Sony Patent Describes "Degradable" Game Demos

Sony Patent Describes "Degradable" Game Demos

Picture a nearly complete game in demo form, only its features slowly change or vanish over time.

Developers have often struggled with game demos, and for good reason: It can be enough of a challenge hand-picking the segments that best represent a game, but if the demo winds up being too good, players might not ever invest in the retail product at all.

Sony aims to fix some of that, assuming they ever act on a patent recently discovered by Siliconera. Their plan is to offer something called "degradable demos" -- complete or nearly complete games in demo form, allowing players free access to a product's full breadth of content for a limited amount of time. As time passes, however, the demo will automatically begin to pare down certain in-game features, like which levels are available or how powerful the player character is. There's even talk of introducing more subtle tweaks like adjusting audio and video effects like brightness, color depth, and volume. All of these ideas are meant to offer consumers a broad look at a game while still encouraging them to make a purchase.

One example in the patent depicts a racing game demo that, at first, has all of the tracks and cars unlocked. Those options start to disappear after a few races, leaving just one or two tracks until the full game is purchased. Another possibility shows a character brandishing an enormous sword, only to have it replaced by a wimpy dagger after six hours of demo play. Both of these scenarios allow players to stick with just the demo if they want, but anyone seriously interested in the product will be able to cough up some money to remove all those restrictions and handicaps.

Sure, time-limited demos aren't exactly the freshest idea ever, but imagine a situation like this: You're on the fence about the next Uncharted, so you download the degradable demo for the game and plow through the first four chapters. Suddenly, wily and agile Nathan Drake is replaced by his portly, cigar-puffing pal Sully, who curses your name every time you make him climb anything taller than a phonebook. Annoying? Absolutely. But how much cooler is that than a screen telling you your trial version has expired?

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Hmmmm.... sounds like a total waste of time to me. but im sure they have there reasons

Sounds lame.

Has anyone EVER liked a demo that they played it relentlessly but then not bought the full game? It doesn;t make any sense

It sounds like it would just, in reality, leave unknowing gamers not wanting the real game because they'd be afraid that the demo is showing that the real game will degrade over time like the demo. Of course they could put a warning, but those kind of people don't read warnings. I see a sharp decline in sales coming from this. :( If I was deciding how to do a demo, I would do just like the God of War 3 demo. It was such an amazing demo. Before I played it, I was thinking that the God of War series was just overrated. But after it, it's a must-buy for me. Or I would do it like LittleBigPlanet and lock features, but still let you see them to show what you could have if you were to buy the full game. P.S. I don't care if you hate the God of War series, so don't even try. I'm giving it as an example. As for LittleBigPlanet: Everyone loves LittleBigPlanet. :DMPHhunter

I love LittleBigPlanet :D

I have two issues with this:

1) There might end up being some way for people to hack the game download that allows them to unlock the full game without paying, given that you are allowed access to the full game to start.

2) These "degrading" parts of the demo could give a false impression of the final product, especially if they are "subtle" like the article talks about. If they are obvious, i.e. the game telling you that you are reaching different points in the degradation, would make you realize that your game is falling apart underneath you and you won't think its actually part of the game.

After six hours ... ? My god, some games are shorter than six hours. Bring those demos in ... :)

Has anyone EVER liked a demo that they played it relentlessly but then not bought the full game? It doesn;t make any sense

RickGotti

They'll have to place a warning in every demo, so that people don't get turned off from buying the game (thinking that the retail game will have a feature which makes your character weaker, graphics more washed out etc.). A demo is still a part of the game, so they shouldn't do anything drastic or annoyingly dreadful; cute and amusing would be the ticket...

[QUOTE="RickGotti"]

Has anyone EVER liked a demo that they played it relentlessly but then not bought the full game? It doesn;t make any sense

gamer620

But you ended up buying it when it released right?

[QUOTE="gamer620"][QUOTE="RickGotti"]

Has anyone EVER liked a demo that they played it relentlessly but then not bought the full game? It doesn;t make any sense

RickGotti

But you ended up buying it when it released right?

I would assume he did :P

[QUOTE="gamer620"][QUOTE="RickGotti"]

Has anyone EVER liked a demo that they played it relentlessly but then not bought the full game? It doesn;t make any sense

RickGotti

But you ended up buying it when it released right?

Something that should also be noted: Arma 2(and other games made by BIS) has an anti-piracy software called FADE that does this same thing(it eventually turns the player into a seagull that can only fly around which makes me LOL at pirates). People who pirate just think that the game is bad and stop playing it. Not that they were going to buy it in the first place. But if the same thing is done for demos, what's making Sony think that it will be different? On FADE anti-piracy(look at the external links section for more): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FADEMPHhunter

Haha I wish every game would let you turn into a seagull after a while. :lol:

They are talking about almost full access to the games, but aren't PS3 games too big for download. People on this board also claim downloading from PSN is also not that fast.

