Monday, July 14, 2008

Demos.. good or bad?

Do you guys think demos are good or a bad thing? Every gamer worth his sauce will usually just spit out (without thinking) that they are good. For him/her. But think about the question as a general one for the industry as well as the consumer and read this intriguing interview with the creators of Pop on WiiWare for some insights into how Nintendo and Microsoft interact with their potential content producers.

Personally I want to give my opinionated ten cents worth on this so here it is: Demos are good for saving money as a consumer and bad for development, innovation, and making a sale. What would work better is trailers and detailed descriptions of what I can find in a game, plus positive word of mouth from friends who own it. And I definitely agree that none of the big three has a good system to help you wade through the crapware and find the good cookieware. Speaking of cookies.. I have places to be...

4 comments:

Anton said...

Demos are good... if your game is good.

I played World of Warcraft for 2 weeks before I started paying for it. Same for Lord of the Rings.

Now that I'm thinking about it... all MMO's offer a short trial period. They've got nothing to lose, do they?

Chappo said...

No, I don't really like demos a whole lot. I prefer reviews which give you everything you need to know; screenshots, videos, and extensive coverage, these unfortunately seem pretty thin on the ground nowadays though.

Thallian said...

Games that never really end like MMO's and that have heaps of content have a good reason to do demos. I think I agree with Chappo though. If blog review and news coverage is good and word of mouth is good I tend to buy things. I Don;t require the company to make a demo of their game tho and sometimes if I play a demo of a non-mmo I get tired of it and don't buy it like the Worms demo. Which is a mistake cuz Worms (the 2D one) is really fun.

Crimson Starfire said...

The only reason I play a demo is to confirm my assumption that the game is indeed not worth buying.

@Chappo
I completely agree.

@Anton
I'm not sure if you can class a trial subscription as a demo. Demos are usually a chopped down version of the game, whereas trials are the full game played for free for a limited time.