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Why do Japanese developers still believe in demos?

R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
It seems people have been down on demos for the last few years, saying that they usually hurt game sales more than help them, since they can turn someone off of a game just as quickly as they can sell someone on a game. Then there's the resources a demo siphons from development of the full release. So it seems publishers have decided to not take the risk and just let their main marketing campaigns do all the work.

I think it's more accurate to say however that only big western AAA developers have given up on demos. Everyone else, specifically indie developers, PC developers, and especially Japanese developers still do them. In fact Japanese developers seemed to put more and more time into demos over the last few years.

I just finished the Bravely Default demo which took me over seven hours. I hear Square Enix actually released like three demos for the game in Japan. If I recall pretty much every game Platinum released for PS3 and 360 had a demo (except maybe Anarchy Reigns). Capcom released not one but two demos for Resident Evil 6. Nintendo has released demos for a lot of its 3DS games. And so-on. They also seem to commonly write text/dialogue and scenarios unique to demos. The entirety of the Bravely Default demo isn't even in the retail game. It's like they've positioned demos as a part of the actual marketing campaign, and even as entirely separate projects, the extreme end of the spectrum being stuff like Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (the latter of which basically funded development of the full release, like a AAA Early Access).

What's the difference in thinking here? I think it's just part of how Japan hasn't caught up on western gaming trends, both good and bad.
 
Maybe the japanese prefer to let the gamers decide about their game by actually putting a portion of it in their hand, and let the quality do the talking instead of convincing them through millions of dollars in marketing?
 
ArtHands said:
Maybe the japanese prefer to let the gamers decide about their game by actually putting a portion of it in their hand, and let the quality do the talking instead of convincing them through millions of dollars in marketing?
Click to expand...

if the BD NA demo thread is anything to go by... Its backfiring
 
Square Enix and Japanese publishers seem to like to generate hype in odd ways. They always announce even the most trivial of releases, like mobile games, with a dedicated website and mysterious dates. I guess hype is still an important factor in selling these games.
 
Maybe the Japanese developers have different data on the effectiveness of demos due to the nature of the games they send out demos for?

I mean if you have an 8 hour AAA game and send out a two hour demo, it makes no sense. But if you have a 40 hour RPG and give players a 6 hour taste of how the game plays, then you've barely given away anything.

I know that in the last year, I've bought Bravely Default and Metal Gear Rising because of the demos. Skipped Project X Zone, though. That was a bit TOO high concept for me.
 
Because it DOES seem to help, look at what happened with Recettear.

"Dice attributes the game's success to two factors. The first was the creation of a fully playable game demo, giving players a sampling of the complete game. Their motivation for creating the demo followed from Epic Megagames and id Software in the early 1990s, who would provide a small episodic section of the full game within the free demo. Through Steam, 40% of the players that tried the demo went on to purchase the full game, a number considered "ridiculous" by Dice who claims most demos only convert roughly 10% of the players to the full game. The second factor in Recettear's success was viral-like word-of-mouth for the game. While Dice and Light-Williams had promoted the game in selected online forums, they recognized that the spread of reviews for the game on other forums drew in large numbers of players."

- People try the demo
- They like it, they buy it and they tell their friends about it
- ????
- Profit

The point is though that you must have a really good demo that not only gives a player the idea of what the game will be like, but also makes them crave for more. Which I think Recettear did perfectly.
 
Do they? Seems they're no better than the west, if not worse; I rarely play demos for JP games.

Hell, I'm pretty sure a good portion of the reason BD's demo is significant is because the genre almost never sees demos.

I guess I could've missed a bunch? Only other one that comes to mind is the demo for Ninokuni.
 
I love demos, speaking as a consumer. In fact I often find myself wishing there were more of them. I bought Arkham City because of a demo, and would probably not be nearly as interested in Revengeance PC had I not played the demo on PS3.

Edit: Kingdoms of Amalur is another game that I haven't bought yet, but when I do it will be solely because of the demo. It is especially clear in this case, as that game is often brought up in a negative light.
 
Demos are great, allow the gamer to make a more informed purchase

noone is fucking down on demos other than those devs and publishers who make shit games with big marketing budgets
 
PSGames said:
Haven't tried it yet but it's that bad?
Click to expand...
no

it's not bad at all. I think people assumed the game was easy so that's what they expected going in. Then they found the game wasn't going to hold their hand.

the demo explained the basics for the battles and exploration. after that the player was left to discover the nuances of the battle system on their own.
 
