Ben-DutkaAs some of you may have already heard, EA wants to try charging for lengthy game demos as part of their "premium downloadable content" plan. Unsurprisingly, this didn't go over well with gamers, but Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli has defended this idea.
In speaking to Develop , Yerli says free game demos will go the way of the dodo and added that he was currently unsure about a Crysis 2 demo. He calls free demos a "luxury" that is actually "prohibitively expensive" for the developer and that the "reality is that we might not see any free game demos in the long term." Now, it should probably be noted that EA just so happens to be the publisher for Crysis 2 so maybe it isn't surprising that Yerli would defend their plans. However, he still believes it has merit; in responding to the backlash, he said:
"I read a lot about this, and read about the backlash as well; people complaining that they would essentially be paying for a beta. I think EA’s strategy is interesting, overall. The thing is, every time we see a publisher doing something to improve the industry, making things more commercially viable and actually increasing the market, people instantly think this is only some money-hungry ploy."
We do have to agree with him there. There's a quick knee-jerk reaction amongst the gaming community that regards all such plans as rip-off schemes designed to take advantage of the "little person." It gets a little tiring hearing so many people complain bitterly about very small fees for something that, if it were a similar service in any other industry, you would most certainly pay. In short, it seems Yerli believes gamers are a touch spoiled (and a touch cheap), and in that, I have to agree with him to some extent.
As for EA's plan, he believes it just wasn't explained properly. He says that although it may appear one way on the surface, it's really "an attempt to salvage a problem:"
"The industry is still losing a lot of money to piracy as the market becomes more online-based. So it’s encouraging to see strategies outlined to combat this.
I think the whole issue needs to be explained in a better way, because there is good thinking behind EA’s plan. I understand why people are thinking that all EA wants to do is maximise profits out of the audience, but really, what it’s really trying to do is get investment back but while being as fair to the gamer as much as it can. Ultimately, it will be a better deal for the gamer."
And given the cost and "time pressure" required to release a quality demo, Yerli says it can be very difficult to deal with and he won't guarantee a demo for Crysis 2 . But now that he's said his piece, we'd be interested to hear what other developers have to say about this… Ninja Theory told everyone Heavenly Sword didn't sell well enough to warrant a sequel, and the game sold 1.5 million copies…to most designers with realistic expectations, that'd be a smash hit. So are Yerli's observations universal or is he in the minority in the dev crowd…?
Related Game(s): Crysis 2
And who said we needed demos so BADLY?!
I had 50 PS2 games and I WASN'T downloading demos at that time, I bought all those games regardless, I didn't need a demo to buy Uncharted 2. Its THIS generation that made it a norm to put up demos and I don't know about others but I personally NEVER asked for them.
There's NOTHING wrong with charging a small fee for demos but it's funny paying for something you didn't really ask for to begin with. Like Ben said, you're not allowed to read the first few pages of a book, but the storekeeper told you, you could read it and now she's charging you for it, wow! Wrong move…
Exactly, us consumers never ask for such things. But why do companies do it anyway? Perhaps to promote their stuff? and the fact that it has a positive effect on their sales? I mean if it affected their sales negatively, would they do it?…probably not.
I don't see what's so new about this. All business require some type of investment… duh. I personally think demos are like commercials on TV. Obviously, they both probably cost a lot (and are free to view/play), but in the end, it benefits them because they'll likely to bring in more customers as to if they didn't promote it.
If demos were so bad, surely companies would stop doing them already. We have to remember that business do what's best for them, not the consumers.
Crytek is a company that seems to believe in that running your mouth for attention get's you somewhere.
They seriously think they're that good. Besides graphics they've got nothing
Really? demos are just now becomeing relevant because you can download them whenever you want instead of having to buy a collection of them for $5 or subscribe to a magazine. If anything demos will become a more promenent way to advertise your game.
yeah i used to buy the playstation magazine because it had game demos packed with it. i would actually spend a few more bucks for a magazine with a demo disc if the disc had something i wanted a demo of.
