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Not Offering A Demo Better For Indie Games?
Thanks to DIYGames for their article showing surprising results from an independent game developer who offer games for sale directly on their website. According to the piece, "Every other visitor to the website is given an alternative page for each game that does not give them the option to download a demo of the game. The idea is to see how sales are affected by not giving users a free demo." So, while the article points out that "the results are less than scientific", 43.3% of total dollar volume came from 'demo available page', and 56.7% of the dollar volume from the 'no demo available page'. The developer concluded by working out that "not offering a demo increased sales revenue by roughly 31%." Does not offering a demo increase the sales of a game, sometimes, or is this just crazy talk?
It all depends on the game, you really have three situations:
1) Crap game. Releasing a demo just lets people find out ahead of time how crap it is. Sales plummit.
2) Great game. Releasing a demo allows people to discover how great the game is. Sales increase.
3) Average game - in this case I am not sure what happens. Do people buy it because it doesn't suck? Or do they skip it because it doens't rock?
I would think that the choice is pretty easy. If you have a great game, you should always release a demo. If you have a good game that people aren't that convinced about, you should release a demo. But if you have a crap game, never, ever, ever release a demo...
Of course the other thing to consider is if these results are accurate, what accounts for the difference? Is it people not wanting to pay for what they can get (in part) for free, like the RIAA and such is always so happy to accuse people of? Or is it that people try the demos and find out the games aren't as good as they hoped? If it's the second case, there might be quite a number of unhappy campers who don't like what they paid for once they tried it out. In that case, once has to decide if the increased sales from no demo games are worth possibly alienating your customer base.
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try before you buy. this will determine how many morons there are. those who buy without playing just waste money, since they obviously dont give a shit about what they spend it on. i'm interested in the results. how many gamers are stupid? we shall see...
I think you mean: "does sometimes not offering a demo increase the sales of a game?" That's a much different (and more relevant) question, and the answer is probably yes.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
maybe they could have asked decent questions, obtained scientific results, and provided some social psychology major with raw data for his thesis. Too bad, now they'll just have to have an MBA look at his magic eight ball, and guess the wrong answer.
Let's say 100 people visit the site. Let's say they all want to buy the game, but if given the chance to download a demo first, they will.
Of those 100, 50 hit the 'no demo available' page and make a purchase.
The other 50 hit the 'demo available page' and download the demo. They like it and come back to buy. When they come back to buy 25 will hit the 'no demo available page' and make their purchase. The other 25 hit the 'demo available' page and make their purchase.
The result: Of the 100 people 75 make the purchase from the 'no demo page' and 25 from the 'demo' page, thus proving demos are a bad idea???
if your game sucks.
Even ignoring for a moment if there were problems with the methodology here.
If you can definitively tell me "people who had the option to play the demo were 13% less likely to then buy our game"..
I am not going to interpret that as meaning "demos make people less likely to buy games"...
I am going to interpret that as meaning "your game sucks"...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
How are you presenting this to the user? If this is a random 50/50 chance of getting a page with a demo, then someone else already analyzed why that case makes it seem like the no-demo version is more popular.
Lets say you give the users a choice: "Download and Try then Buy" or "Buy"... if you've already downloaded and tried it, which are you going to click on when you decide you want to buy it? Probably the buy link, unless you loved the demo so much you're wanting to download it agian.
The only way really to track whats going on would be through the use of eeeevil session cookies, or more likely, persistant cookies with a long lifespan so that a person could download a demo then come back a month later with the fact they downloaded the demo still available. Then randomness or link wording and whatnot aren't brought into play.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
.. that the demo of the game wasn't all that exciting?
No, this is not a very scientific test. Perform it with the Wind Waker, and you'll get numbers in favor of the demo. Perform it with Daikatana, and you'll get results in favor of no demo.
What the demo does do is let you know if a game holds up to the promises made by the marketing team. This isn't so useful with companies that make bad games because they haven't suckered the customer out of their money yet.
"Derp de derp."
The fact is, games are expensive. I'm not just going to blindly buy a video game. For console games I'll rent them before I buy them and for computer games I get a demo first. It's how it is. I'm not going to throw my hard earned money away on crap.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
Those people probably have lots of cash, are interested in the game, and are going to buy it.
The differences in sales are so small, and the test probably not rigourous enough for any conclusions.
Demo versions of games are a good idea. So that we can try out games before buying them.
I think demo versions are good for developers too. So they avoid refunds, and agry people. Unless they really believe they have a rock solid game that will work well on everyones weirdo computer setups. Oh and if they know that 99% of the people who buy the game will like it.
