Demos, and how they influence you decision to buy

GoodSarmatian

Jokerfied Western Male
Joined
Apr 25, 2006
Messages
9,408
I remember that back in the late 20th century (man, do I feel old and dignified typing this) practically every high profile game and a lot of low profile games had a demo, but it seems it's nowaday pre-release demos aren't as common as they used to be, but we still got them for Shogun 2, Civ 5, Mss Effect 3 andother games.
I'd like to know if demos regularly influence your decision to buy a game.
I've rgown very sceptical of professional reviews, and for me a demo is the deciding factor in my decision and more often then not a demo will convince not to buy.
If there's no demo I'll wait until a couple of weeks after release and hear/read what my friends and the internet have to say about the matter.
Here are some 21st games that demos convinced me (not) to buy in the past couple of years.

Games I was sceptical about, or not that interested inm but bought because of the demo:

Rome - Total War
The Total War series didn't interest me that much before. Real time battles with armies and formations just didn't feel right to me, like there's not many decisions left to make.I knew the Shogun demo and was not convinced. The Rome demo changed that. It only showed the real-time battles, but they were fun enough to make me buy it.

Bioshock
I'm usually not a big fan of FPS, but Bioshock immediately drew me in. It had a great atmosphere, and electrocuting a group of madmen in a puddle of water was all kinds of entertaining

Deus Ex : Human Revolution
This game didn't have a real demo, but it had a leaked Beta versio which, while not strictly legal was tolerated by Square-Enix. I was one of those guys who - despite positive previews- feard this game could give a beloved classic the game equivalent of the George Lucas treatment. The coup de grace for the franchise if you will. When I found out there's a leaked beta with a very positive reception I had to try it out. I played it all weekend and decided 'Yes, that's a Deus Ex game'.
More importantly, I didn't encounter any bugs or crashes. Here was a beta of a game that wouldn't be released for another six months, and it was already more stable and felt more polished than many 'finished' games on release day.

Shogun 2
Finally a Total War demo with a campaign, and was better than Rome. Specialized provinces, talent trees for generals and agents, two research paths, and real time battles with a focus on melee. It had almost everything I loved about Rome, and a greatly expanded TBS part.
I still waited several months before I bought it since I couldn't gleam much about the diplomatic AI from the demo.


Games I planned to bu on release day, but didn't after playing the demo

Dragon Age 2
The previews were already discouraging, but I would have still bought it. It's Bioware, it's Dragon Age. Of course it's gong to be good.
Well, it wasn't. The demo only showcased the battles which were supposed to be the big selling point of the game, bringing more action into the mix.
They didn't bring more action, just less strategy. All I could take away from the demo was that battles were faster but more boring than in Origins. I postponed my decision until the internet could form an opinion about the finished game. Maybe I'll buy it if I find it for less than 15€ including all DLC...

Medieval 2 and Empire
Again, only battles. Medieval 2 felt like Rome, but not right.
There were some changes, but I couldn't see any big improvements. In the end it was at the same time just similar and different enough to Rome to be stuck in the gameplay equivalent of the uncanny valley, if this makes any sense.
Empire just wasn't fun. I don't really know why. Previews had made me excited about the game, but for some reasons that I can't really put my finger on, that excitement was snuffed out by the demo.

Cicilization 5
Well, I bought it eventually when I found it for 20 bucks (two weeks before the GOTY edition was announced :mad:)
After palying the demo I decided I wouldn't buy it for at least another three or four months after release, mainly because the demo was quite the trainwreck in regards to stability and performance. The pacing was also horrible. Build times were too long, maintenance costs were too high....
This was a game in need of some serious patching. I wasn't really surprised, Civ4 wasn't any better when it was first released.
 
I have an irrational distrust of demos. Evil Genius burned me with a great demo. Somehow the full game turned out to be mindnumbing and not at all as well-planned.
 
I find that I almost never buy at initial offering price anymore, since I usually get "burned" (i.e. the game sucked, or was way overpriced for its value). These days, I usually buy only when the items are on sale (deeply discounted physical copies on Amazon, or digital copies a la Steam sales), as a means of protection against paying too much for a new game. At which point a demo is appreciated, but not sparing me much in the way of cash. A demo (and I suppose--free-2-play versions) influences my purchase only if I'm on the borderline about buying a relatively 'new' purchase. Lets play videos generally have as much influence on me as demos, in determining if I'll buy the game.
But definitely, I won't buy a non-sequel main-stream $60 offering if it doesn't have a demo or tons of let's play videos that show it for what it is.

The thing about modern gaming is that there are so many affordable options for gaming, that playing catch-up with new major releases isn't really necessary to have fun and be a "PC gamer". There are tons of decent indie games, free-2-play MMO games, freeware games, and deeply discounted digital sale games that you don't have to be ashamed for not paying $40-$60 for a hot-of-the-press major release game. Ignore the game for 1-2 years while you get caught up on your back-log of games, and you'll see if the game was worth the initial price, PLUS it'll probably be on sale for 50% off or better. The only exception is maybe the multiplayer games in which if you wait 1-2 years, the game might be obsolete or the fan-base might have died off (only bad if the game was actually good, but too niche to hold on to a large fan-base).

In the good-old-days of gaming, demos were entertainment in themselves (remember downloading demos of 1990s era games on BBS systems).
 
Even back in the days (90s) I didn't play demos. I'm "Everything or nothing". I'm like this with basically everything else in life. I don't know how to explain it, but if I'm gonna spend just a day in Disney Land, I'm gonna buy a pass to let me ride everything as much as I want, I'm not gonna compromise with tickets and counting money. If there are 3 cookies left in the box and someone wants to share with me, I'll say "screw this just eat them all" and leave. Demos somehow fall in that category. The compromise to try the game annoys me. I'd rather wait for a discount and buy the game when it's cheap, if I'm unsure. If it sucks oh well. I still probably paid for 5 hours and only paid less than a meal at a restaurant for it. Usually though I'd say I generally don't need a demo to know if I'll like a game or not. And I've found those demos that I've tried lately rather underwhelming, even when the actual game was good after all. I don't know if it's because the demos were indeed underwhelming, or if it was just me and my weird psychological thing with knowing that I'm playing a compromise.

So yeah, I couldn't care less about demos.
 
Back
Top Bottom