Now that the so-called Noughties are over, and we can look back at them (with relief that they've gone), it's clear that the main thing they contributed to human society was relentlessly to assault us with stuff that was crappier than stuff we had in previous decades.
Such as reality TV (cheap to make, and appealing only to morons), poisonous gossip rags, compressed music (sounds even worse than CDs, which themselves sound worse than vinyl), New Labour (neither left-wing nor conspicuously able to distinguish between their arses and their elbows), electric cars (I'm sorry, ecomentalists, but hydrogen fuel is the post-fossil future), Twitter (Facebook Status plus the worst search engine ever) and Al Qaida (even the IRA didn't propose returning humanity to life in the Dark Ages). If videogames hadn't had such a good decade, we'd probably all have killed ourselves.
But even videogames haven't emerged completely unscathed from the Noughties. During the decade, one utterly crap subset of games, in true Noughties fashion, assumed vast importance despite completely lacking merit: the demo.
Working in games journalism has its perks, chief among which is the ability to play games before release, and thereby ignore the very existence of demos. The very most you can hope for from a demo is that it gives a vaguely accurate impression of a small part of any given game, and even if it manages to do that, it will still leave you feeling unsatisfied. Fair enough, if a game is completely broken, there's no way in which a demo will be able to disguise that fact. They can, and often do, make fundamentally flawed games look good - games, say, which swiftly become repetitive, or which suffer from wildly inconsistent level-design or some other intermittent flaw. Like, say, Tomb Raider Underworld, which seemed fine at first, but the longer you played it, the more all-over-the-place the camera became.
Then there are the instances in which demos made perfectly decent games look dreadful. I enjoyed Resident Evil 5 enormously, but it tanked due entirely to an appalling demo. Dead Space at least found success after overcoming a similar handicap. In both cases, Capcom and EA would have done themselves a favour by refusing to put out a demo.
It's easy to envisage the factors that conspire to make demos go bad, chief among which has to be a developer struggling to finish a game in time for its designated release date. If you've still got levels littered with placeholder art and nothing but Japanese voice-acting, and your publisher was hassling you for a demo, you'd get the tea-boy to make one so you could concentrate on the important stuff. We all get annoyed when games suffer release-date-slippage, but when that happens they at least tend to get a sensible polishing period, during which developers can actually put together decent demos. Mind you, that's when those demos can end up making games look better than they actually are.
Legendary developer Jon Hare, now development director at consultancy Nikitova but once one of the main men at Sensible Software, confirms those suspicions: "If you're rushing to finish a game but the control systems or user interface are not fully realised, getting a demo out a month or two before release can be problematic - making a demo does interfere a bit with the production process." Nevertheless, Hare is broadly in favour of demos, "Particularly when the game is quite mature-a sequel perhaps." He recognises their value as a marketing tool, but adds; "The problems comes when games at a demo stage are not tuned properly - a lot of tuning goes on at the end of the development cycle."
In my opinion, blame for the undue influence which demos now enjoy can be laid at the door of the TV companies. All we want to do is see games before we decide to buy them, so we can get a good idea whether or not they're any good - and the obvious forum for that would be TV programmes about videogames. But there are no programmes about videogames on TV any more. Why? Because TV execs form the last collective group of our society which doesn't play videogames. Believe me, I've spent enough years trying to convince them to run programmes about games. Sadly, they're all too busy prancing around being self-important about the fact that they work in TV to actually do anything as tawdry as press an Xbox 360's on button. Imagine the outcry there would be if there were no TV programmes about films, music or literature.
But unfortunately, because even the over-70s now play more videogames than people who work in TV, we have to download those infernal demos. Although, when I say "we", I mean "you" - we games journalists have more to work from, in the form of preview and review code. So do yourselves a favour and actually read what we have to say - and try not to download those demos.
Despite what a review might say, you can't beat getting to play the game yourself, even if it's only a small portion of it. I've read reviews which would have put me off otherwise brilliant games, were it not for a good demo.
In my opinion, story heavy games aren't really suited to demos, what I'd like to see is developers making a self-contained demo. Make them like prologues, same mechanics, different character, so players will still get a feel for the game without thinking that's all there is to it.
I actually thought the RE 5 demo was alright once I got over my initial controls gripes though, but I disliked the Dead Space one. On the flip-side, Crackdown's demo was awesome.
And since when was RE 5 a flop?! I'm pretty sure I read it sold 5 million worldwide ages ago...
Demos are a very important process imo, i wouldnt buy a game based off any reviews because why do i need some complete strangers opinion, their favoutite games might be games i hate with a passion, we all have different likes and dislikes
And for that very reason i've always thought reviewers were complete waste of space, i dont need anyone telling me i should get a game purely because they loved it, i want to try it myself and thats were demos come in, they are there to help give us an idea of what the games like (after all games arnt cheap anymore) and provide us with an incentive to buy that game.
I cant count how many demos have persuaded me into buying a game, they are a very important part of marketing and more games should do it.
One word. Bioshock. When the demo for that Game dropped on Live, it was huge, millions downloaded it and played it enough to get it onto the most played Games on XBL!
A good demo means that the final product should be good as well, a bad demo means the final product ... well you know.
