How necessary is a demo?

[Kura]

The discussions in the "Neglected WIP" thread about potentially sectioning off WIP threads based on whether they have a demo or not got me thinking--I never really had any intention to make a demo of my game at all. When I look at the WIP threads now I see that the vast majority of WIPs with decent progress have a demo, but I don't remember it being that way a few years back.

Do you think every WIP should have a demo? How short of a game is "short enough to not have a demo"? Do certain types of games need demos more than others?

What do you think the main purpose of a demo is, anyway? To show what the art/writing/interface is like? To introduce the story and characters? Just to prove that the creator is making progress and can put together a game?

Is it important to you whether a game has a demo, and does demo/no demo influence whether you look at a WIP thread?

Obviously, I asked a lot of questions; just answer whichever are most interesting to you~

[DaFool]

A few years back, we had a term called the 'demo plague' or something like that. Which meant that the WIPs that had demos tend to never be completed.

Is your game commercial?
1. Finish full game and release
2. After getting early adopters and fixing bugs, release demo based on stable build for fence-sitters

Is your game free?
Do you want to recruit team members?
-Release skeletal demo that shows what you've accomplished so far and the overall direction you want the game to go.
Do you want to call attention or just want to free yourself from something unfinished?
-Release vertical slice demo

[Camille]

There's a lot of different reasons for making a demo, but mostly I think a demo is a good way to show to people that your project is really being worked on--it's got some progress on it. It's also the easiest way to show people what your game/art/writing/characters/whatever is like. You can make up little descriptions all day long, but a mini-VN is the quickest and most authentic way to show what those will be like in the actual game.

That said, I don't think a demo is necessary all the time. Regardless of length, if you finish your VN within 3-6 months, a demo is kind of pointless because you'll be able to release the full game already. Auro and I have been working on BCM for 5 months. I think our demo came out at a good time so people could see "After 5 months, this is what they've got so far". Our full game won't come out for another 6+ months, meaning it will take us a little more than one year to make this game. I think people would probably start wondering about our project and losing interest if we went all that time without at least a short demo. Projects released by well-established VN makers, too, don't really need demos. (and for the most part, commercial projects by such makers don't have them until the full game comes out) They already have an established fanbase and people already know that they finish what they start, so they don't need a demo to prove much of anything--they just focus on finishing their game and releasing it.

Honestly I don't have a whole lot of time to play a lot of demos in the first place. After looking at the WIP thread and reading through all the information, I've already sorted out which projects interest me and which don't. A project that doesn't interest me--even if it has a demo, I'm not going to play it. (I'm already hard-pressed for time playing demos from the projects that do interest me =_=!)

[Deji]

Imo, I think you can take two approaches with demos:
- The early build/test demo that is basically saying "this is what I've done, this is what I can do: do you like it?", that is basically to get feedback for development (or to show off).
- The based-off final-ish build one that is just to generate hype and make players to want to get the final product soon (ideally, you'd release a demo shortly after the release)

I like both kinds of demos, myself, but I understand that some games do not need demos, or that the developers don't want to give *anything* away, so they won't show anything before release. So, are demos necessary? In my opinion, no. They can help, but they're not a crucial part of development.

I liked what Cyanide tea made with their demo, though; it's not exactly what the game will be like, it generates hype, it shows what they've done and it introduces the characters and makes people want to know more about them without giving much away of what the actual game will be.

[Omnificent]

I enjoy demos, myself, and it gives you an immediate goal to shoot for in order to work out how your programming/graphics/logistics are going to go. At the same time, there is the risk of becoming complacent, yeah.

[leon]

Do you think every WIP should have a demo? How short of a game is "short enough to not have a demo"? Do certain types of games need demos more than others?

I would say the less traditional VN your game is, the more it needs a demo. Sometimes I find it more difficult to explain some ideas, than making a quick mock-up. If you are making a turn based fighting game, you will probably need more than just explaining the mechanics, for people to understand your idea.

