According to this author:
Bah. Even a writer with a passing acquaintance with gaming should at least mention the concept of shareware demos in promoting early ID titles instead of leaving me with a vague reference to gaming taking cues from Hollywood trailers. Or brought up the BF1942 demo as a true example of the dichotomy of demos: on one hand, it completely sold the game from word of mouth due to people playing the demo VS people burned out on it and didn’t buy the full version.
How any of the article’s arguments (mostly just his anecdotal evidence that he doesn’t like paying for more of the same) supported his thesis that demos discourage adults from buying games, I couldn’t say. Got it, older gamers don’t like long involved stories. Only 14 year olds bought Torment…
The article really rides like “regular slate employee who happens to be the only person who plays any games.”
Wow, that’s confusing.
As far as I’m concerned this article is spot-on. I’m not sure it’s a grand thesis, just an observation. I’ve often thought the same thing, and now only wish I had actually said it out loud so I could accuse this guy of blatantly ripping me off.
/mc
Well, if it helps, Monty - I actually DID say the same thing at one point on the OMM forums, but you were fairly in absentia from them at the time IIRC.
–SB
I will say I think I got more fun out of the UT demo than the real game, at least in multiplayer. Putting the shield belt (instead of boring ol’ invisibility) at the bottom of Phobos made it more interesting, and I swear my pings were better on the demo, though I have no idea why…
Demos work both ways for me. At times, they satisfy my curiousity about the game (UT2003) and are all I need. Other times, they actually do send me to the store to buy the game (BF1942).
But it’s very, very rare that I don’t buy a game just because I got enough satisfaction from the demo. The games that I’ve had enough of after completing the demo are almost always games I’d not have paid $30 to $50 for even without a demo.
It was actually better before. The Duke Nukem shareware was so big, I was actually bored with it by the time I finished. Quake had the entire first episode. I mean, like 5 levels and it ended with the showstopper that is Cthon.
Now you get what? One level?
Tropico.
The demo was so good and got me to the point of - okay I did that, I didn’t buy the game until I bought it at clearance.
Chet
I got a lot more value out of the free Starsiege Tribes demo than I did out of the full version. It was great, because it wouldn’t accept mods, so you actually got to play the original balanced game the way it was supposed to be intended.
I think I still prefer Tribes to Tribes 2 also.
Yeah, my brother was really into Tribes for a while, and said even after buying the full game, he still preferred to play the demo levels online.
Torment didn’t sell that well, and I don’t think it had a demo, but it’s a legitimate point that, for many, the demo is enough. I feel like I’ve at least “experienced” a lot of games solely through their demos.
Demos are great for consumers, but for every success story (BF1942), there are probably dozens of cases where the demo was “enough.” Their ubiquity has also caused the perception that if there’s no demo the company is “hiding” something.
Demos also discourage people from experimenting, which again is good for consumers but bad for companies. (If games were cheaper, there might be more experimentation as well, but that’s another discussion.) I do wonder if people are more willing to “stick with” a difficult game they purchase versus a demo. Would the people that like that Europa 1400 game have been turned off by an undocumented demo?
Ah, don’t misunderstand me, I have experienced demos that made me feel satisfied enough I didn’t bother getting the full game. I think that’s a valid contention to raise when questioning whether developers aren’t doing more harm than good for their game with a demo.
But the author is trying to make the point that this is part of why games aren’t selling to enough adults. I don’t think he provides any good evidence for that, and I think his argument that adults don’t like games with stories is off - he’s making it a kids vs adults thing, which is something I just don’t buy.
And I’m suggesting that he missed the opportunity to bring up the importance of shareware demos to the success of a pre-guaranteed best seller such as Doom III.
I agree with DennyA completely. I play some games only as demos (and UT2003 is one of them for me too), and I would never buy the game otherwise. I did the same with Q3, actually. I have also been talked out of buying a game by the demo, since I didn’t like it. However, I have never gotten enough from a demo that I didn’t buy a game that I wanted to buy and was just testing out. If the demo is good, I buy the game. If it isn’t, I don’t, but I don’t get satisfied by a demo.
I also agree that the kids vs. adults thing is weak, and actually counter-intuitive, IMO. I think lots of adults want decent stories because they are interested in more than just pure action. Do we have less time than kids? Maybe, maybe not. I think kids still have to go to schools and have social lives and such. And set aside some time to do drugs and hang with the ladies…
Actually, I may not be fully adult yet, now that I think about it.
–Silent Hill spoilers–
A game where I enjoyed the demo just a little more than the full game was Silent Hill. I loved the full game, but the demo was so perfect that the complete package came off as a little less polished, and a little meandering. Part of the reason the demo worked so well was that I think it presented the best section of the game, the school. (And in the demo the little demon children actually looked like children rather than Casper the Friendly Ghost, making them three times as scary). Also, the way the demo plopped you into the two situations with slightly less of the little bit of backstory helped to heighten the feeling of disorientation that was one of the strengths of the game’s mood. The little opening mini-section where you have to walk down the alley as the world slowly turns more hellish until you are pulled down by the demon children was just genius. And I will always be impressed by the moment when I had opened up the portal in the normal school and walked through the tunnel to come out in the hell school. I had been freaked out before, as the game was so atmospheric. Then they turned it to 11 with the rusty metal grates and hanging mutant bodies.
Anyway, in this case it seemed like the form of the demo–a short section of gameplay where you just have to jump in and try it, that doesn’t go on long enough to get repetitive–played to the game’s strengths, making the sample just a bit more purely effective than the full product, which itself was brilliant.