I won't pay for a demo. Call me spoiled or cheap or whatever, but I bought most of my games off the strength of the demo, as I'm sure many people here have. If a game is good, a demo is just a way to get more people to try it and eventually buy it, so why charge for what is basically a form of advertisement? Gaming is already one of the more expensive hobbies out there, so it does irk me a little when these companies start trying to nickel-and-dime us.
I get what you're trying to say Ben but I mean paying for a demo is not something I would do. I mean I don't have a problem personally with the developers charging for a preview of their product but you won't catch me around downloading it. I have my own ways of using money sparingly. I'm not one to rent videogames or movies because I feel that I'm wasting money on them.
When I spend money, I like to own something. IMO when I spend money, I want a grand experience or something tangible. So paying to go to the movies with friends or a theme park is fine. However, when I pay to simply see something without the ability to see it for eternity and there's not exactly a great experience along with the decision for temporary satisfaction, I feel like I have just wasted the cost of the product I rented.
I also have to agree with the argument frylock made about sampling food in a mall or the other argument about commercials on television. In order for businesses to market and advertise their product, they're going to come out of pocket. Some businesses which have already established themselves as powerhouses in their given business territory don't really need to advertise much because people are anxiously anticipating a given business's products. However, the fact that these businesses are probably rewarded bountifully for their merchandise means that they have profits to dish out for advertisements anyway.
I'm not one to groan when free products are stabbed by price tags. Instead of overreacting to new developments I try to discover the reason behind the development. If the reason for the updated action is just and reasonable then I won't be angry about it. However, if the cause for the sudden change in marketing is unreasonable and is disguised by faulty means when the action is really taken for profit's sake, I find that to be intolerable.
Last edited by just2skillf00l on 4/17/2010 2:35:42 PM
I can't imagine having to pay for a demo, even an extended one at that. Isn't the whole concept to entice a player to want more so that they will be willing to shell out 60.00 for your game? Paying for a demo makes about as much sense if Sony or M$ decided to charge store patrons $$ for playing the consoles on display.
I'm against D/L material in general, but paying for a demo seems beyond me.
But here is an idea. If I did pay for a demo, then if I later bought the game, could I get a voucher or something to get my money back for the demo? That would at least make me feel better about having to pay for demos. And I think that would be a win-win situation for publisher and consumer.
SvenMD, yeah that's all well & good in theory, but……..
What happens if you pay $5 for a demo & don't like the game at all????
I can guarantee you won't get your $5 back!!!
And what if you've downloaded 30 demo's, but you only wind up liking 10 of them???
So now, you've just thrown $100 away just to find out those 20 out of the 30, just aren't your style, or up to par.
Here's an open letter to all gaming company's…..
You can call me cheap, and/or spoiled, but by doing so you've just insulted my intelligence.
And by doing so, it also shows me you don't just know what the words "educated consumer" means.
And if you won't/don't take the time to research exactly what that means, then you have no f*cking business at all trying to run a company that caters to consumer products.
Screw "payola" demos, and screw any company that puts out a "payola" demo!!!!!
Hopefully you didn't think I WANT to pay for demos, or that I ever will. I wont. If you could see my PS3 the only downloadable content that I have are FREE demos, and Flower, which I did pay for because it's a game…and a good one.
I don't agree with paying for demos, and I wont do it.
Just so you understand that we're on the same side. I was just trying to give a crappy publisher a second chance if they ever did decide to make demos cost money.
Sorry Ben but I think your cheese slid off your cracker on this one. Gamers usually have to be frugal and few to none will pay for a demo, in the long term it would be a better gamble to buy the games that reviewed well and we think we will like, and then the ones we could have had a shot at for free would be written off. That would be bad for the industry and gamers.
