Game Dev Claims Demos Hurt Game Sales

[DrunkenMonkey]

Christ reading this article made me think. "these guys are the bastard children of EA"

I want to know if they actually conducted any experimental research to see if a demo decreases a game's sell rate. From the phrasing of the article it seems like they did correlation research and completely forgot the golden rule.

 

[Epona]

I use demo's so I can find out what the game play will be roughly like. If it's terrible, then you don't deserve to make money. However, I believe you should research before you buy. Even if I didn't like the demo, I still wait for more info, and I'm sure many others do as well, and then spread the popularity.

Does he really have the numbers? Starcraft had a 4 level demo and I fell in love with it. We all know that one sold a lot. What's the difference with new demo's?

Maybe the difference with new demos is that developers now have the attitude that they are doing YOU a favor if they release a demo instead of designing the demo as a promotional tool.

Do you think they are doing me a favour?

I thought they would be happy to show off their work. I keep watching new video's of games in the making, and all of them say they are excited to show us how it's going so far.

They aren't all excited about releasing demos though, are they? No see, they want you to buy their game based only on their own marketing and paid off reviewers. Hell, when it comes to pre-orders they want you to buy even before the marketing kicks in.

 

[Nazulu]

I use demo's so I can find out what the game play will be roughly like. If it's terrible, then you don't deserve to make money. However, I believe you should research before you buy. Even if I didn't like the demo, I still wait for more info, and I'm sure many others do as well, and then spread the popularity.

Does he really have the numbers? Starcraft had a 4 level demo and I fell in love with it. We all know that one sold a lot. What's the difference with new demo's?

Maybe the difference with new demos is that developers now have the attitude that they are doing YOU a favor if they release a demo instead of designing the demo as a promotional tool.

Do you think they are doing me a favour?

I thought they would be happy to show off their work. I keep watching new video's of games in the making, and all of them say they are excited to show us how it's going so far.

They aren't all excited about releasing demos though, are they? No see, they want you to buy their game based only on their own marketing and paid off reviewers. Hell, when it comes to pre-orders they want you to buy even before the marketing kicks in.

And you're 100% sure of that? Actually, what I should be asking is, which developers in particular are you talking about? Cause I'm just talking generally. Sorry for the confusion.

I'm guessing you mean Puzzle Clubhouse and some of the big name developers. I could imagine the developers would just want the game to sell, could be whoever is pulling their strings, who knows? I have no doubt that some pay reviewers, and that they use their pre-orders with extra crap to get our money as fast as they can though.

 

[theultimateend]

I know that I would have never purchased Fallout 1 with my limited budget, if not for its fantastic one town demo.

It's hard to quantify how many people buy a game because of a demo, and it's also hard to determine what scope the demo should portray to draw sales. Some demos give too much, some are tedious, and some are broken - all things that will disincline people to purchase the full game.

I've never not bought a good game because of the Demo.

All bad games that I've played Demos for I didn't buy. I can't think of any exception...

 

[DeltaEdge]

After watching that Extra Credits video someone previously linked, I can see how it has a high chance of hurting the game sales, unless you really knock it out of the park with the demo, but I think that as consumers, we should not compromise on our desire to get as much information on the game as possible before deciding to make a purchase.

I really don't care if the demo hurts your sales. If I have decided that what little I have seen of your game is not enough, and I need to try it hands on to see if I really want to spend money on it, and you aren't giving me the option to see hands-on whether or not I want this game, then I don't think I will be giving you my money.

 

[Nazulu]

I know that I would have never purchased Fallout 1 with my limited budget, if not for its fantastic one town demo.

It's hard to quantify how many people buy a game because of a demo, and it's also hard to determine what scope the demo should portray to draw sales. Some demos give too much, some are tedious, and some are broken - all things that will disincline people to purchase the full game.

I've never not bought a good game because of the Demo.

All bad games that I've played Demos for I didn't buy. I can't think of any exception...

I played heaps of demo's back in the 90's, and if it wasn't for them I never would of bought a lot of the games in my classic collection. I used to buy magazines back then as well (some even came with demo disks), but some times they just failed to make certain games look appealing.

I'll give you small list of demo's that introduced me to games. These games inparticular had a big impact on me, I don't know if they all sold well though.

- The Fury flight games
- Total Annihilation games
- Metal Fatigue
- Half Life
- Carmaggedon
- Worms games
- Command & Conquar games
- Road Rash
- Lineage 2
- Dungeon Keeper
- Descent games
- And Starcraft

 

[Rellik San]

Yup Demo's never do a game any good, after all being an 11 year old who turned down a Dreamcast for a PC one christmas because of all the kick ass games certainly never pestered his mother for and spent all his pocket/paper round money and did extra jobs around the house for games he tried via the old PC Gamer demo discs... nope, I never did that. It's not like I purchased such gems as Half-Life, Revenant, Final Fantasy 8 PC, Starfleet Command, Diablo II and even Ultima Online that were all out of my platformer/tbs comfort zone because of those Demos... nope no sir, I did no such things.

