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What information do you need that you cannot get from, e. g., YouTube LPs?
There are events lately for game demos as well, made by their respective Developers. I doubt Valve will just give full access and larger time frames to "demo" a game. If they ever did so, users should have to waive refund abilities due to having already demo'd the game.
Else:
-Livestreams
-Reviews
-Gameplay videos
-System spec vs games performance in game, videos on YT.
Etc.
demo's for new games like https://store.steampowered.com/app/1399080/The_DioField_Chronicle/
A. Games were a lot simpler in scope and mechanics,
B. Streaming decent quality Video was a luxury
C. Dev/Pubs hadn't yet compiled the data regarding the efficacy of Demos.
Back in the day even streaming 360p was a stretch and the video file size would in likelihood be as large if not larger than the game itself. It was much easier to simply throw together a vertical slice or a level pack and simply let people download it.
Now..The situation is reversed.
And in all honesty Demos in more cases than not reduce sales . There are only two circumstances of 9 where the demo actually increases the sales. And ironically it's more likely when the game is Terrible.
Add to that that demos have to be made specifically now and basically mini game dev projects in of themselves...and you have devs needing to choose between spending their limited resources on a demo that has a slim chance of improving sales and a surprisingly high chance opf reducing sales., or using those same resources to add more content to the game, or pay for for a bit of targeted advertissing and marketing, both of which will do waaay more to improve sales.
Yeah if dev/pubs were gonna be on board with this they'd already do this. Like how some do free weekends etc. If steam does this it will just piss dev/pubs off and actually give devs of smaller games a good reason to NOT bring their games to Steam.
And people would game the system like crazy. Have 5 accounts and you could have, going by your suggestion between 10 and 25 hours of free game time.
Demos are on the store page. If there is a game not listed there that you want a demo of, contact the developer/publisher and ask if they can provide one on the store.
Demos during the hard copy era had the nice feature of being limited to a small portion of the game, usually a single level or two, to get to know the game.
But again for some individuals it is never enough, they demand access to the whole game to see if they like it, to see if there is a bug later on or whatever other excuse they can come up with to play the entire game for free.
Now companies are on defense and what we have is the result of customers being given an inch and taking a mile, the same way a refund system was added and people went with the ridiculous idea of "Now I get unlimited refunds so I will try each game before I decide to buy it" which had the effect of people coming to the forums to complain when reality came crashing down.
Demos often are not utilized because they don't provide as much value as you think they do. And the industry and consumers have evolved. Developers can make demos if they want, or have free weekends, or do any number of events or promotions for their product.
Also, way back when, console games didn't usually have demos. I can't think of any SNES demos outside of the kiosk at Wal-Mart when I was a kid.
I'm also a bit skeptical that demos are so important to you, like what have you been doing for the last 15 years without so many demos?
Quake is a perfect example of this.
There are entire game genres that didn't exist back then. How would you divide up Something like New Vegas or Fall Out 4, Or Skyrim? Heck even relatively simplistic games like DOom would still be a pain to do and equally risky...especially considering it's particular history.
Not about defense. dev/pubs have just found better, more effective ways to advertise their games. SImple as. That's all demos ever were. Ads. It's not surprising that the usage of demos has declined as the capabilities of video codecs and streaming technology have improved.
Back in the day the best way to advertise your game was on a demo disc that came free in a magazine, usually crammed with other demo games. NOw...devs have youtubers they can reach out to,
Pay for a demo what world are you in? And demos are typically 2 hours or less, never more or that game must be 50,000 hours long.
True enough, and some titles do come to mind such as Heavy Gear 2, Starsiege: Tribes and (my favorite) Deus Ex which were indeed easily chopped up due to the game design of the day and tended to present the bells and whistles on the demo while in the full game the later levels were sometimes bleh.
I do stand on my claims on companies acting on defensive instincts when deciding how to promote their product without being taken advantage off, which goes with your observation on the use of social media, easier and more cost effective to hand out a few copies to influencers than waste money on tailored demos or potential abuse.
Even back then companies seemed to prefer video media to demos, I remember many magazine cds had a few demos but a lot of game trailers and gameplay videos, and as tech advanced there were less and less demos on discs due to the audio and texture requirements.
Steam does not Demo games. Developers are the ones that provide demos.
If you have a good game, a bad demo will diminish sales. A midiocre demo will likely also diminish sales, and a great demo..is paradoxically more likely to diminish sales, because if you make the demo that good, people will just keep playing the demo. This is what Happened to games like DOom, Heretic, D3D, and the like back in the day. It's a balancing act.