"A free demo is a luxury" says Crytek

ITT: People complaining without reading between the lines Crytek is just defending EA's plan on making paid demos. You know, EA, the publisher of Crytek's games and the entity that pays for distributing their games...General_X

dont bite the hand that feeds you, I suppose.

still, I dont see why developers should become the ***** of publishers; they make the game, the publisher finances and distributes them...their idealogies dont necessarily have to match

I think most posters are under estimating the cost and effort involved in releasing a Demo.

1) You cannot release a demo until the engine and supporting tech is 100% finished and finalized. It *has* to be as compatible, run as well and have as good graphics as the final product, if it doesn't you're hurting the games sales, not helping it. If you're demo ends up running less than perfect on ATi cards for example, it *will* hurt your sales a lot.

This means that you cannot release a demo until the very last minute before the game launch, since you'll be working on optimization and bug fixes up until past the final dead line and those fixes have to be part of a demo. This in turn means that to release a demo you'll need to pull experienced designers and programmers away from working on your game during the last sprint when you need their desperately need their experience to finish the game.

2) Making a demo is expensive. It's not 'just' taking a level and releasing it. A demo has to be smooth to download and install so it has to be small, yet it must have the final games graphics, performance and sounds in order to leave the player with a positive impression. This means that you need to take the engine, executables, configurations, sound system, physics systems and so on and tweak them to run just one level. to not crash when 90% of the game is missing, you need to make new menus, ensure that saving and loading still works, you need to repackage it with a new installer, make sure the installer works o all OS'es, with all video cards and so on, then you need to do the same for the digitally downloaded demo. You need to pull out all extra textures, levels, sounds, cut scenes to reduce the size of the downloadable.

All these things are not necessarily huge challenges, but they are time consuming and they do have to be done by the few people who are intimately familiar with your game. Those are the people you *cannot spare* near the end of your product. Basically, a demo cost more than money, it will also take resources away from making your final game the best it can be.

3) Demo's tend to help pirates. Since you have to use the files, executable, configs and what have you, from the final game, a demo becomes a DRM free guided pre-release tour for pirates in how to crack your game. In fact a lot of games have been 'hacked by the hackers taking the demo files and simply tweaking them to work with the full game. Releasing a demo is like giving hackers a loaded gun and tell them to point it at your game.

4) A demo only helps if it makes more people buy your game. As others have said, a demo is a form of marketing and just like other forms of marketing, if it's not resulting in an increase in sales that matches the time, cost and resources invested.. then it's a bad idea to do a demo. The question becomes, what's the chance of a potential buyer buying the game without a demo? And what is the risk of turning a potential buyer away because they didn't like the demo? Someone who might have bought the game, if he didn't have a demo.

5) Another problem is what to include in the demo. Pretty much all games have some form of tutorial that teaches you the basics of the game. These tutorials are rarely all that much fun, but without a tutorial you risk giving the final user a bad impression of your game because they didn't know how to use the various abilities / options / functions in the game. This might not always be a problem (I think most of us could figure out how to play through a CoD demo); however in other situations it could make the demo confusing and again leave a potential buyer with a bad impression of your game.

Do you want to show a level with all the weapons / units / buildings? If so you're ruining the surprise when players get a chance to play the game. In general you have to be carful about spoilers. On the other hand, if you add an early level with just the first one or two weapons / units / whatever then you're game is going to look kinda simple and unimpressive.

The bottom line is that releasing a demo is expensive, it's risky and it's time consuming at a point where most developers usually have no time to spare. It can help convince players to buy the game; it can also help pirates succeed in releasing a hacked version of your game before you can get your game on the shelves, which in turn would cause a significant financial loss for you.

Because of all those factors, releasing a demo is not a simple choice and not releasing a demo is not just a matter of the developers not caring about the players, it's a decision with a lot of both pros and cons, and whether its a good idea to release a demo depends on the specific game, studio, marketing strategy, budget and deadline.

Mazoch, you make some excellent, well thought-out points.. But I still want a demo of the game before I spend my hard-earned money on it. They've been able to make demos since the start of PC gaming, and they still serve the same purpose to the consumer that they did then. Neither devs nor publishers can stop piracy. I think releasing a demo a short time before the final game is done really increases anticipation for the full game for most gamers. Some of my favorite demos ever were Jedi Outcast (which the demo level didn't even end up in the full game), COD2, UT99, Crysis. I ended up buying the retail version of all of these games.. along with dozens of others.