 

[MarlonBlazed]

From the android who brought you "Manipulate players into enjoying your game". Comes "I speak words and quote stats to stay relevant because I can't admit to myself no one likes my games"... Geez that last title was long.

I don't even care about the demo debate, this robot needs a check-up.

 

[Abomination]

Any industry that has a return policy that is as terrible as the gaming industry has no right to complain or begrudge the issues surrounding releasing demos of their products.

Dropping $90-120 NZ or $70-100 US on a product and finding it either doesn't meet expectations or does not run properly on my current system - despite meeting the requirements - and NOT being able to request a refund is absurd. No other industry has such a pathetic customer satisfaction system. There is no solution to the problem, all you get is "learn from your mistake".

So consumers are supposed to be clairvoyant.

 

[demoman_chaos]

Mount&Blade's demo mode sold me on the entire series.
The demo of the Deadliest Warrior game made me decide to buy it.
The demo of Medieval Total War completely sold me on the series, and ruined other RTS games in the process.

In contrast, the demo of NFS Most Wanted 2 made me NOT want to buy the game.

The demo for MGS: Revengeance (fucking retarded name) has clued me in on how it plays (which I didn't have a clue about before hand). I might get it some time after release, but likely not while it is new.

 

[Nurb]

In the end, it doesn't matter; Demos might hurt sales, but increases the number of people willing to pirate instead of wasting money too. Every positive has a negative that balances it out and we get more corporate shlock that the kiddies still pay for.

So yea.

Everything is kinda everyone's fault

 

[Smooth Operator]

If your game/demo sucks dick it will absolutely hurt sales, so just make sure you game does not indeed do the protein gargle.

 

[Darks63]

You expect me to drop 60USD on a game without anything but METACRITIC to back it up?

What...are you retarded...or high...or highly retard?

No he isnt be he sure hopes you are so you buy blind.


OT:If it hadnt been for the Thief Demo i might have never gotten into that series. Same goes for the mount and blade series.

 

[Strazdas]

you mean giving the ability for the people to play the demo and find out that they didnt like the game made them not buy the game? the shock!

Or, you could make games in such a way that the demo actually made you want to buy it faster? Playing suppreme commander at cousins house made me instantly buy it when back home because i loved it. without that - i wouldnt evne know it existed.

That being said i dont play demos anymore. no time. i got a lnog enough list of games i want to play as it is (not really a backlog as its a list, not games i bought already)

 

[Eliwood10]

I dunno, I was iffy about picking up Fire Emblem: Awakening, but 30 seconds with the demo changed my mind and I ordered it the next day.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

Funny, I remember buying many games based on demos. Not even the best ones too, like Conan on PS3 - bought it based on demo, which pretty much includes best parts of main game.
Basically demo only hurts the game if demo is shit. Which more often than not indicates that the game itself wasn't good.
Douchebags like him are the reason why in this day and age you should stop buying games without demos completely.

There is guide on how to sell a shit, unplayable garbage of a game. Not releasing a demo is part of the strategy.

 

[AuronFtw]

So basically... bawww, when people play demos they figure out our game is a steaming rancid pile of shit and subsequently avoid buying it?

And they think the solution to this "problem" is to stop making demos instead of, say, making the game suck less?

No wonder this industry is ass-backwards.

 

[vezon]

LOL. this kind of studies make me laugh so hard. Ofc demos, samples, test-cars or anything in any domain will have a negative impact on sales IF its weaker than competition.
Demos are good, but they should be released after a period of time if u see if the incomes are lower then it should be so u show that your product is better than the competition.
Back in the days demos worked very well because almost every game was better and came with something new, when something is freshly born it changes rapidly. Nowadays they are mostly replicants, if I try something out and see "Oh, I already played something like this a few months ago" u will be not so eager to spend money on dejavus. But if they dont bring out demos u will spend money only on searching.

 

[Norrdicus]

Well the numbers don't lie, although I do hope those numbers exclude Call of Duty.

The numbers don't lie, just the man reading them.

I could make a graph where I compare sales figures of games with different launch prices. You can bet your ass $60 games would be way, way above $10 ones. Does it mean that higher prices mean more sales? No, of course not.

Correlation does not imply causation, and Schell apparently failed to learn that in statistics class.

The only thing this guy's chart proves, is that AAA game developers and publishers *often* leave the demo out if they think they'll sell well without it.