We need to bring back the era of demos

[Nuvendil]

sc94597 said:

Nuvendil said:

sundin13 said:
Demos are almost universally bad for business so I don't see that happening any time soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QM6LoaqEnY

Well, people still drive even though driving is almost universally bad for you.  I mean, there's only a limited number of ways driving can turn out.

1) You are a pretty bad driver and yet you get where you are going without a hitch. 

2) You are a pretty bad driver and get in an accident and injur yourself.

3) You are a pretty bad driver and get in an accident that kills you.

4) You are an ok driver and you get where you are going without a hitch.

5) You are an ok driver and get in an accident and injur yourself.

6) You are an ok driver and get in an accident and kill yourself.

7) You are a good driver and get where you are going without a hitch.

8) You are a good driver but someone hits you and you are injured.

9) You are a good driver but someone hits you and you are killed.

10) You are any of the above but someone else hits you and causes no injury but results in damage to your vehicle.

11) You are any of the above and get stuck in trafic, causing your driving to take as long or longer than walking.

I mean that's 11 outcomes (with streamlining) with only 3 actually good outcomes.  

This is a VERY, VERY poor analogy. The likelihood of a good outcome when driving is much higher than the likelihood of getting in to an accident. The demo outcomes, on the otherhand, are pretty close in probabilities. Basically they represent three outcomes (demo is better than your game, demo is the same as your game, demo is worse than your game) for three types of games (good game, okay game, bad game.) Furthermore, the additional argument is made that the benefits of a good demo, good game combo aren't that great, and hence not worth the risks. Meanwhile when you drive you usually do so because the alternative is labor intensive, time intensive, or both and is worth the risks involved. Both are cost-risk-benefit analyses, which is what most companies do when making decisions. 

First, you would think I was joking.  Unless you think I ACTUALLY think driving is disadvantageous.  I don't.  But the bolded is the thing I call into question.  According to who?  There's really very little they can look at to prove that this is in fact the case.  Now I will say this:  the ad campaign blitz strategy is a safer bet though more resource intense.  And that's what it really comes down to:  demo based promotion *requires* more polish, more quality assurance, and may still be ineffective.  The ad campaign blitz can sell almost any game, polish be darned.

That's the thing.  Demos are not quantifiably reliable, ads pretty much are.  It's that simple.  The rest of the analysis is entirely superfluous.