WTF happened to DEMOS?

[OptimumSlinky]

I'm rolling around Steam and some developers websites, and nobody seems to offer demos of their games anymore. What gives, or am I just looking in the wrong places?

 

[sanzen07]

Demos are more rare these days. My hypothesis is they don't want you to see how crappy the game is until after you've purchased it.

 

[motsm]

They are typically released on consoles but PC demo releases are really dwindling.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

It's bad marketing letting people see how bad your games are before they commit money to them.

 

[KaOTiK]

The others hit it. They don't want you to know how the game is, if you wanted it before playing the demo, the only thing the demo can really do is make you not want it.

Publisher not rely on those first 1-4 weeks sales for a title before word of mouth spreads. Usually the first 2 weeks they can get by with good sales on a turd before everyone hears it sucks.

 

[sactoking]

It's pretty much been said already, but here's another reason:
The demo files are just too large. We're not at a point anymore where a game is =< 10MB, game demos now are hundreds of MBs in size. No company wants to host that bandwidth and pay the associated costs.

Here's another reason:
Games used to be programmed by a small handful of people and ship with dozens of hours of content. A demo could steal 15 minutes of actual gameplay and it would be ok. Now games take dozens of programmers and ship with a handful of hours of content. A demo can't steal actual gameplay or the thin-content games will be even thinner. No company wants to pay for new content for a demo b/c games are so complex that it would take way too many development hours.

 

[motsm]

Usually the first 2 weeks they can get by with good sales on a turd before everyone hears it sucks.

Indeed they can.

I'll never understand the mass pre ordering that goes on these days. Can people not wait just a single day to see if the game is actually any good?

 

[wuliheron]

Last year the video game industry made as much money as Hollywood and the most expensive games made now cost over 100 million bucks. Marketing is what happened. The snake oil salesmen have taken over the business and now push dishonest advertising and whatever tricks they can think of to sell games. Some of the newest offer games for free if you watch commercials first and games where its free to play and you can buy additional content. Like movies they're even putting commercial products like soda inside the games themselves.

When the next generation consoles come out I wouldn't be surprised if Hollywood started moving into the game development industry in a big way. So far their efforts have met with mixed success, but that's to be expected when moving into a new venue. Already the current generation of consoles are capable of games like L.A. Noire which uses actors and advanced motion capture technology. The next generation will be capable of some fairly serious ray tracing and AMD is working to create the first feature length ray traced anime video that uses the exact same graphics in a video game. Once they can exploit more of their strengths in acting and the visual arts they'll be no stopping the marketers until the dust settles a bit.

 

[DeathReborn]

A long time ago they stopped doing SP demo's and pushed out pretty much only MP ones. It's not surprising that they haven't taken off & instead are fading out of existence.

It sucks but now they know how to milk cash from us cows better than before.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

I remember when the IL-2 demo had several long campaign missions and multiplayer.

Or even more recent ones like BF2, which had a map for everyone to play online.

 

[KaOTiK]

The only thing the game industry has learned is this:

Good games will sell, bad games will not after two weeks.

Looking at that, no motive to take a risk of a demo on a game that isn't going to be a surefire hit.

 

[Red Hawk]

Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2 got PC demos. The problem is ME2's demo came out around 6 months after the actual game was released and the DA2 demo was loaded with bugs (even more than the actual game).

 

[Red Storm]

I use OnLive as my demo tool. 30 minute free playtime for all games.

 

[Zenoth]

Demos are more rare these days. My hypothesis is they don't want you to see how crappy the game is until after you've purchased it.

It sums it up, really.

It is financially risky to "convince" consumers that your game sucks too much to be worth buying. Better having them buy it blindly based on a few teasers and trailers, call it a night, have the consumers' money, and then let them complain all they want, move on to the sequel, rinse and repeat, profit.

 

[MustangSVT]

Last demo I tried was DA2. it didnt even last 15 minutes on my HDD.
But remember Quake Arena? that was probably the demo I played all the time.

 

[nenforcer]

Wait, are you saying you missed the Crysis 2 PC Demo? Crytek probably wishes they had never released the initial PC demo as it led to numerous pre-order cancellations!

 

[ImpulsE69]

Indeed they can.

I'll never understand the mass pre ordering that goes on these days. Can people not wait just a single day to see if the game is actually any good?

