CEO Cevat Yerli defends EA’s controversial PDLC strategy, remains unsure on Crysis 2 demo
The CEO of indie studio Crytek has defended EA’s divisive ‘premium downloadable content’ strategy, while also predicting the extinction of free game demos.
In an interview with Develop, Crytek’s co-founder Cevat Yerli said he wasn’t sure that a demo of Crysis 2 was going to be released. He also said demos are "a luxury” that becomes “prohibitively expensive” for game studios to make.
He said: “A free demo is a luxury we have in the game industry that we don’t have in other industries such as film. Because we’ve had this free luxury for so long, now there are plans to change this people are complaining about it. The reality is that we might not see any free game demos in the long term.”
Crysis 2 publisher EA was recently the subject of much controversy for plans to release premium demos “for $10 or $15” before a game’s final release.
That strategy was coarsely criticised across message boards, forums and social networks, yet Yerli believes it has many benefits.
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“I read a lot about this, and read about the backlash as well; people complaining that they would essentially be paying for a beta,” he said.
“I think EA’s strategy is interesting, overall. The thing is, every time we see a publisher doing something to improve the industry, making things more commercially viable and actually increasing the market, people instantly think this is only some money-hungry ploy.”
Part of the reason why there was such backlash, said Yerli, was that EA’s plan was not properly explained.
“Yes it is quite unpopular, but this is a messaging issue. The problem with any new strategy like this is it initially may appear as a blood-hungry, money-grabbing strategy. But I think there is a genuine interest here to give gamers something more than a small demo released for free.
“Really, what this is, is an attempt to salvage a problem. The industry is still losing a lot of money to piracy as the market becomes more online-based. So it’s encouraging to see strategies outlined to combat this.”
“I think the whole issue needs to be explained in a better way, because there is good thinking behind EA’s plan. I understand why people are thinking that all EA wants to do is maximise profits out of the audience, but really, what it’s really trying to do is get investment back but while being as fair to the gamer as much as it can. Ultimately, it will be a better deal for the gamer.
Yerli added he wasn’t sure if Crytek were going to release a free demo of the studio’s upcoming FPS Crysis.
“That’s something we need to think about, because we haven’t fully decided on this yet,” he said.
“But whether we do have a demo or not, do I think companies need to release so many demos? I think that we’ll see more and more games not carrying a demo in the future, because it becomes prohibitively expensive.
“Also, given the time pressures in making a demo – in fact given the time pressure of making a quality demo – I think it all becomes really difficult to work with, and I think we’ll see less and less of them in the future.”
The games themselves are more likely to become F2P than demos are ever to start costing money.
The F2P game will be the demo and require payments to extend it into the full game.
Surely the whole point of demos is to see if you like the game before you invest money into it? What happens if you pay for a demo and decide you don't like it? I can see this driving more people towards piracy as a means of try before buy.
I understand the industry is going through quite a few expenses problems but paying for a demo isn't practical thinking.
Every industry gives a taster of what your buying before you buy it e.g. Spray perfume to try it, watch a film trailer, try on clothes etc.
It could be considered 'luxury' but without it, people would go for something they've tried and enjoyed rather than taking the developers word that it's good.
Making a demo is prohibitively expensive? It's just a subset of the game that the developer has to make anyway.
This seems like yet another crazy idea that a desperate industry has devised to punish people who actually pay for their games.
Here's an idea...Make better games and run your companies more professionally, that'll work.
A video game is much different than the film industry. Paying $8 for a film is much different than the $59 - $69 retail price of a new game. I personally do not spend that much money on any game without trying it out first.
Killing the demos could really hurt the gaming industry.
Is this guy retarded? He's supposed to be trying to convince us to buy his product, he should consider it an honor that people even want to try out his games. Literally every other industry has some form of preview before you buy a product, especially a product that costs as much as a game - most movies have trailers or even entire scenes from the film available before hand, cars let you test drive before you invest.
Please contact Yerli and drive this into his thick skull Develop, you're clearly in touch with him
Posted: 04/16/2010
Oh my god this is the most funny thing i have heard in 8 years.
I am not fucking paying for a demo and since i never got to try there damn game I am not going to buy the full retail game either since i did not get to test it for free.
The fucking game demo should be paid with your marketing cost that gets me to buy a game faster than your lame ass TV and print ads.
