Game Discussion ver 1.0

Last week I teased a something exciting, something I had cooking. Here it is.

I am a big fan of listening to discussions so I decided to start hosting these discussions. This is a trial run. We all have to begin somewhere.

I enlisted my comrade Ben to talk about a subject over MSN. The following text is largely unedited; I tidied up some of my spelling and Ben's punctuation (full stops aren't something that happen to other people) but that's about it. We could have gone on for longer but I'm very aware of internet attention spans so we cut it short. We are going to do at least one more as just the two of us but I really want to open it up to more people.

If you want to take part in one of these please let me know. If you have any feedback about length, quality or content let me know.

Chopemon says:

Ok, this is the first of a hopefully successful discussion roundtable with developers about game issues. I am Oli Clarke Smith aka Chopemon and today we're going to be hitting up the subject of demos. With me is...

Ben says:

Ben Gouldstone, aka Yaw Momma on Xbox Live.

Chopemon says:

Ben and I have worked together in the scary world of development and to start we're going to talk about how to demo 60 seconds of fun in a demo. Ben, why don't you take it away.

Ben says:

well from my perspective, when i start up a demo the first thing I want to see is gameplay
too many times I've downloaded something and I'm barraged with menus and options and lots of stuff I don't need to see. In terms of demos, my personal opinion is that it should send the player right into the thick of it, if you are going to get a punter to buy the game, do it with the experience of playing the game, nothing else. What do you think?

Chopemon says:

I think the problem a lot of demos have is that they barrage the player with a crazy loading screen with insane controls from the start. That is off putting to a lot of people. I see it, decide that it is mostly nonsense and just try to pick it up as I play.
Then there's usually a cutscene. Cutscenes are silly in demos.
I tend to skip them so I can experience the story in the full game. Then you are in the unique problem of demoing gameplay.

Ben says:

I agree, I can understand why some companies do use cutscenes in demos, they want to set the scene for the gamer so they don't just feel dumped in the deep end. I think the problem stems from developers making demos from a developers perspective, not from the angle of the person who is going to play the game.
The average gamer doesn't care how much time a company puts into their cutscenes, mo cap or any of that stuff, if the game that follows it doesn't cut the mustard.

Chopemon says:

By demoing a cutscene you are placing some value on the cutscene, you are telling the player that this cutscene is a selling point of the game. Most games have a laughable story and cutscenes are generally poorly animated and rushed. Look at the Wheelman demo. That game is about driving fast and jumping between cars, not story.
There is almost no value in showing a games cutscenes. But maybe that is our perspective. As designers we only care about how it plays, not the fan-fic style story they are trying to tell.

Ben says:

I think one of the strongest recent demos was Resi 5. The reason it worked so well for me, was the fact that there was a small amount of exposition, so you understood what was going on, there is already a well established back story with the franchise, so you know what to expect and it let you play the game without stopping you to explain boring control schemes.
Gamers are smarter than a lot of developers realise, they know how most games work and can figure it out for themselves. I'm dreaming of a day when you fire up a demo for a racing game, and it starts you mid race doing 100mph and just says, sink or swim.

Chopemon says:

Nice point. Resi 5 worked because of the imagery. People react well to being surrounded by zombies. We know that situation and we know (kind of) what to do.
The Resi 5 demo did what Microsoft suggested a couple of years ago; demo the best 15 minutes, not the first 15 minutes. The Resi 5 demo is balls to the wall and shows the best bits of the combat and sells the mechanics of the game well. In comparison, it takes about an hour to get through the Too Human demo. Do a lot of people care enough to put that much time into a demo?

Ben says:

I didn't.
It almost killed me playing that. It makes you feel dumb. I think that's a crime a lot of demos suffer from, is a lack of active learning. Look at Burnout Paradise, you start the game and it tells you, this is a map, this is a car, this is a short cut, this is a road blah blah blah.
I loved it when you could play a game, and not know everything that was going to happen or everything that you could do. The Burnout Paradise demo just gave you everything and it put me off. Which is sad, because the full game is great if you miss all the tutorial stuff.