Mazoch, developers had no problems releasing demos for most of their games 7 years ago. It's just now they're complaining about it, despite them having more money than ever. It's called greed. They want to pinch pennies. They want to hype their product up and hope it sells on hype alone.

Mazoch, developers had no problems releasing demos for most of their games 7 years ago. It's just now their complaining about it, despite them having more money than ever. It's called greed. They want to pinch pennies. They want to hype their product up and hope it sells on hype alone. KHAndAnime

[QUOTE="Ondoval"]

[QUOTE="lucfonzy"]

http://daxgamer.com/2010/04/crytek-free-demo-luxury/

I don't fully understand what they are trying to say in the article, i mean surely you just take one level out of the game and let people play it.

Artosa

Is more complicated. In some games as Oblivion or GTA ones you can't simply "take a level" to let the gamers play for and hour. Then is the problem about that sometimes is hard for a demo to be representative about the full game. Often the demos are bad and discourages the players to buy the game. And above all this problems is the fact that you need time and developers to make a demo, which means: it cost money.

I'll be very suprised if Crysis 2 gets a demo. Half-Life and Episodes doesn't have a demo, nor COD/MW games, or BC 2, or ArmA II, or The Witcher, or Dawn Of War II, etc. In fact, I like more the betas in mp than the sp/mp demos.

Yeah, but MW 2 didn't have a demo. And the Crysis multiplayer beta was only available in Fileplanet, a per-pay channel. And Gran Turismo: Prologue is a demo with les than a 10% of the GT 5 content which sold millions at the price of a expansion. Plus, you need to buy Halo ODST in order to try the Halo Reach beta, and people is paying mad number in ebay in order to play the Stracraft II beta.

So, don't underestimate the nerd capability of the people. If people is able to pay to obtain a new wallpaper to his PS3 and Xbox 360, if the people is able to pay for a new armor to his horse in Oblivion, if the people is able to pay for a cooler mount in WoW, then the people is ready to be milked for demos!

Blame Microsoft; the culture of not allowing free stuff as the UT III Titan Pack in his Xbox Live and to make almost all the content per pay is the root of all this madness. They spread the virus. And Sony: they EARN money by any FREE content that the user download from the PS Network or Xbox Live. The cost is payed by the developer. The concept of free stuff only exist in games with free modding tools.

[QUOTE="Artosa"][QUOTE="Ondoval"]

Is more complicated. In some games as Oblivion or GTA ones you can't simply "take a level" to let the gamers play for and hour. Then is the problem about that sometimes is hard for a demo to be representative about the full game. Often the demos are bad and discourages the players to buy the game. And above all this problems is the fact that you need time and developers to make a demo, which means: it cost money.

I'll be very suprised if Crysis 2 gets a demo. Half-Life and Episodes doesn't have a demo, nor COD/MW games, or BC 2, or ArmA II, or The Witcher, or Dawn Of War II, etc. In fact, I like more the betas in mp than the sp/mp demos.

Ondoval

Yeah, but MW 2 didn't have a demo. And the Crysis multiplayer beta was only available in Fileplanet, a per-pay channel. And Gran Turismo: Prologue is a demo with les than a 10% of the GT 5 content which sold millions at the price of a expansion. Plus, you need to buy Halo ODST in order to try the Halo Reach beta, and people is paying mad number in ebay in order to play the Stracraft II beta.

So, don't underestimate the nerd capability of the people. If people is able to pay to obtain a new wallpaper to his PS3 and Xbox 360, if the people is able to pay for a new armor to his horse in Oblivion, if the people is able to pay for a cooler mount in WoW, then the people is ready to be milked for demos!

Blame Microsoft; the culture of not allowing free stuff as the UT III Titan Pack in his Xbox Live and to make almost all the content per pay is the root of all this madness. They spread the virus. And Sony: they EARN money by any FREE content that the user download from the PS Network or Xbox Live. The cost is payed by the developer. The concept of free stuff only exist in games with free modding tools.

