Recently, in an attempt to save some money, I looked over all the subscriptions I currently have to see which of them I actually use. Of those subscriptions, I considered dropping my PlayStation Plus Premium subscription down to a PlayStation Plus Extra subscription after looking at what I’d lose by downgrading. There are a few key differences between these tiers of subscriptions. With Premium you get access to streaming your games over the cloud, something I really don’t use, and you get access to the Classic Games catalog, which is a catalog of PS1, 2, and 3 games that I have not been using as much as I was expecting namely because they rarely add many actual ‘classics’ from the PS1 and 2 eras to the service. However, despite all this I decided to keep my Premium subscription and it all came down to the last benefit. The Game Trials!

This is easily the feature I’ve used the most when it comes to what Premium offers you. As you might have guessed, it let’s you try a trial of some select games. And by a trial I mean that you can play a couple hours, how many hours depends on the game itself, of the full game in question! Afterwards, if you decided to buy the game in the future, all your progress is carried over so you can pick up playing exactly where you left off. This feature has helped me decided to pick up or move on from quite a few games! And that got me thinking about the fact that I really wish more games did this. Not just through PlayStation’s Game Trials but through just basic demos.

I might not be remembering right but I feel like demos were far more common in the 360/PS3 era of gaming when digital store fronts were really becoming a thing and downloading games started to become the norm. I think the fact that more people were connecting to these digital store fronts got publishers thinking about the fact that having a demo that is easy to download and play was a perfect way of advertising their games! And I certainly think it was. I remember downloading so many demos on to my 360. I remember having a lot of fun in the demos for Resident Evil 5 and Lost Planet 2 and so many more! But as we moved into the next generation of consoles, demos kind of just faded out…

Now, there are probably a few reasons why this happened but I imagine the big reasons were that publishers didn’t want to spend as much time or money on these demos but more importantly, this was the generation that games started shipping with more and more bugs and because of this, publishers probably started seeing demos as less of a way to advertise and more of a way to warn players not to pick up the full game!

This is completely just my speculation but it would make a lot of sense! Not only for games that are being shipped unfinished or buggy but because a demo might show some people that the game they were excited for isn’t what they thought. A somewhat recent example of this happening would be when Square Enix released a demo for their platformer Balan Wonderworld. A game that quite a few people were excited for as it marked the return to platformers for the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, Yuji Naka. I remember when the game was first revealed, showing off the design for Balan, and how hyped people were by the thought of Yuji Naka getting to make a brand new IP that was also a platformer. And while a lot of that excitement started to sour the more that got revealed for the game, it was the demo that really sealed the game’s fate for anyone that was still interested in it.

This is the kind of stuff publishers want to avoid when it comes to demos. It was becoming clear that demos can both hype people up and get more people excited for your game but also turn people away and maybe lose you some guaranteed sales in the process. But even with that in mind I really think demos should make a come back! Because, I won’t lie, there have been a few instances where they have gotten me to buy a game I would have otherwise never picked up.

When PlayStation Plus Premium came out, I was pretty quick to get it! I was curious how PlayStation would handle their version of Xbox’s Game Pass and I was interested in picking up a few of the classic games being offered at the start of the service. What I wasn’t super interested in at the time were the Game Trials, ironically, but wanting to try out all that this Premium service offered I decided to give it a go with Cyberpunk 2077!

When Cyberpunk 2077 was originally coming out, I really didn’t have any interest in it and I then had even less when it was revealed just how buggy and glitchy the game was! But like so many other people, I did eventually get interested in checking the game out after watching the fantastic anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. That combined with the fact that the game was currently on sale for half off, I decided to try the Trial! Since if I did like it, I’d be getting it at a discount too. And I am so glad I did that since after playing the five hours the Trial offered I was sold on picking up the full game! Bugs and glitches in all. Because despite being very much fixed now, especially after the Phantom Liberty update, the game still had a lot of quirks back then. But honestly, I didn’t mind! Being able to get into the game with those five hours, making my character, deciding how to build them, meeting all the other characters, and falling in love with the world… There was no better way to advertise that game. I would not have been able to get any of those feelings from a trailer alone I needed to be able to play it, to experience it, all on my own.

