NoDEMO ? Splash Damage READ THIS plz ! You can make inexpensive demos ! Ideas inside!

(Nail) #21

edit

seen the other one, mind you, in his defence, you were being one

(stankin) #22

had made the exact same thread had you bothered to look…yet i didn’t go about making my self look like an ass doing so. I already stated If I can get a demo of the game then decide if i want the full game legit. supportig the company, thus getting the possibility of more content ect later. or give them a big F-U like they may do us on the PC and get the full game by other means.

I for one like to see/support the new kid on the block as it were. unique FPS game are rare, crappy ones however are not. That is why demos are important, because A: they add more customers, B: they get rid of negative press or at the very least constant negative people since they never bought the game they would have no reason to cruise all the forums related to it saying how much they hated it.

and to the sheeps out there yes there have been many game lately that has been released without demos. count how many of them you have, now count how many are sitting somewhere collecting dust, or taking space because you played it once and found out you didn’t like it but spend the money already.

(RadBrad31) #23

Here is my opinion. And please don’t take it as a console war post.

Consoles are an easier control group to give a designated experience to. They can set up the demo in the office, pick the levels, and make sure they play fluidly and well on 2-3 seperate consoles (PS3, Xbox 360, and/or Wii). The last thing any company wants to do is release a demo that poorly represents the game, or causes the game to play with artifacts, sound breaking, or downright not working.

PCs on the other hand, vary way too much to make a demo that will work on all. There’s too many different variations of video cards, RAM set ups, processors, background applications slowing up the computer. So you make a demo for the computer, and someone tries it and it doesn’t play well on their PC, then they tell their friends it’s a bad game and doesn’t work. It doesn’t give good word of mouth to their product. That even if it is a great product, it could get a bad rep from poorly set up PCs.

Anyways, just my 2c.

TL;DR: Easier to control consoles. PCs have too many variables. Demos need to run very well to give good rep to the game.

(kruger) #24

Ok I changed the OP to make things clearer and broaden (not sure that word exists, I’m not english) the discussion.

[QUOTE=Nail;304804]edit

seen the other one, mind you, in his defence, you were being one[/QUOTE]

Well there are more polite ways of telling someone he is wrong.

He however decided to insult me and act like an agressive nerd, that’s his choice and I’m reporting people who are like that just for the sport !

Also if someone is being wrong, it doesn’t give other people the right to insult him and the fact that that person is wrong shouldn’t be an excuse for being insulting. Only raging kids on internet think like that.

I did look and my first thread subject was completely different, everything has been corrected now and I’m still speaking of a broader issue here, not just for Brink, but I’m using Brink as a recent exemple. Also, maybe I got my facts wrong at first, but I corrected them, only idiots don’t change their opinion or statements even when they see clearly they are wrong, so lets stop the flaming, it’s unproductive.

(Nail) #25

it was a very bad first impression, likely to stick

(kruger) #26

I understand that point of vue and as you said making a demo for a PC game is probably mor expensive and harder (therefore requires more manpower and time) than a console demo for which you only have 3 uniform platforms to consider.

BUT

You don’t have to make the traditional PC demo where people play the first stage and then it stops etc. You can just add to the original game a clock system. Therefore people who would want the game would just download the full game and then just be able to play it for a limited time (30mins, 1 hour, or a few days, anything the devs want). And after that limited time the game would lock up and the only way to unlock it would be to activate it by buying the game. For a boxed version people would just have to enter the serial number, even for digital versions etc. It has already been done by some devs but it’s still very rare.

Now you are going to tell me that giving people a way of getting the digiital version of the game requires servers dedicated to that which costs money. Well not necessarily, since you can do this using services like Steam who has done that for different games over the years (TF2 for exemple, with “TF2 week-ends”). I don’t know about other digital stores / buying platforms since I only use Steam but they probably did offer similar things, (I’m not advertising for Steam.)

Whatever, it doesn’t change what I told you in my last post :wink:

(RadBrad31) #27

Kruger, your idea has merit and in a perfect world, I would support it fully. Sadly, we live in a world full of pirates and crooks. I’m afraid that if they allowed a full game on a timer, that someone would crack it and have the full game. Even if just for the SP or their own server, they’d have it nonetheless.

(stankin) #28

Now Im assuming you must be on console, could tell just from the comment. steam has had plenty of full-game weekend promotions and never had complaints of them being “cracked” “stolen” however to actually think for 1 second that your going to try and sell a higher priced product without any way for the customer to see or try it. that’s just that asking for trouble. and by that point warrants any trouble that comes their way.

yes certain games geared towards the simple minded were sold this way. That is why they have the powerbase they do now. because people were too dumb to ask questions. Its why sony can have an entire system shut down and noone can do anything but sit back and watch, and is why Infintyward could release crap-on-a-stick and still get record sales.

people way too worried on what others are buying,doing. should actually focus on what is it is they want. and as customers have every right to ask.

(kruger) #29

Well unfortunately if someone wants to crack a game they will probably always find a way to crack it. So depriving us of a demo just because of fears of getting it cracked isn’t fair. I know we don’t live in a fair world but the timed demo “way” has been done several times with a few games, it’s not a general thing, but I hope it will, cause it doesn’t require much more additional coding or manpower, just the addition of a sort of timer and that’s it.

For the lack of demos from game publishers in general I blame :

  • Greediness
  • Laziness
  • Being afraid that people will see it’s an unfinished product before actually buying it even though it’s out.