It's the same model ID software used to go from a nothing company to what they are they went around and handed out free shareware copies to everybody who wanted it and they all bought the full game because they liked what they got
as zeek already put it rather well - this guy is an idiot. no demos for movies... really? man...
To me it sounds like this guys had a brainwave and worked out that there's extra cash to be made by having gamers pay for demos, and he's floating the idea to see if any other gaming companies agree with him and pick up on it.
The day we have to pay for demos is the day when I'll give up on gaming. Games are expensive enough without adding more cost before you've even got a finished game.
EA wants its investment but when I invest $10 in a game demo that turns out to be crap, do I get my investment back? No? How is that a better deal? The PR spin on this one is so violent I could run a windmill.
Nowadays gamers pay full money for beta versions as it is. It's more the rule than the exception that games are rushed to the market in an extremely buggy and sometime even unplayable state. Case in point the recent BF:BC2. Pay for demos? This must be a sad joke.
If this does come about, I'm fairly sure that most people will wait for the final product to be released and then borrow/rent it as it's available.
Paying for a demo is like paying 1/4 of the price of a book to read four random pages from inside it... and half of those pages aren't yet completed.
Video game revenue is up in every year of the past decade except 2009. Greedy, video game industry crybabies, your piracy bogeyman is unconvincing. Look at what you have tried to justify with it, just in recent memory:
* "Downloadable content", mere days after release, some of which already resides on the game media
* One-time-use content codes that clearly violate first-sale laws, to punish the used game market
* Treating what would formerly have been an "expansion pack" as a full price product
Keep pushing, and you'll have 1983 all over again. Entitled idiots.
IF we as consumers wish to stop our service industries from servicing us in ways we are not willing to accept, then we need to be willing to pressure those industries into the type of service we require.
The best sort of pressure would be to vote with your wallet. Simply do not purchase the product. IF you really want to pressure the service provider do not purchase any of their products. No one can say they require anything made by EA, therefor if you do not like EA's business practices (EA, or Electronic Arts, used solely as example due to content of original story) then simply post on their forums that you would have liked to have tried a demo of this product first. When the service provider fails to produce the service that you require, again, vote with your wallet and do not buy the product or service being offered.
This solution would work equally well for the movie, music, or gaming industry.
When you do find a product that you like, purchase it! Show the market that you will accept certain kinds of behavior, and that other sorts of behavior are simply unacceptable.
You can bet your life that I will not purchase any game that doesn't come as an acceptable demo before I buy it.
When the industry is attempting to garner more profits for themselves than they already get, there is no other justification besides money.
"Surely the whole point of demos is to see if you like the game before you invest money into it?"
Mmm, perhaps in the console space that's all it comes down to but if we're talking PC-centric then a demo is exceptionally valuable to see if the thing will actually run on your rig, never mind anything else.
To torture Cevat's rather abominable analogy a bit further - I don't need to demo a film. I know full well that when I roll into the cinema, the film will work on the screen. I know if I pick up a DVD, I have every expectation that it will just play when I put it into the DVD player and so on. I don't have any such guarantees with a game.
It's not a luxury we should be afforded. It should absolutely be the first consideration the industry should be making -if- they want people to buy their products.
But then, expecting a dinosaur still reliant on a 1990's style hardware drive model to sell their product to have a grasp on how the games industry needs to evolve is, well, you'd get more sense and joy out of a brick I'm sure.
You blame decreased sales on piracy which 99% of the rest of the game industry does which proves you have no sense of direction or vision. The fact of the matter is. the market is saturated with too many game companies, too many choices and alot of bad games. Piracy is a byproduct of these three areas so people want to know what they are paying for first. So get off your high horse and dont try and sell us this line of crap. we're not buying it. You need to get your ass over to Valve Corporation and set your self up with a tour cause they way you are talking clearly shows you don't have a clue how to run a game company and are out of touch with the gaming community.
I think its just what is expected from a person who came from nothing to a bank roll - now he wants everything and he thinks his industry is better than anything else.
He's dumb and stupid and got far too much money that he needs to be like all rich basket cases even more rich - greed!
Shame on this stupid CEO Cevat Yerli
no one! no one! is going buy your game without seeing if its any good! Period!
I don't buy a car without test driving it!