And these are the kinds of demos we need more of! Demos that really let people experience your game. Even if it’s just an hour or so, that can go a long way and it gives players a chance to truly experience your game for themselves instead of a specific slice of the game which can be misleading at times.

When it comes to making a game, you want people to play and enjoy it. You don’t want people to buy the game and hate it even if you make a sale in the process. Even if the game sells well, if most people buying it hate it, it’s not going to end well. Case in point, Resident Evil 6! This game actually had a demo, but it wasn’t a great demo. And I’m not talking about the fact that most people didn’t really like the demo, I’m talking about how the demo was just a slice of the game, which doesn’t always make for the best kind of demo. Mainly because a lot of people figured that maybe the developers just did a bad job picking which part of the game to showcase or maybe they’d learn from people being upset with the demo and change it. But that wasn’t the case with Resident Evil 6 and its demo. A lot of people still bought the game. And I mean a lot! It was one of Capcom’s best selling games for awhile and people hated it! While I know the game has some fans, most people are in agreement that it is one of the worst Resident Evil games out there. And despite all those sales, this negative reception nearly killed this classic series. It took Capcom five years to feel confident enough to make a new game in the series. Five years! That right there should show you why publishers should not only put out demos still but good demos that give players a good idea of the game they might be picking up. Would it have resulted in less sales? Probably! But at least it might wouldn’t have risked tanking a legendary series like Resident Evil.

With this in mind, publishers and developers shouldn’t be afraid of turning people away with a demo because at least that once interested player won’t be buying a full game and being upset with that purchase. Because that always stings way more than being upset with a demo for a game you were excited for! And hey, if the game itself isn’t poorly designed or anything, there’s a good chance the demo will get someone interested when they weren’t before even if you’re turning away most of the people that were excited to begin with. Demos can really help find the audience that publishers were looking for when it comes to selling their game, which is far more important than making that one sale to a player that is just going to be upset with the game in the end.

I’ve had this kind of recently myself with some games, namely Dragon’s Dogma 2. I feel like a demo for that game would have given me and a lot of people who were also a little let down by the game a better idea of what we were getting into. Another game that I feel like would really have benefited from a demo is Death Stranding. While I personally really enjoyed that game, a lot of people picked it up without realizing what they were getting into due to how vague Hideo Kojima was when promoting and talking about the game. Which obviously led to a lot of players not enjoying the game and not because it was poorly designed but just because it wasn’t the game for them. For very niche experiences, demos can really help the right audience find your game while also making sure people who pick up the full product aren’t upset with their purchase. And the best demo for that is the kind you get with the Game Trials! Publishers and developers should not be afraid of letting fans jump into the full game and try it out for a bit, this approach has really helped me with my purchases!

When looking at games to play for Spooky Month last year, I was thinking about picking up the game Madison, a game I hadn’t heard much of but looked pretty interesting from the previews I had seen. Before deciding to pick it up though, I decided to try the Game Trial for it on PlayStation 5 and that helped me realize it was not the game for me. Getting stuck on one of the first puzzles certainly didn’t help but I really wasn’t a fan of the feel of the game and how it started, which can say a lot about a horror game! So thanks to that Game Trial I ended up simply skipping over it instead of having to write a bad review of the game after not being happy with my purchase.

Demos are just about always good for the consumer. They can give you great insight in to whether or not you should purchase something. A lot of times they can do a better job marketing a game than any trailer or preview ever could! A well made demo can suck players in, get them thinking “Well now I have to play the rest of it!” And thankfully we’re kind of seeing a comeback from demos and not just with PlayStation’s Game Trials. Recently both Unicorn Overlord and Stellar Blade came out with great demos! The kind I was talking about before that let players start the game and bring their progress over when they purchase the full thing! And while I planned to pick up Unicorn Overlord regardless, since I love Vanillaware and their games, I was a little on the fence about Stellar Blade. That opinion completely changed though after trying the demo! Since finishing it, I have been eagerly awaiting the full release next week, completely determined to pick it up day one. And from what I’ve seen online a lot of other people feel the same way too!

So please, publishers or developers or whoever is in charge of putting out demos, lets make demos more of the norm again! Because more often than not, it’s going to get you more fans and help you find that audience. Just so long as you don’t make something terrible like Balan Wonderworld…

But those are just my thoughts, what are some of yours? Do you enjoy demos? Have demos helped you decide on any purchases? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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