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?

Comments

Depends

[antin]

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...

Re:Depends

[Hedonist123]

But you should only release the demo if you've already developed the game to the point that it's going to rock. Many a good game has been ruined by releasing a crappy demo. People play the demo, see it sucks, and never try the real game, whether it's good or not. Good development is the key.

hed.

If they added a survey...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

just do the math

[rhild]

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???

Only...

[dpdawson]

if your game sucks.

10 days

[Scarblac]

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...