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Crytek Thinks Free Game Demos Will Soon Be Extinct
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from Develop:
"The CEO of indie studio Crytek has defended EA's divisive 'premium downloadable content' strategy, while also predicting the extinction of free game demos. ... Crytek's co-founder Cevat Yerli said he wasn't sure that a demo of Crysis 2 was going to be released. He said: 'A free demo is a luxury we have in the game industry that we don't have in other industries such as film. Because we've had this free luxury for so long, now there are plans to change this people are complaining about it. The reality is that we might not see any free game demos in the long term. ... Yes it is quite unpopular, but this is a messaging issue. The problem with any new strategy like this is it initially may appear as a blood-hungry, money-grabbing strategy. But I think there is a genuine interest here to give gamers something more than a small demo released for free. Really, what this is, is an attempt to salvage a problem. The industry is still losing a lot of money to piracy as the market becomes more online-based. So it’s encouraging to see strategies outlined to combat this.'"
No - there is a difference in it that I think most people would agree on. With a trailer, you are trying to build hype for the movie. Get its name out there and make it desirable to watch.
A demo, on the other hand, tend to works the opposite way for gamers. I grab a demo which means I'm already interested in seeing what the game is like. I use the demo to determine whether or not I want to purchase it.
I can't remember the last time I went out of my way to look up a movie trailer to see if I wanted to see the movie. It HAS happened, but not nearly on the same scale.
yup no demo to see if the game is good = more people like to pirate the game. I pirate games i admit it, but if i find the game is worth it i will go buy it. If they eliminate demo's as is, PC games are pretty much non-returnable like console game is. so if you shell 50-60$ for a pc game you are stuck with it.
If they dont release a demo, then id just buy the game (if i think i wanted it, no promises i do), and if it doesnt run well, id return it within 7 days at my local games store, for a full refund)
thats if i wanted it... Farcry 2 is a brilliant example... the first game was very fun... the second was so repetitive, i hated it...
If there's no demo, to me that means the game is so bad that no one would buy it if they played it first.
I also use the demos to decide what I want to play.
FarCry was great. I have 2 copies that I paid top dollar for based on playing it first; I got a 64bit demo. :)
FarCry2 was good enough to make me keep playing it as different people.
Ubisoft really made me happy the games I have of theirs don't include and of the BS that has kept people from playing a single player game. I can't believe anyone would buy a game like that.
Thank you /. for saving me the money I would have spent preordering Crysis 2; two copies were in the group of things I was going to buy when I got home tonight. Our work network doesn't like online buying, lol.
This article saved me almost $100, that's pretty good for slashdot. :)
When someone "shines a light on it" by saying " it initially may appear as a blood-hungry, money-grabbing strategy", that's exactly what they're doing.
Unfortunately, PC gamers aren't as stupid as "they" need us to be. I'll wait until a demo is out, or someone else I know that is stupid enough to buy it blind does, and I play theirs.
I still play Q2:Ground Zero (1 give all per death!) on my lan when we get bored with Crysis Wars or UT3; if they release something I think is a shit product, I won't buy it. Plays great on my HD4780. :)
I still have tons of games to play without their latest 'incremental update'.
I'll wait a year and see if it's worth buying at $20.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Well, given Steam it's pretty easy to get demos almost "pushed" onto you, with their ads and everything. And it has actually happened more than just once that I downloaded the demo for a game that fits into my prefered genre to give it a look, then buy it.
Of course it can work in the other direction, too. If there hadn't been a demo for Supreme Commander 2, I might have bought it. But with the demo I could already easily determine that the game is as shallow as a puddle (and the reviews support that first impression), so I didn't buy.
In a nutshell, though, if you (dear studio bosses) are afraid of launching demos of your game, the message that reaches me is that I would not want to buy your game after playing the demo. Either it's just completely unoriginal (SC2, e.g.) or not going to keep me interested for longer than whatever play time the demo offers.
No demo, no sale. Easy as that. At the very least I will wait until Metacritic and similar pages fill with user reviews. The comparison with movies holds no ounce of water. First of all, I do get movie trailers that at least tell me what I could expect from the movie. And second, I don't spend 60+ bucks on a movie.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Basically exactly that.
What changes for me? Well, first of all I will not hear about that game, probably. I'm a demo junkie. I download them all. If Steam offers a demo, I have it. If the game's good, I buy it. I can't actually remember when I bought the last game without a trial (that wasn't already in the bargain bin and a friend tipped me off).
If I'm not 100% impressed by the demo (it happens), I wait for some user comments to show up on Metacritic. Of course it does happen that a demo shows me a game that I almost MUST have, then I'll even preorder. But I never preordered a game without a trial. And I certainly never will. No, not even a sequel to a game that I loved. Perimeter, Supreme Commander and countless others have shown me that sequels are by no means an insurance against crap.
So what will happen when they refuse me the demo? First of all, I will not preorder anything anymore. Second, I will not buy at release. I will turn to Metacritic and wait for a sensible amount of reviews. No matter how good the game sounds, countless times it's been shown that even a studio whose other products were stellar produce a lemon now and then. By then the game will probably also have dropped a bit in price.
So, I'd guess no demos means less money from me. Dunno how many will see that the same way, but I'd guess a lot of people here do pretty much the same.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm glad to hear that. Those folks deserve all the cash that they can get rolling into them.
2D Boyis a shining example of how to produce a solid game, and then distribute it like reasonable human beings. The demo was extensive, not time limited, and fully 1/4 of the game. The purchase price was reasonable, and was available for all platforms, with no DRM.
I've rarely been as impressed as I was when I found the World of Goo. I bought 4 copies for myself, my family, and friends.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor