Why do games no longer have demos?

[Mr. Boncle Fanclub]

I'm sure im not the only one who thinks that games need to have demos. Its great to have the opportunity to try out a little bit of the game before you have to spend your money on it. There are a few games that i think i would have liked but i wasnt going to risk buying them without trying them first. If these were games on consoles i would just ask one of my friends if i could borrow it, but this is the digital market so borrowing is not an option. What this means is that the only games i can justify buying without trying them out first are the triple-A titles that do the same thing every time and leaves me almost unable to try out anything new. You might be saying "Just look up some gameplay footage on youtube" but gameplay footage only tells you how a game looks and sounds, not how its mechanics and gameplay feel. A personal example of this for me was dead space. I had looked up a walkthrough of dead space 1 on youtube and i watched quite a bit of it, but when i actually played the game myself, the gameplay felt completely different than what the video had led me to believe. Luckily I hadnt bought the game and was just borrowing it but imagine if i had bought that game. I would be stuck with a game that i didnt want and didnt enjoy. A more recent game that has brought me ack to this point is Cuphead. These run and gun shooters aren't usually my kind of thing but cuphead's art style and interesting approach to the genre had me interested. Because of the"tough as nails" reputation of this genre, i wanted to try out the game to see if it was something that i could handle, but when i looked for a demo, i was not surprised to find out that StudioMDHR had not bothered to make a free playable demo. It would have been easy, just have the tutorial and the first part of the first level, there, done. It seems like the only company out there that understands this is nintendo. My 3ds keeps just giving me demos even when I dont ask for them. Even then there are only a handful of games that have demos and most of them are games that were just released on the 3ds and were not made by nintendo. In closing: GAME COMPANIES. I WANT TO BUY YOUR GAMES. ALL I ASK IS THAT I GET TO TRY THEM FIRST!!

[Mr. Boncle Fanclub]

you are going to have to do better than that to convince me that demos are the worst idea ever. It just sounds like excuses to me. Listening to your reasons is like listening to people explain why it was a good idea to remove Peter Dinklage's voice from destiny and replace him with a voice actor with a more boring voice.

[Start_Running]

Messaggio originale di Lazyninja 27:

you are going to have to do better than that to convince me that demos are the worst idea ever. It just sounds like excuses to me. Listening to your reasons is like listening to people explain why it was a good idea to remove Peter Dinklage's voice from destiny and replace him with a voice actor with a more boring voice.

Worst idea ever. Nope Just not profitable. Demos cost money and ironically reduce sales, so though not having a demo may cost them sale, they consider that the better option than spending money on a demo that will atr best have a marginal impact on sales. The time and money spent thusly could be spent on polishing the game ore adding just a littkle more content. Look at all the top selling games in the last 5 years and check how many of them have demos.

[Mr. Boncle Fanclub]

If only they actually did use that money to polish the gme or add extra content. Star Wars Battlefront by EA had a demo but they still maade a lot of money. The only reason i see that game devs would stop making demos is that it would mean they would actually have to work hard on a game to make it as good as possible, maybe then the industry wouldnt be oversaturated with repetitive garbage. Also i can tell you only looked at the first part of my last comment and then posted the same answer that ive discredited in hopes that ill give up this debate. I know what that looks like ive used that trick before only when i did it i actually had backing to my claims

[Mr. Boncle Fanclub]

Also you have yet to explain why it would take a game dev thousands f dollars to cut out a five minute section of a game that they already made

[Mr. Boncle Fanclub]

I also hope that you realize that you are defending something that in the end is just one of the many greedy business tactics used by game devs to take your money in exchange for a peice of crap

[Tito Shivan]

Messaggio originale di Lazyninja 27:

Also you have yet to explain why it would take a game dev thousands f dollars to cut out a five minute section of a game that they already made

Because a game is not a movie. You can't just cut a part of it and expect to work out of the box. Games are not built to be split and pieced in the same way movies are.

Messaggio originale di Lazyninja 27:

How many times do i have to say that watching a video doesnt let me know what i want to know about how the game FEELS.

You're not guaranteed to get that with a demo either.

Besides, any dev that wishes to can offer their game on a free weekend (or timeframe) on Steam. Right now Payday 2 can be played for free. THAT will get you a feel of a game.

Messaggio originale di Lazyninja 27:

you are going to have to do better than that to convince me that demos are the worst idea ever..

It's not the worst idea ever, it's just an outdated one. That's why the industry has moved away from it.

[Dr. Fronkensteen]

No one here is arguing that demos are a bad thing for consumers.

They are just pointing out that they aren't a good thing for devs and publishers, and thats why they aren't made as often.

[Mr. Boncle Fanclub]

1. Games that have sold well have done that, which shows me that they were confident ith there game
2. A demo does let me know how a game feels. I dont thik you know what i mean by feel
3. Free weekends are good and all but not every game has them and when they do its not until years after their release and not all games have them. Als o this doesnt apply to the console maket
4. its not outdated its just that devs dont want to show you that their game is flawed. At least when a game dev makes a demo, it shows me that they dont want to leave the selling of their game to the real killer of the video game industry: hype. Here are a few examples

No Man's Sky
Yooka-Laylie
Star Wars Battlefront (EA)

Need i go on?