Have fun!
http://www.holepit.com/
I don't know about other people, but each year I always manage to buy a few music CDs I don't like. Even with online sites where you can listen to samples, it doesn't seem to help. Now that I can pirate albums first, I can more accurately decide if I like it. Because I am able to listen first if I choose to, I have made fewer buying mistakes. Is that a fair thing to do? It seems like if they were to not offer samples, they'd be able to make us accidently buy a bad game. Whoops, I just wasted fifty dollars. In that case, I'll have to sample games first then. Is that a fair thing to do? Pretty sad if it isn't.
The test was over 10 days. People who get the option to download a demo will usually do that first, even if they plan to buy anyway. If they like the game, come back to buy it. Probably, say, a few days later.
There is no such delay in people coming to the site, planning to buy it anyway, seeing no demo, thus buying the game.
Which means that if you only test for 10 days, this effect is significant. Not everyone who downloaded the demo and will buy it after a few days has come back yet.
And worse, half the people who do come back happen to get the "no demo available" page that time, so that they're counted wrong (as someone else mentioned).
In total, this is meaningless until you a) keep track of which page people got, and always give them the same one, and b) do it over a longer period.
Which is why they said it was "less than scientific". Which makes me wonder why they still tried to conclude things from it, if they knew the numbers were bogus...
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
We don't actually know if the people who hit the demo page downloaded the demo or not, do we?
Someone also mentioned the mathematics of why around 75% of purchasers with the "try before you buy" attitude will hit the no-demo page. In fact, two people mentioned that.
There's also other petty, insignificant factors to consider, such as how sticking the option to download a demo on the page may stop people "spotting" the add to shopping cart buttons.
Besides, the difference in sales was pathetic and totally not good enough, from a statistical standpoint.
I'm sure the RIAA has known this for years...
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
In the early days, when titles were more sparse, we bought them all, if we could. We wanted just to see what they did, and what they could make our computer do. A box cover that showed and told was all we needed. We would play the game a bit, see that it wasn't going to involve us utterly, and set it aside, happy to know what it did, and not really feeling cheated.
I suspect, if free demos abounded, I would never have bought half of the games I paid for. Today, the market is quite different -- we are not all hobbyists anymore, prices are higher, we are mostly jaded about what are computers can do and games no longer astonish merely because they exist.
Still, I think that property -- for marginal games -- may account to some degree for this behavior.
You know it really pisses me off that people over-generalize cookies as "evil". People think pop-up ads are evil too, yet most reputable pop-up ad suppliers use Cookies to make sure YOU AREN'T SHOWN MORE THAN ONE POP-UP PER 24 HOURS!
So all you privacy freaks who think turning them off is good, you're only exascerbating other problems that cookies are good for.
This "study" also does not take into consideration that game demos tend to make their way onto other game websites (fileplanet, and the zillion others). So what percentage of these people who got to the "no demo" buy page had actually PLAYED the demo, downloaded from some other site, and were at the site to purchase the game based on that??
My first thought was - isn't this affected by the quality of the game? What if people downloaded the game demo and realized it sucked? In order to make this slightly more scientific, one would have to try this over many titles, not just one.
Also... large publishers like Activision release free demos all the time: if it really weakened demand for the final game, I think they'd be able to detect that and they wouldn't be doing it anymore.
If you download a demo and see that it's a crappy game or just that it just isn't fun to play, you won't buy the game. If you can't know before buying if it's good or not, you'll take the chance. But anyway, us consumers should boycott companies whose sole interest is a 20% increase in sales and don't give a damn about good costumer service.
well, not that i had the money to buy it at the time, but i played unreal tournament's demo version for YEARS before i actually bought the real game... it had something like 10 levels with it, full online play, no real pestering, patches came out all the time and on time, and i didn't feel like i missed anything.
i mean, come ON... the quality of the demo is as good as FULL FPS games that are put out by other companies. i think this hurt them SOMEWHAT, they probably should have included less games and playing style (ctf and other team games were in there i think).
but then again, it's one of the best selling games of all time.
This may work on small time scales since people will browse and see the game, notice there's no demo, and buy to see what it's like because it's cheap anyway, etc. There's lots of reasons they may buy it.
However if they hate the game and they've spent money, it'll feel like wasted money and they probably won't come back for more. Thus on a longer time scale you may lose more money since you could have less repeat customers.
There are two solutions to this as far as I can see. Produce 100% excellent games that appeal to 100% of customers. Or have a good money-back policy.
In my experience money-back policies are hard to implement when the customer made a copy of your product during purchase, so I'm not sure how great this "no-demo" system would be in the longterm.