Games I got because of the Demo: Eternal Sonata, Afro Samurai, Killzone 2, Resistance 2, Folklore, Uncharted, inFamous, Heavenly Sword, Dead Space. I might have none of those without the demo because for one reason or another I was skeptical of all of them.
Like I said, I'm not saying anybody should or would pay for demos.
I'm simply saying there's cause to charge for them, that's all.
Just Cause to charge for them? lol I understand what you are saying but my tiny mind thinks it would be bad for business. And people who develop for systems that are easy to pirate must incur the wrath of that risk, it was foolish of him to bring that up as a reason for this.
Did you like Afro Samurai, World? I thought about picking that one up.
Yes I did, I suggest being a fan of the Anime first though. Otherwise you will be like "WTF is going on?"
It is flawed to be sure, but the artistry is to be praised, the music is awesome, the levels are challenging, there is some really cool stuff in there (like an aerial samurai battle) and you can slice anybody apart at ANY angle. I once took a slice at a guy's side, he backed off a bit and it just cut off his face.
Last edited by WorldEndsWithMe on 4/17/2010 5:02:01 PM
I never watched the Anime, but I did play the demo a while back and liked it. I went ahead and ordered it along with Heavenly Sword for my daughter.
"I once took a slice at a guy's side, he backed off a bit and it just cut off his face."
lol Never mind demoes, I'm buying Afro Samurai on the strength of that sentence. How much do I owe you for that, World?
Free of charge for a fellow PSXE member 🙂 Enjoy the game friends, I picked it up for $40 and felt it was worth it. You can probably find it cheaper now.
For the record, that did kill the guy. It's fun to hit them at different angles, and your schizophrenia induced imaginary friend pops up now and again to play "Body part poker" where you collect limbs by cutting them off.
Last edited by WorldEndsWithMe on 4/17/2010 6:37:55 PM
$18 on Amazon.
There's also a cause to put up free demos in the first place. I guess this is down to the point on which cause is better. I know companies didn't put up free demos because it would be better for us, than for them. The priority of business is themselves, not the consumers, ala Square Enix.
Now that I think about it, everything was fine about the free demos. There was never really problems being discussed about it. To me, it looks like they're trying to squeeze in an extra couple hundred thousand bucks to the millions of dollars they probably are already making from profit or whatever it is.
All I know is I'll never pay one red cent for a demo… The Day they start charging for all demos is the day I stop playing demos. I have a subscription to Gamefly so demos aren't a necessity for me.
And I would follow with you to Gamefly if they did this. That's kinda my point, it would drive business away ya know?
Now that I think about it, shouldn't Activision be publishing this game? They run their mouths like Wall-E Kotex.
Bobby's off trying to figure out how to sell trailers. Always one step ahead that bobby!
Crytek's like the little cunning weasel in the middle, trying to be the Godfather.
Had a lot to say, but it was all mean spirited. So I'll just say I think the video game industry would lose money from this move. And thus it would be counter-productive.
The reason why you can't compare books and movies with Video-games is simple. The first 2 are passive activities. While video-games is an active activity.
You can get a pretty good idea what to expect from a movie by watching a commercial of it, the same can be said about a book and its back-cover's introduction text.
With games, you can't have an idea how the gameplay and controls are (the active inputs that are completely absent from books and movies) just by looking at a commercial.
I think the nature of the medium justifies the need for demos.
Last edited by n/a on 4/17/2010 5:42:51 PM
Off topic: just felt like posting something I haven't been online for a while…I'm glad to see nothing changed!!
EVERYONE JOIN MY REVOLUTION!
Stop downloading demos and let them make the full game complete and be reviewed before a making a purchase if passes on your score level. I think demos is a waste of time for developers because the game is never the same after the demo has been played. The developers should use the extra time to make the game better and have more people test it. I will never pay for a demo. I will wait for the review or just play another game with a score that passes at my level. I think demos should only be made if the company wants to spend their money on it. Making people pay for a demo is just wrong. If the company doesn't have the extra capital to make a demo for free than they shouldn't make one in the first place.
