Dear Devs; Demos

[Polraudio 122]

I figured I might start a series of dear devs topics.

 

What is dear devs?

Dear devs is a series where i find problems in game development that devs should consider doing to make it easier for the consumer.

 

 

Dear Devs:

 

I noticed lots of games don't do the whole demo thing enough. Sure it takes a while to make a demo and sometimes its just not very good to do because you may not want to spoil any of the game. But it shouldn't stop you from making a demo or something like a demo.

 

A demo can do a few good things for your product that i will list below.

• A demo allows people to play the game before they buy it(lowering piracy a little). Id suggest doing a little of the intro of the game and leave it off on a cliffhanger that way people will buy the game to wonder what happens next.
• A demo also lets people test how a game will run on their systems before buying the game. This is really important when it comes down to people who don't know much about specs. You will be very surprised with how many people don't know about specs but do gaming on a computer.

What do you do if you don't want to make a demo because it might spoil to much of the game? Well theres one thing you can do that will make people happy. You can make a sort of benchmark type demo and allow them full access to the games graphical settings. This will make it so people can see if the game will run for them or not before wasting your time by returning the product if it doesn't run for them. this can ultimately save you money and make you money also.

 

Theres a few reason people will pirate games and one of those reasons is because theres no demo for the game and people will want to try the game. Sometimes they will get so hooked into the game that they will just stick with the pirate copy because the file size is so large and not even think of buying it(i pirated a few games in my time so this is from personal experience). Some games that are good may get pirates to buy them if they like it enough. All this can be mostly avoided by having a demo.

 

Moral of the story is have a demo. A demo wont hurt anyone and will make alot of people happy because sometimes listed specs are not always accurate because hardware is so diverse with PC.

 

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:thumbsup: Hope you enjoyed the first in the dear devs series. If you liked it please post what you thought and maybe start a discussion.

[Kitsuki 17]

Yuuup. The whole demo deal is pretty important, not only to see if the game will work for your players, but it also gets your game increased hype if it's good. Then you get feedback as well--there's things people don't like about the game? They'll probably comment on your page or something, and you'll know to change that in the future.

 

Feedback from the audience is one of the #1 priorities for a developer. If you're making a game that isn't liked, then what are you doing? Exceptions, of course, being indie games and personal experiments. This is mostly for big game companies with a large audience to appeal to, but it's still good to practice that.

 

Not to say you should stop working on what you enjoy. But it's always twice as rewarding to have people like your game as well. :P

[Meteor Rain 0]

I agree with properly balanced demos having a nice chance to reduce the amount of pirates by a lot. I think the main problem with most demos nowadays is that it's

 

1. too large a filesize.

2. takes away statisfaction in such a sense that you don't really want to play the original one anymore

 

a cliffhanger takes care of the second one and the first one can be done by some smart cutting.

[FranklinX 37]

This was a great read. My game's first demo is little more than an hour long, and I want to expand upon that with a more proper demo. Players want to more info to determine if they want to invest their money and time into a game. 

[Kitsuki 17]

a cliffhanger takes care of the second one and the first one can be done by some smart cutting.

 

I would say Outlast is a great example of this, but I'm biased and think that Outlast is a great example of everything (except hygiene and hospital management).

 

But it's definitely the most gorgeous and nicely-done horror I last played, and they did that very cliffhanger method in their demo. And damn did I want to play that game. I bought it with money (something I... don't often do, if I'm honest with myself) because I wanted to support that beautiful work of art.

 

and then I got Whistleblower DLC and now I will pay for anything they next come out with :P

 

Now there's a proper way to hook an audience with a demo.

Edited July 24, 2015 by Kitsuki