Is the game the type that the viewer likes? RPG, RTS, FPS etc.
Do the graphics 'sell' the game adequately?
Does the buyer have $xx in their pocket to gamble on an unknown game?
In the case of multiplayer, are there enough others using multiplayer? That's for those out there who prefer multi over single.
Are there reviews attesting to the quality of the game?
All of this makes the 'demo vs. no demo' a superficial argument.
I rarely play demos, they tend to be too large, which does not feed my fix of playing now, and they are too limited, which does not give me a good idea of the scope of the game.
The thing I look for when deciding to purchase a game is a review, usually on Gamespot. I can get a general comparision of what the game is about from the article, but I generally use the reader's score over Gamespots score which gives me a better idea of the quality of the game. The problem most indy games don't get reviewed on something on Gamespot, and I lack the willingness to look too hard for Indy games, which is partially my fault. I just don't have the time to comb over looking for computers.
Does not mean I don't wish the best luck to them. And if they are somewhere I can find it, I would be more than happy to look.
Visitors were tracked with cookies.
Those that had cookies blocked were put in a separate pool and not counted for the experiment. The amount that had cookies blocked was apparantly non-significant in any event (1% or so)
Of course, there's still a couple of problems with the data. Presumably those who grab the demo will be making their decision to purchase somewhat later than those who do not have the option to get the demo. Which means the results are going to be skewed by whatever that time-period difference is.
Also, if the demo is available anywhere else, it becomes difficult to measure who had it to begin with.
Of course, another difficulty is that this experiment makes it difficult to tell what they're actually measuring. Perhaps what they're determining isn't that a demo is a poor marketing tool, but rather that the web-site is a good marketing tool for an otherwise poor game. A different web-site or different game might give wildly different results.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Most of the comments here are from misinformed people.
The site uses permanent cookies so as to show the same version of the site each time a visitor comes back.
I don't know what the DIY article says (but most of you probably haven't read it anyway), but YES this has lasted only 10 days for now and it is a too short time period to draw any clear conclusion.
Regarding the quality of the games, that site is one of the most successful indy gaming sites, so they probably aren't that crappy. But it's to be seen if many people ask for a refund in the next 6 weeks... (2 months money back garantee)
Try and do this with a $50 game. People will want to try it first and see what it's like before they fork out the money. Now try it with a $5 game.
Also, how many people that bought the game from the demo page actually tried out the demo? That is, how good was your "pitch" of the demo? Did people try it?
Anybody think that maybe the higher number of purchases for nondemo page is due to demo downloaders coming back and buying the game (ie. repeat visitors)
On another note, it has been found that 64% of all statistics are meaningless...
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
If its good, people will buy it and spread the word.
If its bad, a few suckers will buy it based on what they've read in press releases and spread the word that it sucks, and others won't buy it.
Now, lets say that another game is released by the same company....but there is still no demo. If it wasn't a good game, people won't buy it because they are basing it on other peoples information from the previous game and they don't have a demo to see if its any good or not.
The moral is: The answer to increasing game sales is not related to whether or not a demo is offered. It is related to whether or not the game is a good game, or if it sucks.
I played the demo for bf1942 for a whole year at school before I finally decided I wanted to see the other weapons and vehicles and mods, and bought the game. And it was worth it cuz its a good game.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I laughed my ass off. +5, Funny
The best way to make money selling software is make the purchasing procedure as quick and easy as possible.
If you're expecting people to send you a cheque or money order you will see little to no money.
If on the other hand you have something like a 1 click paypal button or e-commerce site such as regsoft.com, you will see greater returns.
I think a demo for a good Role Playing Game would have a better chance of getting the user to buy the full game (assuming it doesn't suck). A demo for a rpg would probobly stop at a certain point in the plot, and the user would want to find out what happens after.
If you've ever read a good book where after every page you just couldn't stop reading, this is kind of the same. The demo would have to stop at a certain, suspensefull point in the plot that leaves the user wanting to continue to play. As long as the user liked the plot so far, and the battle system, graphics, movement, etc. they would probably want to buy the game a bit more than if it was a shooter or a strategy game (though the same idea can be used for these too).
So I think if you have a decent RPG you should try to release a demo for it that stops at a good spot (not so far into the game that the full version isn't worth anything, but not so soon that the user doesn't get a good idea of how the game works).
I think however that providing a demo will prove the game either is good or a peice of trash. The consumer has a choice here and drives the market.
Having no demo leaves the consumer with little choice to try the game based on impressions that the company gives you. Much like seeing the best parts of a movie before you go to see it only to find out all you needed to see was the preview.