This article just sort of ends without the expected detail the first paragraph was alluding to. I mean, it technically described the thing in the headline, but I would hardly call this an “article”.
Aftermath sometimes does short stuff, which is more like blog posts rather that articles. I, too, wish they elaborated on this topic and maype even interviewed someone.
Having skimmed through this article, the article actually sucks. Like, actually.
Why would game demos set unrealistic expectations? That’s only the case if they spent 90% of dev time in the first 10% of the game and use that as the demo. This happens, but this is bad design, this is not a case of a demo hurting a game.
I remember playing the Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker demo a long time ago and it did not spoil the story (which is a big aspect for MGS), it did not take away from the experience, and it introduced me to some of the fundamental mechanics of the game.
A more recent example is perhaps the demo of Enotria: Last Song. Do you think I know the lore and story just by playing the demo? No. Did it introduce me to the core mechanics of masks and a few other things? Yes. Was it good to get player feedback and fix bugs? Hell yeah. Sure, you might not like the game, but that doesn’t change the fact that the demo had a successful impact i.e. it gave both parties (us and the studio) a significantly better understanding.
Don’t put peak content in the demo and it will result in it actually playing like a demo.
Design the game with the demo in mind, don’t make it an afterthought. Demos are very valuable and I’m sure lots of gamers pirate games before buying them, instead of actually buying them, because 2 hours for a Steam refund just isn’t enough! I spent around 6 hours playing the Enotria demo (just for 1 complete playthrough). Why so many? I had to familiarise myself with the mechanics, switched between keyboard and mouse multiple times, tried to see why I was getting frame rate drops despite my RTX 4070 renderring at 1080p 120 fps.
**Game demos do not hurt a game! ** Abusing game demos as purely a form of marketing by making false promises or setting false expectations hurt the game.
This is not exclusive to a game either. Consider a recent release like Elden Ring, absolutely massive map, they did not try to over-sell it. They said it’s around 30 hours of content iirc. You can hurt this game with social media, with interviews, with false trailers, with many things.
TLDR; Angry old man starts raging about “back in my day we had game demoz”.
I wish more games had playable demos. Even after the game comes out, just rip part of it out and let me play it. It’s one thing to watch a gameplay video, it’s another thing entirely to try it out for yourself.
I get that in this case, the demo showed too much (giving the impression there would be more growth), and that was a disappointing experience, but I’d argue that’s an issue with the demo/game combo itself - it’s for a game that only takes a couple hours total, so it’s very limited in what it can do with a demo. It would be like a demo of stray (2 hours to get through the story) or tinykin (under 10 hours for 100%) both also very short games with very limited abilities. You can do a short teaser, but then people would complain it’s too short and whatever… it’s a no-win there, I think, because the author even says there’s a good story missed in the demo.
But if you have a demo of, for example, dysmantle, it doesn’t matter that the gameplay is exactly the same for 100 hours, and the only thing that changes is -what- you can smash… there’s some progression involved, but not much… it’s basically just smashing and exploring, and that’s all the demo would be. And that’s ok too, because holy SHIT is that repetition fun!
aftermath.site
Gorące