I don't buy a house without seeing all around it!
I don't buy a T.V. without seeing it and knowing what and what not it can do!
Demos have made you what you are today!
Stop being a tight ass dummy and live with it.
make us a demo and we may buy your game if it is any good.
Make us pay for demos and you'll sit upon the shelve! just like a car does on a showroom floor! know buys a lemon!
Grow up and Grow out of your high seat!
get real and get to the street!
As said in other posts, demos are not a luxury, they are required if you want someone to buy your game. I think his point is that, once you are a big studio with lots of clout, you no longer need to give a shit what brought you customers to begin with.
..I just wanted to mention that I bought Farcry and Crysis based on the demos.
best game in the world
Without a free demo I will never buy your game, period.
How's that helping your financial forecast?
...And the world is calling BS on the 'prohibitively expensive' demo statement.
The market will decide if game developers offer free demos or not. If they lose business with their paid demo plan, they'll go back to the free demo model, or come up with something new, or perish. That said, I can't imagine the games business acting in lockstep with EA's experiment, especially the smaller/solo developers who use free demos to expand their customer base. Just because Crytek's games are horrendously complex and labor intensive doesn't mean everyone else's are too. I liked Jason Holtman's (Valve) comment that pirates are very often simply 'underserved customers', who resort to piracy when they cannot get the game they want via conventional means. Here's a thought: Charge customers $10 for each level of Crysis 2, eliminating the demo/game duality; each level is an enticement to keep playing and pay more.
This is beyond stupid. Do this, and pirating will increase, game sales will decrease. The only reason I've pirated a computer game in recent years is because there was no demo and I was on the fence about buying. If you put out a demo you can put your best face forward and hide the bad stuff, if people pirate the full game then they can see everything and judge your product on its merits.
Also, demos are exclusive to the game industry? So, for instance, I couldn't see selected bits of a movie before it hit theaters? Every book doesn't have a brief synopsis printed on the back of the jacket? That's crap, it's just a straight out lie. If movie studios started charging for trailers that would be ridiculous, and charging for demos is equally ridiculous.
xbox users would love paid demos
This is an easy choice. I won't pay for demos, which means I won't pay for the full game. Congratulations on alienating your customer base and failing to comprehend exactly why people pirate games. Shitty DRM, shitty demos, and overpriced games are plaguing this industry. Instead of being greedy, why not make a quality product I would love to own and play multiple times? I pay for what is worth my money, not 90% of the crap on the market right now.
"A free demo is a luxury we have in the game industry that we don’t have in other industries such as film"
it's called a trailer, you moron.
more importantly... free demos aren't going anywhere, no matter what this guy says. Microsoft's X360 marketplace / XBLA is almost completely driven by the trial/full-game model.
games are expensive, too expensive for people to buy on a 'hunch'..without giving them a taste for free, you're not giving them much choice.
besides, crytek hardly represent the industry.. they're incredibly niche.
What Yerli means is:
- if you want a free quality demo, studios are losing tech investment because demo's get hacked.
- if you want studio's to keep building demos, you are asking quite a lot since production stages have become 100x more complex than in the 80ies. Shove in a demo target cross-platform, and you're essentially ruining the whole internal planning game, pushing studios over the edges of their initial financial agreements with publishers. Without financial safety nets, the studios go bust. even the great ones.
- also due to the long production stages, a demo is never going to give you the finished look and feel. comparing demos based on (visual/technical) quality is in fact not really useful, since most of the polish/performance work happens in the last stages. the exceptions are game-play, humor and some fun bits. usually you can find that on Youtube before the demo is even out.
- if you pay for it, you're going through 'official' channels, and you'll get the quality you deserve. Alternatively you can pick up a hack and roam the many bug-reporting forums to resolve your system issues. and even then, hacked versions tend to overload support forums with bugs due to copy-protection systems activating deep inside the code-base after x amount of play time.
I'm not saying it's not a money grab. It is. But it also makes a bit of sense. This is not about a pack-man demo anymore. It's about billion dollar budget productions.
The reality is probably that free demos for big budget products WILL disappear, and that alternative media channels will be set up to market to the general public and game audience. The smaller productions and studios will probably try to keep the free demo mantra going for as long as it suits them / they can support it.
