Trial By Fire

This week saw the topic of game demos pop up in several places. Most notably, David Edery the Portfolio Planner for Xbox Live Arcade, shared some wisdom on the Game Tycoon blog about creating better demos.

A downloadable game's trial is everything. It doesn't matter if you licensed the three greatest IP of all time and fused them into the holy trinity of game design itself.

If the trial stinks, most people won't bother to lift the curtain on the full experience.

Demos have become one of the most important features of Live for me and there have been several games that I wished I had a demo before I made a purchase (I'm looking at you Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell). These games weren't bad but they weren't for me and I suffered some buyer's remorse. Demos has also saved me the trouble of each and every racing game that has hit the market over the last couple of years. No matter how many demos I play, I just can't get into racing games.

The article got me thinking about the demos I have played on Live and how they have influenced my buying habits.


FIFA Street, NFL Tour, Def Jam: Icon, NBA Street – Each of these games throws you into the mix with little to no introduction. Since these games are about pulling off some over the top, in-your-face moves, they should how me how to do some and then let me pull them off against the AI. Don’t let me get pummeled by the AI’s obviously perfection of them. Frustration ensued and quickly led to deleting the demo. NBA Street was an exception as it was a lot easier to pull off the special moves. In the end however, it wasn’t enough to warrant a purchase.

THP8 vs. THPG – After skipping THUG2 and American Wasteland for delving far too deep into the Jackass/Margera nonsense, Project 8 felt like a return to form that made me fall in love with Pro Skater 2 through 4. They give a small area from the final game and showed the player the new additions to skating. The game then lets the player loose to shred to your hearts content. Proving Ground gave me the exact opposite feeling. It felt like they took the things that worked from Project 8 and reworked them for all moves and then compounded those elements with more new features. All in all, it evoked the bad taste left in my mouth from Underground. By throwing everything in, including the kitchen sink, it becomes overwhelming and the fun was lost on me. It made me long for a simpler game where the player can just concentrate on skating. I bought Project 8, not Proving Ground.

Skate. – Did I enjoy the demo? Yes. Did I find the simple controls and return to earth game play refreshing? Yes. Did I buy the game? No. Although I still might some day, I think the fact that setting up a line in Skate is a lot a work and less improvised turned me off. That and it was a full line-up of releases this season. In the same way that FIFA lost me, Skate was far to simulation and less like fun. Maybe Skate 2 will alleviate these concerns.

Bioshock – The demo drops the player into the tutorial section but is slightly altered from the final version, giving you access to some different weapons, powers and enemies from the final version. The atmosphere and tone was set perfectly, leaving the player absolutely salivating with a nail-biting cliffhanger. 2k Boston has said that they spent a lot of time on their demos and it showed.

Dead Rising – Capcom boiled the demo down to the game’s purist mechanic: hacking, slashing and bludgeoning your way through a zombie infested mall. Awesome. It was pure gold.

Overlord - Gave me just enough to see what the game was about: wild minions, witty sense of humor and fun hack-and-slash game play. I was on the fence about this game and after the demo, I was swayed. I wanted to see how evil you could play and explore the strategy behind the different types of minions.