I hate Mr. Molyneux's bullshit promises dating all the way back to Black and White

If the game is good then the developer should feel comfortable with a 45 minute demo that potential customers can play for free. Longer demos may be necessary if the future is digital distribution.

I think demos are fine the way they are, I don't see how they've 'completely ruined games'. Either a company does a good demo for their game or they don't.

I remember the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo that I played that came free with the Official UK Playstation 2 Magazine...that was most of the Tanker section of the game I think.
That was a demo and yet it's pretty much exactly what Molyneux's talking about.
He's not really being very original or revolutionary.

I'm officially adding Molyneux next to PSPgo on my Nazi Blacklist.

At first I thought "shut up douche", but then he said that he wanted 45 min free. That's honestly fine too (for offline games), as long as you can show the player what the game is like.

I'm actually not a big fan of demo's either, but i will try them from time to time.

omg a free 45 mins O.O damn i mean what will they call it....oh yeah a demo really is he that thick headed? i dont understand why he said he hates demos, why not rather say he hates the length of demos. this quote makes him sound like a moron.

Obviously.

Mr. Molyneux doesn't like demos because his games are synonymous with hype, so if consumers had a chance to play his games before they released, then they might think that the game doesn't live up to the hype that surrounded it. He just doesn't have the balls to admit that some people just don't like his games, and if a demo is going to mean a difference in sales, then you can bet that he won't include one.

EA did something like this with the PC version of Burnout Paradise. The demo was actually the full game, but you were limited to an hour of play. PopCap also does it with their games. It's a good solution as far as I'm concerned.

The first thing that comes to my mind is the English and Japanese demo's of Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce. The Japanese demo let you pick any of the characters and was just the first few missions and let you play them over and over, even let you save your character and import it into the full game (like Phantasy Star Portable). The English demo, however, was just three of the characters set to pre-determined stats and equipment and only let you do the fight against Lu Bu (which was the first hard mission).

it's a cool idea, but it'll never happen, mostly because Peter Molyneux said it

I like demos.

"possibly after throwing a brandy glass into a fire". funniest line of Jim's I've ever read. Made me think of Jarvis from Newman and Baddiel.

If your demo confuses the player or gives too much away, you're doing it wrong.

A lot of demos have helped me make proper decisions as to whether I want to pay for them or not. Blueberry Garden had a tiny demo that told me that I wouldn't get any enjoyment out of the $5 dollars spent on it. Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 was a good demo that gave me a few different modes and said "This is what you'll be doing if you pay us $60." And it made me want it a little more.

No, Petey, my boy, it's not the demos that ruin your games.

Demos aren't necessarily the problem themselves. The actual quality of a demo goes a long way.

I really wasn't keen at all on the inFamous demo. Run jump, do some stick climbing and complete this object that happens to be well into the first act of the game. It fell flat for me. But, I rented it, and actually really enjoyed the larger experience.

This Pay-as-you-go model is interesting, and I'd definitely be up for trying it out for something I haven't played yet. Think of the person that just doesn't have alot of time for games, and doesn't feel confident in putting down their full $60 for a game they heard sucked. But, give away a bit, sell it in pieces, and you've got an experience you can build on at your own pace.

Give me a title I haven't played before. I'll try it like that.

So he's hating demos specifically as a comparison to his latest Fable 2 "episode" attempt, which is basically Fable 2 Shareware edition. I can get behind that, you people commenting saying "he just hates them cuz they reveal his bad game hurrr" need to actually read the article.

The best demo I ever played was the God of War disk that I got in the mail. I popped it in front of 2 of my friends, and every person in the room ended up getting the game when it launched. Having that brief taste was more than enough to let us know that GoW was special.

So yeah, demos can be pretty effective. On the other hand, if I would have only played a short demo of Fallout 3, I would have hated it. Some games (like Fallout) I have to play for a substantial amount of time before I warm up to them. Every digital romance doesn't always start with love at first sight.

45 minutes is almost quater of the game these days XD

I must say I have been stung by a "misleading" demo. Too Human for example, I thought the demo was pretty good, but hated the full game, especially on the boss battles where the system just didn't work.

I can appreciate what Peter Molyneux is saying regarding not getting the full "experience" from a demo, but I think this idea will only work with a handful of games. Not to mention the huge increase in the size of downloads, demos are getting bigger by the week as it is!

Am I the only one who got about 10 mins into Fable 2 Episode 1 and thought "Holy poop, I almost bought this when it was new, thank god i didn't!"

The very first 45 mins of most games are god awful; case at hand: Fable 2....
I got to the warehouse to kill the beetles as part of one of those horrible MMO-esq "kill 5 rats" quests and an "evil" guy pops up at the window with a horribly jarring and in-your-face moral decision that might as well be (1:)Save the Orphans OR (2:) Eat them alive.

I, almost, audibly groaned before switching the Xbox off.

Now I can see where they where going: "Look our game makes you choose between good and evil" but the way it was presented was as if to an infant who had never played games or made a decision in their life.

Now if I had paid for Fable 2 I might have overlooked this and carried on... but I hadn't payed and had no motivation to keep having my intelligence insulted.

We need demo's... but we need well-cut ones.

How about 2 demo's for, let's say, Fable 2:

--Fable 2 Demo: The road to adventure--
Takes a newbie player through the whole mini fetch-quest rubbish and thinly veiled intro to the moral choice system.. exactly like all the inbuilt-tutorial stuff you get in the first 30 mins of modern games.

--Fable 2 Demo: Dragon Slayer--
Kid-gloves are off, right into the action and heavy dialog of a well chosen part of the game, perhaps cut together 2 or 3 sections together to give a nice overview of what the fun parts of the game entail.

Movie trailers don't just show you the first 2 mins of a movie because most would be just as unengaging as current game demo's or short, free, first episodes. Games have a perfect and relevant point of reference, for demo content, in movie trailers so why ignore them?

Whatever Molyneux says is gold. I'd follow that guy through the fiery hells of "Barbie Horse Adventure" if he willed it so.

@StaticVoidMain

Hmmm...

I was going to call you out for nitpicking a moral decision in the tutorial section offered to a child. But, I realized that one of the better "This is the result of your decision" moments comes once you get to Bowerstone, which isn't included in episode one.

So yep, the cut of a demo makes a difference!

For whatever its worth, the decisions and outcomes get a little better than that cut and dry stuff near the beginning. How about the drunkard decision, though? They're more like that, for the most part.

I guess I should clarify -- Brutal Legend was a good example since it was the real game, starting from the beginning. However, it wasn't artificially limited to a certain number of minutes. I think it just depends on the game whether it needs a time limit. A linear game should just be the first level or something, but a game like Oblivion would need some kind of time limit.