Games Expo is coming up in the near future and there will be some new faces on the booth. For many of you, this will be the first chance to have a go at quickfire, 15-20 minute demos for your games. This is quite a different experience from running a full game and there are a number of things to consider. However, this kind of demo can be immensely fun and rewarding; people can get really enthused about your game really quickly. And, every one turns out different.
To start of with, here's some key threads you might want to have a look at:
Once you've had a look at those, here's what this thread should be about:
An opportunity for you to ask questions about demoing
An opportunity for people to give advice based on their demoing experience
An opportunity for those who have been on the play side of a demo to give their thoughts
If any of these start to dominate, then we can totally break this down in to individual threads dealing with specific issues.
I'd really like this thread to be one of solid, practical advice, not theorising and opinion. Keeping that in mind will make it a valuable resource, not just right now, but in the future.
First things first: What is your demo about?
You have 15 minutes to show off your game to people. That's not long. So what is the core concept of you game and what is the cool thing you want to show off? Think hard about this. Here's my experiences with two games of my own, both with different cool things:
a|state: It's all about the setting and atmosphere. The demo is keyed towards getting across key setting themes: Hope, despair and taking action to benefit communities. The mechanics are there, but they are not a core part of the demo.
Cold City: It's all about showing how the mechanics complement the setting. Trust and Hidden Agendas are foresquare here. Not too much detail about the setting, just BANG! with the situation that is happening right now and how the mechanics contribute to resolving that situation.
Think about what you want to get across about your game, think about what the core experience is and how to get people to hook into that in 15 minutes. Ideally, you wanted them hooked in to that in 5 minutes and at the end of 15 minutes, wanting to play on. Leave you demo on a cliffhanger if you want. The Cold City demo often ends with some characters not knowing if they will live or die. It's tense and exciting.
That's a start, so let's get the questions and answers flowing and get some really solid stuff about demoing down here.
Cheers
Malcolm
Demos
Submitted by Rich Stokes on Thu, 03/04/2008 - 15:54.
I am not claiming to be an authority on the subject, nor am I greatly experienced with giving 15 minute demos. But I'm going to offer this worked example of what I did for the Umlaut demos I did at Dragonmeet.
First, some advice:
1) Listen to people who've done these demos before.
This sounds obvious, but some of the guys here have done a ton of these demos at cons all over the world. Many of them have done them under great pressure and really damn strict time constraints. When Malcolm or Gregor give you advice, listen to them, they know what they're talking about.
2) Practice and test
Come up with a demo and then run that demo with your regular group. This ought to be easy, we're talking about a demo which ought to take 15 minutes. Run the demo for your regular group and time it. Chances are that you need to trim something, and you owe it to your fellow collective members to bring your demo in under the 15 minutes.
3) Trim content aggressively
With 15 minutes you need to make sure you're covering the core thing that makes your game cool. Start by listing cool stuff and any mechanics you want to emphasise. When I did this for Umlaut, I listed these:
* Metal is awesome
* Band and song names are fun
* Gig mechanics are a lot of fun and tactical
* Coming up with outrageous stuff in all scenes is really fun too.
I also looked at the things which new players had difficulty with and which could sometimes make the game drag:
* There are a lot of scene types, and until you know how the game player deciding what type of scene to call for when you're Rocking Out can be hard and often takes people ages the first couple of times.
* Coming up with names/concepts for Bands can take a long time.
* Song titles and band member names can be hard to come up with when under pressure.
This told me that an effective demo needed to:
* show off the basic conflict mechanic.
* play through some scenes and let the players see the interaction between the mechanics and the narrative.
* include (and ideally conclude with) a Gig scene.
* avoid expecting people to come up with/create their own Bands, Members or Song Titles.
From this I created:
* 4 pre-gen Bands, each with 3 of the 5 members names and with 3 song titles (I don't have them to hand, but I think they were Steel Lightning, Hideous Meatgrinder, Gore Angel and PussiKat VixXxen)
* A list of scenes I was going to run (start with the first player calling a Work Scene, then the next guy calling a Clash etc)
* Finally a short Gig.
That's basically all I had time for. Testing it confirmed this, those scenes and a 3 song Gig came to about 12 mins, when I tested it with the guys at home, so I figured 3 mins for questions and we're golden.
4) If you have cards, tokens or fiddly bits, don't give them to people until you're ready to use them.
Gregor caught this one when I did my first demo at Dragonmeet. I handed out the cards to the players and one guy really just spent ages trying to figure out how they worked and what the numbers on them meant. This was an unwelcome distraction for him.
That's probably it from me. The main thing is *TEST IT* to make sure it's 15 mins. You owe it to the other people on the stall not to over run. If you think your game is impossible to demo in 15 minutes, you're probably wrong and just need to think about it more. If you can't think of the games selling points, ask yourself why you wrote it instead of just running your setting with an existing system. That reason right there is probably your game's selling point.
If you really can't demo your game in 15 minutes then you probably ought to run regular slotted games of it. That's a very valid way to promote your game, chances are people will buy the game if they like what they see in your game session, although you'll play to fewer people during the con.
Yes!
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Thu, 03/04/2008 - 17:59.
Rich is on the money.
I know that Luke Crane greatly helped Malcolm at first, and I was given pointers by Tim Kleinert. We were really appreciative of their help and we like to help others in kind too.
Not all demos have to be 15 minutes, its true. But I think it helps you and your customer if you succinctly show them what your game is about and whether it's worth their while investigating your product further, or if their time is better spent trying out other games.
I like to think of it as a sample on a plate or in a cup that a kindly shop assistant would waft under your nose at the deli or drinks counter.
A good 15-minute demo has everyone wanting more play (and indeed makes that not only possible but desirable). If there's time for play going on then that's great. If not, at least they know where to go from when they run the game for their friends themselves.
Excellent
Submitted by Malcolm Craig on Mon, 07/04/2008 - 23:22.
Excellent points guys.
For those who are creating demos for Games Expo or for cons in the future, the points that Rich outlines should be foremost in your mind. It's a great list of really valid stuff.
And do get other people to look at your demo and critique it, both from a read through point of view and through play. As Gregor said, when I first did a 15 minute demo for Gen Con, Luke was kind enough to spend time chatting online about it to get it right. His thoughts were forthright, at times, cutting, but always useful, because he really knew what he was talking about. It made the demo so much better.
Practice your demo with friends, get them to sit down and play through it. test it out. Rigorously go through it to get it right. Don't turn up at a con with a new demo, never having run it before.
I've stickied this thread now, as I feel that the stuff that is talked about here is useful both now and in the future.
Cheers
Malcolm
Contested Ground Studios