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Whatever happened to demos of games?
Dhalphir
don't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
don't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
This is something I just thought of reading the thread about the dude wanting to buy Torchlight.
Torchlight is a game that has a demo. off the top of my head, the only other games I can think of, of recent times, that have had a demo have been Jedi Academy, Jedi Outcast, and...I think thas all I can think of.
is it just me, or are game developers just moving away wholesale from the idea of game demos.
I seem to remember when I was a younger gamer, everything had a demo, and they were usually *substantial* demos. The Deus Ex demo, everyone remember that? that was a seriously chunky bit of playtime.
Reviews are nice for games, but I find that nothing really sells a game to me like the opportunity to try the demo and see if it clicks with me. The way I see it, the best way, bar none, to decide on buying a game, is to be able to play it before buying it, and while the option is there to borrow from friends, thats not always possible if your real life friends are not all gamers (Like, no doubt, many of us here).
personally, I really liked the way every game used to have a demo that was released a couple months before the game itself, and I'm not entirely sure when the turning point was.
What do you guys think?
Torchlight is a game that has a demo. off the top of my head, the only other games I can think of, of recent times, that have had a demo have been Jedi Academy, Jedi Outcast, and...I think thas all I can think of.
is it just me, or are game developers just moving away wholesale from the idea of game demos.
I seem to remember when I was a younger gamer, everything had a demo, and they were usually *substantial* demos. The Deus Ex demo, everyone remember that? that was a seriously chunky bit of playtime.
Reviews are nice for games, but I find that nothing really sells a game to me like the opportunity to try the demo and see if it clicks with me. The way I see it, the best way, bar none, to decide on buying a game, is to be able to play it before buying it, and while the option is there to borrow from friends, thats not always possible if your real life friends are not all gamers (Like, no doubt, many of us here).
personally, I really liked the way every game used to have a demo that was released a couple months before the game itself, and I'm not entirely sure when the turning point was.
What do you guys think?
Dhalphir on
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I don't know why, but it sucks. I like demos because I don't really feel comfortable buying a $50-$60 game on day one with nothing other than reviews from "gaming journalists" who modify their scores based on how much ad revenue they get from the publisher.
Games used to have not only demos, but multiple versions of the same demo. I remember old PC Gamer demo cds where one game demo would have an MS-DOS version, a Windows version, and an MMX version. Some game demos weren't even demos so much as they were benchmarks with mouselook (remember the various Qtests released over the years?).
It's weird to me, because first we (as gamers I guess) realize we're losing manuals and we relent it, then we realize we're losing complete game releases (as in, games that don't nickel and dime us to death with DLC) and we lament it, then we realize we're losing control of ownership of our own games due to DRM and we relent it, and now we realize we're losing demos, and we're starting to relent it.
What are we going to be lamenting five years from now?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
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(ooh rocket knight demo)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.182616-EA-Considering-Paid-DLC-Before-Game-Release
Hooray for progress?
Demos will always be around for games from small developers/publishers though
Now I can download DS demos through the Nintendo channel, and the 360 has a bunch of demos available all the time. Things have improved a lot.
If there are less demos, it's probably because they require a lot more resources/disc space now. You want a demo to be impressive, so it's usually the early areas of the game which pack in the geometry and texturing to leave a good first impression. Personally I am averse to downloading a gig or two of data just for 5 minutes of playtime.
This makes sense too. Remember the FFXII demo that didn't have a good representation of the game at all? Remember the Viewtiful Joe 2 demo that erased people's memory cards? Ugh.
If you want the Rocket Knight demo, [URL="steam://install/19060"]click here[/URL]. Unfortunately the region lock on the full game can't be circumvented that easily.
Also playing the skate demo before release was one of the worst things I've ever done, I totally played the shit out of it, and when the game finally came out, I was bored of it.
wouldnt that make the demo a good idea then, since it made you realise that the game was going to bore you quickly?
Good for him, bad for the company.
Precisely, why would they put people off buying their game on a whim? I think bringing out a demo shows confidence and I respect companies more for doing it. Giving the consumer a choice whether they want to spend their hard earned money on their game is a brilliant thing.
Then again there are plenty of games that don't need demos and are still awesome.
I guess they figured that if the demo doesn't sell them on the game, at least they get some money out of it.
Edit: Found it
Xbox Live: Kunohara
I think those are more along the lines of small games than big demos.
if the small game sells they'd find the budget to make a big game with it (which can be pretty expensive), if the small game doesn't sell well, the idea dies and they don't make anything more with it.
Think of it kind of along the lines of making a conscious decision to make games like portal, and then saying if their portals sell, they'll make half-life sized games based upon it.
actually I think that's what valve did with portal now that I think of it, although I still have to see just how long portal 2 really is.