Intro

The advent and subsequent rise, of the gaming industry has introduced new ways in which consumers interact with the media that they consume, distinct from other forms of media such as television and cinema.

While there is certainly an overlap in how we interact with and consume these various forms of contemporary media, video games stand separate and unique in the way that they interact with us.

Games don’t exist in the same capacity that films or television do. While the materiality of video games may often be identical; stored on physical CDs or downloaded digitally, video games cannot function without the presence of a consumer or in this case a player. This is key in exploring the existence of video game demos.

Gameplay demonstrations, or game demos for short, have been around for a long while, emerging out of the early 1990s as physical discs that you could often get for free with other games. These short snippets of upcoming releases were usually small portions of the final game and served to give players a feel for the upcoming title before release.

As the digital realm continued to expand, however, the physical became immaterial, and it became increasingly common for demos to exist purely as digital downloads. Now, it’s much more common for games to have open or closed betas for players to take part in, particularly multiplayer games.

Regardless, demos have become far less prevalent and their presence within the gaming landscape is now a pale shadow of its former self. The expectations that we have as consumers has dramatically shifted over the last console generation. We don’t expect or even necessarily want demos anymore.

But are we really better off without them?

The Importance of Experience

Do Games Influence Our Minds? The Stanley Parable Is An Example Of This - Emir Bektic

Needless to say, demos are vital in showcasing the various systems and mechanics of a game. These mechanical aspects of video games can be illustrated through other methods besides game demos, such as trailers, pre-recorded gameplay, and tech demos.

Something that demos can provide players with, however, is the individual experience of playing the game. This is arguably the most impactful aspect in players forming their own opinions and feelings towards a game and demos allow players to form these embodied experiences, without having to buy a full-priced title. 

Plus, many games don’t rely on complex and intuitive systems and mechanics but rely more on the ‘experience’ of playing. These games tend to have an enhanced focus on narrative and atmosphere, facets of video games that heavily rely on the idea of ‘experience’ to keep players engaged and motivated to continue playing.

Yet the intangible nature of the ‘experience’ does not detract from its impact on the player. The Stanley Parable Demo is an excellent example of how a demo can provide the player with an experience that, while not dense with complex mechanics, informs them of all they need to know about the final game..

The methods that The Stanley Parable uses to engage players —, the dialogue, narrative, and structure are all identical for each player, yet the experience for each player is diverse and unique.

Writer and Academic Marc Prensky writes :

“[t]he reason computer games are so engaging is because the primary objective of the game designer is to keep the player engaged. They need to keep that player coming back day after day, for 30, 60 even 100+ hours”. 

Marc Prensky : Learning in the 21st Century

Certainly, The Stanley Parable holds huge amounts of replay value, but the intention of The Stanley Parable is not to keep players engaged so they return to the game the same way that games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, or even Fortnite keep players invested.

The Stanley Parable [demo] uses ‘experiential engagement’ rather than ‘mechanical engagement’.

The distinction between mechanical and experiential engagement is subtle but significant. It is indicative of the various methods that developers employ to keep us, as players, invested in their games. 

Components of Culture

Demos are not just methods through which developers and corporations can more effectively sell their products. Demos are part of the culture within the gaming landscape. 

Art historian Ladislav Kesner explores the idea of ‘cultural competence’ when looking at individual experiences at art museums. In essence, it is the idea that individuals often need to possess a particular competence in order to gain the greatest value from a particular activity or experience. 

Ladislav Kesner

While Kesner focuses on art museums as an object of study, this idea of ‘cultural competence’ can be morphed to fit into other cultural spaces, such as video game culture. The most important factor in an individual’s cultural competence within any particular cultural sphere is their familiarity with and proximity to that sphere. 

Individuals who actively participate within gaming culture, are more likely to be aware of the norms and conventions of the culture than others who are not, this includes understanding the role of game demos and how they operate within the gaming landscape.

 It seems, however, that demos are increasingly rare and increasingly unwanted. Both players and developers, in recent years, seem to have forgotten the important cultural role that demos occupy. Fewer and fewer games have demos before their release, and those that do often cost money. 

There are particularly egregious examples of this, however none so much as Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. While Ground Zeroes (GZ) isn’t technically a demo, the role that it fills, and the objective of the game is much the same. GZ was released prior to The Phantom Pain (TPP), with many of the same features, mechanics, systems and gameplay as the final release.

Ground Zeroes is also similar to a demo in both its length and amount of content, with the main story able to be completed extremely fast and most of the other content being filler. But what makes GZ such an egregious example is that it was full price upon release.

As a cultural object, the role of Ground Zeroes was purely that of a demo. It was not the final release of a full-sized title; even narratively Ground Zeroes serves solely as a prologue to The Phantom Pain.

Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes is a prime example of how demos are losing the relevance that they once held within gaming culture. Simultaneously, as the gaming industry continues to proliferate and grow, the conventions that were once foundational to gaming culture are becoming eroded as the player becomes increasingly commodified, recognized as a mere consumer and not an active participant within a singular, unifying cultural sphere. 

The Loss of Culture

 I go back to the question I posed at the beginning of this essay: Are we really better off without them?

Despite whether we acknowledge or even understand the importance of demos, it is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with the idea that we, as players, would be no worse off without video game demos.

 No Man’s Sky, Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 are only a few of the more notable examples from recent years, in which the final release has not been what was promised at the release date, showing how a lack of demos can be directly detrimental for the player.

More than this though, gaming culture would be less diverse, less exciting, and less interesting without the presence of this long-standing convention of the industry. 

Demos are an anomalous cultural object, unique to the gaming landscape. Which makes demos all the more valuable to us as players.

And to offer an answer to my own question...

I think we, as players and as participants within gaming culture, are far better off with the presence of game demos and the decline in their presence is an unfortunate trend in the sphere of gaming.