What do you think the main purpose of a demo is, anyway? To show what the art/writing/interface is like? To introduce the story and characters? Just to prove that the creator is making progress and can put together a game?

I would say the purpose of a WIP thread is to get feedback and/or build hype and the same goes for the demos. If you want to get feedback on how readable your fonts are or how user friendly your interface is, you will need a demo. The same goes if you want feedback on some unique mechanics or special effects. The story and the characters can probably be introduced better in the thread.

Is it important to you whether a game has a demo, and does demo/no demo influence whether you look at a WIP thread?

For me - yes. I sometimes browse WIP threads just for something cool to try. It's also much more likely I will leave a feedback after playing a demo.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I think you should do a demo if you feel like it? You would know your project better than anyone else, so you are the best person to figure out if you really need one.
Like everyone one has said, there are a lot of reasons and I agree with all of the above, but I think feedback is one of the most important. We are an entire forum of developers. If there is anyone you want feedback on both the technical aspects of your game and how the general aspects are going, it is us. Sometimes it is good to step out of the vacuum and gauging people's responses. You never know, you might get some advice you had never even thought of

[Sapphi]

I don't think they're very necessary unless you are charging for the full game or the download is so ridiculously huge that people want to see if its worth their effort to get it.

As for me, I'm writing a KN, so it would be kind of weird to have a demo. I know that in some books, they include a chapter from another book at the end as a form of advertising it, but I think that's kind of tacky. I think for a KN, a small summary or at most a few excerpts in the project thread should be enough.

[Cidz]

i think demos are good to let people kind of play and get a feel for the gameplay. sure you can talk and show screenshots/pictures about the game play but its not the same as actually playing it. and if you release a demo then people can play it a little and know if theyll like it or not.
i think demos are also especially good for commerical games because then a person can play a bit of it before buying it.

also a good way to get some feedback as well.

but i think if your game is really short and doesnt take very long to play or make maybe then you're better off just releasing the full version.

[natsumachi]

I agree with the above comments that it would depend on the type and length of the game, and also if you're feeling motivated to release a demo.

I like demos from first-time projects because it's easier for me to get an idea of whether or not I'd be interested in the full-version from playing 5-10 mins. Often I can't be bothered reading an unformatted info dump on story background in a forum post. My mind starts skipping and thinking, "yes, but I have no idea of the story's quality".
However, if the developer/team was already known and I liked their previous work, a demo would mostly be a nice bonus.

[Wright1000]

A few years back, we had a term called the 'demo plague' or something like that. Which meant that the WIPs that had demos tend to never be completed.

I agree with that 99.9%.

[Miyuki]

I feel like commercial games need demos. I was talking to someone recently about whether or not a demo is needed or if a youtube video of gameplay is sufficient.

If the game's not commercial I don't know how much it matters whether or not it has a demo. I guess if it's a huge file size it'd be appreciated. I'm not sure how I feel about demos of WIP's. I haven't ever downloaded them because to me it feels weird to play a game that's not a finished product.

I mean, I'm sure there's a reason for them (and some have been said) but personally it doesn't make sense for me to download a WIP demo.

[papillon]

Do you think every WIP should have a demo? How short of a game is "short enough to not have a demo"? Do certain types of games need demos more than others?

A WIP needs a demo if you want feedback on how your game as a whole is developing so that you can make alterations in case of problems.

This has absolutely ZERO to do with how good your game is, or how big your game is, or how commercial your game is.

Many commercial types will NOT release public demos of WIP games. They will release demos when the game is done. You don't want to publicly release a demo full of ugly (or illegal) placeholder art, and you don't want to spend huge amounts of time trying to get a demo to look "polished" when you're still trying to finish the real game.

I sometimes do private WIP demos because I want feedback on particular things - is the interface working, are the character personalities coming through clearly enough quickly enough, etc... things that I need to get a solid foundation underfoot because they'll be much easier to change sooner than later.

