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Why did AoD release with a demo?

Tavernking

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...Given that demos traditionally decrease sales? I am really curious as to why the developers thought it infact a good idea for their specific game?
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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Selling games is a lot of work and VD just doesn't have the time to ship thousands of copies on a daily basis. This is extremely boring wörk and if VD wanted to do extremely boring wörk 24/7 he could of stayed in marketing. That's why he took measures to ensure sales numbers would stay within reasonable limits by releasing a demo.
 

Vault Dweller

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Because we aren't a AAA or AA studio. When Bethesda releases the next Elder Scrolls game, people will rush to buy it and it will sell over a million copies in the first 24 hours. Giving them a demo would only distract them and slow things down. When we release The New World, maybe a thousand people will rush to buy it, the rest will need to be convinced. That's what the demo is for.

Plus, our design is different, so it's only fair to give people an opportunity to try it first and see if they like it. Our demo was downloaded 47,120 times. I can't see the conversion rate at the moment but last I checked it was 12%. So 47,000 people tried the demo, only 5,640 people felt the urge to buy the game. While it's tempting to think that had we not offered the demo, 40,000 more people would have bought the game, it's not how it works. Just like piracy, it doesn't mean lost sales.
 

Black Angel

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The better question would be why did every game who didn't have one didn't release with a demo.

Yes, there's something like Steam refund policy (and maybe GOG but I don't exactly know how refunding works at GOG), but it's too restricted, and I've seen more cases where people have to play past 2 hours before they realize it's not for them.
 

Absinthe

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...Given that demos traditionally decrease sales? I am really curious as to why the developers thought it infact a good idea for their specific game?
I'm afraid you're an idiot if you believe that. You have to ask yourself why demos would reduce sales. How do demos make players feel about the game that playing part of it would diminish their interest in the game. And the answer is that demos only decrease sales when a game is sold based on strength of marketing rather than strength of gameplay. That applies to most AAA productions where the actual game is nowhere near as good as the absurd hype and nothing will kill your enthusiasm faster than actually playing the damn game and realizing how underwhelming and boring it actually is. A lot of companies compile statistics on how many players finish their game (just check the percentage of players who have the achievement trophy for finishing the game, really) and it's a safe bet that a lot of those players who didn't finish the game wouldn't've bought it to begin with if they had a demo to experience it first. Some players never even go beyond the basic intro of a game. Those guys would almost definitely not have bought the game if they tried a demo first. On the other hand, when the game is actually fun but you need to convince your audience of that, the best way is to get people to experience part of the game themselves so that they will buy the whole game if they end up liking it, so you release a free demo.

To put it simply: Demos decrease sales when your game sucks. Demos increase sales when your game is good. It's never a good sign when you have to hide the game from the gamers (ie. avoid releasing a demo) in order to avoid losing sales.

And traditionally speaking, releasing demos for your games to increase sales was the norm. Back in the 90s the primary means of popularizing games was through spreading shareware demos and it was traditional for the overwhelming majority of games to have a demo. Heck, Quake 3 Arena is a good example of a game where the demo was incredibly popular and no doubt led to a large surge in sales.
 
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laclongquan

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It's the usual practice for AAA businessmen.

God forbid that that they would admit the lost sale is due to their games suck, since it provide no easy way to fix that (making good games is no clear cut process).

It's easier to blame on things that can provide easy fix. Lost sale due to demo? No demo, no lost sale. Lost sale due to piracy? With DRM you fear no pirate. Even if DRM is a horrible thing. But it is an easy thing for excutives to get. Just sign the damn contract to integrate DRM measures into your games.
 

Vault Dweller

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...Given that demos traditionally decrease sales? I am really curious as to why the developers thought it infact a good idea for their specific game?
I'm afraid you're an idiot if you believe that. You have to ask yourself why demos would reduce sales. How do demos make players feel about the game that playing part of it would diminish their interest in the game. And the answer is that demos only decrease sales when a game is sold based on strength of marketing rather than strength of gameplay. That applies to most AAA productions where the actual game is nowhere near as good as the absurd hype and nothing will kill your enthusiasm faster than actually playing the damn game and realizing how underwhelming and boring it actually is. A lot of companies compile statistics on how many players finish their game (just check the percentage of players who have the achievement trophy for finishing the game, really) and it's a safe bet that a lot of those players who didn't finish the game wouldn't've bought it to begin with if they had a demo to experience it first. Some players never even go beyond the basic intro of a game. Those guys would almost definitely not have bought the game if they tried a demo first. On the other hand, when the game is actually fun but you need to convince your audience of that, the best way is to get people to experience part of the game themselves so that they will buy the whole game if they end up liking it, so you release a free demo.