[Start_Running]

Messaggio originale di Lazyninja 27:

I also hope that you realize that you are defending something that in the end is just one of the many greedy business tactics used by game devs to take your money in exchange for a peice of crap

Greedy businesses and greedy consumers. Match made in heaven.

Messaggio originale di Lazyninja 27:

Also you have yet to explain why it would take a game dev thousands f dollars to cut out a five minute section of a game that they already made

Because in most modern games 5 minutes doesn't give you much of a feel for the total set of mechanics, and play styles available to the player. Some demos ctry that but these vertical slices of game play then tend to create a skewed perception of the game's pacing which is rather misleading. It's kind of like with the right editing and voice over you could cut a trailer for silence of the lambs that makes the movie look like a comedy or a romance.. It's not very hard even.

And again give a reason why a business should spend any money that has a 6 out of 9 chance of generating a loss on investment and only a 2 in 9 chance of showing any positive returns and even then those returns are marginal. A banner add or feature spot in a gaming zine would cost about as much and have a greater chance of yielding positive returns.

Messaggio originale di Lazyninja 27:

1. Games that have sold well have done that, which shows me that they were confident ith there game.

Did they sell well because of the demo? That's the question you need to ask. As said. look at some of the top 10 selling games each year for the last 5 years and count how many of them actually had demos. CLearly the lack of a demo doesn't hurt sales.

2. A demo does let me know how a game feels. I dont thik you know what i mean by feel

We do, but you seem to assume that its impossible to make educated inferences on that . Regardless it's mnoot. All the feels can be determined within the 2 hour refund window.

3. Free weekends are good and all but not every game has them and when they do its not until years after their release and not all games have them. Als o this doesnt apply to the console maket

So again it seems like the lack of demos does not hinder the sales of these games to any great degree.

4. its not outdated its just that devs dont want to show you that their game is flawed. At least when a game dev makes a demo, it shows me that they dont want to leave the selling of their game to the real killer of the video game industry: hype. Here are a few examples

Aliens COlonial MArines. It's very very easy for a dev to make a misleading demo. Hell evenm Quake's demo did this.

No Man's Sky
Yooka-Laylie
Star Wars Battlefront (EA)

And how hard do you think it would have been for the devs to set up an unrepresentativlely good demo for those games.

[Mr. Boncle Fanclub]

I'm not gonna buy a movie without seeing a trailer and the movie would fail if the trailer made it seem like a comedy if it was a horror.

[Mr. Boncle Fanclub]

yooka laylie and star wars battlefront(EA) did have demos

[Gwarsbane]

All of these games have something in common, they were all best selling games and NONE of them had demos.

Borderlands
Borderlands 2
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead 2
Wolfenstine New Order
Rocket League
Witcher
Witcher II
Witcher III
Dark Souls
Dark Souls II
Dark Souls III
Fallout 3
Fallout 3 New Vegas
Fallout 4
Dead by Daylight


Just because there is a demo, doesn't mean its going to be a good game. Again over the years, there have been many games that the demos and the games were almost 2 totally different things.

Look on this list and you will find many of the top 100 games, do not have demos, yet they are still in the top 100.
http://store.steampowered.com/sale/2016_top_sellers/


Also we're not saying that a demo is not worth it to the consumers, we're only pointing out that devs and publishers do no think making a demo is worth the time and money.

And no, you can't just copy some code out and change a couple of things to make a demo. Its just not that simple.

https://www.google.ca/search?num=100&source=hp&ei=VsbzWfeEFeW7jwTWtJGoDg&q=how+much+does+it+take+to+make+a+demo+for+a+game&oq=how+much+does+it+take+to+make+a+demo+for+a+game&gs_l=psy-ab.3...1326.8673.0.9114.49.40.0.0.0.0.336.4864.3j19j7j1.31.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..18.25.3964.0..0j0i131k1j33i22i29i30k1j33i21k1.86.b68OKDniyOc

[Start_Running]

And lets not beat around the bush. if you do create a feature rrich demo that gives a true feel for the tone, pacing and challenge of the game.. then honestly, a fair number of people who would have bought will just stick to getting their fix from the demo. This is again something that historical data has taught publishers and developers. If there was any data that showed a clear link between better sales and demos publishers and devs would have never stopped. BUt to the contrary they discovered that what really boosted sales was paying for a feature spot in a gamezine.

[Tito Shivan]

Messaggio originale di Start_Running:

And how hard do you think it would have been for the devs to set up an unrepresentativlely good demo for those games.

Specially since most of the features people complained about the game wouldn't be seen on a limited gameplay demo.

The lackluster procedurality? You wouldn't notice it.
The lack of the promised multiplayer? Neither.
The end of the game? You ain't finding that in a demo.

If a cook gave you just a sausage bit you wouldn't say you had a taste of the hot dog right?

[Mr. Boncle Fanclub]

I'm not asking for the ending, i'm not asking for the multiplayer, I'm not asking for anything more than 5-10 minutesand if people are getting their full video game fix from that, then we should stop putting stories in video games,and the people who put those games on that top 100 list don't care about the price tag. I do.