Ewan's Musings
The day to day ramblings and thoughts of a Scotsman in England.
It's a phrase being seen more and more on Symbian Software sites. "No Trial Version Available." How am I meant to judge if a game is good enough to spend my money on? There's no independent reviews of the majority of applications out there, and a little bit of HTML and one screen shot from the Author is not going to convince me that something is worth spending money on blind.
I talked about this in the first issue of Your Symbian, and the situation has got worse. Less than half the apps appearing nowadays have trial/demo version. Why are companies doing this? It is loosing them money. I'll repeat that. No demo version is losing you money!
So why do companies insist on making us buy their applications without letting us try them our first? After asking around, here's the most popular answers.
We Can't Be Bothered
Suprisingly there are companies out there that would rather code their next application, than take the time to slightly alter their first application so it can function as a demo. It's a simple matter to have a flag called "Register%" and set it to 1 for the full version and 0 for the demo. Then when a feature that you want to limit in the demo is called, a check on the Register% flag can branch the code in that section only. It's not difficult, and if you think about the demo version at an early stage of coding, then adding in this type of functionality is no more difficult than changing the icons from red style to blue style.
Scared They Stay With Demo
Some companies ar scared that once you install a demo of their game, because the demo is so smooth and playable, the customer has no incentive to upgrade to the full version.
While some of the more altruistic ones will register to reward you , the majority will need convincing. This is a bit of a balancing act, and takes time to get right. The easiest way is the "30 Day Trial," where the application is fully featured and runs perfectly well, until 30 days are up. At that point it won't run without the registration code.
Of course an even easier way is to not offer a demo version at all.
Warez
If we put a demo version out there, all the restrictions will be hacked out and people won't feel the need to register - because they already have everything.
Again, all true, but missing a vital understanding about people who do Warez. No matter what you do, these people will obtain your app (the full version) and post it for everyone to download. If you don't have a demo, then they'll just get the full copy from somewhere and put that up.
So they still get the app, but your legitimate ser who wants to see what your app does will never go near it because they don;t want to spend money on something they can't see.
You'll never get the warez crew to purchase your app - but you might get the casual browser.
Support issues
Why should we spend all our time answering emails from peopel who can't get our app running, then decide they don't want to give us money? Again false logic. The fact you spend time to answer those emails is probably what will tip the balance in someone making the decision to register an app. People want to see an app continualy updated and worked on if needed, and showing this willingness to help with issues is something that reassures them.
Ewan's Final Thought
Ever heard of Doom? Thought you had. You realise that it was a shareware app, don't you? That had sensible restrictions (no BFG or Plasma, and only the first 9 out of 27 levels). That had an easy to find demo? That they took time to support all those demo versions and un-registered users?
Now imagine the success of Doom if there was no demo, and all you had to go on was a few screenshots and a blurb from John Romero that said (in effect) "this is the best experience ever, you can walk around and really feel like you're there. You'll mess your pants with fear."
Nope, I wouldn't have bought it either. Makes you think.