Epic: Most Studios are Afraid to Release a Demo
unless they’re certain it’s really good and can represent the game in the best possible way...
By Svend Joscelyne
I went off to the Gears 3 multiplayer event yesterday and who did I interview? Why none other than Rod Fergusson.
I asked the following, well, much more than the following but you can read that in the full interview:
You’ve said that this Beta has had to be presented in such a way as to come across as a ‘polished demo.’ It’s interesting that you mention that, because it seems the function of a Beta has changed somewhat over the years, to be more like a demo than a work-in-progress. Is that change better or worse for you guys?
Rod Fergusson: "I think it’s worse, much worse (laughs). I think it comes back to the fact that PC gamers are very ‘do it yourself,’ hands-on kind of guys. They’re swapping out video cards and memory chips, opening the case and fiddling with the circuitry - so the idea of an unfinished product going out into the wild would be something those users would be fine with.
"They’d know they were contributing something to make it better - they were the testers for it, in a way - and there’s a sense of pride in that. A sort of ‘I got to work on this before anybody else got to play it’ kind of thing. I think where we now have the console generation, things have become very different.
"It’s a whole different set of expectations now. Games come in sealed boxes, and it’s a world of finished goods going into a market. When you look at it from that perspective, our Betas have to be ‘demos’ in that sense and I think we lose a lot of interactivity with the community because of it.
"If you release an unfinished product for testing to get feedback, people tend to make buying decisions off of that. They may think it’s not a good game because the Beta was bad, without recognising it for what it is, which is an unfinished product.
"So, the fact that we’re forced to polish it means we end up doing fewer Betas. Most studios are afraid to release a demo unless they’re certain it’s really good and can represent the game in the best possible way, and that usually means that development is largely done before you can even show the game to anyone."
The full interview is here.
The Gears 3 multiplayer demo is here.
I went off to the Gears 3 multiplayer event yesterday and who did I interview? Why none other than Rod Fergusson.
I asked the following, well, much more than the following but you can read that in the full interview:
You’ve said that this Beta has had to be presented in such a way as to come across as a ‘polished demo.’ It’s interesting that you mention that, because it seems the function of a Beta has changed somewhat over the years, to be more like a demo than a work-in-progress. Is that change better or worse for you guys?
Rod Fergusson: "I think it’s worse, much worse (laughs). I think it comes back to the fact that PC gamers are very ‘do it yourself,’ hands-on kind of guys. They’re swapping out video cards and memory chips, opening the case and fiddling with the circuitry - so the idea of an unfinished product going out into the wild would be something those users would be fine with.
"They’d know they were contributing something to make it better - they were the testers for it, in a way - and there’s a sense of pride in that. A sort of ‘I got to work on this before anybody else got to play it’ kind of thing. I think where we now have the console generation, things have become very different.
"It’s a whole different set of expectations now. Games come in sealed boxes, and it’s a world of finished goods going into a market. When you look at it from that perspective, our Betas have to be ‘demos’ in that sense and I think we lose a lot of interactivity with the community because of it.
"If you release an unfinished product for testing to get feedback, people tend to make buying decisions off of that. They may think it’s not a good game because the Beta was bad, without recognising it for what it is, which is an unfinished product.
"So, the fact that we’re forced to polish it means we end up doing fewer Betas. Most studios are afraid to release a demo unless they’re certain it’s really good and can represent the game in the best possible way, and that usually means that development is largely done before you can even show the game to anyone."
The full interview is here.
The Gears 3 multiplayer demo is here.
Read More Like This
Comments
Anon 16 Mar 2011 12:27
1/2
What happened to 'demo does not represent final quality of game' statement which is all too familiar in most demo opening screens? Surely this covers that one off?
deleted 16 Mar 2011 12:51
2/2
@Anon
yeah but most of the time it actually does represent it, in fact the quality is worse on the final game because the devs let you play the "funnest part" to convince you to buy the damn £40.00 turd.
yeah but most of the time it actually does represent it, in fact the quality is worse on the final game because the devs let you play the "funnest part" to convince you to buy the damn £40.00 turd.