Sales and Demo's

Let me know how that works out for you. :wink:

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I think the general consensus here is that in today’s environment demos are pretty much irrelevant (and can negatively impact sales) due to the wealth of information that is available about a game (videos, reviews etc) once it has been released.

If you really want to provide a demo I’m more in favor of an approach which also tackles piracy at the same time, something like what Game Dev Tycoon did. They provided a copy of the game to torrent sites but made it so that at a certain point you run out of cash because every game you make gets pirated. This can be achieved in many games by making a boss impossible to kill etc.

I like this approach because it provides a demo to those who pirate the game in order to try it out, but also helps get the point across to people who pirate it and never intend to buy.

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In my time here Demos have gone from mandatory sales tools to physically hurting sales volume. I believe the rules for a demo is being harmful is shifting towards harmful, but still helpful in one specific scenario: A game that is NOT complex.

Basically what I have gleaned is the more complicated the product, and by proxy, the longer cycle to understanding the core mechanics, the more harmful a demo is. Take a game like a WW2 operational level strategy game and you can guarantee that a demo will be harmful. The reason is demo players do not take the same amount of time to understand the product as someone who spent money. In complex games you get out what you put in, oftentimes.

Simple games however, may still benefit. Especially casual games. How’s this match-3 different than that match-3? A short demo may be your only chance to get someone to understand how :slight_smile:

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Well I think we have a consensus here, thanks for everyone’s input.

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