I can kinda see where they are coming from. they can't just rip a level from a game and send it out as demo. It does take some work to get everything tailored for it to be a demo in the first place. But i really don't like the way companies are talking about demo's going to be paid for.

If they did something similar to what shareware was back in the day. IE 1/3 of the game for about 15$. So lets say three to four hours of a ten hour game. I would go for that possibly. But it would definitely have to be a good chunk of the game and have multiplayer also. I'm not paying naything more than 15$ for a demo. And I"m not giving them 15$ for a couple of hours of gameplay.

http://daxgamer.com/2010/04/crytek-free-demo-luxury/

I don't fully understand what they are trying to say in the article, i mean surely you just take one level out of the game and let people play it.

lucfonzy

Eh, I'm too tired to look through all the post so sorry if this has been said:

It takes more manpower and money to code a demo. Yes they can take already created parts of the game and slap them into a working demo, but there is more to it than just doing a cut and paste.

They have to run QC, check code, do their best to resolve any problems (heaven forbid a demo comes out with a glitch/issue in it because then the public will SLAM the demo and trash talk the game and slam the developer....then demand that the problems are fixed and that the game is bad because it doesn't run 100+fps on their super-gaming computer.....the list goes on; I'm sure you get my point) and hope they can deliver a quality demo to best demonstrate the full game.

A demo too short and consumers feel they got jipped.....a demo too long and consumers feel that too much of the game was revealed.....if the demo doesn't give enough of the storyline, making the game's story feel lacking/dumb/unfinished/etc, the consumer feels the game isn't story driven enough.....

It's hard to please people these days. Before when games were simpler, a 1 level demo was enough to quench the consumer's thirst. Now if things aren't blazing fast, full of mayhem/death/destruction/blood/gore/love/romance all at the same time, it wasn't good enough.

I feel bad for the developers at times when demos backfire on a game, but at the same time I feel bad for consumers that are left in the cold when a game really sucks and no demo was released (I've been there and done that; bought a game and found out first hand it was horrible, but there was no demo and mixed reviews out on the game). It's a hard ledge to walk and consumers are, in my opinion, too harsh nowadays on developers that do release demos....or too harsh on the developers don't release a demo.

And for those that feel a developer is required or that it's owed to the consumers to have a demo released, shame on you. A demo is a great way to showoff a game, but at the same time it can kill a game if it's not perfect. You should feel blessed if a demo is released, even if it's faulty.

Mazoch, developers had no problems releasing demos for most of their games 7 years ago. It's just now they're complaining about it, despite them having more money than ever. It's called greed. They want to pinch pennies. They want to hype their product up and hope it sells on hype alone.

KHAndAnime

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it. The video game industry has plummetted to the ground. It's hard to see it getting any worse. Game quality is at its all time low, game prices are at their all time high, popularity is at an all time high, and as such, game developers and publishers' cash flow is at an all time high for making terrible games... And they're still **** about their consumers. This "luxury" crap is frankly offensive. Absolutely disgusting.

Are they actually planning on making us pay for their advertising? Have they actually twisted things this much? How is this possible? How is it possible there are people actually defending this notion? I'm gobsmacked. How can they honestly be expecting us to pay for their advertising?

If the demo is good, people will get the game. Almost everyoneI know has played the Doom demo, and look at where that stands in history. I brought FEAR 2 because the demo was brill, the game was pretty bad but the demo must have got other suckers like me. If you have confidence in your games you will release a demo. Especialy since Crysis will be new to all the console people, they will want to brag about the amazing new game. If you start paying for demos will you get a rebate if you buy the full game? Im sure that wouldn't be too difficult with the internet. Or maybe access to another demo...

Then why else is it called a f*cking demo if people don't know what your product is going to be like? That's one less developer from the "companies that have good customer support" list. Yea, I still consider letting people trying a demo considered some sort of customer support.

I never mentioned mw2 in my post i was talking about cod 1 to 5 (cod5:waw) and crysis does have a singleplayer demo we are not talking about consoles here this is the pc section, things work differently on pc.Artosa

My point is to show that the problem arrives from the console world, and since most of previous only-PC-developers are now multiplatform develomers -in some cases focused in consoles- the mentality from console developers about money milking is arriving to PC. And yes, Crysis had a free demo, but the mp beta was in a per-pay channel (Fileplanet). Also, COD 4 had free maps in PC, now COD 6 will receive only per-pay maps, and lacks any modding tool.

