No Watch Dogs Demo

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In general, I am very leery of games that do not have a demo these days. Considering the fact that Watch Dogs missed its huge next-gen console launch due to delays, I am not buying the "demos take time" excuse. What are your thoughts on games without demos?

Answering a question on Twitter, Jonathan Morin tweets that there will be no demo version of Watch Dogs, Ubisoft's upcoming open-world hacking game. He says: "They are no demo planned before release," adding an explanation: "Doing Demos take time, the focus is on the game. You will see more footage before release." Thanks GameSpot.
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Making a demo is not trivial but it also does not demand new or different content. A demo requires a limited deployment of assets you have, cut off at the right time which any decent content system will do ez pz.

No demo no sale, I say. There is no valid excuse not to have a demo.
 
Making good games takes time, too. Judging by the games released in the last eight years or so there's a chronic and crippling time shortage in the game development industry these days.
 
Demos of great but I am leery of all the "early release" games.

With a few exceptions I won't buy a game until I read at least two reviews, let alone before the game is even finished.

Back in the day beta testers would get paid, or at least get to play the game for free, now they pay to beta test... ...what???
 
I've only found a couple games on Xbone that off demo's, and they were like Lego games. None of the big releases have them. However, what Xbone does have is the ability to record gameplay and upload it. So while I can't play the game myself I can at least see 30 second clips of people playing random sections of the game (after the game is released of course).

It's not great, but they at least throw you a little bit of an xbone.
 
Of course not. They don't want people drawing the conclusion that the difference from target renders is easy to notice.

Not surprised by this at all.
 
Demos don't matter to me. What matters is multiple reviews.
 
Based on the changes to the game I have seen, this game smells funny. Not good funny either. Stay away.
 
Demos are dead and have been for a long time. This is neither unusual nor unexpected. Pruning down your game to a demo takes time and resources during the "Holy shit it's almost time to ship" crunch time when you need all hands on deck. And people have moved on to things like Lets Plays and like-minded YouTubers to figure out whether to buy a game or not anyway.

I'll trust someone who has played the full game over a cherry-picked demo any day of the week.
 
Granted I was going to get this game anyways so not having demo isn't a big deal.

For me demos don't usually affect my decision on getting a game. I can only think recently I was on the fence about getting Ninja Turtles out of the shadows. I played the demo for about 3 minutes and decided I wasn't getting that garbage game.
 
I didn't realize games still had demos. I've been relying on reviews. It Yahtzee says a game isn't the worst thing in the universe it must be golden!

In all seriousness, if you read a few decent review sites you can get a good idea. Look reviews of games you hate and see what the reviewer said, if the review says it's crap the reviewer both thinks like you and is honest and they're the ones you want to read.

I've taken to buying games a bit after launch to see how they're received first.
 
Don't pre-order and wait until you've seen enough gameplay video or word-of-mouth from other gamers to make your decision.
 
djoye said:
Don't pre-order and wait until you've seen enough gameplay video or word-of-mouth from other gamers to make your decision.
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This was always the best choice even back when we had demos, to be honest.
 
Given what I know about this game, I don't know how they could create a demo really.

Demos are fine for a game where you play a single level or something like that, but for a huge open world game you don't have demos. There wasn't a far cry 3 demo, GTA 5 demo, skyrim demo....

The only way they could have a demo would be basically to make a brand new game that has nothing to do with the actual game but has you do some of the stuff in a watered down degree.

Like others said, not a lot of games have demos now.
 
old old school: here's some shareware, check it out, give it to anyone everyone and if you like it, buy it

old school: heres a time limited demo, buy our game!

new school: buy our game, we won't let you try it, we won't let you return it, we won't even show you real video of what it actually looks like before you fork over your cash. Fuck you Pay me.
 
collegeboy69us said:
old old school: here's some shareware, check it out, give it to anyone everyone and if you like it, buy it

old school: heres a time limited demo, buy our game!

new school: buy our game, we won't let you try it, we won't let you return it, we won't even show you real video of what it actually looks like before you fork over your cash. Fuck you Pay me.
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Alternative new school: pirate the game, play it, pay for it if you like it.
 
melteye said:
Alternative new school: pirate the game, play it, pay for it if you like it.
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bull shit. you show me somebody that pirates games and then actually pays full retail price for them because they liked it.

the method used by most people is pirate the game, play it and that is where it ends.
 
