People here use the terms "demo" and "beta" interchangably. They have different meanings, as jim42 says, but for the most part Game Devvers either don't know or don't care about the distinctions. It seems to me that betas are more for testing purposes, and demos are more for showing off.



A game demo is a demonstration of what your game is about and what it's like to play. It doesn't necessarily need to be "the first X hours" of the game, and in fact, it's probably better if it isn't and is instead treated as a separate thing to the final finished product. FL has listed a number of reasons why being able to carry on from a demo into the full game is a bad idea (requires more effort to support saves made in the demo, the player will miss changes made to the start of the game, etc.).







Anyway, what are people releasing and why? It can't be denied that the main reason they release a demo is for publicity. The fact that they can also use their demo as an open beta and receive bug reports for it is a bonus, but I don't think that's the main reason people release demos. They want to show off what they've done so far.



I find when I put out a new version of Essentials that I suddenly become less enthused about it. It's a "job done" mentality, and is a strong demotivator even though you know there's much more to do. On top of that, having people tell you what's wrong with your demo saps your will even further. Because of this, I'd say that releasing a demo can tend to be detrimental to productivity.



If you must release a demo, we Then come to the point I alluded to earlier: what's in the demo? The first chunk of the game, commonly using Gyms as endpoints. How often have you heard "playable up to the second Gym"? Maybe Gyms are good way-points, I don't know. Maybe it'd be better to end on some kind of cliffhanger, such as when you just enter a new town/big area (which is visible but not accessible, to tease the player with more to come).



That's not my point, though. Why must a demo be "the first chunk of the game"? Many game demos in the real world don't give the player the first mission or two to play through, because the beginning of a game is generally boring because you can't do anything yet. There's also the problem of player fatigue - if they've already played the first X hours of your game, they're going to be dulled when they have to replay it in the final game. Why not omit the very beginning part, start the player at the second town with a sample party, and let them play from there? This lets the beginning be new to them, may well give them some information which provides context to comments they saw in the demo which didn't make any sense at the time, and by the time they reach the demo part the pacing has picked up enough that they don't mind replaying it so much and will have more options to follow (e.g. different Pokémon).



Let's go further than this. Why should the demo be a copy of some chunk of the actual game? How about changing some things, like moving a building around or having different wild Pokémon? The contents of the XY demo were thrown together entirely for the purposes of the demo, and the only part of it that might be in the final game is the map design itself (not the NPCs or wild encounters). In this case the demo really is just showing off what you can do (ride Pokémon, Mega Evolutions, some Gen 6 Pokémon). The XY demo has some restrictions on what you can do too, such as being unable to gain Exp. Most importantly, the XY demo doesn't make you want to play the full game any less because there are no spoilers (any revealed part of the plot that isn't in the game's description counts as a spoiler, even if it seems unimportant).



The benefits of doing something like this should be obvious. It means you can work on whichever maps you want, rather than being forced to create them in order. It means you can make changes to any part of the game later on without worrying about breaking demo savegames (because they'll be unsupported). It gives the player a better experience when they finally play the full game. You can stitch together whichever things you want to show them off without worrying about how that cluster of features will affect the whole game (because they're only stitched together for the sake of the demo).



So there's some ideas for you.







Should people release demos at all? Personally, I'd say "maybe one or possibly two towards the end of production, in the stitch-together style, for the sole purpose of advertising". The only things you can really show off are the mapping, story and maybe some new features/redesigns if you've done those, and you shouldn't be including the story in the demo because spoilers.



Any actual testing of the game (mechanics, mapping/eventing, etc.) should be done in closed betas by recruited beta testers, whose job is to thoroughly test every aspect of the game and who would be able to recognise potential problems (and ideally have access to the source to help them). A beta tester operates differently to people who'll download/play a demo, who will just play through it casually and might jot down some of the bugs they happened to spot. That's why you shouldn't rely solely on "outsider" reactions.



A demo is a publicity stunt. If you find yourself wanting to resort to it in order to boost your motivation, you need to look at why you've lost that motivation in the first place instead of trying to top it up.