[QUOTE="Artosa"]I never mentioned mw2 in my post i was talking about cod 1 to 5 (cod5:waw) and crysis does have a singleplayer demo we are not talking about consoles here this is the pc section, things work differently on pc.Ondoval

My point is to show that the problem arrives from the console world, and since most of previous only-PC-developers are now multiplatform develomers -in some cases focused in consoles- the mentality from console developers about money milking is arriving to PC. And yes, Crysis had a free demo, but the mp beta was in a per-pay channel (Fileplanet). Also, COD 4 had free maps in PC, now COD 6 will receive only per-pay maps, and lacks any modding tool.

[QUOTE="Artosa"]I never mentioned mw2 in my post i was talking about cod 1 to 5 (cod5:waw) and crysis does have a singleplayer demo we are not talking about consoles here this is the pc section, things work differently on pc.Ondoval

My point is to show that the problem arrives from the console world, and since most of previous only-PC-developers are now multiplatform develomers -in some cases focused in consoles- the mentality from console developers about money milking is arriving to PC. And yes, Crysis had a free demo, but the mp beta was in a per-pay channel (Fileplanet). Also, COD 4 had free maps in PC, now COD 6 will receive only per-pay maps, and lacks any modding tool.

[QUOTE="Ondoval"]

[QUOTE="Artosa"]I never mentioned mw2 in my post i was talking about cod 1 to 5 (cod5:waw) and crysis does have a singleplayer demo we are not talking about consoles here this is the pc section, things work differently on pc.OoSuperMarioO

My point is to show that the problem arrives from the console world, and since most of previous only-PC-developers are now multiplatform develomers -in some cases focused in consoles- the mentality from console developers about money milking is arriving to PC. And yes, Crysis had a free demo, but the mp beta was in a per-pay channel (Fileplanet). Also, COD 4 had free maps in PC, now COD 6 will receive only per-pay maps, and lacks any modding tool.

True that, Microsoft make you pay to play online. Psh i think we can blame them for every major problem in this world hahaha

[QUOTE="KHAndAnime"]

Mazoch, developers had no problems releasing demos for most of their games 7 years ago. It's just now they're complaining about it, despite them having more money than ever. It's called greed. They want to pinch pennies. They want to hype their product up and hope it sells on hype alone.

dakan45

[QUOTE="dakan45"][QUOTE="KHAndAnime"]

Mazoch, developers had no problems releasing demos for most of their games 7 years ago. It's just now they're complaining about it, despite them having more money than ever. It's called greed. They want to pinch pennies. They want to hype their product up and hope it sells on hype alone.

Makari

[QUOTE="Ondoval"]

[QUOTE="Artosa"]I never mentioned mw2 in my post i was talking about cod 1 to 5 (cod5:waw) and crysis does have a singleplayer demo we are not talking about consoles here this is the pc section, things work differently on pc.OoSuperMarioO

My point is to show that the problem arrives from the console world, and since most of previous only-PC-developers are now multiplatform develomers -in some cases focused in consoles- the mentality from console developers about money milking is arriving to PC. And yes, Crysis had a free demo, but the mp beta was in a per-pay channel (Fileplanet). Also, COD 4 had free maps in PC, now COD 6 will receive only per-pay maps, and lacks any modding tool.

[QUOTE="KHAndAnime"]

Mazoch, developers had no problems releasing demos for most of their games 7 years ago. It's just now they're complaining about it, despite them having more money than ever. It's called greed. They want to pinch pennies. They want to hype their product up and hope it sells on hype alone.

dakan45

There's several problems compared to 'back then':

1) Cost. A game 'back then' cost perhaps $100.000 - $200.000. Now they cost about 100 times as much (10-20 million is no longer uncommon for top end titles). Back then it required 5-10 people to make a new game, it now takes 100 people.

Branching off the code and re-working it to work as a standalone demo is also a lot more expensive, a lot more manpower intensive and a lot more complicated today. Just like games cost 100 times more to make, so does demos.

2) Size, a game today can take up as much as 7+ gigabytes. While a large a mount of that can be removed from a demo it will still come out to 1+ gigabyte. That's a lot to get people to download.

