Five Things Devs/Publishers Do in Demos That Drive Me Away. - by lost_soul
Malf on 19/8/2010 at 11:35
Don't Spiderweb Software still operate on a Shareware model?
june gloom on 19/8/2010 at 12:49
I really wish these kinds of entitlement-whore PC-gaming-is-dead threads didn't make my brain recoil in disgust upon first glance. Have you ever felt the weight distribution of your skull suddenly shift? It's not a pleasant experience.
Quote Posted by Shadowcat
As for "shareware" vs "demo", is there really a difference? One anticipates more content from something labelled "shareware", but that's really the only distinction that springs to mind. It seems excessive to draw such a big line between them.
I think there is a huge difference, but the primary issue is that games these days simply aren't set up in a way that easily allows shareware. Older games were divided into "episodes"- segments of a paper-thin story where a collection of levels might share a common theme, for example Commander Keen having Mars as its first episode. You could expect to get a whole third of a game for free or a low price (depending on how you got it) and when you finished that third of the game, the game would tell you to buy the rest of the episodes.
That doesn't work nowadays because games tend to be much more free-form and much more streamlined, so at what point do you make the cutoff? Hence the rise of demos. You could make the demo be a single level or a couple of levels; you could make the demo be the first 15-20 minutes of the game.
The other problem is the sheer size of games and the amount of space their assets take up. A particularly egregious example is the demo for Quantum of Solace, which is a nearly 700mb download, takes up much more than that once installed, and lasts all of five minutes. To release games in a shareware format nowadays you'd have to cram in a sizable portion of your game's assets as it is. Gone are the days of reusable tiles and simplistic sprites. Now you've got upwards of several hundred megs of art assets, models, sound files, voice files, music, et cetera. It's for this reason that even so much as a demo is a pain in the ass, which is why increasing amounts of developers have stopped bothering.
Shareware effectively died when Quake 2 and Half-Life came out.
Shadowcat on 19/8/2010 at 13:38
I was going to comment on the distribution/download/asset size issue originally, but then it occurred to me that pirates happily download huge games in their entirety, so downloading something smaller than that isn't really going to be a big problem.
I agree that free-form games would be harder to adapt (the open-world ones in particular). The classic shareware concept definitely seems more applicable to linear gameplay and storylines. I still think it can be done, but it would seem like much more work, so I'm sure there are games for which a shareware release is never going to be especially practical.
Anything with fixed levels seems like pretty fair game, OTOH, and that covers an awfully large number of titles.
"Episodes" obviously made for a convenient way to group assets and story in the past, but I didn't think "shareware" needed to imply that kind of division of a game. I would think that any appropriate cut-off point would do for your "buy now to continue" message.
Matthew on 19/8/2010 at 13:41
Quote Posted by Malf
Don't Spiderweb Software still operate on a Shareware model?
Indeed they do.
addink on 19/8/2010 at 13:56
Quote Posted by lost_soul
Rest assured, if your demo contains any of these things,you have lost out on a sale from me.
I don't believe you. And I doubt any developer or publisher does.
Annoying traits they are but in the end they are just small annoyances ( apart from the infamous starforce let-me-kill-your-CD-drive option ). If the game is any good you'll just be hurting yourself.
On the topic diminishing number of demos out there:
As far as I can see, the main blame lies with the internet. Before the days of internet games were mostly marketed through magazines and word-of-mouth, demos worked great within that system.
But nowadays the (interested) public is well aware of a title in development before it hits beta. Though providing a demo to test a game is nice, it doesn't affect sales much, and it does require some effort on the part of the developer, so why bother.
The only exception is if a developer and/or title is not very well known and truly has to entice people to be interested. For example, I would never have given The Witcher a serious chance if it weren't for the demo they put out.
On the topic of semantics:
For games demos and shareware are near identical.
Originally shareware was only distributed outside the retail market. Demos were tastes (small or big) of games that were distributed through retail. Again the internet blurred this distinction out of existence.
henke on 19/8/2010 at 14:44
Good point addink. All the gameplay videos and reviews and forumdiscussions about games you have easy access to these days means demos aren't essential for getting a feel for a game the same way it was back in the 90's.
lost_soul on 19/8/2010 at 14:46
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
The games industry was in a very different place during the 90's than it is now. Games development can be very expensive these days, especially if you want to compete in the AAA blockbuster arena.
Well perhaps they should concentrate on making *games*, not interactive movies where you're not allowed to deviate from their path of beautifully-rendered in-game cinematics. This would give them more time to produce more levels. Also, define "AAA Blockbuster Arena". Is that the type of game I just described above? Last time I checked, Deus Ex and Thief weren't AAA Blockbusters, but the gameplay was damn good in those games. The cut-scenes were there, but they didn't get in your way on subsequent playthroughs You could skip over them after watching them once or twice.
Nameless Voice on 19/8/2010 at 15:29
Quote Posted by lost_soul
1. having long (>8-second) unskippable cut-scenes that I MUST watch before I can start playing. This ties in with......
Gnnnnrrrrrg this drives me mad even in retail games, and it applies to any length videos or legal messages or whatever. Metro 2033, I'm glaring at you with your files I couldn't even find and delete.
Brian The Dog on 19/8/2010 at 15:31
If anything, I would have thought that games should be cheaper to make now than 10 years ago, as the technology available to developers has massively improved, whilst wages are only slightly higher. The problem is that the purchasing public expects more, so they just won't buy a game that looks like it's done on a 10-year-old engine. I'm guessing if you asked some devs to make something akin to Thief or Deus Ex from scratch now it would be cheaper than the original.
It's the same problem as the Movie industry - the costs have ballooned over the past 10 years due to CGI (and also due to the wages of movie stars, but that's a different argument); making a simple film with a good plot should be easier now as the cameras & lighting etc are all way cheaper than they were in Star Wars' day.
catbarf on 19/8/2010 at 16:17
Quote Posted by Brian The Dog
If anything, I would have thought that games should be
cheaper to make now than 10 years ago, as the technology available to developers has massively improved, whilst wages are only slightly higher.
In Doom, a room is a square block with a texture applied to the walls you could make in five minutes. Today, a room takes several people days to produce. A lot of it is expectations, as you said, so a lot of indie games are taking the low-graphics route.
What I wish more indie devs would do is make games in the same vein as Deus Ex or System Shock, shooters and RPGs without ultramodern graphics. Right now it seems more like big companies make shooters, and indies make puzzle games.