Chopemon says:

I agree. Developers haven't completely honed how to make a demo. It is hard though. How do you sell your game in a small amount of time whilst explaining the controls and providing a learning curve? Tutorials are boring and are normally badly done anyway but games have such complex control schemes that they are hard to just dump on the player. The only demo I can think of that got the balance between tutorial and freedom of play right was Crackdown.

Ben says:

You're right, the fun to be had from that game was the fun you found. The play it your way approach is great for demos, because there is no punishment, you aren't affecting high scores or ranks. I think the reason Crackdown worked so well as a demo, was that the best aspect, or at least the most addictive aspect of that game was free running.
The ability to leap as high as a sky scraper never got old, and that's why it worked, because the most fun part of the game was there from second 1 in the demo.

Chopemon says:

I want to ask, what would you say is your demo to purchase rate? Mine is pretty high. Regardless of me buying most games anyway, my purchases are often affirmed by a demo. Recently I was umming and ahhing about Red Faction Guerilla but the demo sold me on it.

Ben says:

I wouldn't say it was that high for me, there are few games that have really sold themselves to me based on a demo. Most of the time I know if I want to buy a game before I play the demo, the demo usually just confirms my thoughts. Sometimes it almost works the other way, warning me off something i didn't want
I can honestly say the last time I remember a demo selling me the game was Grim Fandango;
I played the demo and wanted to know more.
For me, Red Faction Guerilla put me off.
I'm very much into character development and narrative and plot in games. If done right I think they are just what a game needs to draw emotion from a player. I know its hard but it is possible. When i played the Red Faction demo, I thought, oh cool, you can smash everything.... now what? It just felt like same old same old.
To me anyway
Why did it excite you so much?

Chopemon says:

I guess I just how it appealed to the lowest sense of fun in videogames. I could blow stuff up and it looked real pretty. It was just mindless fun, a good fun sand box, playful experience. I tend to be like you, my decision to buy has been reaffirmed. I buy so many games that demos become a reassurance rather than a converter.
Did you used to pick up demo disk magazines before the rise of online demos?

Ben says:

Yeah I did, much more for PC than console though. I think it was just the range of available demos. I used to install all of them and then give each one 5 mins, if it didn't have me buy then I dumped it. I would even sometimes replay a demo as soon as I finished it because it drew me in so much.
I think part of it is the fact that we know so much about games that are going to come out these days there's no surprise any more.

Chopemon says:

I can't remember how many times I replayed the Starcraft demo mini campaign.
I think for us we already know what the game is but the vast majority of people often have no idea what a game is until they play a demo. We keep our ears pretty close to the ground and watch all the videos and read the previews. A lot of people don't. That's why I wonder if demos do enough to sell themselves.

Ben says:

You hit on it earlier, but don't you think timing in demos is sometimes dubious?
Like with the Too Human demo?
Way too long, where as some don't even let you get started.
The Mirrors Edge demo worked well for me length wise, but it was punishing, making you re-run sections over and over if you pressed a wrong button.

Chopemon says:

That was the game though. The game was brutal if you were 'bad' at it. The worst bit of that demo was the tutorial! I enjoy demos like Ninja Blade and FEAR where they do remix levels. The levels are chopped and changed so that you play the demo, enjoy some excellent buts but the levels in the game are still fresh and relatively unspoilt.
My last point for this topic is where do demos go in the future? Microsoft TRCs don't allow save games but the PS3 TRCs do. This allowed the orbs collected in the Ninja Gaiden Sigma demo to carry over to the full game. More linking of demos to games could be vital in the demo to purchase rate so they don't feel throw away. What would you like to see demos start doing?

Ben says:

I like the idea of linking demos to the released titles, some people might see it as a cheeky marketing scheme though. I think more than anything I want to see more trust in gamers, in terms of skill and intelligence. Let them work some things out for themselves, surprise them.

Chopemon says:

That is an excellent closing comment. I think this went pretty well for a first effort. Thanks a lot Ben, good to have you aboard for this.

Ben says:

Really enjoyed it, thanks for asking me.