Think demos are a bad idea when the game is iterative and a known good. There is no reason to make a demo for the new call of duty, youre just going to kill sales. If you're making an indie game, obscure, or niche mechanics then a demo is a huge bonus. Lots of people are interested but scared to pull the trigger, and if they try the demo and like it they will buy.
 
Tagyhag said:
Because it DOES seem to help, look at what happened with Recettear.

"Dice attributes the game's success to two factors. The first was the creation of a fully playable game demo, giving players a sampling of the complete game. Their motivation for creating the demo followed from Epic Megagames and id Software in the early 1990s, who would provide a small episodic section of the full game within the free demo. Through Steam, 40% of the players that tried the demo went on to purchase the full game, a number considered "ridiculous" by Dice who claims most demos only convert roughly 10% of the players to the full game. The second factor in Recettear's success was viral-like word-of-mouth for the game. While Dice and Light-Williams had promoted the game in selected online forums, they recognized that the spread of reviews for the game on other forums drew in large numbers of players."

- People try the demo
- They like it, they buy it and they tell their friends about it
- ????
- Profit

The point is though that you must have a really good demo that not only gives a player the idea of what the game will be like, but also makes them crave for more. Which I think Recettear did perfectly.
Click to expand...

Did DICE actually respond to the Recettear figure? And DICE probably has a much larger demograhphic sample than something like Recettear.

I think another difference with indie games is that since they can't really afford massive marketing campaigns, the most cost-effective way to get the word out about their game is sometimes a demo.

Lastly, I really do think the issue is that few people have really looked at the art of making a good demo. A lot of the Japanese developers I mentioned seem to go way beyond just doing a vertical slice of the game, almost to the point of creating an original miniature game specifically for sampling the larger game. Some like Bravely Default even put content in the demo that can carry over to the full game. Another interesting tactic is what Patapon did -- basically let people download the first level for free, then carry that save data into the full game.

Inorigo said:
Do they? Seems they're no better than the west, if not worse; I rarely play demos for JP games.

Hell, I'm pretty sure a good portion of the reason BD's demo is significant is because the genre almost never sees demos.

I guess I could've missed a bunch? Only other one that comes to mind is the demo for Ninokuni.
Click to expand...

Yeah you kinda did. Etrian Odyssey had a robust demo. Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2 had demos (though the first was Japan-only). It actually seems like most of Square Enix's big releases get demos. All the Yakuza games get demos, etc.
 
elementalsin said:
if the BD NA demo thread is anything to go by... Its backfiring
Click to expand...
Doesn't matter to them. The demo served its main purpose of helping people to make a more informed decision on the purpose, even if the purpose means ending up not buying the game.
 
The Bravely Default demo is a lot of fun. Impressions in the demo thread are pretty positive, but the demo is hard and can leave you clueless if you don't closely pay attention to all the info prompts.

I think we don't see demos for a lot of AAA Western titles anymore because they want them to seem like "events" and want people to be so starved for the game that they immediately buy it. I think they assume that a demo could lose more sales than it would gain, since if the demo is bland or boring then that's a ton of sales lost right there. However for smaller titles with not a lot of marketing, they need demos to push people off the fence or bring awareness to the game.
 
Mugaaz said:
Think demos are a bad idea when the game is iterative and a known good. There is no reason to make a demo for the new call of duty, youre just going to kill sales. If you're making an indie game, obscure, or niche mechanics then a demo is a huge bonus. Lots of people are interested but scared to pull the trigger, and if they try the demo and like it they will buy.
Click to expand...

Actually Call of Duty games tend to have post-release demos, at least they did up until Modern Warfare 3. Perhaps more AAA developers should do that after the initial front-loaded sales wear off.
 
RedSwirl said:
Did DICE actually respond to the Recettear figure? And DICE probably has a much larger demograhphic sample than something like Recettear.
Click to expand...

Andrew Dice is half of the 2 man team who translated Recettear and brought it to the western market.
 
h#shdem0n said:
I love demos, speaking as a consumer. In fact I often find myself wishing there were more of them. I bought Arkham City because of a demo, and would probably not be nearly as interested in Revengeance PC had I not played the demo on PS3.

Edit: Kingdoms of Amalur is another game that I haven't bought yet, but when I do it will be solely because of the demo. It is especially clear in this case, as that game is often brought up in a negative light.
Click to expand...

That demo is a perfect example of why not to release demos. It was INCREDIBLY buggy and pissed a lot of potential gamers off.

