Sooo  . . . we work on making better demos?

Truth be known, demos aren't really meant to be complete games themselves. If they were, they would take demand away from the real game. So the big question is - where is the best place to draw the line between a demo and a full game?

Quantum, I know your ideas are within reason and in some cases make sense. Coming from someone who knows piraters and was once one myself for quite a time. I kind of know what they and I were thinking. Telling them to go to review sites does not work one bit. Reviewers have already lost all credibility in the past and are looked down on by anyone who knows each game for example. It is quite easy to find flaws in their reviews. It doesn't help most reviewers have a large form of bias.

Demo's on the otherhand was mentioned a couple times in here.. Demo's will fix nothing, they have lost any form of usefulness. For the most part people who play the demo's were most likely going to buy the game anyways. In some rare cases the demo is enough to get people like with left 4 dead.

Really the key in my mind to limiting piracy which everyone seems to think is a horrific thing. Is good online and heavy replayability. Reason I know the ones that pirate do..is because game companies can't really be trusted anymore, they promise one thing and deliver another. There is that and the sense that..am I going to get more then 5-10 hours of enjoyment out of this?

You can fix demo's and make them better, you can tell people to go to review sites, and you can throw protection on everything until your blue in the face. None of these will stop piraters. People buy good games, people buy from respectable companies. Thats all their is too it.

The main reason I'm buying Demigod and the reason I applaud them is because of stardock's measure to not put protection on the games. I played Sins of the Solar Empire, I realized the game wasn't for me but I told myself the next good game that fits my playstyle comes out under their name, I'm buying it. The actions of the company and the Games they produce sold the game to me and perhaps a few others better then any demo or review could.

No anger is involved in this post, pedantic patronization is generously given regardless of temperament.

Quantum, were you actually attempting to make a point with that post or did you just randomly pick another subject to compare it to?  I'd say it's a retarded analogy, but that wouldn't be fair to the other retarded analogies.

The developers don't work for me, they work for their customers.  If I don't buy their product, I'm not a customer.  There is no agreement to pay them in advance, no obligation to purchase their product.  Passing on a game because it only looks interesting enough to play through once is no different than passing on any other product that you don't feel is worth the price.  If they'd lose me as a customer by letting me play through the game once, they never had me.

I've never bought a cd because I listened to a song on the radio once and had heard it enough, I've never bought books from an author who's book I wasn't interested in after reading once from the library.  This is normal behavior.  People want to own things they intend to use repeatedly.  They rent shit they're only interested in messing with one time around.  Do you buy cars you only intend to drive once, or do you pick up a rental?

It's the industry that's giving us the shaft and trying to get every potential customer to be an owner.  It's the industry that has made rental impossible, shuts down secondary sale, and makes demos more and more useless in an assbackwards attempt at making more money.  If the industry wants to kill itself by making piracy the only alternative to a fifty dollar purchase for something that's only worth playing once, I don't give a shit.  Good games sell themselves, I buy good games.  The rest, fuck em.  When they hit ten bucks in the bargain bin, maybe I'll remember to pick them up.

Which is why I preordered Sins and Elemental, hell would freeze over before I did that for any of the big ones no matter how interesting the game looked.  Stardock has earned my trust by going beyond not shafting me and actually giving a shit after they've made the sale.

The only way to limit piracy is by doing things that will promote buying the product, and don't do anything that will cause people to pirate like DRMs and over priced software. If EA, Ubisoft, and every game publisher got rid of DRM piracy would go down because it takes away the one motivation for probably a large percentage of piraters. As well I believe if publishers took a more "episodic" approach where instead of making one full game they split the game into 3 parts, and sold them for 1/3rd the price not only will it mean less risk on the publishers part, but since it is cheaper those who cringe at paying $50's for a game may be more willing to pay $20 for 1/3rd of the game to see if they will like it. Obviously that wouldn't work with open world games, but it is just a thought.

I really don't get the "demos suck" argument.  Most demos give me a great sense of what the game is like and leave me either wanting more or caring less.  Do people expect to be given half of the game or what?  If the size of demos reached expansion pack proportions then they'd be giving away free content not free samples.  Besides, who wants to download huge demo files?  I have a hard time finding any need to pirate because the demo sucks.

I do, however, believe that all games should release demos, even if they're just PC ports.  I've been terribly curious about Mass Effect for a long time, but there's no demo available on the PC so I'll just wait until it hits the bargain bin, in which case they won't be making much money off of me by then.  I can see how pirating a game without a demo would be more easily excused.   

