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General discussionThe problem of GOG Games on piratebay(164 posts)(164 posts)
(164 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 18, 2015
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KiNgBrAdLeY7: CAN I HUG YOU AND KISS YOU?
You cannot.
Posted January 18, 2015
I think also internet and social media on the whole has maybe diminished the need for demos. Reading other people discuss about a game, and maybe seeing some user-made gameplay Youtube-videos of it, seem to give already a pretty good idea whether I'd like it or not (but not fully of course, you never know for sure until you try it yourself, and even then your opinion may change for better or worse the longer you play the game).

For PC gamers the added benefit is to see how well the game runs on your system specifically, but I mostly buy games with the mindset of "If I don't or can't play it right now, I'll play it later.". Goes also to Witcher 3, I pre-ordered it even though I am not convinced it will run satisfactorily on my current system.

The demos would nowadays normally be quite huge anyway I think, so it is more practical to do it like Steam or Origin does, limited time playing of the full game. But that practice needs DRM. I personally usually pass those "free weekend" deals though (downloading gigabytes over gigabytes, just to try out a game shortly), unless I am very interested to try some game out.


I don't quite agree with that Extra Credit's view that e.g. free-to-play games are great because you can try the game for free, and only pay as you go. It does work as a free demo, but unfortunately that whole concept relies on making the gaming inconvenient if you try to continue playing without paying, and it reduces the game mechanisms to e.g. forcing the free players to wait for mundane things, and/or add a heavy element of luck to the game so that you have to retry to pass a level million times even if you're supposed to be skilled with the game (all those Candy Crush Saga etc. games).

TeamFortress 2 appears to be one exception, but then the problem for the publisher is that since there is no real gameplay incentive to pay for anything, we don't, even if we keep playing the game. Maybe there are enough people who want funny hats or some more advanced gadgets as soon as possible.

The episodic system where first few levels are free and rest costs money is quite ok idea too, after all that is what classic shareware games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom used.
Posted January 18, 2015
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MadalinStroe: The video makes it clear why there are no more demos, but the conclusion is simply retarded: "There are no more demos due to our consumer habits, because we don't buy shitty games or games with shitty demos". ?!?Logic!?!
No, you're seeing it from the wrong perspective, he's doing the devil's advocate.

The point was since people wouldn't buy the games based on the demos experience therefore developers/publishers prefer to not release the demos, i would say that most games are mediocre and not shitty, people would have that reaction of "I'll wait for a sale" instead of buying (blindly) day one, in second place would be the shitty games not selling because people saw the game was shitty through the demo.

In the end. he's right, the study shows that games with demos will lead to less sales, it's bad for us gamers having to buy a game without playing it first but hey, they're (the devs/pubs) in for the money and not for us (i still laugh at those who trust in "#4theplayers", yeah right....).
Posted January 18, 2015
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Pardinuz: Demos aren't profitable. End of story. You just have to learn to deal with it. If you can't understand why, watch the video Cyraxpt posted for some insight.
In the age of Let's Plays and Youtube reviews there is really no excuse for pirating just for the sake of seeing what the game actually looks like.
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catpower1980: As pointed in the video, the new form of demos actually are the mobile games with in-app purchases and in that particular market that makes sense because:
1.technically, due to the various you'll never be 100% sure that your game will work correctly on most devices.
2.consumer's habits: people almost spent no money are more likely to throw 1$ here and there than paying 5$ upfront.

Now, on the PC market specifically:
1.sharewares was useful to get known in the 90's because of the lack of internet, now there's youtube, twitch.
2.consumer's habits: games are to gamers what clothings are to women: driven by sales and impulsive buys.

The state of PC demos nowadays from a dev point of view:
1. Demos are now mostly used for tech/gameplay demos to promote crowdfunding campaigns. Sadly, early access are now the "new demos".
2. Most games rely on upgrades and unlockables so if the demo features only the beginning of the game, it will lack most of the features and run the risk of feeling too generic (like every metroidvania starts with only "jump and shoot" option)
3. The best way would be to design a specific level which would showcase every features of the game but it can heavily backfire as the level design and game balance could be completely different than the real game experience.
4. the best genre for demos are point 'n' click which only features the beginning of the game as the player can directly experience the flow of the story and get involved in it or not.
5. Money Shark mode on: a PC consumer will more likely buy a 5$ game on sale than properly taking the the time to install a demo and play it so it's better to not refrain him from his purchase. Of course, for a 30-60$ price, it's another matter but as most games cost less than 20$....

Conclusion : IMHO the only future of PC demos are through web games (no install, direct gameplay) without forgetting to put a visible buying option. See how Winter Wolves did it for Vera Blanc:
http://www.winterwolves.com/webgames/verablancfullmoon/
Blue Bottle Games did something similar with NEO Scavenger way back when the game was still in the alpha stage. There was a demo of the game playable in your browser and it convinced me to pre-order the game at the time :)

Defender's Quest also had a web demo and we even hosted, or we are still hosting it somewhere, it here :)
Posted January 18, 2015
way to necro..
Posted January 18, 2015
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Cyraxpt: No, you're seeing it from the wrong perspective, he's doing the devil's advocate.
The video makes it perfectly clear why the developers/publishers prefer to not release the demos. But the first thing that is said in the video is: "The truth is that it's a direct result of consumer habits." and then we are presented with 9 situations, where only 2 situations lead to increased sales. The problem I had with the video is that the situations where the demo of the game would lead to decreased sales were all caused by bad demos of bad/boring games.