Not every WIP *needs* feedback. If you know what your plan is and you're on track, you do not need to hold up an early build to let people nitpick it. If you know exactly what story you're trying to tell, opening yourself up to a lot of backseat writers suggesting things that are totally not what you want to do is just a distraction. It's up to you.

But if you really want feedback, it's a lot easier for people to make meaningful comments if they can see how your project works and read your writing in context.

I strongly doubt that there is anyone here who will turn their noses up at a new release in the Completed section on the grounds that it didn't have a WIP demo sometime in the past.

(A free demo for a pay game is, as I said, a different subject.)

[Kura]

Awesome, thanks for the input everybody! It actually never occurred to me that releasing a demo might decrease the motivation to get out the full VN. I myself find it easier give a WIP feedback based on reading a thread than playing a demo, so it's interesting to see that so many people would rather play a demo than read a thread.

So I guess I underestimated how much more effectively a demo can generate feedback than, say, posting screencaps in a thread can. That's really good to know. I had been under the impression that there isn't much point in releasing a demo for a short VN if it'd be nearly half the game (as opposed to finishing it and just getting feedback from beta readers), but I guess if I want feedback to work off of while it's still in progress then a demo is still the most effective way.

One other thought against releasing a demo was that the story is meant to be read all at once and that the showing just the beginning as a demo would misrepresent the visual novel--does that make any sense as a concern? Are you inclined to take a demo with a grain of salt, knowing that it might not effectively capture the point/themes/ideas of the whole work?

To anyone who has chosen to release a demo that was something other than just the beginning of the VN (Cyanide Tea, I'm looking at you ), could you share some of the thought process on why you chose to release that kind of a demo rather than using the beginning of the actual work?

[Camille]

Hahaha well we had a few reasons, really. Mainly what we wanted to do was:

1) Have some of the story be from Kyousuke's POV since he doesn't get to appear much in the actual game
2) Showcase scenes that show our main cast's personalities and interactions
3) Have a little tiny bit of time travel to get people's feet wet
4) Showcase the sprites, UI, and music (of course)

The beginning of BCM is very... Well, it's a little slow-moving, to be honest, because it's totally introducing the player to the Amamiyas and the world that they live in. There's no time travel until close to the end of chapter two, and Yukinari, for example, has all of like 4 lines in the first chapter. (ok it's not quite that bad, but still, because Shuuki and Natsume aren't familiar with him at first, he barely gets to do anything)

Auro and I originally planned on having the demo be part of chapter one, like most devs tend to do, which is why she was trying to finish off various BGs and such originally. After some thought and discussion, though, we decided that it wouldn't be representative of what our game is like if we did that. I mean, a sleepy intro is fine when it's part of a full game because once people get through it, that's that. But if the demo was 100% sleepy intro, we got the feeling that it would turn a lot of people off from BCM. Aaaaaand that wouldn't be fair because it's not like the whole game is comprised of sleepy intro scenes, you know? So even though it gave me a lot of sleepless nights, I decided to write completely new scenes for the demo and so all Auro had to do was polish things off instead of having to draw a bunch of new BGs.

So rather than show off a somewhat boring intro, we wanted to make almost a mini-VN that could stand alone even independent of the full game. (so even though we call it a demo, it's really more like a loose prologue) We wanted a demo that people could perhaps go through more than once--even though I wrote it, sometimes I like opening the demo up again just to see our characters interact. XD Of course, part of it is just the fact that this is Cyanide Tea's first VN, so we wanted to know how people would respond to what we've done so far. The feedback has been really really helpful so for us, the demo really was necessary, even if some people might find it strange for a WIP project to release a demo. In the end, I guess what I personally did was think of all the things I would like from a game/demo and then I tried to model my game/demo to that. It's not like Auro and I will change every little thing about BCM based on people's feedback on the demo; it's important that we make the game we want, too. But it'd be nice if other people could enjoy our efforts, as well.