Demos are only really valuable when they are well done, which tends not to the case. It's often well respected developers (Blizzard, Codemasters etc.) who release decent demos - and you tend to know that their games are going to be worth playing anyway!
I always felt that Blizzard led the way with their Warcraft 3 demos (way back in the day), which were actually part of the main game's storyline, as well as providing an excellent introduction to gameplay.
Of course you aren't going to like demos! They're obviously not a good thing for games journalists: if we get to play the game before we buy we don't need to read the review
Anyway, often it comes down to personal taste and a demo gives some indication if you're going to enjoy the game enough to fork out money for it.
Finally IIRC Doom's success was largely down to the first few levels being available for free; and looked what happened to that.
It's this simple : I very rarely buy games I haven't had a chance to play a demo/beta of first. To put it bluntly, I trust my own opinion much more than I trust yours, Mr. Journo.
This means of the maker/producer wants my money, they have to make a demo and they have to make it good. I don't see why this is such a hardship for the industry. Plan to make a demo from the beginning and build it into your project plan. What? You don't have a project plan? Not my problem. You haven't built in time to make a decent demo? Not my problem. Your demo isn't a great representation of your game? Not my problem.
Let's get down to basics here. You, as a game maker, want me to hand over a significant sum of money (I can rent 20 DVDs for the price of one game) for your product. If you want me to do that, you have to meet my needs, not the other way around.
No demo? No sale. There's always other games to be played who have bothered and they'll get my money instead.
I reckon more of a focus needs to be put on demos as a marketing tool - that's what they are. For sequels they're less important - if the original sold well and was good, the sequel will sell anyway.
Dead Space is a great example - the demo was utter pap but the game is great. It had the right creatures, the right weapons and control schemes, but none of the actual gameplay. It was a single inescapable room with an endless supply of creatures and hardly any ammo.
If it had been just a short cut scene or video to get us up to speed, then a single corridor or room section, that would have worked much better.
There should be a body set up to check these things. If the demo doesn't give a decent representation of the product (and while small details change near the end, they don't change the game) then it gets refused a public release. People should know what they're being asked to pay money for.
Wow. I couldn't disagree with this article more. I think Demo's are a vital part of selling a game to an audience; I flat-out refuse to buy PSN games unless there's a demo offered, simply because otherwise I have no idea what I'm getting into, especially because one reviewers opinion can differ wildly from another.
Some demo's certainly need more effort put into them- but I'd argue whole-heartedly about the Res 5 demo, which drew me in and caught my interest in ways that no amount of preview footage or review coverage could. Had I not played the demo, I might never have tried the game.
The same goes for Batman: Arkham Asylum, a game I had no interest in before I tried the demo, and fell in love with it. Granted, that demo had a lot more effort put into it, but its one example of many for me. Bayonetta, Dead Space, Bioshock- all games I would have blindly missed out on had I not decided to give the demo's a try. Doubtless there are plenty of other games out there that i'd also love if I ever had chance to try them. But buying a game is an expensive and in some ways risky prospect- and as jonbwfc said, i trust my own opinion over somebody elses.
I think demos are more important than they ever have been. Like someone said above I was unsure of Batman until I played the demo, Dante's Inferno has gone from "God of War clone that I might get" to "Must have it NOW!".
I think part of the reason that xbox live arcade is so superior to WiiWare and the Playstation Network games is the fact all the games are available to try first. I would never have bought the likes of "Catan" or "Splosion Man" if I hadn't played the demo, on the flipside I've heard that "Calling all cars" is great but without the ability to take it back to the shop I bought it from or try it out I'll probably never buy it!.
Wooooo first ever CVG post..! Now that I've got that bit of over, I'll say that I also don't really agree with this article. I'm not sure I agree with a lot of the author's views, and I think he makes some pretty misleading statements.. And yeh I was also like RE5 was a flop.. riggght..
Demos are a bonus to me, it may cause me to buy the occasional game I wouldn't otherwise have, but on the other hand I'm pretty sure I'll soon buy uncharted 2 based on critical reaction even though theres no (as far as I know) demo available.
One sure thing though, is that if a dev is going to decide to release a demo, its in their best interests to make sure they do a very decent job of it as a naff demo can really put people off.
So do yourselves a favour and actually read what we have to say - and try not to download those demos.
This imperative makes absolutely no sense. Its validity is predicated upon the idea that the preceding article actually gives us some real reasons why we shouldn't download demos. Other than the "it may not give a totally accurate representation of the final product" reasoning (which is pretty obvious anyway - surely most people expect the finished product to be better than the demo?), I see no reason why I should not download a demo of a game. As everyone else is saying, nothing is a substitute for hands-on experience. What a pointless article.
While the comments made by Jonbwfc are very reasonable, the fact is that games prices haven't risen significantly in 20 years, so for most people it is no longer a significant amount of money, and we here are the minority in that we research what we buy, we try demo's, maybe even rent a copy first for a look.
Go into game on a weekend and see how many parents are blindly buying all kinds of shovelware for all formats based on the cover art. A demo is a luxury we are afforded, it is in no way a contributor to a games success or failure in this day and age.
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