Demo Daze - Why Don't Creators Make Game Demos Anymore? - Extra Credits

[Music] our new friend arvus is here to help us out once more and we're thrilled to have him today we're going to be talking about demos a lot of you guys have asked questions about them specifically why aren't there more of them great question kind of a rough one to answer though because the truth is it's a direct result of consumer habits so it's kind of our fault now I would love to see more demos one of the reasons that I think free to play Done Right could be such a boon to this industry is because I think the idea of buying a $60 game sight unseen is ludicrous even more so now with rentals on the decline and video stores disappearing you can't even grab a game for a weekend anymore to see if you like it before putting down a bunch of money on it heck half the time when I ask people why they buy used games they say because if I don't like it I can return it for a full refund whereas I can't do that with new games maybe that's just unique to the States but it clearly shows that there's a consumer need to know more about something as expensive as a game before buying it but as much as I am for demos and as much as I want to see more of them I've I got to admit from a

developer perspective making them makes no sense at all and that's basically because of us without meaning to we've actively disincentivized developers from creating demos let me explain there are only a few possible outcomes that a demo can lead to I've got a chart here from Jeff zkin and the video game metric Wizards at edar which sums them up nicely let's go through them one by one outcome number one your game is terrible and your demo is lousy too well your demo just showed how bad your game is so you're definitely going to lose sales as a result of people trying the demo outcome number two your game is terrible your demo makes it look okay this usually results in most people deciding to wait and see what the reviews say once the reviews come in and declare how bad the game is most people will decide that they've gotten their fix from playing the demo and don't really feel inclined to pay for the privilege to play more and as a result that demo has lost you sales overall outcome number three your game is terrible but the demo makes it look pretty awesome this is really really hard to pull off it's not like a pre-rendered trailer where you can fake the awesome making a bad game that plays like a great game for 30 minutes almost never happens but if it

does it will convince some people to buy it who wouldn't have otherwise so that demo will increase sales for sure so for those keeping score that's one positive outcome two negative so far outcome number four your game is okay but the demo makes it look awful well if the bad demo doesn't completely kill people's interest in the game right away they're likely to lose interest by the time the game's released end result you've definitely lost sales outcome number five your game is okay the Demo's all right too some people will still be interested enough to buy but it's not likely to convince someone to purchase if they weren't already planning to most people will decide that they got their fix from the demo and just move on leading to an overall loss in sales outcome number six your game is okay the demo is great this will convince people to buy increasing overall sales but it also increases player expectations which occasionally leads to a backlash once they find out that the finished product isn't nearly as good as the demo made it look overall though this result is still a net positive for the developer so now we've got four negative outcomes and only two positive ones outcome number seven your game is excellent but the demo makes it look awful this absolutely

kills sales this is a big part of what happened to spec ops outcome number eight your game is fantastic but the demo makes it look just okay some people will still be interested in buying but there are a sizable chunk of players out there who are only willing to spend time and money on great games so even if your game is likely to get a Metacritic score of 85 or higher putting a demo out there that is merely passable loses you sales in the end and again if your demo is just okay plenty of people will decide that they've had their fill of the game from the demo and lose interest and finally outcome number nine your game is awesome and your demo is awesome too surprisingly this outcome has shown to lead to a marginal sales increase or sometimes no noticeable increase at all you see games in this category often already have either a huge marketing push or fantastic word of mouth and when everyone is saying this game is a must play it's going to get more sales if you have to pay just to try it so out of the nine possible outcomes only two of them are a strong win for the developer and of those two one of them is nearly impossible to pull off as consumers we're always saying that we want demos but demonstrably sales data shows that demos almost always decrease sales so

we're the real reason that companies don't put out demos and I know it sucks but it's the truth I mean think about it how many times have you played a demo that convinced you to buy a game that you hadn't been planning to buy already now compare that to the number of times a demo convinced you not to buy a game or made you lose interest in a game or made you decide to wait for reviews or the times you finished a demo and ended up moving on to some shiny new thing rather than playing The Full Experience so demos lead to decreased sales and when you couple that with the fact that demos also cost time and money to make they're just a losing proposition all around for developers after all they could just take all the money and hours they were going to invest in building a solid demo and putting it through certification and all that and instead invest those resources in building more of the game which is far more likely to translate into sales anyway so I don't see an era of abundant Demos in our future not unless we change consumer patterns on a massive scale and I don't see that happening this aspect of consumer Behavior just makes too much sense after all why would you buy a game if you know it's bad or if you've already had your fill of it without paying it are ready to move on so I

think that the old age of demos is dead but that's all right I think we'll see solutions to this problem as we evolve new ways to play if we look at tablet and mobile games we're already seeing these Solutions cropping up we're seeing a pay as you go model where you can either buy the whole game or buy a level of the game and decide at the end if you want to buy the next one we're seeing games offset the cost of having a demo by including some small amount of advertising or cross promotion for the company's other games inside the demo we're seeing free to- playay microtransaction games and episodic games where the first episode is free we're seeing a host of methods to make it practical and easy to get your hands on a game before buying it at full price so while I don't think we'll ever see a time where every game has a demo we will see that underlying need that desire to try before you buy fulfilled by Savvy companies as the industry evolves so things will turn out all right one way or another see you guys next [Music] week [Music]

n