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Exactly, throw away that broken 360, and buy a PS3.
They'd steal the eye out of your head..
I didnt read it all but id say that developers that know their game is THE sh**, we will still see demoes for them games.
Last edited by Ben Dutka PSXE on 4/17/2010 9:21:30 PM
I know this is a bit off topic, but all of this talk about having to pay for stuff got me wondering if Sony plans on making us pay for the adobe flash player 10 update on our browser as part of their premium subscription. It just seems like they have been stripping away features lately with the removal of Linux capabilities (never installed it so no biggie) and now no flash player update. I could be wrong about this, and I know that the browser is separate from PSN, but I can't help but be leery.
Do video game publishers honestly believe they're doing their customer a favor by releasing a demo? The target market for the game they're making should be SO grateful that they should pay if they want to sample this awe inspiring game?
This has got to be one of this industries biggest jokes. Nice one EA. Hopefully all those folks from IW will teach you a thing or two about demos. They're not needed!
go ahead EA see what happens to your sales, just dont come crying to me when your games are selling like sh*t!
99.99999999999999% of the games EA publish are pure utter crap, so they need demos for their games.
no demo is automatically a miss when it comes to EA, so do yourself a favor, pull your head out of your a$$, and start thinking about your fans and not about your back pocket!
right so the 120 bucks im paying for every game is not enough!?
honestly and they wonder why people pirate their games.
honestly, wondering that is like wondering why your fired after you slept with the bosses wife and trashed his car…….
games died the year money grubbing bastards like EA rolled in.
why cant we go back to the old days where games were made for a passion, not as a cash cow?
You didn't like Dead Space? I hear good things about the BFBC series as well. I prefer MW2 personally but hey thats just me.
"99.99999999999999% of the games EA publish are pure utter crap, so they need demos for their games."
surely if the game is crap playing the demo wouldnt help that at all i think ea have had a load of good games recently….mirrors edge, dead space, bad company
those are the exception to the rule.
thats why they need a demo because if they release a demo than if its good people will buy it.
everyone i know dont buy EA games unless they have played the demo and liked it, no demo = no purchase.
It may have just been me, but I didn't really enjoy Bad Company 2.
I like the single-player, but I absolutely hate the multiplayer.
Again, most likely just me.
In my opinion, Modern Warfare 2 was better. Not only because I'm basically playing MW1 with new maps, but because I simply loved MW1.
Bad Company 2 in my opinion was a little bit, uh. How do I say this? Big!
I mean, each map I played I had no clue where to go. I ended up following the sounds of gun fire in the distance, only to realize it is coming from behind me now. Huge game!
It's extremely hard when I spawn at the beginning of the game. It's like half my team goes left, and half goes right! Who should I follow? Left, or right? I end up simply going straight and get lost.
You know what? Forget what I just said! I Love Bad Company 2! I Can Make Things Go Boom!
ha, go play MAG now theres large maps!
i preferred the sp and mp modes of the original bad company, EA tried to make it more like MW.
BFBC is still the best game EA has released this gen, by far!
it helps if you stick to your squad and follow the objectives, ur squad is colored green, other team mates blue.
Honestly, the single player on BFBC2 is horrible, its the multiplayer that makes this one of my fav shooters in very long time
All this talk about the cost of making demos has me thinking… What cost?
GoWIII demo? Was part of the game that sold a million copies.
Heavy Rain demo? Part of the game that sold a million.
Deadspace demo? Again, the entire do was IN THE FULL GAME.
What part of releasing a demo costs money? The chopping part or the PSN/Live fee part?
