It's official, No Civ3 Demo

[Darkknight]

Some of you may have quessed already and I might even have missed a thread on this already but Kelley Gilmore has informed me tere will be no civ3 demo so bad news for anyone wishing for some scenario editing tools

There won't be a demo for Civ III.

Thanks for checking.

Kelley

[Ralf]

Re: It's official, No Civ3 Demo

What thread? A link, please.

[General Ludd]

Apparently I am the only person who feels this way, but I don't want there to be a demo. It'll just ruin the moment when they game is released and you will finally be able to play it, Instead, you will have already been playing a watered down version, and probably have gotten bored of it because of the lack of features and options in the demo, and you wouldn't be very excited about the game anymore.

Not to mention that demos are usually completely horrible and just give a bad impression of a game, especially with strategy games, where it is really difficult to limit the game and still have it being fun.

[TechWins]

Apparently I am the only person who feels this way, but I don't want there to be a demo.

You're diffently not the only one. Even there was a free demo to download I wouldnt' download it. Like you said it takes away from the "real game" when you first play it. I say no to a demo (hey look it rhymes).

[Darkknight]

umm no I won't give you a link to my email a/c.

[Christantine The Great]

A copy would be sufficient.

[Urban Ranger]

Intolerable!

Originally posted by Osweld
Not to mention that demos are usually completely horrible and just give a bad impression of a game, especially with strategy games, where it is really difficult to limit the game and still have it being fun.

I am not sure what kind of demos you have played, but that's not what my experience is. The SMAC demo was very complete, for example.

[Apocalypse]

I'm getting the game no matter what so why would I want a demo?

It would be interesting if there was some limited release demo like the Civ2 demo which would lead to me being one of the few people with a copy though.

[Swissy]

Why make a demo of what is the most anticipated TBS game of the year(s). Demo's are for games you need to build a pre-release buzz for. Civ3 has been buzzing for a few years now.

[yin26]

Brian Reynolds on the SMAC demo:

Then, it was time to release our demo. We had originally thought of the demo entirely as a marketing tool, but as soon as we released it we realized that it made perfect sense as part of our process: Here was a fairly polished, almost-final version of our game in the hands of the public, and as soon as the thing was out we started getting all sorts of feedback from it. Since the release version of Alpha Centauri was still in final testing, and our actual ship date was more than a month away, we had time to incorporate many suggestions from e-mail and Internet newsgroups into the retail version - much to the game's benefit.

Thanks to the demo release, we could make improvements to the game's interface, add a couple of new features, and fix a few glitches found by demo users that had somehow slipped through our testing process. Most significantly, the design of the game itself was still "in play" during the demo process - we could improve some rules, fine-tune the game balance, and improve the AI, all based on feedback we got from the Internet. Even though we hadn't planned it that way, the demo release really proved to be a perfect addition to our design repertoire.

Once again, the general public is being shut-out by this decision not to release a demo as was done with great success with SMAC. Of course, if Civ 3 proves to have not needed info on "glitches found by demo users that had somehow slipped through," then fine.

Murphy's Law and a hell of a lot of experience, however, should be screaming otherwise.

[MarkG]

ok, Firaxis, the experiment has worked!!

"No Civ3 Demo" is one of the key phrases that awakens the Yin26 Beast! Everyone should know that from now on so that this doesnt happen again.....

[Guest]

That's cold Mark, very COLD! When you throw a dog a bone, it's not supposed to be on a string so you can pull it back at the last second!

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by MarkG
ok, Firaxis, the experiment has worked!!

"No Civ3 Demo" is one of the key phrases that awakens the Yin26 Beast! Everyone should know that from now on so that this doesnt happen again.....

Two options:
1) Darknight is kidding, demo will be out: that's not very funny but's OK.

2) Darknight is correct, game will not have a demo and you are making this time less than funny joke on Yin26 only replying to Swissy and others the positive feedback of demo as once admitted by Brian himself.

Are you really the same MarkG who 21-8-2001 wrote:

anyway, first of all, there WILL be a demo. firaxis always made demos for their games, and infogrames seems to be doing the same(check their site).

second, if the demo is done like smac, it will be very good for civ3. if you consider that the demo was out on december 25 and the game was released on february 9(that's more than 2 months between the two dates), guess how you can call the smac demo....

Naaah, unbelievable: someone must have stolen administrator password.

[MarkG]

1) my post above in this thread was a joke
2) the other post you quoted is pure speculation on my part. i think it's clear i was just making an argument, i wasnt quoting any info from firaxis or infogrames or from a preview

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by MarkG
2) the other post you quoted is pure speculation on my part. i think it's clear i was just making an argument, i wasnt quoting any info from firaxis or infogrames or from a preview

Sorry MarkG, I know the quoted part is not an info from Firaxis; my point is you showed a good appreciation for a demo out before the game goes to the shop.

Just in case Darkknight wasn't kidding (and you know about it) I was surprised by your uninteresting shooting on Yin26 (that wasn't trolling Firaxis at all , just quoting a previous info to explain good use of a demo), and not about the missing demo itself.

So would anyone please care to confirm or deny the info about demo?

Thank you in advance to anyone will help a dumb person as I am