Dying Game Demos

I played the demo for a game called 'Poke All Toads', a game where you play as a smug and very stupid and selfish fairy on a goal to annoy the hell out of every toad she comes across. It was pretty enjoyable, I'll probably play the full game when it comes out.

That being said, it's been a pretty long time since I've played a game demo. Game demos just aren't really a thing with most games anymore, even smaller titles. It's not that they don't pop up every now and then but frankly it confuses me that the overwhelming majority of games don't have demos instead of an incredibly small minority.

If you consider a trailer, or a synopsis, as an example of what a book or movie might be like, it's only natural that a demo would give you an example of what a game is. The best part is, much more than a trailer or synopsis, a demo gives you a much clearer picture of the experience.

The lack of demos isn't done out of laziness. Most game devs aren't lazy, but even if they were they could just shave off the first 2 hours of the game and make that a demo or some shit, like most demos do. Demos were killed deliberately out of some sort of fear that it would decrease game sales, which someone rattled off randomly at some point with very little supporting evidence but it was enough to scare suits.

Would demos decrease game sales? Possibly, but only in the case that the game is utter shit. Which... actually, that could explain quite a bit. Lots of AAA games aren't sold on gameplay, they're sold on vibes and aesthetic. Dispelling someone's idea of what a game is with the reality of it could turn them off. Imagine if No Man's Sky got a demo and everyone could see how broken the game was before it launched.

Most games don't really meet their deadlines these days. They release half-finished after several months of crunch. If you have a series of players lined up to pre-order the game and their first taste of it is a demo that shows the entire game is a giant rough patch then expect them to afterwards cancel their pre-order.

That seems like it's selling demos really dirty, which it is. Because the game the demo is apart of happens to be bad, demos get the blame and get cut. A healthier and more balanced release schedule for games, as well as careful direction considering where to apply development time rather than bloating the piece in all directions, will make better games and therefore better demos. Will this happen?

lol no

But let's pretend it did. If your game's good, then your demo's good and it'll make more people wanna buy the game. Extending this sort of olive branch is good as consumers become increasingly more cautious with their purchases after being burned several tens of times over the course of the last decade. Especially if you're trying something new, and people aren't really sure what to expect.

Demos, assuming the game is good, make sales better because it builds up familiarity. There's less risk in the purchase if you've already had a bit of time to play the game and can understand what you're getting into. It can build up a sort of anticipation that'll make people interested in the full product.

There's degrees of demos, however, and while it might be nice to just cut away the first little bits of the game what could really help is making an entirely unique demo experience designed to fulfill players and give them a very exciting first view at the game. This is especially true if you're making a game that has a pretty slow buildup, it can be difficult to just say the first hour of a game will expand upon its systems enough.

An example that really shines to me is Dead Rising 2's Case Zero. After playing it I genuinely thought this was how every single demo was supposed to work. You get a totally unique set of missions set in a smaller timeframe than the original, but it also has a lot of the mechanics you'll come to expect in playing the full game such as psychos, timers, missions...

It's a fantastic example as to how a unique demo can help a game. You'll know what Dead Rising 2 is all about after playing, so you won't feel weird or intimidated purchasing the full game, but you're not being spoiled to anything that happens in the game itself so you'll have a nice time discovering it all for yourself.

Would it be worth it for every game that wants to have a demo to go through the process of creating one that's unique from the base game? Well, yeah, probably. Depends on how much dev time you can spare, but considering it'll be the first thing the majority of people see in your game it's a good idea to make a good first impression.

There's no reason for most to just play the demo and then drop playing the full game. If this were the case, there'd be no reason to have people on Youtube make videos of your game because the more people who see it being played the less who want to play it. This, of course, isn't how it works, there's tons of people who get games after seeing them being played on Youtube. Almost like a demo, except with a degree of separation!

How the industry came to revile demos is ridiculous, shareware and demos should be much more prevalent than they are.

...actually, I guess it's not that silly. Again, all of this positivity assumes that the game is actually good. Most of the time, these games are not good, or even in a playable state weeks off of release. It's kind of disgusting how broken a lot of this shit can be. It's far too regular for a game to have to take patches weeks off of release.

Indie games aren't that much better in this regard. There's tons of titles that release years from being finished and use an early access system to pardon their dust. Particularly infamous examples like Project Zomboid still remain unfinished, and the standalone DayZ took nearly a decade to throw off its tag.

What the hell would a demo do? What would you make the demo of? There's not even that much game to begin with. Would people test out the game on a demo just to end up having to test the game itself?

What a confusing hellhole we've found ourselves in. Well, if you want a concise answer on why the relevance of demos has faded, it's not that "games with demos sell less" but it's that "if their games have demos, they will sell less." Unless you're the type who would've bought F76 anyways. I'm sure there's enough of those people around.