A decent demo

[Jonas]

A question, just because I'm curious:
What do you find a decent demo for a RPG game? In the context that it is made by a micronationalist who is inexperienced in making games.

Does the demo need to take 30 minutes? An hour? Two hours? I want to know from which point I can sell Kildarian Time Wars.


Don't worry, it will not be made available ( ) before I finished the first major parts. With Andreas on holiday, I'm trying to use the time for making the game around the script he already made.

[Bacchus]

Don't make the demo too long or else it will satisfy people enough so that the game itself is never completed.

[Leo Fenrir]

I think its a matter of ratio. Like If your game is going to 1 hour in total give them 10 mins. Its up to you really. (I agree with bacch though.)

[Jonas]

If I haven't finished the game, how do I know how long the game will be?
And with a demo, I mean from which point would it be good to publish it? Not that I will give a free sample, because the game will be free (except if Andreas and I decide to sell it, what's probably better for the economic system).
I think with the current stuff, the demo will probably take an hour to play. And I have still some things to do before I finish the script Andreas wrote until now. But it's, of course, the quality and not the quantity that counts.

It's going well. Maybe I have to sell stocks from my gaming company.

[Bacchus]

By the way, don't let convention constrain you. You don't have to release a demo of the first section of the game just because that's the way it's been done before. Why not have a series of exciting bits- you know, the bits just before the plot twists- and some of the cooler sections of dialogue, along with the fun and more interesting battles. That's just an idea, of course- and if you do take that course, I beg of you not to include the very best stuff. There's nothing worse than playing a demo and buying a game, and then finding that the game is no better than the demo.

[Jonas]

I hope it's clear that with selling it, I mean with micronational money. So you can't lose much.

[Bacchus]

It's the principle. It's good form to leave the awesomest stuff out of the trailers and demos for games and films- though in the latter's case, hardly any comedy or action films these days leave the best scenes out of their ads. Fortunately, it would be impractical to include extended scenes of hilarious dialogue, or tension, or action (incl. scale of fighting) and so those areas, for now, remain on the whole sacred.