To put it simply: Demos decrease sales when your game sucks. Demos increase sales when your game is good. It's never a good sign when you have to hide the game from the gamers (ie. avoid releasing a demo) in order to avoid losing sales.

And traditionally speaking, releasing demos for your games to increase sales was the norm. Back in the 90s the primary means of popularizing games was through spreading shareware demos and it was traditional for the overwhelming majority of games to have a demo. Heck, Quake 3 Arena is a good example of a game where the demo was incredibly popular and no doubt led to a large surge in sales.
It's not that simple. Things changed a LOT since the 90s.

1) Marketing and hype do play a key role today. If your game can sell millions of copies (meaning top visuals and good hype) offering a demo IS counter-productive for many reasons. From a marketing perspective, you offer someone an opportunity to sample your wares when the interest and/or brand awareness are low, which is not the case with AAA games at all. The goal is to sell the highest number of copies on release (ideally in the first 24 hours), which makes news and boosts visibility and thus sales. Offering a demo will simply slow down the buying frenzy.

2) Viral marketing is always the best form of marketing but it's not something that can be easily replicated and the 'strength of gameplay' isn't always a factor because such things are very subjective. Even on the Codex (i.e. mostly like-minded community that seemingly likes the same things) people can rarely agree on what constitutes strength and whether or not specific examples fit that definition. The Elex thread is a good example of that. Half of the people posting there are convinced the game is good, the other half is convinced that it's shit. Just another day on the Codex. So if you take a slightly wider group (let's say add the Watch into the mix), the results will change dramatically. Throw in the Obsidian forums and it will be a battle for the ages.

Undertale and Darkest Dungeons went viral, becoming massive success stories, but it will be interesting to see if their respective developers can replicate their own success. In fact I'm wondering the same thing myself. For obscure indie games, AoD and Underrail were well-received and sold over 100k copies. While I hope that The New World will do even better, I can't help but wonder what if it will do worse or be ignored? Too many factors: sci-fi vs fantasy (fantasy is more popular for a reason), the story might fail to grab people, gameplay changes, etc. While we do want to make a better game, it's never a guarantee of success.

3) Completion rates are an interesting factor but it's not an indicator of the overall quality. Battle Brothers is another successful indie game, yet less than half of the players reached 1,000 renown, only 25% managed to kill a necrosavant or a fallen hero, only 16% reached level 11, only 9% killed a goblin shaman. According to your logic, only 10-15% would have bought the game if it had a demo, which is not a very accurate assumption.

Pillars of Eternity's stats are also interesting: 43% completed Act 1, 22% completed Act 2, 12% completed Act 3, only 10% completed the game. Based on these stats you'd think the game was a complete failure, losing the players left and right, yet it sold over a million copies and rated Very Positive. Our own stats aren't that different either:

AoD: 45% of players reached the second city (not sure if the demo's stats are factored in as well), 25% reached the third city. It's harder to figure out how many people beat the game due to all possible combinations.
DR: 71% beat the first fight but only 40% managed to reach the second level, which is a staggering drop. Only 16% wiped out all 3 gangs, 12% killed the Emperor, etc.
 

Tigranes

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These days the golden rule is that 50% of your buyers will not play beyond a couple of hours, and only 10% ever complete it, yes. But every time someone raises those stats about a specific game, many people think that it's proof that particular game was awful. It's just the norm now (and we don't really have data for, say, the early 90s).
 

Ellef

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To be fair doesn't just about everything in AoD traditionally decrease sales? In current year that's praiseworthy.
The demo got me to buy the game, I think demos are useful when you're basically a nobody.
 

*-*/\--/\~

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I feel that demos were simply replaced by Youtube gameplay videos in recent years. Still, it's nice to have one to feel the game first-hand. Trying hard to hide the actual gameplay from players just makes them obtain a demo on piratebay.
 