3) Distribution. I think demos are less effective overall, 'back then' the most common way to get your hands on a demo was from cd given out with computer game magazines. This means that all the readers of a given magazine would get your demo (they might not install it but at least they got it). This means that you got your game into the hands of a lot of people who might not know anything about your game.

Nowadays, only people who already know about the demo are likely to download it. If you don't know about the game you're less likely to spot the demo (you still can through sites like Gamespot). More importantly however you're a lot less likely to spend the time and bandwidth to download 1+ gigabyte for something you're not already interested in. The result is that demos today tend to be a lot less effective in generating interest in your game simply because only people who are already interested are likely to try out your demo.

I'm not saying that demos are bad or that devs should stop making them. But it has nothing to do with being greedy or lazy. If I make good business sense to release a demo when all factors have been considered, devs will release a demo. If it doesn't make good business sense, they won't release a demo.

EDIT: One more point

With most (or at least many) games being multiplatform, you basically need to double your work for each extra platform you wish to release a demo for. This will greatly add to the cost / time required to make the demo but it also puts a strain on other parts of the studio. Negotiations will be necessary with Microsoft to release a demo on the X360, negotiations with Sony for the PS3, negotiations with STEAM for the PC. Direct2drive? Windows Live? A different client for file planet and Gamespot? Each of those outlets have different requirements and standards that the demo will not only need to meet, but the demo will first have to be tested by the dev studio, then the publisher, then platform releasing the demo. The demo basically has to go through 3 tiers of testing and negotiations for each distribution. All this takes quite a bit of time, which in turn forces the developers to finish the demo early in order to have the demo out before the launch of the game.

*Sigh*

I'm willing to bet some brown nosing Analyst decided to shift the perspective of demo's from marketing cost to operations cost or something >_>

oy vey

sigh...... I always loved demos. Don't get what's up with Crytek........ I mean, what's wrong with tossing someone 1 level of a game for free?

Honestly. I used to think Crytek was a nice company; But recently, they've just been all prideful. When they saw Halo's success, they instantly announced a trilogy featuring a mega-cool suit on the front cover with a main-character with an energy shield of sorts.......
Oh well.

[QUOTE="Artosa"]I never mentioned mw2 in my post i was talking about cod 1 to 5 (cod5:waw) and crysis does have a singleplayer demo we are not talking about consoles here this is the pc section, things work differently on pc.Ondoval

My point is to show that the problem arrives from the console world, and since most of previous only-PC-developers are now multiplatform develomers -in some cases focused in consoles- the mentality from console developers about money milking is arriving to PC. And yes, Crysis had a free demo, but the mp beta was in a per-pay channel (Fileplanet). Also, COD 4 had free maps in PC, now COD 6 will receive only per-pay maps, and lacks any modding tool.

A demo is a form of marketing to get people to buy the game, so any costs associated with it should come out of the marketing budget. And don't tell me the marketing budgets are small, when EA admitted spending just as much on marketing some games as the actual development cost. And anyone who thinks the end consumer isn't paying for that marketing budget is misguided at best. If they don't recoup the costs with the core product sale, they certainly do with DLC.

Playing demos over the years has saved me from getting some really bad turkeys, and saved me a LOT of money. It's not MY fault those devs made crappy games with clunky controls, and lost sales by putting out a demo for it. For every decent game that gets released, there are ten stinking piles of garbage, and the last thing I'm going to do is rely on some doctored teaser trailer, a paid for game review, or fiddled metacritic scores.

So Crytek can cry about demos being a luxury all they want, but I'm much LESS likely to buy any game without trying a demo first. I don't have money to piss away, so I have to be selective about my game purchases.

Game devs in general need a wake-up call, because they need our money far more than we 'need' their products.

PC games need demos. Not because it helps people figure out if they like a game or not, but rather figure out how well they can run it. It's stupifying that developers have mostly stopped making PC demos yet console game demos have increased. WTF? I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty good at picking out which games are good and which ones are bad. If I download a demo its because I already think the game is going to be worth playing. As a result, I don't care much about seeing console demos die, but I really wish developers would start making more PC demos or at least releasing tools that accurately gauge how well your PC is going to perform with theirgame.