Maes
I like big butts!
Posts: 8662
Registered: 07-06 |
There sure seem to be a lot of people that give a damn about game "demos" here...and a I double quote "demos" because apparently it has come to mean different things in different times:
- In the pre-internet days, a "demo" was usually closer to what today you'd call a pre-alpha release: usually based on an extremely limited version of the actual engine with a restricted dataset, and it didn't even have to be playable: a slideshow could do the trick. I recall some didn't even go beyond the title screen menu!
- When the "playable tech demo" became commonplace, it was something much more limited in extension than shareware, with which it coexisted for a while. The only major exception was Quake I's "demo", which included a good third of the game, just like shareware Doom. This was the exception rather than the rule though. By comparison, Need for Speed's demo had just one track if I recall, and the engine was actually much worse than that of the finished product. The Warcraft II demo included a bunch of the first missions, I recall...
- Later on, the shareware model like it had been in the Apogee and Epic games effectively died, but demos stuck, closer to the "one level" approach. They were generally more polished than in the past, but still, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING AS FUCKING SHAREWARE DOOM. Shareware is part of the marketing model of a game and is supported as well as the actual product, a demo is generally more like a one-off fanservice item meant to be used for a short while, though there are exceptions.
- From time to time, the idea of charging for demos or eliminating them altogether was flirted with by publishers and authors alike, but it didn't fly.
- Today, ideas like calling episodic releases of a game "demos" or even using the same codebase and database for the full game and the demo are being considered, implementing their differences only via DRM.
My point is that things have come a long way since "One must fall" was a diminutive proof-of-concept beat'em up game with two karateka sprites...or since e.t. the Star Trek: Generations PC demo was just a bunch of BMP files simulating the game's main menu!
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03-22-10 17:32 