Goral

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I daresay, Shadow Tactics demo is the main reason it had so (relatively) many sales. Some no-name studio has made a Commandos (Desperados) clone and somehow reached around 400k copies (327k on Steam alone). Without checking it out first (if not with demo then the pirate version) I wouldn't believe it and video gameplays aren't accurate, watching gameplay of games such as AoD or DR is boring, in fact watching any gameplay longer than 5 minutes is boring.

BTW Vault Dweller how come there is ST demo and not AoD demo? Is it too late to add it now?
 
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Vault Dweller

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You mean on GOG? No idea (don't recall, things were very hectic back then). In fact, until I mentioned it, I didn't even realize there was no demo there. Now it's too late, probably.
 

Goral

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You mean on GOG?
Yes, on GOG. Steam isn't as convenient because it requires a client, on GOG all you need to do is to log in to download. It might be one of the reasons why it sells so poorly on GOG, once they try the demo it's more likely they will buy the full version also on Steam.

Now it's too late, probably.
It doesn't hurt to ask. Maybe you can still add it?

JudasIscariot
 

Absinthe

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It's not that simple. Things changed a LOT since the 90s.

1) Marketing and hype do play a key role today. If your game can sell millions of copies (meaning top visuals and good hype) offering a demo IS counter-productive for many reasons. From a marketing perspective, you offer someone an opportunity to sample your wares when the interest and/or brand awareness are low, which is not the case with AAA games at all. The goal is to sell the highest number of copies on release (ideally in the first 24 hours), which makes news and boosts visibility and thus sales. Offering a demo will simply slow down the buying frenzy.
That's not necessarily the case though. Going back to Quake 3 Arena again, Q3A was not lacking for hype or brand awareness at the time of its release. Nevertheless the Q3A Test demo succeeded in getting a lot of players who weren't into the Quake series to check out the game and buy it. Demos too are a form of marketing, and the main use of demos is to convince an audience that otherwise would not have given your game their time of day to check it out and see if they would enjoy playing it.

2) Viral marketing is always the best form of marketing but it's not something that can be easily replicated and the 'strength of gameplay' isn't always a factor because such things are very subjective. Even on the Codex (i.e. mostly like-minded community that seemingly likes the same things) people can rarely agree on what constitutes strength and whether or not specific examples fit that definition. The Elex thread is a good example of that. Half of the people posting there are convinced the game is good, the other half is convinced that it's shit. Just another day on the Codex. So if you take a slightly wider group (let's say add the Watch into the mix), the results will change dramatically. Throw in the Obsidian forums and it will be a battle for the ages
Agreement on what constitutes a good game is unnecessary. The main point of demos is exactly that players who are uncertain whether your game is any good can find out for themselves if they'd like it. The other point of demos is just marketing. Back in the day you found out about a lot of games mostly through finding/playing demos for them since people would share them freely. But these days not a lot of effort is put into spreading your game's demo and videogame media has stopped emphasizing demos too.

Undertale and Darkest Dungeons went viral, becoming massive success stories, but it will be interesting to see if their respective developers can replicate their own success. In fact I'm wondering the same thing myself. For obscure indie games, AoD and Underrail were well-received and sold over 100k copies. While I hope that The New World will do even better, I can't help but wonder what if it will do worse or be ignored? Too many factors: sci-fi vs fantasy (fantasy is more popular for a reason), the story might fail to grab people, gameplay changes, etc. While we do want to make a better game, it's never a guarantee of success
I'll tell you right now that if you just replicate AoD you are in real danger of your next game doing worse than the last one unless the quality of writing somehow improved considerably. The main reason is that most of the newness of AoD has worn off and the emphasis on primary questlines and character skill over player skill tends to reduce a lot of gameplay decisions into you fiddling with your character page rather than you interacting with the world (which seems to be mostly on autopilot for you). If AoD does have a low completion rate, then a failure to sustain interest to complete the game could translate into a failure to sustain interest to buy a successor. With the noncombat gameplay being minimal, it falls to the strength of narrative to sustain appeal and interest in the game.

3) Completion rates are an interesting factor but it's not an indicator of the overall quality. Battle Brothers is another successful indie game, yet less than half of the players reached 1,000 renown, only 25% managed to kill a necrosavant or a fallen hero, only 16% reached level 11, only 9% killed a goblin shaman. According to your logic, only 10-15% would have bought the game if it had a demo, which is not a very accurate assumption.