'
This.

Never made sense to me. Preorders were initially made so that brick and morter places (or even online retailers) could get an idea of how many they needed and the customer could guarantee they could find a copy.

These days with digital distribution being such a big thing (ala Steam) there is no reason to pre-order unless it's an unbelievable value compared to retail price (which 99&#37; of the time it isn't).

I echo the comment that demos aren't as important these days due to size and also due to the lack of length of most games. While I don't agree that it is solely because of crap games, I'm sure that plays a role in it.

 

[orbster556]

Last demo I tried was DA2. it didnt even last 15 minutes on my HDD.

Glad I wasn't the only one.

Although I was wary of the proposed changes to the game, my concerns were mostly assuaged when both BioWare and a number of press previews seemed to indicate that the game would remain faithful to BioWare's legacy. Moreover, I interpreted BioWare's willingness to release a demo a few weeks before the game's full retail release as a sign that the game remained faithful to DA:O. Much to my chagrin, however, I was not impressed by the gameplay/camera changes in the demo.

I do appreciate that BioWare, although no longer placing emphasis on their traditional gamer-constituency, does still have the decency to let people make an informed decision as to whether a particular game is worth a purchase.

Regards,

 

[Schadenfroh]

They are called "beta keys" now and expire once the game is released. You also have to put some money down for the demo, typically a $10 preorder.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Last demo I tried was DA2. it didnt even last 15 minutes on my HDD.
But remember Quake Arena? that was probably the demo I played all the time.

This is probably one reason they dont make a lot of demos. I played the demo and hated it. But the game was on Direct2Drive for half price and I bought it anyway. It was not a great game, but I liked the full game much better than the demo, which was acutally mostly cut scenes.

So if you have a well known franchise and a lot of publicity, you have not much to gain and a lot to lose with a demo.

 

[SMOGZINN]

'
This.

Never made sense to me. Preorders were initially made so that brick and morter places (or even online retailers) could get an idea of how many they needed and the customer could guarantee they could find a copy.

These days with digital distribution being such a big thing (ala Steam) there is no reason to pre-order unless it's an unbelievable value compared to retail price (which 99% of the time it isn't).

I agree. I remember a time where my local game shop would only get a handful of copies of a game, and if it was popular I would have to wait a month or more to get a copy if I didn't preorder. Now I can find copies of the most popular games at a dozen different stores in a 5 mile radius on day one, or get it shipped to me 2 day air from Amazon. Why would anyone preorder?

 

[ShawnD1]

Demos are more rare these days. My hypothesis is they don't want you to see how crappy the game is until after you've purchased it.

They expect you to warez the game. That's the demo. If you think it's good, you pay for it.

I'm too lazy to warez things so I wait until it's $5 on steam and only if the rating is really high :biggrin:

 

[pontifex]

Demos are more rare these days. My hypothesis is they don't want you to see how crappy the game is until after you've purchased it.

that is my thought too

 

[dualsmp]

I notice some of the trailers on Steam show little actual game play and resort to showing mostly cut scenes. If they're too afraid to show the game play they must have something to hide. That's generally a sign for me to stay away.

 

[ShawnD1]

Last demo I tried was DA2. it didnt even last 15 minutes on my HDD.
But remember Quake Arena? that was probably the demo I played all the time.

Back when Doom came out, literally 1/3 of the game could be shared with your friends. It had 3 chapters, and the first chapter was shareware.

Never made sense to me. Preorders were initially made so that brick and morter places (or even online retailers) could get an idea of how many they needed and the customer could guarantee they could find a copy.

These days with digital distribution being such a big thing (ala Steam) there is no reason to pre-order unless it's an unbelievable value compared to retail price (which 99% of the time it isn't).

If anything this is totally backwards. Pre-order makes a lot of sense for online purchases because the game starts downloading immediately. I purchased Fallout 3 before it was released and the whole thing was downloaded and ready to go b. The download time was something shitty like 3 days so it actually made a difference.

Brick and mortar is where it doesn't make sense. Have you ever seen Best Buy run out of games? Nintendo Wii is the only thing I have ever seen a shortage of. When a game like Gears of War 2 hits the shelf, every store has hundreds of copies. If one store runs out, you just go to another store.