So demos haven't disappeared because of "consumer habits", but because of bad demos of bad/boring games.
Post edited January 18, 2015 by MadalinStroe
Posted January 18, 2015
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Silverhawk170485: I'm wondering how many people who downloaded games from pirate bay buy them and how many consume the whole game without buying it afterwards.
99.99% do not buy it afterwards.

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Silverhawk170485: The demo thing is just a cheap excuse in my opinion.
It's not just your opinion, it's a fact. The "lack of demo" argument is just a cheap excuse to get games for free. It's just a BS excuse to make pirates look right.

I would understand (but i would never agree with it) the "lack of demo" argument if we were still in the 90s and had to rely on a few screenshots on gaming magazines to check whether or not a game was worth buying. But nowadays this excuse is just ridiculous beyond belief. There are tons of ways to check if a game is good or not with all those reviewers and Let's Plays on Youtube. Heck, you could even watch the entire fucking game on Youtube.

The "compability" argument is also BS. With modern APIs and OS compability issues were dramatically reduced. Not to mention that thanks to the internet you can always find a solution made by the community to run that old game that requires a bit of tweaking. Oh, and if you try to run a game with minimum system requirements that are above what you have, then you know the risks well enough and shouldn't blame publishers/developers if it doesn't work.

The truth here is that pirates are just greedy bastards that want everything for free. They are so full of themselves that they think they have the right to pirate, and get pissed when their beloved piracy sites are taken down. Don't listen to the lame excuses. Pirates are pirates, they just want stuff for free.
Posted January 18, 2015
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timppu: Maybe there are enough people who want funny hats or some more advanced gadgets as soon as possible.
I have a friend who mostly plays Team Fortress 2, and if he's to be believed, the game is entirely about hats and such.

It gave me some super rare crate on maybe day #4. Selling it immediately would have netted me like $75 in Steam credit. One could think of it as a valuable gift from Valve to me, but on the other hand it didn't cost them anything and someone would have paid them the $75 just to buy it off me.

I just gave it to my friend in return for some in-game things since he wanted it real bad.
Posted January 18, 2015
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MadalinStroe: So demos haven't disappeared because of "consumer habits", but because of bad demos of bad/boring games.
That's not the conclusion i came to when i watched the video. What i got from the video is that making a demo is not financially rewarding. If the game is great, a demo won't do much to increase revenue and if the game sucks, the demo will probably make things worse.
Posted January 18, 2015
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MadalinStroe: The video makes it perfectly clear why the developers/publishers prefer to not release the demos. But the first thing that is said in the video is: "The truth is that it's a direct result of consumer habits." and then we are presented with 9 situations, where only 2 situations lead to increased sales. The problem I had with the video is that the situations where the demo of the game would lead to decreased sales were all caused by bad demos of bad/boring games.

So demos haven't disappeared because of "consumer habits", but because of bad demos of bad/boring games.
You're reading "consumer habits" as a bad connotation when he's trying to say that our consumer habits (bad/mediocre demos = no sale) leads to a decrease in games sales, like i said, he's doing the devil's advocate, he's saying that pubs/devs don't release demos because we, as consumers, are doing the right thing but in the process showing them that bad/mediocre demos/games will lead to less revenue.
Posted January 18, 2015
I've never found demos that much useful. Not even when they game on a bootable floppy disk on a gaming magazine...

The reason is that I found them often misleading. Some devs would put out demos early. Then the demo would have performance problems, bugs etc letting me think there was a sloppy done product, while in reality the final version was a lot more polished and ran fine on my machine.
Or the other way around: The demo is the most polished and interesting level of the whole game, the rest if the full product isn't really that good. Like with movie trailers that look very promising, but in reality you have already seen the best scenes and the rest of the movie is boring.
Posted January 18, 2015
Sometimes Piratebay and other similar torrent site (e.g. KAT) act like a free ad for the developers. Pirates download those releases and some of them will buy those games if they like. Don't you agree?
Posted January 18, 2015
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Neobr10: 99.99% do not buy it afterwards.
nice crystal ball you have there ;)
Posted January 18, 2015
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mobutu: nice crystal ball you have there ;)
I don't need crystal balls to see the facts. Using pirated games as a "demo" is just a lame excuse and nothing else. People who want free stuff will just make up excuses like that to make themselves look good. It just doesn't justify it, especially at this day and age when it's never been so easy to find tons of information before purchasing a game. Not to mention that games have never been so cheap as they are today with all these sales.
Post edited January 18, 2015 by Neobr10
Posted January 18, 2015
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Cyraxpt: You're reading "consumer habits" as a bad connotation...
That was never what I meant to say. I was just stressing that the logic used in the video was faulty, and I still claim that it is.
I don't see it as they were trying to play "devil's advocate", I see it as just an inflammatory statement.

The more I'm trying to explain this the more I'm regretting using the word "retarded " in my initial post.
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Neobr10: What i got from the video is that making a demo is not financially rewarding. If the game is great, a demo won't do much to increase revenue and if the game sucks, the demo will probably make things worse.
That is exactly the same conclusion I reached after watching the video. And that has nothing to do with "consumer habits" which is the only part I was commenting on.
Post edited January 18, 2015 by MadalinStroe
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionThe problem of GOG Games on piratebay(164 posts)(164 posts)
(164 posts)