Pillars of Eternity's stats are also interesting: 43% completed Act 1, 22% completed Act 2, 12% completed Act 3, only 10% completed the game. Based on these stats you'd think the game was a complete failure, losing the players left and right, yet it sold over a million copies and rated Very Positive. Our own stats aren't that different either:

AoD: 45% of players reached the second city (not sure if the demo's stats are factored in as well), 25% reached the third city. It's harder to figure out how many people beat the game due to all possible combinations.
DR: 71% beat the first fight but only 40% managed to reach the second level, which is a staggering drop. Only 16% wiped out all 3 gangs, 12% killed the Emperor, etc.
While completion rates are not necessarily an indicator of quality, they are an indicator of the game's ability to sustain interest. Pillars of Eternity was also a very hyped-up game (until the tranny drama), since it was supposed to be a return to oldschool RPGs, and regardless of positive impressions, it didn't exactly live up to that hype. AoD on the other hand is a very unforgiving oldschool game with minimal gameplay, a mediocre tutorial, and no manual. AoD's gameplay can be basically summed up into 3 parts: Walking/click interaction, combat, and text adventure (which is largely brainless, heavily skillcheck-gated content, even if it's fun to read). At the same time almost all content is gated in a way that you have to reroll if you didn't build your character properly to do the job. Players are used to hoarding SP and saving before skillchecks so they can reload and reassign their stat points to pass checks instead of just building up their characters the way they want. A lot of vignettes are jokes (nobody cares about mercenary vs drifter, for instance), starting stats for most backgrounds are suboptimal (making the game harder for newbies - also, thieves don't have the starting stats needed to climb around), certain builds are abject failures (try playing a dodge+daggers+crit assassin in leather armor without crafting, you will die a horrible death from wasting SP on crit, having pisspoor vsCrit and DR, and get absolutely murdered by nets and aimed strikes to the legs), the division of combat vs civil SP deceives players into thinking they should go hybrid (which is widely agreed to be the most difficult way to play AoD), and it deceives players into assuming Craft and Alchemy are noncombat skills while in reality they are overwhelmingly combat skills. The revamping of the economy also resulted in healers being too expensive to rely upon, ensuring that combat builds will remain very poor if they make the mistake of actually using healers instead of alchemy. Healers are simply a trap option in AoD, with great big flashing lights saying "Go here."

Dungeon Rats meanwhile made poison builds very unreliable, and in the first level had extremely limited crafting, used heavy poison against players, had problems provisioning ranged builds iirc, and I think it had a bit of a healing death spiral iirc. If you got hurt a lot you would run out of healing supplies even faster which would in turn bring you even closer to an unwinnable state. The first level was probably the least fun part of the game.

Both of your games can definitely be fun if you play them right, but it's also very easy to ruin yourself and get worn out by all the different ways you can screw yourself. So it's not exactly surprising if players lose interest in your game.
 
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Vault Dweller

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That's not necessarily the case though. Going back to Quake 3 Arena again...
It's ancient history now. Quake 3 was released 4 years before Steam was launched. Today digital distribution is king. On Steam alone there are nearly 16 million customers who can buy a game with a click.

Demos too are a form of marketing...
I don't disagree. My point was that today demos are no longer the best marketing tool for AAA games.

I'll tell you right now that if you just replicate AoD you are in real danger of your next game doing worse than the last one unless the quality of writing somehow improved considerably...
Like I said, what constitutes strengths is a very subjective area. If I have to name 3 things that were consistently praised by other players (including those who didn't really like the game overall), the writing will be one of them. I'm aware that some people didn't like it, of course, but they are a minority. So overall, the quality of my writing isn't a pressing concern. Other things are (the ones that didn't make the top 3 list).

While we aren't planning to replicate AoD, we aren't planning to change the design core either. It's outlined here, so feel free to comment:

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7217.0.html

While completion rates are not necessarily an indicator of quality, they are an indicator of the game's ability to sustain interest. Pillars of Eternity was also a very hyped-up game (until the tranny drama), since it was supposed to be a return to oldschool RPGs, and regardless of positive impressions, it didn't exactly live up to that hype. AoD on the other hand is a very unforgiving oldschool game with minimal gameplay, a mediocre tutorial, and no manual.
These rates seem be fairly standard across the entire board:

Dishonored: 78% completed the intro (22% couldn't be arsed to install the game or what?), only 46% completed the forth mission, only 25% completed the 6th mission, etc.

