Operators ask me all the time whether to offer every VR game they can license or a short list they rotate in and out.

My answer is always the short list, and the research on choice overload backs it up.

The jam study

In 2000, Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up a tasting table at Draeger’s, a grocery store in Menlo Park, California. On one Saturday it held 24 jams. On another it held six.

The big display pulled more people in: 60% of passing shoppers stopped, against 40% for the small one. But only 3% of the people who stopped at the 24-jam table bought a jar. At the six-jam table, 30% did.

Barry Schwartz made that study the centerpiece of his 2004 book, The Paradox of Choice.

The jam study has been hard to repeat

In 2010, Benjamin Scheibehenne, Rainer Greifeneder and Peter Todd pooled 50 experiments with 5,036 people. The average effect of a bigger assortment was close to zero. Sometimes more choice cut sales, sometimes it raised them.

When too much choice does hurt

In 2015, Alexander Chernev, Ulf Böckenholt and Joseph Goodman went back through the research, 99 results from 7,202 people, and asked when the effect shows up. They found four conditions, and each one reliably makes choice overload more likely:

1. The decision is hard.
2. The options are hard to compare.
3. The buyer doesn’t know what they want.
4. The buyer wants to decide fast and move on.

A VR counter meets all four

A group of friends walks up to the front desk of a VR venue. Most of them have never played any title on the menu. They can’t compare a zombie shooter with a puzzle adventure from a 30-second trailer. They don’t know yet whether they want scary or funny, competitive or co-op. And there’s a line behind them.

Every game you add to the menu makes that decision harder. That’s why I tell operators to limit the library and rotate content in and out.

Rotation gives you something to promote

I recommend rotating titles for two more reasons. The first is that it lets a venue promote content instead of the concept of a VR arcade. When we see success in digital marketing, it’s usually content-related. Sandbox VR promotes Stranger Things and Squid Game. Eclipso promotes Titanic and Everest. None of them talk about virtual reality or the endless experiences you can have. A constant rotation gives you new content to promote when it arrives, and again when it’s leaving.

The second is scarcity. Part of what gets people out to events is fear of missing out. When you have hundreds of titles that are there forever, there’s never scarcity, so you can always go next weekend.

Movies have it built in: if you want to see one on the big screen, you’ve got to go while it’s playing in theaters. Touring Broadway shows do it well. You see the ads on buses in big cities all the time: last three weeks, ending soon. That creates a spike of awareness in the part of the audience that meant to go but hadn’t yet booked a ticket or put it on the calendar.

Even Netflix does this. There’s a category called “New on Netflix and another called “Leaving Soon.” With a massive library it helps get people to stop scrolling and hit the play button.

I know it can be scary to limit your titles. And you have to make sure you curate your library carefully. As long as you have something to recommend to somebody in every genre, in case they ask for a specific game you don’t have, you can say, “Hey, try this other one. It’s kind of like it, but even better.” And then, when you bring the game they asked back into the library in the future, you can almost be assured that they’re going to come back for a repeat visit.

Give it a try and let me know how it works out.

Should a VR venue offer every game it can license? No. Keep a short list and rotate it. Research on choice overload finds that a long menu hurts when guests don’t know the options and want to decide quickly.

What is the paradox of choice? The idea, popularized by Barry Schwartz’s 2004 book, that more options can make people less likely to choose and less satisfied when they do. It rests on Sheena Iyengar’s 2000 jam study.

Why rotate VR games in and out? Rotation gives a venue new content to promote when a title arrives and again when it leaves, and a title that’s leaving creates the scarcity that gets people to book.

Does choice overload hold up? A 2010 review of 50 experiments found no average effect, but a 2015 review of 99 results found it shows up reliably when decisions are hard, options are hard to compare, preferences are unclear and people want to decide fast.