- Joined
- Feb 8, 2008
- Messages
- 404
I have been noticing something recently. A lot of games are being made without anything more to go on but screenshots and videos.
What ever happened to The Demo? Why did it fall by the wayside?
See, me and my gaming buddies have a rule; We never, EVER buy a game if it does not have a demo, or we can not play it somewhere first. Why? We don't want to get fleeced.
Let's face it, in game without a demo, you have a 50/50 shot of getting something YOU like. Not something some magazine writer likes. It would be like being placed before 2 Doors. You are told one leads to 'Wealth and Happiness' the other leads to 'Horrible Death' but you can't know which is which!
That's when I turn around and walk through the door marked 'Exit'. Sorry, I won't gamble.
When a game lacks a demo, you become one of two things:
The Private Eye:
You spend a lot of time looking at screenshots, watching commercials (provided you are not taking interest in an older game), and watching videos that show 2 seconds of in-game cutscenes and half a second of actual gameplay.
You read reviews that claim the game gets a '9.5!'. (Sorry but I do not believe something as complicated as a persons view on a game, based on so many different things, can be quantified as a number) And listen to it be hyped in magazines where it is not being reviewed so much as advertised. (Innovative! It lets you shoot bullets covered in fire AND acid that shoot lightening while singing a song you made in the intro!!)
The Sap:
You fall for all the hype without thinking about it. Or maybe it piques your interest after you do the study. Maybe it was in a bargain bin and you had a few extra dollars. So you pick up the game.
Suddenly, you want your $15 back.
Despite how pretty the box art was. How in-your-face the commercials were and how hyped up the magazines wanted it, it is horrible.
The memory leaks, causing slowdown after half an hour. (This is to keep players from getting eyestrain because they have to stop playing! It's a feature!)
The graphics are not what is shown in any video. Landscape textures do not mesh properly, or they tear. NPCs that walk into walls or off cliffs. Bad hit-detection, so dragons bite your head off in one try, but your sword can stab them in the neck and the game acts like you missed because you were a centimeter away from the string-width hitbox.
Uninspired voice acting. (When an NPC being ripped apart goes 'Ow. Ow. Oh....darn..' like you simply poked him in the arm, it takes away from the game, ALLOT! Take notes and make sure you fire bad voice actors..out of a cannon..into the sun).
It is buggy. Like, there are virii out there that wish they were this buggy! To top it off, the company never made any bugfixes or patches, leaving it up to the few fans of the game to actually fix anything. (THAT truly make a player feel like The Sap).
So your friends learn from your mistake and you learn to never buy a game without a demo first.
Seriously, game companies. Throw us a bone, ok? Let us try before we buy. This way, we can see if our gaming rigs can run it (for those of us less tech-savvy, like me) and we can see if we like the gameplay or special ideas you guys put into your work.
Above all, stop treating gamers like dumb animals that you believe will chow down on mud, just because there is a steak somewhere in there.
Because, seriously, that's the vibe I get when I see a game released without a demo.
What ever happened to The Demo? Why did it fall by the wayside?
See, me and my gaming buddies have a rule; We never, EVER buy a game if it does not have a demo, or we can not play it somewhere first. Why? We don't want to get fleeced.
Let's face it, in game without a demo, you have a 50/50 shot of getting something YOU like. Not something some magazine writer likes. It would be like being placed before 2 Doors. You are told one leads to 'Wealth and Happiness' the other leads to 'Horrible Death' but you can't know which is which!
That's when I turn around and walk through the door marked 'Exit'. Sorry, I won't gamble.
When a game lacks a demo, you become one of two things:
The Private Eye:
You spend a lot of time looking at screenshots, watching commercials (provided you are not taking interest in an older game), and watching videos that show 2 seconds of in-game cutscenes and half a second of actual gameplay.
You read reviews that claim the game gets a '9.5!'. (Sorry but I do not believe something as complicated as a persons view on a game, based on so many different things, can be quantified as a number) And listen to it be hyped in magazines where it is not being reviewed so much as advertised. (Innovative! It lets you shoot bullets covered in fire AND acid that shoot lightening while singing a song you made in the intro!!)
The Sap:
You fall for all the hype without thinking about it. Or maybe it piques your interest after you do the study. Maybe it was in a bargain bin and you had a few extra dollars. So you pick up the game.
Suddenly, you want your $15 back.
Despite how pretty the box art was. How in-your-face the commercials were and how hyped up the magazines wanted it, it is horrible.
The memory leaks, causing slowdown after half an hour. (This is to keep players from getting eyestrain because they have to stop playing! It's a feature!)
The graphics are not what is shown in any video. Landscape textures do not mesh properly, or they tear. NPCs that walk into walls or off cliffs. Bad hit-detection, so dragons bite your head off in one try, but your sword can stab them in the neck and the game acts like you missed because you were a centimeter away from the string-width hitbox.
Uninspired voice acting. (When an NPC being ripped apart goes 'Ow. Ow. Oh....darn..' like you simply poked him in the arm, it takes away from the game, ALLOT! Take notes and make sure you fire bad voice actors..out of a cannon..into the sun).
It is buggy. Like, there are virii out there that wish they were this buggy! To top it off, the company never made any bugfixes or patches, leaving it up to the few fans of the game to actually fix anything. (THAT truly make a player feel like The Sap).
So your friends learn from your mistake and you learn to never buy a game without a demo first.
Seriously, game companies. Throw us a bone, ok? Let us try before we buy. This way, we can see if our gaming rigs can run it (for those of us less tech-savvy, like me) and we can see if we like the gameplay or special ideas you guys put into your work.
Above all, stop treating gamers like dumb animals that you believe will chow down on mud, just because there is a steak somewhere in there.
Because, seriously, that's the vibe I get when I see a game released without a demo.
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