Let's pretend that you've been given the task of creating a demo for a game - what would you do?

If publishers really wanted to stop piracy in its tracks, they could just make the games require an Internet connection to play.

But that would greatly reduce the # of people who could play the game.

I don't think you're understanding.  

You would have the key game data be server-bound.  No data, no game.  Nothing to "edit out".  You would require validated CD keys to play.  

We're not talking about some sort of data check. 

Even in World of Warcraft the data is still local which is why you can set up virtual servers.   

To use GalCiv as an example, if all the XML data in the game was server based and sent over an encrypted stream where it never existed on the disk, it would essentially be a server-only game.  I have no idea how one would get around that other than trying to somehow reverse engineer all the XML data in the game which would likely be impossible.  

If the game was popular enough, in time someone migth cobble together something that worked but certainly not in the first few months.

As someone who's cracked games (for personal fun, I don't share what I crack) for decades, I feel safe in saying that piracy can be stopped provided that publishers were willing to force users to be connected to play the game.

I just don't think publishers are willing to do that at this stage.  But I think it's only a matter of time before online computing is so ubiquitious that publishers start requiring a net connection to play.  I think that time is still years off though.

I think you talked about that in another thread, (I think it was the gamer's bill of rights one) where you used a soldier that couldn't have a reliable connection to the internet as an example.

I hope to god that it doesn't happen anytime soon either. Quite frankly I don't have a %100 reliable connection to the internet at all times.

I sure the hell won't buy a game that requires that I be connected, unless I was playing online but that would be a diffrent story.

Luckman is correct.

For an rts, full game options with a map or two that showcase the engine, not some dinky shit.  No twenty minute timers, or training level campaign missions.  A real skirmish map that lets people dick around and actually see what the game is like.  I can handle not seeing all the sides when a game has 12 or something, but hiding features is only intelligent when there's something wrong with them.  When a three faction game demo comes out and only one side is in it, my first thought is that something is severely wrong with the balance, my second is that all three sides play exactly the same.

No screwing with settings either, the demos I've hated the most were ones where some ass stripped down the gui so I had to edit a config file to change the resolution.

For a tbs, I'm a little more forgiving depending on the style, one game of civ would basically be the entire game.  If they're based around a campaign, they need to follow the rts rules, if they're based around a sandbox, push it as far as you can.  The more I see, the more likely I am to give a shit after I've played the demo.  The less I see, the more likely I am to wonder if that's all there is.

For rpg's it all depends on the format, the start of the campaign is never a good idea though.  I hate tutorials, unless you break the mold and skip that annoying shit, making it the demo means it has a lifespan of about thirty seconds after I finish playing through the tutorial.  Starting somewhere in the middle is almost always a better idea, I've even been suckered into an rpg I hated, and I don't like most rpg's to start with, but the demo was entertaining enough that I gave it a shot.  Once I bought the game, the start was so fucking boring I never got to an entertaining part...  Give an obvious, non spoiler portion filled with what makes your rpg relevant, usually gameplay and atmosphere are at the top of the list.

Fps, naturally I want to blow shit up.  Weapons are a key ingredient, give them.  Some people like plots, some people like sneaking around, some people just want to blow shit up.  You've designed your game with an emphasis on these for a given market, advertise it.  Deus Ex needed a demo that exemplified the upgrade system, Half-life 2 needed a demo that showcased their in game interaction with objects and people, Doom 3 just needed to shove freaky shit at you through the walls so you could rip it to pieces with your boomstick.  No gay tutorial levels, no first level intro with dick for weapons access and the lamest badguys in the game.

If it's multiplayer ready, give us a fucking map and server access.    Not that I can play them with my 2k ping, but it was a requirement when I was.

I have no opinions on the other genres, I don't like sims, puzzle games, whatever.

Above all else, all of them should be honest.  If the Hitman series had come with a fast paced action packed demo, I'd have bought it.  It would also be the last Eidos game I'd ever buy.  I don't like being a sneaky bastard, I like suicidally rushing into the enemy and being the only thing alive at the end of a level.  Or dying, which was often the case in multiplayer.  Showcasing the strength of your game means showing them what they can do with it, not taking ten minutes out of a four hour game that happen to be particularly active.  When you lie to them, all you're doing is grabbing the wrong audience and pissing them off.  As far as I know, selling one game your entire life isn't the goal of the typical developer.  The demo should reflect that.