CAPTAINCRIMSON'S PROFILE

author=Link_2112

author=CaptainCrimson
God damn, so many people are so passionate about demos...for no good reason.

You don't get to decide what other people are passionate about or decide if their passion is legitimate.

Why are so many people taking this as personal attack?

If you actually read the comments and still don't get it, then there is nothing left to discuss.

Once again, someone is taking this as a personal attack on them. You are desperately shouting from your keyboard trying to start drama where there doesn't need to be any. I'm sorry I don't want to read your 3,000 ~ 4,000 word essay on why author is wrong and you are right, but I'm already here so let's dig in:

This article, as a whole, is about game demos and why here on RMN they are not needed, but if you'd like to make one, here are some tips. Immediately, you jumped on it saying that the author should never tell you not to do something. This is hypocritical because you are telling him never to do something which is directly contradictory to what he should do to you. This means one of two things: you don't think the rules should apply to you or you don't like this opinion so nobody should have it. Quite frankly, I believe it to be the latter.

However, this point is moot because the discussion quickly shifts when the author says that demos aren't necessary. Before I go any deeper, let's first define what a demo is. From what I gathered reading through the comments, there are two types of demos: The first is to get people interested in a game, and the second is to build hype and gather feedback. The author views game demos as the prior, while several people here on RMN view them as the latter. If we look back on the history of gaming, demos were released as a way to spark one's interest and convince them to spend money on the game if they thought the demo was fun. The second kind of demos is typically released a bit further back from release day. The purpose of this demo is to keep people interested, despite the game not coming out for a while. It's more of a teaser than a demo. It also does the job of figuring out what exactly the players don't like. If the teaser is released and part of the game is completely panned, they have plenty of time to fix it before the game's official release.

Now that my little digression is out of the way I can continue. I would argue that an extraordinarily high percentage of games made on RPG Maker and posted to this website are the latter: games that are still a ways from being finished and are looking for feedback. This is understandable, because most devs here are probably working by themselves with no one to give feedback as the development progresses.

The author also brings up how one can structure a demo. He says not to start your demo at the beginning of the game because that is when a game is at its most drab and boring. He also states that you don't need this part in the demo because typically this is where the player is given tutorials and introduced to certain mechanics of the game; certain mechanics that most people playing the game will probably already know. I don't like saying this, but RPG Maker games are almost exclusively played by other RPGM hobbyists. Yes, there are some games that get very popular (ie To the Moon, OneShot, etc), but these games typically aren't RPGs. Traditional JRPG-style games made with the engine all play and feel very similar, and since the core audience of these games already know the basic mechanics, tutorials are unnecessary, but I digress. I agree with the author that starting a demo at the game's beginning is rather bland and boring, but that's not why people are releasing "demos" on this site. They are doing it for feedback.

The author of this article has the first previously mentioned definition of demo in his head as he wrote. The EC video does paint a pretty solid picture on the current state of demos in the gaming industry, and this is where we then get into the discussion of Hobbyist v. Indie v. Corporate game dev. Again, the EC video explains why we don't see a lot of game demos anymore, and author was definitely riding off of that video. In fact, I would take a guess that the article was inspired by the video and the author was thinking of ways to help make better demos; most of them are very sound arguments. And yes, from what I've read, the author is being rather stubborn about his definition of demo, but several people are extremely rude to him telling him he's wrong and a terrible person, instead of offering valid criticisms and simply stating what they feel a demo should be.

Now, here comes my final point: when writing an opinionated and argumentative article as author has done, you need to present your point confidently. People have been spewing out their mouths that he shouldn't be presenting his opinions as fact, but this is wrong. He's presenting his opinion and using reasoning to explain why he thinks demos should be presented this way. That is not presenting them to be factual, but because people don't like this, they subvert this and then start asserting their own opinion that we need demos because that's how people get feedback for their games.

At the end of all of this, this whole argument has boiled down to miscommunication of definitions: One side sees demos as ways to gather interest, and the other sees them as a way to gather feedback. I could go on about the topics of budget and the random inclusion of Nier: Automata's demo, but that wouldn't add anything to my response.

I really really REALLY like how this looks. It has a wonderful nostalgic charm to it. :)
I look forward to the finished product

Thank you very much for the review :)
I love criticism and it warms my heart to one of the mechanics that I worked really hard on get some positive praise. It also allows me to see what I need to work on, (such as map design, I've always been really bad) and I will most definitely take it all to heart and use that knowledge for next time.