Development Info No Bloodlines Demo Planned

[Sol Invictus]

Tags: Troika Games; Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

<IMG SRC="/images/news/vampiress3.gif" ALIGN="left" />According to Shane DeFreest, the Activision Community Manager for Vampire: Bloodlines, there are <a href="http://vnboards.ign.com/Bloodlines_Inn/b22439/69976864/?5">no plans to release a demo</a> for the game. It is inconclusive whether there will be a demo released after the game goes to retail, but seeing that it is going to be a very complex RPG with a very weighty Source engine, I don't think that's going to happen.
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Granted, this decision might change later on, but it's unlikely.
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I wouldn't feel dismayed, all things considered. Production on the demo alone would take up two good months which are better spent on QA or development. After all, we're all going to buy ourselves a copy of Vampire: Bloodlines, aren't we?
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[Major_Blackhart]

what's with the chick who looks like an escort I banged?

 

[Jed]

That shit is over the top.

 

[EvoG]

I'm interested to see if and how this affects sales. We all know shareware has paved the way for many a game...what better way to capture the imagination of an audience. The "two month production" is a terribly weak argument( trading away sales for two months of extra work? riiiiight ), but then again, they must have their reasons. I'm gonna wager it was the poor reception DX2 received due to 'it' also being an rpg*cough* that the demo failed to capture.

ADD: Interesting comment someone wrote(the link) about pirating, and I hate to say I agree with it. Foolish decision not to release a demo.

Cheers

 

[Sol Invictus]

The problem with demos for RPGs is that they're terribly short and don't offer very much in terms of revealing the world to the player. Reveal too much and the plot is spoiled or a portion of the game becomes 'stale' when you play the full version, reveal too little and people get the idea that it's all the game has to offer.

What's worse is that they'd have to pick an area that deliberately shows off a lot of the game - meaning somewhere mid-game, like the Omaha Beach demo for MOHAA. When people got the real game, they came to realize that the Omaha Beach part was the only good part of the game. Most people don't get fooled twice.

Releasing a demo might mean that the developers (in this case Troika) would have to purposefully 'spruce up' the first 5th of the game to be more interactive and enjoyable than the rest of the game by dedicating more time to it, instead of offering a more balanced experience - all for the sake of putting out a good demo. That would seriously suck.

A lot of people tend to apply reverse psychology to the products they play, too. If the demo's "too good" they'll assume that the rest of the game is bad and simply warez it instead of purchasing it.

How's that for complicated?

 

[Psilon]

I thought the Fallout demo was pretty nifty, if short. Jeff Vogel's approach works pretty well too, though I'm curious if anyone actually bought the downloadable version of ToEE. (In fact, did that version ever materialize?)

The problem with demos, in my opinion, is the backpedaling. The Deus Ex 2 demo was just undisputedly awful, but Lionheart suffered from this as well. Generally companies release buggy demos (for non-FPSes especially). This is OK, if the demo isn't too unstable. I understand that QA time is limited for this kind of thing. I don't mind if someone posts a bug report and the reply is "we fixed that already in the retail branch." However, to say "Get a taste of our wonderful new game!" and then respond to any and all accusations of flaws in the gameplay with "Well, it's not representative of the full game" is completely intolerable. Sure, the plot and balancing can vary a bit, but when people are bitching about the UI, the combat system, the graphics, the voice acting, and the controls? If none of that is representative of the full game, why the hell did they release that as a demo?

Also, note that it's usually the RPG makers that pull this crap. Silent Storm played very similarly to its demo, and they didn't backpedal. Neither did Epic with UT2004, the Painkiller guys, and so on. Yes, it's easier when you can just throw two missions together and remove the unneeded weaponry, but I remember the demos for Arcanum, Wizardry 8, and even Daggerfall being pretty good in this respect.

It just takes a bit of attention to quality, and a willingness to admit problems prerelease. Fix it now, before it goes gold.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I know I generally play a demo prior to deciding to buy a game, especially one I'm not sure about like this one. Not big on first person in CRPGs, so I was pretty much hoping for a demo just to see what the game was like. I don't trust reviews these days, so I can't go by them either.

The lack of the demo just makes me wonder how much faith Activision has in this title and whether or not they're not releasing on to cut their losses early. After all, the less development time they have to spend money on, the more profit they make. If they don't think there will be that much profit, they might decide to not have a demo.

