T w e n t y S i d e d

So my plan was to play a bunch of demos for this series. But then Steam Next Fest ended, and a bunch of demos were removed from Steam. That’s just crazy bananas. If you’ve got a demo and it’s still representative of the quality of the full product, then taking down a demo is hurting yourself for no benefit.

Weird.

(I know the claim is that demos supposedly lower sales. I have some serious concerns with the methodology behind that conclusion. Most importantly, I think it only applies to popular AAA titles in entrenched genres. I don’t need a demo for AssCreed or Tomb Raider, because I already know how those games work. This isn’t always true when dealing with a fresh genre blend from an unknown developer with an unknown property. I might actually enjoy your mashup of Cooking Mama with Batman Arkham combat and a dash of Tekken by way of Fruit Ninja. I don’t know. If you let me try a little of it, then it significantly lowers my risk. The study above claims that game demos hurt sales, but going by my personal buying habits that’s not the case. This study is basically saying, “Who are you going to believe, our statistics, or your own eyes?”)

Anyway. Like I said: I’d planned to review some demos, but they were taken down.

But! The Steam Summer Sale began just a few days after SNF ended, and basically my entire wishlist went on sale. So what I’m going to do is drop coverage of games that have pulled their demos and instead cover a few of these shiny new wishlist items I’ve picked up. And to be clear, I’m not trying to punish the games that pulled their demos. It’s just that, you know, I can’t cover them, because the demo is gone. 

Let’s start with one of the demos that’s still live:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Steam Next Fest 2021 Pt2: City of Beats / Neon Abyss”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Like I said at the end of my E3 coverage, Steam NEXT Fest features a ton of playable demos. So I decided I’d play a few of them and offer my reaction. I spent a bunch of page space responding to the AAA trailers that the big publishers put out, so it seems only fair that I should give some attention to the hardworking indie teams that went to the time and trouble of putting together a playable demo here in the year of our Lord, twenty hundred and twenty-one. I thought demos were all but extinct, and if developers are going to bring them back then we ought to reward them with our attention.

Then again, maybe my attention isn’t that great of a reward. I am by nature relentlessly picky, insufferably critical, and tragically jaded. When you put out some sort of trailer or public demo, then you’re probably looking for unconditional fanboy gushing, not the critique of an aging, cantankerous programmer. 

This is particularly true when my response is generally negative, which is the case for…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Steam Next Fest 2021 Pt1: Lake”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

And so we end E3 week with a final catch-all post designed to round up the smaller presentations. Note that I won’t be covering the Nintendo stuff at all. I’m just not keyed into Nintendo’s stuff and so I’m not going to have anything useful to say. 

Same goes for Capcom, although I’m willing to bet Chris will have some thoughts on that stuff at some point, if you’re following him.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2021 Part 4: And the Rest…”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.