OP, I suggest you make an effort to understand the economics behind why it has changed. Developers aren't charging for beta because they are greedy, they are doing it because that's the only way they can afford to make the game. The days of big publishers throwing money at game studios is all but gone.
OP, I suggest you make an effort to understand the economics behind why it has changed. Developers aren't charging for beta because they are greedy, they are doing it because that's the only way they can afford to make the game. The days of big publishers throwing money at game studios is all but gone.
It is not my problem if some devs cannot raise enough capital to properly fund a game. There are plenty of entertainment out there.
I remember when you only had the back of a box at a store to determine if a game was good or not.......kids these days.
Most of those game had demo's. Guess you didn't know that.
Not in the RPG or RTS genres..
Yes...they did
RTS games are a relatively recent phenomenon. The earliest that I'm aware of is Command and Conquer in 1995. Other early hits included Age of Empires in 1997 and StarCraft in 1998. But there weren't any RTS games in the eighties, so any questions of free trials for RTS games is necessarily a question of free trials for relatively recent games.
All those games you listed had free demo's. I know because I owned and played them.
The entire argument here, which you have done nothing to contradict and don't even seem to comprehend, is that while recent games have commonly had free demos, older games didn't because the technology made it impractical. Listing even recent games in the Internet era as having free demos does exactly nothing to advance your arguments.
I remember when you only had the back of a box at a store to determine if a game was good or not.......kids these days.
Most of those game had demo's. Guess you didn't know that.
Rentals, perhaps, but free game demos used to be just shy of impossible. There used to be no Internet, you know.
Which games are you complaining about, anyway? If it's something that hasn't launched yet or only launched in the last few months, I'm going to laugh at you.
There were demos on diskettes and CD's with PC/Games related magazines.
But my entire point is that there weren't demos on CDs before there were CDs. Saying I had a CD demo of this, that, and the other is completely ignoring the entire argument. Do you not realize that there was a time in history when the CD-ROM did not exist? And that even after it did exist, it took a while to become prevalent? It wasn't for no reason that AOL gave out free copies on floppies that they knew everyone had drives for for years before eventually moving to CDs.
I remember when you only had the back of a box at a store to determine if a game was good or not.......kids these days.
Most of those game had demo's. Guess you didn't know that.
Not in the RPG or RTS genres..
Yes...they did
RTS games are a relatively recent phenomenon. The earliest that I'm aware of is Command and Conquer in 1995. Other early hits included Age of Empires in 1997 and StarCraft in 1998. But there weren't any RTS games in the eighties, so any questions of free trials for RTS games is necessarily a question of free trials for relatively recent games.
All those games you listed had free demo's. I know because I owned and played them.
The entire argument here, which you have done nothing to contradict and don't even seem to comprehend, is that while recent games have commonly had free demos, older games didn't because the technology made it impractical. Listing even recent games in the Internet era as having free demos does exactly nothing to advance your arguments.
Dude you realize you are calling 20 year old games recent?
I remember when you only had the back of a box at a store to determine if a game was good or not.......kids these days.
Most of those game had demo's. Guess you didn't know that.
Not in the RPG or RTS genres..
Yes...they did
RTS games are a relatively recent phenomenon. The earliest that I'm aware of is Command and Conquer in 1995. Other early hits included Age of Empires in 1997 and StarCraft in 1998. But there weren't any RTS games in the eighties, so any questions of free trials for RTS games is necessarily a question of free trials for relatively recent games.
All those games you listed had free demo's. I know because I owned and played them.
The entire argument here, which you have done nothing to contradict and don't even seem to comprehend, is that while recent games have commonly had free demos, older games didn't because the technology made it impractical. Listing even recent games in the Internet era as having free demos does exactly nothing to advance your arguments.
Dude you realize you are calling 20 year old games recent?
Compared to 30 year old games, they are. And the entire argument with this whole long quote storm is pretty much exclusively about games more than 20 years old.
If the argument is about whether something was ever rare, saying it's been common since some particular date doesn't settle it.
Why no demos? Because people don't buy Magazines anymore. At one time I had subscriptions to Byte, PC, DDJ, PCG, and GD. Today I don't. Back at the Beginning of Gaming (BG) the population was small. The ways of getting the word out that you had a game, and it was worth playing were limited.
Today the population is large and growing, there are many venues for getting the word out about new games. Hell, there are so many people waiting in line at the developer's door that they can charge people to beta test their product now.
The gaming market has lost 6M+ gamers. But it is still so massive that dev's will not go back to free demos to advertise their products. There are free demos out there. But there are few AAA games. I remember Mass Effect 2 had a free demo. But I don't remember the time frame, but that was some time ago (5+ years?).
Welcome to the future.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Why no demos? Because people don't buy Magazines anymore. At one time I had subscriptions to Byte, PC, DDJ, PCG, and GD. Today I don't. Back at the Beginning of Gaming (BG) the population was small. The ways of getting the word out that you had a game, and it was worth playing were limited.
Today the population is large and growing, there are many venues for getting the word out about new games. Hell, there are so many people waiting in line at the developer's door that they can charge people to beta test their product now.
The gaming market has lost 6M+ gamers. But it is still so massive that dev's will not go back to free demos to advertise their products. There are free demos out there. But there are few AAA games. I remember Mass Effect 2 had a free demo. But I don't remember the time frame, but that was some time ago (5+ years?).
