the endpoint lays the road by designing the entire preparation process backward.