It costs the developer money to create the demo and the game from which the demo came from. First, they had to come up with all of the R&D to make the game. Then, possibly during production, they had a seperate team work on what would be the demo to introduce people to the game. They had to spend additional man hours cleaning up, deactivating features, modifying the title screen and creating an end screen to show that the demo has been completed. To say that this doesn't cost the developers money is just plain wrong. I think some publishers actually do this work in order to increase gamer interest. I thought I read somewhere that once a game is completed, the publisher decides if they want to create a demo because they have to pay the bandwidth costs to Sony and Microsoft.
I do believe that if companies go the route of charging for demos, we may see an increase in game rental memberships. I'm sure that many would pay for demos if they are truly interested in the game and many more would gladly pay the fee if that fee could be used towards a future purpose. Think about that. Let's say you shell out 4.99 to play a 45 minute section, that is from a significant part of the finalized version of the game where you get to try out many moves and features that help to engross you in the experience that they are trying to create. You like it and decide you want to purchase it. They create an email feature where you are sent a voucher worth that 4.99 with a unique code and can take that with you to the store. If you have an iPhone or something similar, that email has the barcode that the retailer can scan when you purchase the product. If they came up with a model like that, who would really complain aside from the cheap ass ignorant people who really don't care unless they are placed on a throne and treated like royalty?
And if you didn't like the game? Well, they generate a questionaire at the end asking you for feedback regarding the experience. Maybe they'll give you some credit points for filling out the survey and over time you accumulate vouchers good for future purchases. If the companies can come up with incentives to keep the buyers interested, it could work out greatly. I know it is extra work but it would pay off immensely if the companies make the consumers feel like their opinions are wanted.
Last edited by fluffer nutter on 4/18/2010 12:48:51 PM
I appreciate you trying to answer my question. You've obviously given it some thought. I however cannot agree with most of what you've written as I do not see a single drop of value in a demo.
I did not need a demo to tell me that I was going to buy Dragon Age, Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2, MGS4, FFXIII and many others.
Acting like demos are SO costly that they are not worth the developers time is nonsense. Fine. Don't make a demo. Spend that budget on TV ads. Do it! But how often did we see TV ads for Crysis?
Then look at the huge games that DO have TV ads. Are they going to complain about that next? "Oh look, we're showing you what's in the game before you've bought it. You owe us!" Of course not. That would be nonsense.
If devs and/or publishers are losing money making demos, then stop making them. Try your luck by releasing a game with no free way for a customer to try before he buys. But charging for a demo? Charging for an incomplete piece of software? Dream on.
You don't agree that it costs money to produce demos? Really? That's pretty foolish. No one said that you needed demos. You seem to have a predetermined thought process that doesn't allow yourself to take in additional information and then modify your answers accordingly.
And I didn't place any thought in my previous response or in any, for that matter. There's no need to think about things like that when they're already understood from the implications.
Last edited by fluffer nutter on 4/18/2010 8:08:05 PM
Fluff, of course the production of the demo costs money on some level. Just arriving at their studio in the morning and turning on their lights cost the studio money. But just how much money does the production of the demo cost? Unless we know for sure, then we certainly can't give an informed answer. Until then, it is all just oppinion and hyperbole.
I would imagine (again, just a guess) the majority of the cost comes from fees from PSN and Live. The publishers should go argue with them about the costs, not come to us.
I thank you for your response regarding the cost of making a demo and then you attack me like some kind of raving lunatic? What's your problem?! Why don't you try reading what I actually wrote and stop putting words in my mouth!
What I said was that I don't agree with most of what you've written. Most of what you wrote was about how people would not object to paying for a demo if it lead to some kind of perk when buying the full retail game. That is what MOST of what your post was about.
My reply to that was that demos don't hold any value to the customer so they most certainly WOULD object. We live in a consumer world where retailers offer pre-order incentives. FREE, pre-order incentives. Why would I pay for a demo of a game that I may or may not like in order to get some kind of dlc or credit?
Anyway, since you admittedly don't give your comments any thought I'll leave it at that. You can carry on misunderstanding people now.