Just put some ads in or before the game. It would cut the cost of releasing demos. Hell, why not put some billboards in the full game? It fits. And maybe the price would be lower. Of course I'd expect a large company like EA to have their cake and eat it too.
I will have to disagree with what Cevat Yerli said about industries such as film making. People in the film industry DO release a "demo" of their final product. Trailers are the equivalent of a demo in the film industry. You can get a sneak peak of what the whole movie its all about. And I believe it will be much more expensive for game developers NOT to create a demo than actually creating one. If you are not able to play a portion of the game you are not certain if you will actually get to like the game per se, and you have to rely on somebody else's review to decide whether you want to buy the game or not. But that's just my humble opinion.
Well, they are not to blame, in our difficult time we must seize every opportunity to earn money, and that's exactly what they are doing. But since "That strategy was coarsely criticized across message boards, forums and social networks", Crytek can lose lots of loyal fans. It's their choice, after all.
This guy is completely out of his mind! He surely has no idea of the point of releasing a DEMO. DEMO means TRY IT FOR FREE! that's the whole point.
And the stupid argument of demos being "prohibitively expensive to make" is ridiculous!!! Sure games are expensive as hell to make, but demos ARE PART of the costs of making a game! I mean, ALL CONTENT you are going to put in a demo, is already PART of the final product, (and if not, it would only be a beta), so where in heavens is such "expensiveness"??!! Yo only have to take a part of your already made (or near finished) game. Say, just a level or two, or part of them, or whatever, those are things that already have been made for the final thing, and "spent" money on making!
It is not as you would have to make everything from scratch to make a demo, as if you had to design different levels, maps, characters, whatever... Simply ridiculous.
And about being a luxury the VG industry has and other industries have not.. WTF!? Doesn't he know movie trailers? Doesn't he know "free samples" of music, or even food at the market??!! And again, a LUXURY!?? A trailer of any movie is made of things already being part of it. Its not like you are filming different things to the trailer that are NOT going to be part of the final thing! It would be senseless. Hence, the cost of making a trailer for any given movie is negligible. In video games maybe the cost of making a demo is not as small, but from that to "prohibitively expensive"??!! COME ON!!!
This guy really needs to go outside and ask people WHY they want demos for (try before you buy) and why they NEVER agree on paying for them.
And for all those people willing to pay for sneak peeks, beta versions, teasers, etc, THOSE are NOT demos. (And THOSE cases would only apply to already known and hyper hyped games, which people is willing to pay for)
DEMO = FREE try out of THE REAL THING.
Maybe the thing is he is just afraid of making a demo not enough good to convince people to buy it thinking the real game sucks.
Come on! Don't be a cheap bastard and just try harder and make a FREE demo that is worth it and make us EAGER to by your god damn game!!!
This is just going to alienate your market you morons. I will NEVER pay for a demo. You can try to justify it any way you like.
@ a0a:
I don´t agree with your post. Every industry gives me an adequat possibility to try out their products FOR FREE, to get a decent impression of what I want to buy.
You can testdrive a car to get a picture of how it feels, how the handling is, etc.
You can "Test Smell" a perfume.
Books and movies give you a summary of its stories so you know what you´re about to read/watch
Long story short: You can test every product based on your interaction with it.
I cant´t imagine that other media channels like a youtube gameplay video can give me the same impression of a game like a FREE playable demo.
It would be like if I want to buy a car, and the only way to make myself a picture of it would be to watch how others drive it in the streets.
So as said, every industry gives you a FREE preview of their products.
You also said:
"also due to the long production stages, a demo is never going to give you the finished look and feel"
I think every gamer knows that when playing a demo.
P.S: Sorry for my English guys. Hope you could understand it anyways :D
This sounds like a comment from a businessman thinking purely in terms of content and profit, not from a game developer thinking in terms of gameplay and value.
Demos are industry standard, invaluable marketing tools for games. As someone else mentioned, for PC titles in particular they are vital to make sure the game actually runs on different hardware. Also please tell me you *are* a mature business that is factoring demos into the project plan from the start and not still in the adolescent mid-90's game company model of reaching the last few weeks of dev and suddenly going "OK, so now we make the demo!" If it's the latter, no wonder you find demos 'prohibitively expensive' to make.