Underrail's achievements paint the same picture, ranging from 60% (dropping fast to 25-30%) to 0.6%. Witcher 3's achievements start at 66% and go down equally fast.

So it's not exactly surprising if players lose interest in your game.
As of opposite to what game?
 

agentorange

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The outwardly science fiction setting of New World will alone attract more people, I think. I doubt most people looked at the Age of Decadence page or imagery and thought of a Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind style post-apocalyptic science fantasy setting, instead it looks superficially more like historical fiction. And people make a lot of judgement based on superficial elements. New World on the other hand has spaceships, guns, neon stuff.
 

Absinthe

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It's ancient history now. Quake 3 was released 4 years before Steam was launched. Today digital distribution is king. On Steam alone there are nearly 16 million customers who can buy a game with a click.
Sure you can buy games with a click now, but the basic consumer issue of "is it worth buying" is still relatively unchanged. Lowered standards and a rise in AAA mass-marketing may have encouraged people to purchase games they might not even enjoy that much, but for the average game which is still jockeying to not only get a gamer's attention but also convince him to buy it, free demos still carry a lot of value in convincing people to give your game a try.

I don't disagree. My point was that today demos are no longer the best marketing tool for AAA games
Best is a debatable and subjective thing, but I'm pretty sure that demos still have strong positive value in marketing, provided your game is good.

Like I said, what constitutes strengths is a very subjective area. If I have to name 3 things that were consistently praised by other players (including those who didn't really like the game overall), the writing will be one of them. I'm aware that some people didn't like it, of course, but they are a minority. So overall, the quality of my writing isn't a pressing concern. Other things are (the ones that didn't make the top 3 list)
I didn't say your writing quality was bad. What I meant was that if you're going to turn your next game into a massive CYOA narrative for the most part, you might as well go all the way and turn your writing into a selling point by achieving a level reminiscent of the science fiction classics.

While we aren't planning to replicate AoD, we aren't planning to change the design core either. It's outlined here, so feel free to comment:

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7217.0.html
I think you need a greater focus on environment interaction, possibly build that stealth system you were considering for AoD (might make the game more XCOM-esque), and you should probably borrow notes from classic adventure game puzzles to build solutions to quests beyond the braindead "push skillcheck = win" design that was so prevalent in AoD. If I were you I would also consider implementing something like a calendar and allow people to pick which people they were going to run errands/etc. for while progressing the timeline instead of locking them into a faction's questline like AoD does. That way events will keep progressing and players can enjoy greater freedom in how they spend their time aboard the ship without creating large imbalances of quest exp. If you want an example of the design pattern, this was more of a RTS but Sacrifice used a system where you could choose which faction you'd run errands for (and factions would slowly become unavailable depending on your choices as the story progressed) at each stage. Honestly a colony ship like yours seems like people would be counting down until the final arrival anyway, so emphasizing a calendar might have narrative value.

These rates seem be fairly standard across the entire board:

Dishonored: 78% completed the intro (22% couldn't be arsed to install the game or what?), only 46% completed the forth mission, only 25% completed the 6th mission, etc.

Underrail's achievements paint the same picture, ranging from 60% (dropping fast to 25-30%) to 0.6%. Witcher 3's achievements start at 66% and go down equally fast

As of opposite to what game?
One important thing to note is that steam achievements tend to be extra sketchy, since a decent number of players prefer to disable steam overlays with their obnoxious popups. And if you have the overlay disabled, you never get any achievements no matter how far you get in the game. In other games like Divinity: Original Sin 2, you won't get any achievements if you applied mods to your game, so a lot of players will finish the game without ever getting the achievement because they installed mods partway through. And I think steam achievement stats go royally to shit if you do a free weekend. Console statistics are probably more reliable.

But if we're comparing games, Fallout: New Vegas, Witcher 3, etc. do have higher completion rates than your game.
 