Welcome to the future.
If your theory was correct then they could have just made game trailers instead of demo's. But they had both a trailer and demo.
Really free demos were rare. People passed stuff around on BBS and other places, but those weren't official distributions and were often cracks.
Reminds me of the days when a 2400 baud modem is considered super fast
Hey it was fast considering my first was 300 baud
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I'm currently developing a MMORPG from Open-source, a copy of Tibia(Open-beta, F2P, 23 August but servers are already up). This game has at least 20k paying players, maybe over 100k.. it is hard to know. A lot of players are using Bots and a lot of Servers are faking their online-numbers. It's about 50/50.. the amount of players playing the original Tibia and the amount of players playing "OT"/Open-Tibia.
Anyways: On this OT-scene let's say there's about 10,000 players. And then there are about 10-20 Hosts, people that grab a copy of Open-Source and Host it as it is or people that develop/change the game in their own way(Like me). And let's say about 50% of the servers that are launched are real crap. Basically the definition of "Cash-grab".. teams of developers build up hype with multiple forum-accounts for a server that has 0 new and have little to no plans on being serious/longterm.
But what does the players do?
They "donate" like crazy.. The game is, I think on all OTs aswell as original, F2P but you can buy "Premium accounts"(benefits like teleportations, mounts etc) and on OTs even in-game items for $$.
It's basically a huge living community of fans and developers that is going down a slow buy steady path to a black empty abyss. And it's the players fault.
Why?
Because they don't DEMAND anything better.
And same goes for MMORPGs/PC-games/Games in general.. As said, 50% of games that are released are probably expected by developers to die out after just a few months/1-2 years.. if there would be a Beta/Demo that's free: Huge amounts of $$ is lost
My point is: It's the players fault.. the gaming world is 100% in the hands of the developers. Only small things that change this is Forums like this, where players can talk and evolve as a group.. to demand better things from developers.
Until players do this(Which I doubt they ever will, because 99% of gamers never read or write on forums) it will continue to be EASY living for developers..
www.Argardh.com F2P, Open-source with low-req/graphic MMORPG launching Open-Beta on 23rd August. Based on Tibia 8.6 Follow us: www.facebook.com/Argardh Youtube-channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCNmxHWGpO790r-4wn4AEeSA
Really free demos were rare. People passed stuff around on BBS and other places, but those weren't official distributions and were often cracks.
Reminds me of the days when a 2400 baud modem is considered super fast
Hey it was fast considering my first was 300 baud
lol .. I remember those days. 2400 baud modem (my first is 1200, i believe) and trying to find BBS to call.
I also paid Compuserve for the privilege of posting in their forums
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Comments
It is not my problem if some devs cannot raise enough capital to properly fund a game. There are plenty of entertainment out there.
Tell us....those who were unaware...of those days please.
shareware...lol. You sure schooled us...
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
If the argument is about whether something was ever rare, saying it's been common since some particular date doesn't settle it.
You can always find a time where something is rare. It is pointless to state so.
Today the population is large and growing, there are many venues for getting the word out about new games. Hell, there are so many people waiting in line at the developer's door that they can charge people to beta test their product now.
The gaming market has lost 6M+ gamers. But it is still so massive that dev's will not go back to free demos to advertise their products. There are free demos out there. But there are few AAA games. I remember Mass Effect 2 had a free demo. But I don't remember the time frame, but that was some time ago (5+ years?).
Welcome to the future.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Just buy games on steam, and every game is a demo for 48 hours. Problem solved.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I'm currently developing a MMORPG from Open-source, a copy of Tibia(Open-beta, F2P, 23 August but servers are already up). This game has at least 20k paying players, maybe over 100k.. it is hard to know. A lot of players are using Bots and a lot of Servers are faking their online-numbers. It's about 50/50.. the amount of players playing the original Tibia and the amount of players playing "OT"/Open-Tibia.
Anyways: On this OT-scene let's say there's about 10,000 players. And then there are about 10-20 Hosts, people that grab a copy of Open-Source and Host it as it is or people that develop/change the game in their own way(Like me). And let's say about 50% of the servers that are launched are real crap. Basically the definition of "Cash-grab".. teams of developers build up hype with multiple forum-accounts for a server that has 0 new and have little to no plans on being serious/longterm.
But what does the players do?
They "donate" like crazy.. The game is, I think on all OTs aswell as original, F2P but you can buy "Premium accounts"(benefits like teleportations, mounts etc) and on OTs even in-game items for $$.
It's basically a huge living community of fans and developers that is going down a slow buy steady path to a black empty abyss. And it's the players fault.
Why?
Because they don't DEMAND anything better.
And same goes for MMORPGs/PC-games/Games in general.. As said, 50% of games that are released are probably expected by developers to die out after just a few months/1-2 years.. if there would be a Beta/Demo that's free: Huge amounts of $$ is lost
My point is: It's the players fault.. the gaming world is 100% in the hands of the developers. Only small things that change this is Forums like this, where players can talk and evolve as a group.. to demand better things from developers.
Until players do this(Which I doubt they ever will, because 99% of gamers never read or write on forums) it will continue to be EASY living for developers..
Follow us: www.facebook.com/Argardh Youtube-channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCNmxHWGpO790r-4wn4AEeSA
lol .. I remember those days. 2400 baud modem (my first is 1200, i believe) and trying to find BBS to call.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED