Outmodemoed

Lately I've been running across a word unheard since olden days in gameademic circles: demo.

 

Y'see kids, back in times of yore momma when the floppiest of di(s)ks battled the slick seedy-ROM for control of the world (wide web) game publishers would release free product demos to give their customers a taste of the good stuff before sinking fifty dollars into what may or may not have been shovelware. It was a risky way to advertise onself though. Give too little of a free sample and you may not be showcasing your strong points. Give too much and you may be showing your weaknesses. In some cases companies included so much in a demo that even well-impressed potential customers would feel no need to play the full version. The demo for Heroes of Might and Magic 2, for instance, was basically The Game, with the full purchase feeling like a glorified map pack.

So publishers gradually moved on to preorders, glitzier teaser videos, microtransactions, years-long "beta" versions a.k.a. selling vaporware, and other marketing strategies. Particularly, since the late 2000s, old school expansion packs gave way to the unwholesome trend of titles releasing as skeletal, content starved visions of what might be, only to spawn verminous, dozen-strong broods of five dollar DLC packs. By a couple of years ago, this trend had progressed to the point where, Paradoxically, games at their official launch date became little more than $50 demos.

 

I have to wonder at the true success rate of this strategy. After all, a paid demo can run into the same pitfalls as the freebie version: giving customers so little as to disgust them into cutting their losses (sunk cost fallacy aside) or so much as to display the extent of your more irrevocably noxious design choices rendering further development moot. In addition, as you gradually condition your public to expect your products to remain incomplete until two years after release, you merely train them to hold off on buying anything until after you go bankrupt - completing the work of the old "wait until it's patched" caveat.

In such a climate, releasing free demos may once again become viable. If customers will assume any first showing to be a mere demo of itself anyway, you may as well beat your competitors to the punch.