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Because we aren't a AAA or AA studio. When Bethesda releases the next Elder Scrolls game, people will rush to buy it and it will sell over a million copies in the first 24 hours. Giving them a demo would only distract them and slow things down. When we release The New World, maybe a thousand people will rush to buy it, the rest will need to be convinced. That's what the demo is for.

Plus, our design is different, so it's only fair to give people an opportunity to try it first and see if they like it. Our demo was downloaded 47,120 times. I can't see the conversion rate at the moment but last I checked it was 12%. So 47,000 people tried the demo, only 5,640 people felt the urge to buy the game. While it's tempting to think that had we not offered the demo, 40,000 more people would have bought the game, it's not how it works. Just like piracy, it doesn't mean lost sales.

How do you know those 12% were not composed mainly from Codexers and other people who would buy your game even if they did not try the demo?
 

Drowed

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You know, I'm still waiting for empirical data showing that demos have helped sell good games. All we have here so far have been rationalizations based on nothing more than personal/anecdotal evidence and subjectivity.

STEAM's data isn't complete or absolute, but it's data. Between this and the unsupported personal opinion of random people on any internet forum, it's not difficult to think of which one has the most persuasive power.
 

Tavernking

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Because we aren't a AAA or AA studio. When Bethesda releases the next Elder Scrolls game, people will rush to buy it and it will sell over a million copies in the first 24 hours. Giving them a demo would only distract them and slow things down. When we release The New World, maybe a thousand people will rush to buy it, the rest will need to be convinced. That's what the demo is for.

Plus, our design is different, so it's only fair to give people an opportunity to try it first and see if they like it. Our demo was downloaded 47,120 times. I can't see the conversion rate at the moment but last I checked it was 12%. So 47,000 people tried the demo, only 5,640 people felt the urge to buy the game. While it's tempting to think that had we not offered the demo, 40,000 more people would have bought the game, it's not how it works. Just like piracy, it doesn't mean lost sales.

How do you know those 12% were not composed mainly from Codexers and other people who would buy your game even if they did not try the demo?

I assumed when he said conversion rate he had some way of tracking players who had both the demo and the actual game?
 

Bohrain

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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
In economic terms the question is how does the consumption of demo affect the the game's demand elasticity. There is also an element of imperfect information, as people won't be able to fully judge how good the game will be before trying it and generally speaking new games can't be refunded, so the sales depend on the customer's expectation of what the quality is.
In the case where demo decreases sales the effect on elasticity would be negative, meaning the demo supplement the need that the actual game provides. The most plausible explanation to me would be that the demo affects the customers' expectation of quality negatively, which leads to less sales. The other relevant question is to what extend, as people will likely look for reviews, let's plays and streams. So the people who will be affected will most likely be early adopters who do not have this information available, assuming the demo is released before the actual game.
I do not see these things applying after release when people have more information available, refunds are possible and the game is more likely to be cracked so pirating it will be more feasible. You could probably calculate the elasticity if you have data about preorders, demo release and comparable data about the effect of time to preorders.
 

Absinthe

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You know, I'm still waiting for empirical data showing that demos have helped sell good games. All we have here so far have been rationalizations based on nothing more than personal/anecdotal evidence and subjectivity.
No one compiled concrete statistics on it, and even if you tried, results can be specific to the game and demo in particular. If you want to get the numbers, try making a game and A/B testing releasing a demo vs not releasing a demo, but it's the internet so the no demo guys can still get a demo offsite. Plus the results will be inconclusive in the scheme of things since it depends on the game, depends on the demo, and depends on how well the demo was marketed (if people can't find a demo offsite, you're doing it wrong). And then there's the fact that you can use demos as a pre-release open beta to tune the game, compile bug reports, and adjust design decisions for a better final release. So we're left with armchair analysis in lieu of hard data. The general trend for AAA games has definitely been that releasing a demo damages sales, but that's likely because most AAA games are seriously overrated trash cashing in on marketing, cinematics, and general production values to make up for the boring gameplay.

STEAM's data isn't complete or absolute, but it's data. Between this and the unsupported personal opinion of random people on any internet forum, it's not difficult to think of which one has the most persuasive power.
Wait, were you suggesting that Steam's data supports demos costing you sales? If so, you'll have to provide links. If this is just one of those vague "well there's totally data out there that supports my case" arguments, then fuck off.
 
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