Exavior said:
bull shit. you show me somebody that pirates games and then actually pays full retail price for them because they liked it.

the method used by most people is pirate the game, play it and that is where it ends.
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Yes... I'm going to direct you to someone... of course. :p
 
Exavior said:
bull shit. you show me somebody that pirates games and then actually pays full retail price for them because they liked it.

the method used by most people is pirate the game, play it and that is where it ends.
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I like how you say no one does that and then go on to say "most" don't... which implies that some do.
 
That's okay, Watch Dogs is just Assassin's Creed: Baseball Hat and Cellphone edition
 
Demos can be very difficult for the publisher. If your game title has fancy graphics at the expense of gameplay, people may get totally satisfied just playing the demo. Happened to me with far cry and many other games - I got bored to the game just passing the demo and didn't want to buy the actual game.

If the demo has 2-3 maps even, the full game is just going to be a repetition of those with slight variations, hardly reason to pay money for it. The access to online gameplay is the only incentive for me to pay for a release version actually. Offline games just bore the shizzle out of me.
 
I don't need a demo, I just wait for some chump to pay $60 and then rage about the shit game on the forums.
 
Just make it so that the publisher are reliable for shitty products that don't work and a sold on hype/lies.

Seems like software is the only place you can get away with selling products that don't live up to claims or simply don't work as intented.
 
Exavior said:
for a huge open world game you don't have demos.
...

The only way they could have a demo would be basically to make a brand new game that has nothing to do with the actual game but has you do some of the stuff in a watered down degree.
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Umm, on what grounds are you making that claim? I mean, I can see two quite obvious options:

  1. Let the player go where they want and do what they want for a limited amount of time, i.e. the demo ends at, say, one hour of play and then kicks the player back to the menu. They can start again and play another hour as many times as they like but they'll never get very far.
  2. Restrict the player to a small area of the world with barriers and end the game after completing a certain mission.

Obviously, the developer has to figure out what assets can reasonably be cut out to reduce the size of the download, but other than that, what's the problem? They can even subtly gate the player into the "starting area" by making their chances of survival beyond a certain boundary close to zero, e.g. not allowing them to gain many weapons/items/skills/levels, or by removing the transportation required to progress further.

It used to be the case that studios were proud to put out a demo because they were confident in the quality of their product and knew that they could snare extra customers by giving them a short but addictive taste. I can't remember how many times I played through the original Metal Gear Solid demo, testing out different routes and strategies, and I went on to buy the limited edition premium package at release.

Nowadays, there's so much shit being pushed out the door before it's fit for consumption that a demo would just be an embarrassment and they are instead forced to try and milk as many pre-orders as they can with flashy (and often irrelevant) CGI teaser trailers and idiotic pre-order bonuses before people find out how terrible the game is and tell all their friends not to buy it. Consequently, I now never buy games until there are a number of good reviews out, and even then I usually wait for a Steam sale unless I'm already a big fan of a previous game in a series.

If there was no demo of The Stanley Parable I certainly wouldn't have bought it, but because of the demo the developer gained a customer and I'm very pleased with my purchase.
 
Demos have a higher chance of losing customers rather than gaining them. You are more likely to get angry at a demo and not buy the full game than play a demo and be perfectly happy.
 
xIronCrossx said:
Demos have a higher chance of losing customers rather than gaining them. You are more likely to get angry at a demo and not buy the full game than play a demo and be perfectly happy.
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Are you suggesting that examples such as the MoH:AA and CoD4:MW demos led to more lost sales than new customers? Because they led to day 1 purchases for me...