 

[DemonKing]

What's worse is that they'd have to pick an area that deliberately shows off a lot of the game - meaning somewhere mid-game, like the Omaha Beach demo for MOHAA. When people got the real game, they came to realize that the Omaha Beach part was the only good part of the game. Most people don't get fooled twice.

Sorry but in my memory there was never an Omaha Beach demo level for MOHAA. There was a single player demo when you had to blow up some rocket launchers and a Stalingrad MP and "a Hunt" Objective MP demo, but that was it...ok the Omaha level was hyped in previews but it was never available as a demo.

As for RPG demos, I find them genereally unsatisfying. The Deus Ex 2 demo was so bad I couldn't believe anyone would release it thinking it would boost sales, and even the FO demo didn't do much for me, although I later bought the game based off positive reviews. I seem to remember the Arx Fatalis demo as being one of the few RPG demos that actually encouraged me to buy the game.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

The Deus Ex 2 demo reeked. When i got the developers' ineptude thrown at my face, i just stood there speechless. It seems everything that could go wrong in a demo actually did. And based on what i saw, i didn't buy the game (o'course, to be honest, i borrowed it anyway from someone i know - i'm still glad i didn't spend money on the game, as it's terrible).

By contrast, i'm seriously considering buying Thief 3, because the demo gives a good feel of what the full game is. And judging by some people's comments (like EvoG and dipdipdip), 't seems it's good enough.

 

[Taoreich]

I was intigued by the ToEE approach, and on paper it seems like a solution to the two-month demo development hurdle. But I'm no coder/haxxor, how tough is it to crack the registry timer which locked the game at 6 hours? Has Atari or Troika provided any feedback on how that worked?

 

[Sol Invictus]

Yes there was DemonKing. It wasn't released before the Brecourt Manor demo but they did release to the press early on to show them how great MOHAA was, when in fact MOHAA kind of sucked.

 

[DamnElfGirl]

What do y'all think about demos that are made available some time after the game's release? I know a lot of kiddies aren't satisfied unless a demo appears before the retail (or the warez) version is out, but I think a post-release demo is a good compromise. The devs don't have to deal with a demo while they're producing the game, but will get a chance to convince more cautious consumers to pony up some dough. Why should devs care about the audience that will either buy the game first thing no matter what or won't buy the game ever because mommy doesn't give them enough allowance?

 

[Sol Invictus]

The 6-hour limit was built into the executable by TryMedia and the funny thing about it is that anyone with that version of the game cannot patch it with any of the latest patches. Atari took a risk with TryMedia and failed. TryMedia is a company that's going bankrupt and Atari decided to fuck around with TOEE. I have no doubt in my mind that the 6 hour demo downloadable from Kazaa (chock full of virii in the searches, no less) hurt TOEE's sales.

 

[Briosafreak]

Bad news. No way i`m going to buy it without trying it first.

 

[IClaudius]

Bad news. No way i`m going to buy it without trying it first.

I suspect that will be your loss, at least inititially. But anyway it's my experience that people who make such ultimatums cave pretty quickly when positive reactions from peers gain critical mass and start affecting their e-envy meter... :p

I really don't see this as a con. If the game is good it will sell on its own terms IMO. After the IW debacle a lot of people (even 'mainstream' gamers) are craving a real spiritual successor to Deus Ex and this is basically it.

 

[Volourn]

Doesn't change my plans for the game. I've only played 4 demos. One was LH which I eventually bought for $20 and thought it was a playable game (not great; but not the worst ever); and the Avernum series which showed it had simple yet okayish fun tb combat but nothing else so I skipped buying the whole version because it has to be great if I'll buy something over the net.

 

[Voss]

Saw the DeFreest guy on a G4/techtv show... pulse, I think. They were sneak peaking Bloodlines. I was a bit disappointed since all they showed were action shots of gameplay at DeFreest's head, while he talked about the RPG aspects. He was somewhat excited, but it wasn't what I was looking for in a preview. Especially since it looked like a pure shooter. Though he rambled on about customizing characters and etc,etc.
One funny bit, which I know will amuse people here, he mentioned Troika as the developers, and mentioned Fallout and Arcanum, but not TOEE.