And from a gamers' point of view I fail to see the benefit of this. It won't be 'exclusive' content, just the demo that should have been free in the first place. And unless there is some 'if you've bought the demo, you get that $10 off the full game' deal, then you will have paid more than just taking a random punt on the full title.
In the end, instead of just having the full game available as an illegal download, they will now have the 'paid' demo up there as well. That's all that will change.
He said: “A free demo is a luxury we have in the game industry that we don’t have in other industries such as film"
What the film industry doesn't have, is trailers that try and con the general public into thinking the film is more than it really is. The film industry doesn't have to put "Not actual film footage" on the trailers, unlike games were forced to do because they conned the public with CGI trailers for so long. The film industry doesn't release great CGI trailers that turn into sub-par releases 2 years later.
What the film industry doesn't have, is you buying a film and then having to wait 4 weeks to get the patch so that you can watch all the film, because it's broken. Or, if EA was making films, you wouldn't get a patch to fix the film, you'd just get told to buy the sequel instead... which in turn would probably be broken, and so it would continue.
This guy doesn't want free demos, because he is fully aware that his product just might not be up to standard, and a demo would give that fact away.
Maybe he should consider that if his company can do nothing more than produce generic FPS games, maybe creative/inventive/imaginative personnel might be the answer, not consumer exploitation.
The problem is, the games industry is now full of dishonest, greedy businessmen, and it's simply because of the dumb gamer. The current business model has been spawned by:-
NextGame = substandard_product;
If (NextGame.sales >= 500000){
NextGame.sequel = substandard_product + 1;
} else {
NextGame.sequel = substandard_product + 1;
}
If you put crap in a box and people buy it, where is the incentive to put anything other than crap in the box, if all you are interested in is the money it earns. Until people grow a pair and do something about it, they better get used to crap filled boxes.
of course I'll pay for commercials Mr.Yerli !
I really don't see a problem with paying for a demo if there is some real value attached to paying for this pre-look at a future game. The problem is where is the value in it? Is there going to be significant discount on the final game? I'm not talking these BS unlock codes to a car or a weapon that I don't care about. I'm talking value in purchasing a demo as opposed to what has traditionally been free. This sounds like the movie industry play book of double dipping the consumer to death with all the different cuts of a movie. Director's Cut, Game of the Year, etc. and now the Demo Cut. How many versions of LOTR's can one person own?
If a company starts trying to charge for a demo, then frankly, I would be left with two options: not buy the product, or give up on my long-held stance to never download cracked games,
In the latter case, I would play it through for a bit, and then delete, or buy - but I certainly am not shelling out my cash for a product which I have absolutely no way of telling if it appeals to me or not.
Arma 2 was a case in point. I was eagerly anticipating the product, downloaded the demo... discovered immediately whole motion blur/DoF effects (which *really* give me motionsickness) and deleted the game after less than 5 mins. I would be extremely angry if I'd paid the full price on a product like that, only to find my money wasted; especially in the games stores who will refuse to accept returns.
I was going to post a long comment, by there is no need.
I would never buy a demo. And you fight the market at your own peril. Enough said.
They are talking about Crysis 2 here not some new IP thats never been seen before. I doubt this will have any effect on the sales of this game. Everyone I know is waiting for the game with their $60 in hand. The game is going to be bought on the basis of Crysis 1 not any free demo.
Frankly I think the only waste of money (and time) will be to make the demo at all since no one will buy it. People will just play at a friends or a GameStop if they aren't sure about the game.
For New Game with no history, charging for a demo would be rediculous since people are a bit shy about plopping down $60 for a game that might suck and as every successful Drug Dealer knows, the first dose is always free. $4$ its a good investment.
“A free demo is a luxury" NO...... gaming is the luxury....and if im pushed into it i am prepared to stop.
What does it take for people like him to see that every time they make a game that we dont all have yet another 35-45 quid collecting dust on the sideboard or bank account just waiting to be used.
whats next...(devs) hows about this amazing idea we could put the game in a complicated to open puzzle box that you have to enter your debit card details into before it will open....we can say its a fun mood setting mini game...
"The film industry doesn't have to put "Not actual film footage" on the trailers"
Hmm, some pr0n films have pictures on the front cover that are photoshopped! It wouldn't be so bad if they "enhanced" the entire film with CGI but that would obviously cost more than a single cover image. ;-)