Any one of those reasons is the one, and even for some publishers a combination of several of these. OF course some of these can be changed like “Greediness” becomes “lack of production money” or “Laziness” could become “understaffed because not very rich” for a small unknown company or a small company just starting in the business etc which I could understand in that case.

(kruger) #30

[QUOTE=stankin;305000]
yes certain games geared towards the simple minded were sold this way. That is why they have the powerbase they do now. because people were too dumb to ask questions. Its why sony can have an entire system shut down and noone can do anything but sit back and watch[/QUOTE]

Exactly, the customer should be king, not the other way around. There have been many many exemple of games getting over-hyped and over-marketed etc and that ended up being huge dissapointments for the players. And I’m only talking about gameplay, story, art stuff. I’m not even adding games that were technically unfinished, full of bugs, bad console ports etc.

Ah I miss the shareware era, where companies actually cared about their players. You know, these days I would accept to buy a game “blindfolded” without trying it. Unfortunately throughout the years the number of devs for who I would do that has narrowed down a lot, I think it’s only one these days. And thats because that dev rocks big time, and rarely let me down.
However note that i’m not talking about the designers, they try stuff, sometimes it rocks sometimes it’s not so cool etc, they bust their butts on their job most the time. I’m blaming decision makers that just see everything as costs costs costs. They are the ones behind this. In the past in a company everyone from top to bottom was a gamer and knew how it works, now a lot of decision makers haven’t played any games except for five minutes before an interview to talk about that specific game, and even there you wonder if it’s the case.

So yeah that’s what devs get when they prefer to release beta-grade stuff just because they want to keep the schedule tight and limit the costs, a bad rep, and the more it goes, the more it spreads in the industry ("oh they’re not releasing a demo for their next big game ? Why should we for ours ? It would cost so much more ! " or “oh look at that guys, even though multiplayer doesn’t even work correctly people are still buying the game and they are breaking sales records ! Why bother with that multiplayer problem we are having right now, let’s just release the game and fix it later in a patch”).

And we are not even talking about the fact that consoles are favored and games nowadays are first thought of as console games then they get ported to PCs (maybe, because not all games get ported) which ends up with a slow noob game on PC.

Of course to that add the recent “pre-purchase” scam a lot of publishers are using. Nowadays a lot of the sales are done during in Pre-Purchase lol ! Check it out : lot of marketing / hype => lot of pre-purchase. So even with a game not even out yet it’s already making money ! So why bother making this perfect, let’s just fix it in a patch later !

(AnthonyDa) #31

Free weekend on steam? Anyone?

(kruger) #32

For exemple yes ! Tiens un français xD !

(kruger) #33

Well well well, Brink is on Steam, yet no demo or free test week end and look what I found:

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/publishingservices.php

Free Weekends and Guest Passes

Hold events like Free Weekends (or any length play period) to entice customers and promote your game. Then securely and efficiently turn the promotion off at the end of the period. Also available is guest pass technology that allows you to promote your game through your community. Let friends give free, limited-time passes to their friends. This is proven tech that has been used with our games and third parties.

So it seems that’s a start ! Now the publishers who publish on Steam actually have to ask Steam to activate the feature for their game, and we are on the right tracks !

(stankin) #34

[QUOTE=kruger;305275]Well well well, Brink is on Steam, yet no demo or free test week end and look what I found:

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/publishingservices.php

So it seems that’s a start ! Now the publishers who publish on Steam actually have to ask Steam to activate the feature for their game, and we are on the right tracks ![/QUOTE]

heh fallen earth doing the same thing but to an extreme extent. you buy the game you get a free code for digital copy for a friend. tho now im just sitting here the a spare game its still a nice thought lol. so it could work.

(Avoc) #35

To be honest, imagine if they had released a demo for this game - noone would have bought it with all the issues it has, and negative word of mouth spreads faster than positive. At least now, they have your money, and are working on fixing the problems as quickly as possible.

I believe that once the game has been patched up, they will have free demo weekends in hopes of getting people to buy the fixed product.

(Nail) #36

don’t expect anything like a demo or free weekend before some of the issues are resolved, wouldn’t make any sense otherwise.

AMD have said they will address some Brink specific issues in 11.6

(RadBrad31) #37

Sorry, I have pretty much no experience with Steam or demos on PC because I am a console gamer. I used to play RTS games online and there were always keygen/cracks going around. My reasoning for the lack of the demo sticks with the idea of the company being unable to verify their game will work well given all the variables of a PC community, whereas it is very simple to do on a few consoles.

I take back what I said about the cracking of the game. If it’s commonplace and safe for free weekends, more power to em and I applaud it. But, I can understand from a purely business stand point not wanting people to play an unpolished product because their PC can’t handle it. Then getting bad reviews from people when it isn’t even their fault.

In the end, this is about making money. And if bad word of mouth causes them to lose money, the investors won’t allow them to risk it. Even though SD is a great company and are about making games for gamers by gamers… the people who pour money into their games still need results.

(Nail) #38

it’s still the top selling game on Steam, it’s #1 on XBL, I think it’s ok for now

(McAfee) #39

If i recall correctly. The demo for ETQW came in after the a few patches. Probably like a month after release of the game.

(Nail) #40

I like the free Steam weekend idea, seems to be easiest to do, don’t need to write a separate demo build, no cost !!!