I can see why it would be needed, demos aren't always that good. I personally don't trust demos, they rarely seem anywhere near as good as the final product.

Some just don't work for people new to a series. VF5 demo just throws you into a fight for example, that's not the easiest game to teach yourself when you have the full game.

I wouldn't even download 360 demos if they were full size though.

That just sounds like a ****-ass way of disguising the lack of content in the demo.

Plus it would increase download sizes.

Sure, time-limited demos aren't exactly the freshest idea ever, but imagine a situation like this: You're on the fence about the next Uncharted, so you download the degradable demo for the game and plow through the first four chapters. Suddenly, wily and agile Nathan Drake is replaced by his portly, cigar-puffing pal Sully, who curses your name every time you make him climb anything taller than a phonebook.Blazerdt47

I have never in my life heard of someone who was so in love with a demo they just kept playing it over and over and felt no need to buy the full game. That makes ZERO sense to me.

Has anyone EVER liked a demo that they played it relentlessly but then not bought the full game? It doesn;t make any sense

RickGotti

The Skate demo lets me skate around ina skate park for 30minutes at a time, i hae all the tricks and if i want to play longer i just restart it- no need to pay $60 when it came out, and even though it deffinetly alot cheaper now, three years later, i can still play for free!!

sounds like a complicated version of DRM that already exists in some demos where you have a time limit before the demo becomes locked

So, you download a HUGE file, then you play it for like 4 hours, then it just becomes a normal demo with stuff missing and whatnot. That sounds worth it... Devs should put some effort into demos like FEAR 2 did, they actually made one full level built up with bits from throughout the game.

Has anyone EVER liked a demo that they played it relentlessly but then not bought the full game? It doesn;t make any sense

RickGotti

Yes, quite a few actually, I played the WANTED demo loads for some reason, and it was pretty awesome, but I knew that the full game was short and would have bad story etc, so I didn't get it. And DiRT2, I played the Grid demo loads too, eventually bought that, but still haven't bought DiRT2, I tend to get bored with full racing games, so I don't spend money on them.

Has anyone EVER liked a demo that they played it relentlessly but then not bought the full game? It doesn;t make any sense

RickGotti

I have never in my life heard of someone who was so in love with a demo they just kept playing it over and over and felt no need to buy the full game. That makes ZERO sense to me.ZIMdoom

Has anyone EVER liked a demo that they played it relentlessly but then not bought the full game? It doesn;t make any sense

RickGotti

Dumb in my opinion. I have never played a demo that I liked so much I didn't buy the real game. I either don't like a demo or I like it and buy the game. I don't need more than a level or an hour of gametime to decide. Degrading certain items like the visuals or audio doesn't make any sense to me. Just give us all the graphics for a short time so we can try it out. I sure hope Xbox doesn't try to go this way.

As long as this remains only in demos, i dont care :PII_Seraphim_II

Or they could be like Microsoft and offer demos for every game instead of trying this...

Something that should also be noted: Arma 2(and other games made by BIS) has an anti-piracy software called FADE that does this same thing(it eventually turns the player into a seagull that can only fly around which makes me LOL at pirates). People who pirate just think that the game is bad and stop playing it. Not that they were going to buy it in the first place. But if the same thing is done for demos, what's making Sony think that it will be different? On FADE anti-piracy(look at the external links section for more): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FADEMPHhunter

Or they could be like Microsoft and offer demos for every game except the majority of games that are actually worth playing(Halo, Gears, GTA IV, etc) instead of trying this...

WilliamRLBaker

Just another way to entice people to buy a game if you slowly take features out of it. I don't know about the huge installs for JUST a demo though..VideoGameGuy

good point

For demos, this sounds pretty dumb. So instead of doing something simple like putting a timer on a demo and calling it a day they want the devs to spend time having features of the game degrade. What dev in their right mind would think that's a good use of their time and resources?

Something that should also be noted: Arma 2(and other games made by BIS) has an anti-piracy software called FADE that does this same thing(it eventually turns the player into a seagull that can only fly around which makes me LOL at pirates). People who pirate just think that the game is bad and stop playing it. Not that they were going to buy it in the first place. But if the same thing is done for demos, what's making Sony think that it will be different? On FADE anti-piracy(look at the external links section for more): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FADEMPHhunter

Yes, because the fact that you hate pirates automatically makes them full blown morons who don't know about this wonderful form of DRM that's so obscure it actually has its own wikipedia entry.

That's dumb. No demo is good enough to keep playing over a full game.Parasomniac