 

[Sol Invictus]

You realize, right, when the PR people do these shows on G4 and TechTV they have to show something intense and 'run and gun' style or the viewing audience will be completely turned off if they start showing the character design screens and focus on the hours of boring dialogue which is only good when you see it in full.

Of course they'll have to put in all the fast paced parts of the game or the show will be fucking boring to the target audience.

It's the same with movie trailers, even ones with a lot of good dialogue. They always show at least two short clips of action scenes, the hero or the bad guy making a proclamation, and lots of special effects.

A trailer just wouldn't seem very exciting if it had the Godfather talking to the guy at the start about his daughter's wedding. They have to show firefights too, perhaps a burning building, all the while the Godfather talks about 'business' in the background.

If I was him, I wouldn't mention TOEE either. It wasn't exactly a smash hit.

As for the development time it takes to make a demo (1-2 months), it doesn't matter how much the company anticipates the game to sell or how much faith they have in the developers. They still have to meet the quarter and if they work on a demo, then work with have to be cut elsewhere, usually in the QA department. It'd be better if they released a demo post-release, like Warcraft 3 and C&C Generals.

Steve, instead of saying that they have no faith in Troika, you -could- pause to think that perhaps they have enough faith in the title to want to release it without a demo, because it's based on the Source engine, which is Half Life 2, and it's got a kickass license. That's free advertising right there. You've got both the Half Life 2 crowd as well as the RPG crowd to buy the game and that's a lot of people. The game will sell on its own terms, much like Half Life 2 will sell on its own terms. There are no plans for a demo of HL2 either, much like there are no plans for a Doom 3 demo.

Heck, remember how Far Cry had an early demo, and it was so buggy that a lot of people considered cancelling their preorders? They had to release a fixed demo a week later and push the game back by a month for the new demo to absorb. That's just bad business.

I seriously doubt any of you wouldn't buy the game the day it came out unless your computer can't meet the specs.

 

[Volourn]

You doubt wrong.

 

[Sol Invictus]

To quote Adam Sandler, "B-b-b-b-bullshit!"

 

[Volourn]

Haha. The fact that you re forced to quote Sandler shows you are the one full of it. I gaurantee I would be buying Bloodlines until it is under $50. No FPS is worth more.

And, remmeber, not all of us are Visc wannabes. You ae; but the rest of us aren't.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

No one quotes Adam Sandler. I just lost my respect for you, Ex.

 

[Voss]

Ex, right, forgot. They did mention HL2. And cut to clips of it in the middle of the bloodlines preview. Slightly disconcerting since it didn't transiton well.

And, yes, quoting Sandler does make you a bad person.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I felt it was pretty warranted given your ridiculous claim.

 

[EvoG]

Steve, instead of saying that they have no faith in Troika, you -could- pause to think that perhaps they have enough faith ...

I think you meant Saint.

And on that note he has an interesting point. Lets address why they wouldn't spend the time (pre or post release) to do a demo if it might boost sales. As Saint said, if Activision decides the cost to develop the demo (regardless of when) is costlier than the revenue it might generate...no demo. I'm not convinced that this is the case but interesting nonetheless.

Personally, I buy most games anyway so this isn't realy a 'me' issue. I just find it interesting that in this day an age of HEAVY game demos, that they wouldn't make sure that the greatest body of consumer would have access to it for free.

Now, as for the awkwardness of RPG demos...still no excuse. If this team can design a whole 'flipping' game, they can come up with a taste of their product. Rip a nondescript chunk from the final game, toss in a few pregen characters and let them absorb the world and atmosphere. That can go a long way to exciting players about a game. Hell I had no interest in Riddick until I played the demo, and its turned into one helluva an experience I might otherwise have passed up.

ADD:

Heck, remember how Far Cry had an early demo, and it was so buggy that a lot of people considered cancelling their preorders? They had to release a fixed demo a week later and push the game back by a month for the new demo to absorb. That's just bad business.

There is zero excuse for a poorly made demo not representative of final code. All there is to say about it. If the demo is buggy because your game is buggy, you have a responsibility to fix your game, not hide it in a retail box.

All this 'poor demo' talk is an issue developers need to resolve, not an excuse as to why there won't be a demo.


Cheers