I might agree if you had said "Bad demos have a higher chance of losing customers rather than gaining them" because given that a lot of current AAA titles are terrible, it's not really possible for them to release a good demo *cough* Colonial Marines *cough*
 
Do you recall demos being poorly optimized?
Do you recall demos not running on some computers?

The FEAR series was one in particular that comes to mind.

So many people were mad over the demo not running....essentially because at the time the requirements were just too steep....that the game probably lost customers.

The release was much better and ran very well, but releasing a demo that doesn't work is probably way worse than not doing so.

I just wait for reviews.
 
Steve said:
In general, I am very leery of games that do not have a demo these days. Considering the fact that Watch Dogs missed its huge next-gen console launch due to delays, I am not buying the "demos take time" excuse. What are your thoughts on games without demos?
Click to expand...

If I can't try it before I buy it I probably won't. :rolleyes:
 
No way i'm pre-ordering this one. I'll let everybody else "demo" it for me.
 
The whole reason demos are no longer released is because they can lead to lost sales. If a person plays a free demo and does not like the game, that is a lost sale. If no demo is provided, then the person has to buy the game. If they don’t like it, then the customer suffers the loss instead of the game publisher. So there is no business sense in releasing a demo. However, I do believe that if demos are released, it will reduce piracy.

There are three type of software pirates:
1: Download in protest of the DRM used.
Motivation: Publisher included controversial draconian DRM
2: Download for “Try before you buy.”
Motivation: Publisher did not release a demo
3: Download simply because you don’t want to pay for it.
Motivation: Consumer does not want to pay
 
melteye said:
I like how you say no one does that and then go on to say "most" don't... which implies that some do.
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I meant that as most people just pirate games.

Geryon said:
Umm, on what grounds are you making that claim? I mean, I can see two quite obvious options:

  1. Let the player go where they want and do what they want for a limited amount of time, i.e. the demo ends at, say, one hour of play and then kicks the player back to the menu. They can start again and play another hour as many times as they like but they'll never get very far.
  2. Restrict the player to a small area of the world with barriers and end the game after completing a certain mission.

Obviously, the developer has to figure out what assets can reasonably be cut out to reduce the size of the download, but other than that, what's the problem? They can even subtly gate the player into the "starting area" by making their chances of survival beyond a certain boundary close to zero, e.g. not allowing them to gain many weapons/items/skills/levels, or by removing the transportation required to progress further.

It used to be the case that studios were proud to put out a demo because they were confident in the quality of their product and knew that they could snare extra customers by giving them a short but addictive taste. I can't remember how many times I played through the original Metal Gear Solid demo, testing out different routes and strategies, and I went on to buy the limited edition premium package at release.

Nowadays, there's so much shit being pushed out the door before it's fit for consumption that a demo would just be an embarrassment and they are instead forced to try and milk as many pre-orders as they can with flashy (and often irrelevant) CGI teaser trailers and idiotic pre-order bonuses before people find out how terrible the game is and tell all their friends not to buy it. Consequently, I now never buy games until there are a number of good reviews out, and even then I usually wait for a Steam sale unless I'm already a big fan of a previous game in a series.

If there was no demo of The Stanley Parable I certainly wouldn't have bought it, but because of the demo the developer gained a customer and I'm very pleased with my purchase.
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You are aware that you really aren't disagreeing with my statement about what is needed for a demo. If you spend time adding fake blocks into the game and creating a starting area you have done what I said and basically made a new game area since that isn't in the game already.

Any type of time limit or even a locked down area will be cracked and people will then have the full game from the demo. Trying to remove stuff from a massive open world game requires time and effort and might break things or might not even be possible.

My claims are made on that grounds of what I stated, you don't see demos for open world games. There was no GTA 5 demo, no Skryim demo, don't think there have been any Saints Row demos, no Far Cry 3 demo, no fall out demos.
 
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