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Bug-Filled Demos Are Game Anti-Marketing?
Thanks to GamersWithJobs for their piece discussing early, bug-filled releases of videogame demos (actual link here, broken website referrals currently in effect.) The author points out that if the downloader "...doesn't like the demo, the player will probably skip the game which will hurt the publisher in the end. That makes me really wonder why some of them appear to insist on early trial versions." He concurs that sometimes PC demos are 'leaked' from magazine cover-discs, but wonders "why such a poor representation of a product would be released anywhere in the first place", and concludes: "I tried to understand the reasons for the release of rather 'flawed' demos, but short term gains such as marketing deals or market timing are usually clearly outweighed by the overall consequences."
The bug-ridden demos only represent the bug-ridden final products that suddenly populate 90% of the industries releases.
People have come to accept that games are buggy, which scares me, because they whine and complain about it but continue giving away their money to the same publishers that poop on them time and again. So the only thing that will change in this scenario is the publics acceptance of poor craftsmanship.
This doesn't seem like a huge issue to me. I only play a demo to get a feel for the game, to see if the graphics and the gameplay appeal to me. Unless the demo is so riddled with bugs that it is unplayable (in which case I can't imaging why the demo would be released in the first place), I can forgive a few bugs for a chance to sample the game prior to release, just like a beta test. If the game goes GOLD and the bugs are still there with expected patches, that's where players get irked!