I say that as someone who played that demo like three or four times in the two weeks before the game actually released, and someone who nearly platinumed the game. Demos have a ton of potential to win gamers over, but they can easily, easily lose them as well.
 
I think it's a good thing when a demo puts somebody off. it was not put together properly some games don't deserve my money.
 
I hope they will never stop believing in them then.
I've enjoyed the hell of Japanese demos during the past two years and bought games like BD and VLR when they first came out thanks to the demos.
I also love the recent (?) trend of putting the game's prologue out as a demo and enabling the player to transfer the save data to the full version of the game, as seen in God Eater 2, Soul Sacrifice, Zero no Kiseki Evolution etc.
 
I rarely demo console games, but I won't make a PC purchase without one. It's just as likely to turn me off as not, but at least it offers the chance.
 
Bravely Default and Etrian Odyssey 4 are examples of AMAZING demos.


I also should mention the Stanley Parable demo, go play that if you haven't done so.
 
without demos I would have missed out on Dragons Dogma....

and that demo sucked in retrospect.'


If I had my way every game would have a demo....it is a great way to try out games you aren't super sold on.
 
Demos are great. I love it when developers/publishers give me a chance to check out a game for free. I don't know if they help a game's sales but they must have some effect since. If you look at the 3ds eshop a lot of developers are making sure to include a demo for their games. I don't think they would go through the trouble if they had strong evidence that it actually hurts sales.
 
Mik317 said:
without demos I would have missed out on Dragons Dogma....

and that demo sucked in retrospect.'


If I had my way every game would have a demo....it is a great way to try out games you aren't super sold on.
Click to expand...

Yeah, for a limited demo it actually sold me the game. The large monster combat is just something you didn't get in any other game at the time.
 
I was just thinking of this idea about demos yesterday and then playing the BD demo made me think about it again before I saw this thread.

I think demos are a great source of advertising a game, if more development went into making good demos, I think it could be more effective than advertising alone. If part of the marketing budget of games is allocated to that development, I think that is a worthy trade.

It definitely seem like it's difficult to make the perfect demo. Some game demos have turned me off (sometimes for games I end up liking), others have sort of satisfied my urge to play (even to where I may play a demo a lot but am just not interested in buying the full game), but there are demos that get me intrigued enough to play the full demo and go on to play the full game. I liked that the Bravely Default demo is tied into the full game with bonuses while also giving an experience that is made for the demo. It gives me incentive to not just play the demo but to get the game (which I was already planning on buying but with another JRPG, Denpamen, having my demo experience carry over helped push me over the edge to decide to buy the full game).

What I was thinking about yesterday was how come no one has tried the Dead Rising 2 paid demo model again? I don't know if it was successful for Capcom, it personally didn't make me interested enough to buy the full game, but I was satisfied with my purchase since it was almost like DLC that came out before the game, and I think that is a something that can offer people enough of a taste to want to purchase a full game. The free2play model has some of those same techniques to entice people to pay for the full game.

Demos shouldn't necessarily all become paid demos especially since I'm not always sure I'd even like a game at all, but there are still interesting ways to show people what your game is about while still keeping them interested/entertained enough to want to pay for the game. I hope to continue to see more of it.

If your gameplay isn't interesting, a demo probably won't be a benefit for the consumer or the publisher.
 
Well, it probably doesn't help that in cases like XBL it seems they simply didn't think or actively didn't want people to be able to save and import progress in a demo, closest thing you get is if you bought an XBLA game midway through, and implementing those systems in Steam and PSN doesn't seem to really work out well. Is it still like that on Xbox One? For that matter are there many test examples for it?

It's why I hate standardizing and limiting options when the ideas aren't fundamentally bad (iOS admittedly shows what happens when you go all the way), and Nintendo isn't innocent there with their mandated usage limit for demos. Having the option's fine for developers that WANT it, but what if they don't care? What if it actively gets in the way (this may arguably be the case for Bravely Default)? I guess that's admittedly preferable to simply killing any potential outright like Microsoft did though, Sony enabled progress to carry over from Tearaway's demo to the full game and that was a pleasant surprise.
Mashin Haters said:
japanese devs know how to make better demos than western devs.

anyone else agree??
Click to expand...
When I think about it, I think it's more that because most Western devs focus on Xbox those aforementioned restrictions actively stunted them. You couldn't make a long term demo you could freely save in, you couldn't import progress over, and the closest we ever got was Dead Rising 2 Case Zero which was more a demo/prologue you could buy.
 
