One thing that has been of great interest to me over the years has been PC Gaming. Despite the numerous times I've read or heard of the immenint death of PC gaming, I've stuck with it. I have played many console games; however, I do not personally own either a Playstation 3 or an Xbox 360 as I would not play them nearly enough to justify their cost. I do; however, use my computer often enough, and for more than simply PC games, to justify building a high performance computer.
I've noticed a recent trend in the PC gaming world. The lack of game demos. I've heard a few reasons for this, but (to me) they do not make much sense. I do not see how the time/effort in producing a demo is not outweighed by selling more copies. Piracy has increased lately, or at least the talk of piracy and it's damage to the industry has increased. I am unsure if there is causation or merely correlation between the increase of piracy (which i suppose, in and of itself is debatable; however, for this blog post let's assume piracy has, in fact, increased over the last few years) and the decrease of available game demos.
I've heard several people make such statements as "I pirated the game to see if I would like it and to see if it was worth buying." While I do not condone piracy, in a way they do have a valid point. PC games, although usually not as expensive as their console brethren, are expensive, especially for a broke college student such as myself. Quite a few titles that have been released in recent years, that I very likely would have bought had their been a demo I enjoyed, did not recieve my money. I never played them either (just to clarify), as I felt pirating the game was not the "right thing" to do.
Mirror's Edge was released (albeit late) to a good amount of acclaim; however, due to the lack of a demo, it was not really an option. I have bought games where there was not a demo, available; however, I did have some idea of what to expect as they were traditional FPS games, or sequels to games I already played through and enjoyed. But for games that aren't your traditional first person shooters, I have been very reluctant to purchase them. Although they look interesting, and others seem to enjoy them when reading reviews I am usually on the fence about them.
One of the major games that I have been on the fence about, and the game I want to talk about today, is Fallout 3. Outside of FPS games, I am extremely picky about games I enjoy from other genres. Fallout 3 looks interesting, as it combines RPG and some FPS elements; however, without being able to play the game personally I just can't bring myself to purchase it for fear of not liking the RPG aspects and essentially wasting 50 dollars. I've been undecided about this game since it's release. I really can't make up my mind! Bethesda could easily have gotten my, and I'm sure many other gamers, 50 dollars had they provided a game demo for those of us on the fence about it.
Thoughts? Do you have anything to say about Fallout 3 (should I just take a deep breath and try it out?), or anything in general (Do you miss having game demos? Have you ever been on the fence about a certain game? Do you think producers are helping/hurting themselves by not putting out game demos?). Post them in the comments section below. Thanks for reading!.
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