Sold on the Demo

It's been a busy one. The Xbox Live Marketplace has been awash in some great demos in recent weeks. I've had a crack at most of them and have discovered a surprising phenomenon this time around: the inability of a demo to sell me on the final retail product.

I count Resident Evil 5, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, and Wanted: Weapons of Fate among some of my most anticipated titles this spring. The demos for all three games failed to ignite my interest, dispelling months of positive hype, preview videos and screenshots in a matter of minutes.

Demos are still one of the best ways for gamers to test drive a product before making a buying decision. So what does it say about a demo when it almost works against the game itself, revealing the game's shortcomings for what they are and possibly even focusing undue attention to flaws that might not pose such a large factor in the full retail release?

There's also a misconceptin among the gaming community on what the purpose of a demo really is, even going as far as to confuse the goals of a demo to that of an open beta release. In the case of Resident Evil 5, the quality of the demo made me doubt whether I was actually playing test code or an actual slice of a the the actual game. A myriad of problems made me dislike this demo, not the least of which was the cumbersome control scheme. This sentiment was shared by gamers at large and the mass reactions prompted a response from Capcom
brass and the game producer. The complaints were heard loud and clear, but fears were not allayed. It was only a matter of getting used to the controls, we were told: Once we played the actual game, it would all make sense.

But of course it would. I won't get into Capcom's response to fan reaction to the demo, as stubborn and arrogant as it was. The statements were telling, however, and stood as a stark reminder to us all that demos have always been mainly tools of marketing, and not an avenue for iterative design. As much as I wanted Capcom to roll back their survival horror opus and change fundamental design mechanics in order to make a better game, this was not going to happen. By the time a demo launches, almost everything about a game's development is locked in and near to completion.

So it can be disheartening for developers to see some negativity result from gamers getting a sample of their pet project and realizing that they won't be able to change anything once the actual game is released into the wild. I can almost begin to see why some game demos never see the light of day, or show up months after a game's release. I used to find late demos inexcusable. It flies in the face of marketing logic, or so I had mistakenly assumed. If the recent batch of demos are any indication, maybe publishers and developers ought to put more care into their demo code and put more thought into what segments of a game are to be shown. Should a custom level be built, a patchwork of different areas of the game or simply the first 30 minutes of the retail code be used for expediency's sake?

For game companies, putting out a demo is still giving gamers what they want. It's just not the win-win it used to be. In all likelihood, they have been waiting with bated breath for it, eager to get a taste. That first impression, however, can be a killer. Without the benefit of having the full power of the game behind you, impressions are left to hang only on a fraction of the full meal, the little you've decided to offer them as a sample. If the demo is good, then the experience will be extrapolated into a favourable impression of the full game to come.

And a lousy demo? Well, I've learned to never underestimate good marketing, word of mouth and the power of Metacritic.