I find user reviews with an extremely low rating inherently suspect. Why would someone that dislikes a game that much play enough of it in order to say something meaningful about it?

Remember when devs made demos(without the air quotes) much more often, and even SHAREWARE?

I remember. :\

I do that a lot on Steam.

I'll get a game I really enjoy, usually one I played the $&#^ out of on console years ago, and then have a ton of issues with third party DRM

I end up writing a review about what a great game it is, but how encredibly Squeenixed* it is on PC, so people should probably stay far away from it there.

Thankfully the only thing I really need to watch out for on GOG is the fact that, while they do not allow DRM, they're perfectly fine with super-creepy "anti-cheat" spyware being included in games sold here.


* Squeenixed: I swear that should be an official term for intentionally breaking a port through excessive paranoia then never fixing it out of extreme apathy.

Me as well, I very much remember. And kind of got used to it too.

Some devs today do release demos with their games, but we're talking about barely 0.1% of devs actually do that. It may sound like a joke, but that's the sad reality of it. :(

I think threads should have star ratings, and without further ado 1 star.

I dont think they do rely on piracy.

I think, compared to the past, for most devs of today, it's all about making money. And therefor their products suck and they know it. And therefor it's rather pointless to make a demo for everyone to see what kind of crap they created. They would rather have you buy it, and than hope that you'll spend more then 2 hours, so you don't get a refund.

Where in the past, devs made good games, with love and passion. And so, them'be happy to make a demo for everyone to try and see how great their game is.

That's how I look at it. But for sure, that's not the only reason why we don't have any demos today. But i really think it's one of the reasons.

One side of the coin - and one reason that GOG curates, even if we don't always agree with their decisions.

Another reason is, that today's toolsets and frameworks make it incredibly easy to create games. And many creative people are drawn to it. And then, many of those people realize, that it does take considerably more time and effort and actual technical skill to actually create a good game than they can muster. They want to create the next Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch or Papers Please and completely underestimate the work and talent involved. And they end up with something, they have to call finished, because they depleted their energy, time, bank account... So it's put up on Steam or GooglePlay or whatever...

I mean there are lots of objectively bad games, where you can still see that someone with a vision and even a bit of talent for something and passion put a lot of sweat, blood and tears into it. There are games with great visual storytelling and horrid gameplay. Games with a great idea of social commentary and bad mechanics and MSPaint visuals. Games that tell great stories but fail at something simple like tight controls.
And the people creating those games are not after the money. They want to reach an audience for their art. Creating demos is just... way above their level of technical profession. They're so busy getting their "piece of art" to work, they don't even think about demos.

On itch.io it's possible to actually watch these processes.

You're right. But I wasn't talking about indie-devs. I was talking about, at least in my mind, about those big names. Big names, big funds, but yet create crappy games, plus have enough money to add a denuvo for 100k. But don't care about making a demo.

... but muzzle contracts for gaming journalists... that's always a bad sign. A bad habit that started in the 90s and really became a thing in the early 2000s. Mega-hyped games, but no one was allowed to write about them until release day... And the gaming magazines went with it and sold out, because the same companies paid for the ads...

Money, money, money... Some wipe their ass with it. As in don't need it.

Others, worship it as Gods. As if you could take it all with you to the afterlife/next life/orwhatever to spend it on something really awesome that you don't yet know about.

But still, we got some good devs too, like Larian. And they could be that "good devs" example for all the others. That you don't need no DRM, don't need to bribe anyone, don't need to bullsheep people, etc... For as long as you make good games with love and passion(not for money), you can actually be successful(with money).

Some(iirc) have even unofficially said they let people unofficially use pirated copies as demos, so there's that.

I mean it makes sense.....why make a demo for your game when the pirated copies(and let's plays) work as well?

Imo there are still good(in terms of plot/gameplay/etc) games out there made today.....even if some other people(in general) sometimes think new=crap.

Add to that many seem to not have time/money for a demo, YET they can afford to nearly double(in some cases) their overall costs due to their marketing/promotion alone.

==================================

It also exists to make them look unique from steam/etc.....but it is just the other extreme end of the coin from what steam does.

Except for obvious cheap cash in asset flip games/etc I applaud such actions....it gives us the possibility of seeing the "birth" of a new good/great dev or IP/series.

Who knows....it could be our world is like Grim Fandango and we need that dough for a cool sports car or a ticket on the number 9. ;)

I do know. When we die, we don't go to hell or heaven. That's just religious bullship propaganda. To control and manipulate people, generation after generation. They been doing this for the last +/- 2000 years. That's why people of today are so freaking insanely stupid. lol

What happens after we die, we lose our body and our memory of the life we lived. And then we are reborn a new, without the memory of the past life, and experience everything for the first time again.

And we die, so that we can appreciate life as we know it. Cause if we were immortal, as in we can't die. Then there's no fun in life, since we wont be afraid to risk our life. Cause we wont die anyway. And life becomes rather boring after a while.

Therefor we die and then we are reborn and it is an "almost" endless cycle. Almost, because there's a break from it all, where and when we take our true form for a little while. A form of a God. Because that's who we are, all of us, everywhere in the universe. We are all god. I know I am. :P But religions, most of them anyway, don't want you to know that. But that is the reality. You want to believe it or not, doesn't really change anything.


As for taking bling-bling with you to the afterlife. Well that's nothing new, really. Pharaohs of Egypt, have done it. But were they buried in dirt somewhere ? Nope! They were buried in the Valley of the Kings. So unless you take all your bling with you and be buried in the Valley of the Kings, I say it's rather pointless and stupid idea otherwise. :D

Old games with issues and until features were more or less standardized playing games was a klunky experience.

Expect Windows 10 to almost always break since they seem to constantly patch the OS ready-or-not mandatory updates and break something. So don't expect much there.

Otherwise, it mostly depends on how patient you are. And how forgiving. A lot of older games had severe limitations on memory so making the best possible product wasn't possible, or if it was it involved a ton of memory swapping; And comparing today vs how everything was 30-40 years ago...

And some of the issues is badly implemented manuals. Like finding a random readme file within the Mortal Kombat game in order to figure out how to start a 1 or 2 player or access the options menu was terribly designed.

Not that long ago i remember Playing Morrowind. But the game after 100 hours in, would die every 5-15 minutes making me have to re-load it from scratch and each loading took like 2 minutes... Today i wouldn't stand it. But back then in 2005 it was one of the only games i had access to, and filled my 2Gb hard drive up...

You tend to overlook such glaring issues if you get more fun than annoyance out of the game...