Do game demos harm game sales? Schell Games founder says yes

During a presentation at last week's DICE (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) summit, author, professor, and Schell Games founder Jesse Schell shared a rather bold statement for developers: releasing a demo for your game could actually harm sales. The solution? Look, but don't touch.

According to Schell, keeping a game tantalizingly out of reach turns the old "try before you buy" method into a more profitable "buy to try"—a colder approach, but a logical one for racking up the numbers. The presence of a demo, he continued, risks throwing away a player's interest after he or she actually experiences a sample cut of the game.

I agree that not releasing a demo may make sense for story-driven games, where it's tough to introduce just a slice of the game. But the advent of digital platforms and the ubiquity of beta periods for games has made it easier to try before you buy, and I still think demos represent a valuable way of attracting interest. How much time and money it takes to release a fragment of your game, I'm not sure of.

SimCity's invite-only beta wasn't labeled a demo, but amid continued controversy , the one-hour trial mode also seemed to draw tons of positive attention when EA opened it up last month for the first time. Has playing SimCity's beta, or other recent pre-release builds, deterred you from buying?

Omri Petitte is a former PC Gamer associate editor and long-time freelance writer covering news and reviews. If you spot his name, it probably means you're reading about some kind of first-person shooter. Why yes, he would like to talk to you about Battlefield. Do you have a few days?