In a continuing trend of taking a quick break from MMOs (before this weekend’s NA Aion beta test!) I spent all of yesterday trying out demos on newer games that I was interested in. This included: Trine, Overlord 2, and Arma 2.

I’m not going to be delving into the demos themselves, all were pretty good though. Instead I want to throw my thoughts out on demos and sales. Each of the three demos elicited different reactions from me, some positive and some negative. Then there was the pre-order sale that shook everything up more…

Demos have long been a source of ‘marketing’ towards gamers — we try them, we decide whether we want to buy or not. I like to think of it as natural selection, the good games thrive while the poor games die. As such, I’ve come to base many purchases in the past off the demos, more so than critic reviews. Reviews are fine, and often hold some good information, but they only share one person’s thoughts on the game — and personality/preference weighs heavily on the outcomes (there’s lots of ‘spin’). Yesterday I was thinking of purchasing one game from among the three listed previously. I used the demos to make that decision.

Arma 2 was up first; this game is sort of like Ghost Recon in the realistic modern day military combat game play. It’s not my kind of game, so it was a definite no go. Next was Overlord 2; I played through most of the first game, it was enjoyable, but this demo for the second one was really enjoyable. I won’t go into it, but anything that has clubbing baby seals, goblins riding wolves, and bashing hippie elves — I’m totally there. My heart was set on Overlord 2 at this point, I’d even thought about getting the first Overlord so I could run through both of them — then I tried Trine. The production value isn’t as high as Overlord, I think, but the graphics and game play were quite fun and good — I was now torn on which to get. Certainly, Trine isn’t released yet, and that would normally make a big difference, however it had this one little perk — a discount when you pre-order. Yup, per-order on Steam and get 10 bucks off the retail value. Could I pass this up? Nope. I went with Trine and figured I’d pick up Overlord 2 at a slightly later date, since the price wasn’t going to change any time soon (I think).

So, what happened there? What was the point of it? Nothing? Perhaps. But what won the war of the sales that day was two things — a (good) demo and a special discount. Want to ship products? Want people to pre-order? Offer small discounts (and a good demo). Even if your game has a poor demo, offer discounts — at that point you probably should anyway.