Eusis said:
Well, it probably doesn't help that in cases like XBL it seems they simply didn't think or actively didn't want people to be able to save and import progress in a demo, closest thing you get is if you bought an XBLA game midway through, and implementing those systems in Steam and PSN doesn't seem to really work out well. Is it still like that on Xbox One? For that matter are there many test examples for it?

It's why I hate standardizing and limiting options when the ideas aren't fundamentally bad (iOS admittedly shows what happens when you go all the way), and Nintendo isn't innocent there with their mandated usage limit for demos. Having the option's fine for developers that WANT it, but what if they don't care? What if it actively gets in the way (this may arguably be the case for Bravely Default)? I guess that's admittedly preferable to simply killing any potential outright like Microsoft did though, Sony enabled progress to carry over from Tearaway's demo to the full game and that was a pleasant surprise.

When I think about it, I think it's more that because most Western devs focus on Xbox those aforementioned restrictions actively stunted them. You couldn't make a long term demo you could freely save in, you couldn't import progress over, and the closest we ever got was Dead Rising 2 Case Zero which was more a demo/prologue you could buy.
Click to expand...

yea it definitely is better when the demo lets you import the progress over to the full game.

im pretty sure mass effect did that right? I feel like thats the best way to do a demo.
 
Why do you put it like demo is inherently bad? Demo is just another tool, a method, which results depend on how the user utilize it. Yes, it can hurt sales, driving away people before they bought it. But so does the reverse, it can attract new people that would greatly benefit sales. Also people who driven away by the demo aren't automatically a lost sale. They might hold it a wait further impression from people who have bought it.
 
I still believe in demos. Honestly, with everything going digital and rentals becoming less common, I kind of wish more games would have demos. Actually, let's go back to the shareware model, I miss that. Give me 1/4th of an entire game for free, and if I like the rest, I will buy it.
 
I wish more games would have demos. It means I'll actually get to see if I like the game before I purchase rather than relying on someone else's opinion. For example, I still would have bought W101 eventually when it got cheaper, but playing the demo made me buy it day 1 because the demo was pretty good. On the other hand, I was thinking about getting Sonic: Lost World but after playing the demo I decided to wait until the price drops considerably.

These are the very reason why developers, and, more importantly in the marketing process, the publisher either dislike or really like demos. They can potentially increase a game's sales if they're good enough, or if the demo is one of the best parts of the game a la Indigo Prophecy, or hurt a game's sales if the demo isn't very good.
 
In my experience with the predominate business attitude amongst Japanese companies is one of simply trying to make the best product knowing it will sell itself. American business culture, on the other hand, it quite different and is heavily influenced by short term results, market trends and sometimes companies aren't even really aiming to make a good product as was revealed in the Deadpool thread where the company ultimately was aiming for a 64 metacritic.

If you believe in quality selling your product then demos are a given.
If you believe in something else selling your product then they aren't a given.
 
Is this thread looking down on Japanese companies for their pro-consumer practices?

Because that seems a little silly.
 
From my personal experiences with demos, a good demo basically is free advertising. A poorly planned out demo can turn me off the final product however. Bioshock's legendary demo pretty much instantly sold me on the final product with me knowing very little about the game.

Dire said:
In my experience with the predominate business attitude amongst Japanese companies is one of simply trying to make the best product knowing it will sell itself. American business culture, on the other hand, it quite different and is heavily influenced by short term results, market trends and sometimes companies aren't even really aiming to make a good product as was revealed in the Deadpool thread where the company ultimately was aiming for a 64 metacritic.

If you believe in quality selling your product then demos are a given.
If you believe in something else selling your product then they aren't a given.
Click to expand...

Having faith in your product to sell itself is something I wish more developers on both sides of the pacific had. All too often I get the impression that the a development team just doesn't care about the final product.
 
Huh. I had no idea anyone thought a demo was a bad idea. I certainly wish more studios prioritised it. Why look down on a practice that reinforces engaging game design.

That's one of the reasons I enjoy this whole Early access thing. It kind of acts like a resurgence of the demo. Except the prices aren't in-line with thinking of it that way.
 
urfe said:
Is this thread looking down on Japanese companies for their pro-consumer practices?

Because that seems a little silly.
Click to expand...
Nah, I don't think he's looking down, I think he's just surprised Japanese devs are still doing demos when western devs seem to have to have given up on 'em.
 
Battle of the Z demo got me interested in buying it when it releases on the 28th this month.

And I remember one Japanese company agreeing with OP that demos are bad due to a waste of resources making one and people who tries them might not end up buying the game cause the beginning doesn't hook them. Think it was Capcom
 
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