16/6/2020 Gamasutra: Josh Bycer's Blog - The Pros and Cons of Prologues

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by Josh Bycer on 06/16/20 10:28:00 am

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
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June 16, 2020

Health Scholars
Technical Artist

Airship Syndicate
Mid to Senior Developers are always looking for new ways to market their games and make them more algorithm
Programmer friendly on store pages. While the widespread use of demos has died down over the last decade, we are
seeing a new trend of “prologues” as an alternative.
Airship Syndicate
Senior VFX Artist
What’s a Prologue?
HB Studios
Senior Game Designer
When we traditionally talk about the use of demos for a videogame, a demo is meant to showcase a title
innogames under specific conditions. Some demos could be just a single level, some could be timed, and it’s
Mobile Software dependent on the game and developer in question. A demo is usually released before, or closely after, a
Engineer - iOS/Android -
game’s release.
Core Team

innogames
From a store point of view, a demo will usually exist on the same page as the game in question, but there
(Senior) Java Developer
are exceptions to this.

With that said, demos fell out of popularity due to consumers feeling that they did not provide a fair
Latest Blogs enough representation of the game. Some demos were so short, or cut out so much content, that you
View All Post RSS couldn’t get a good estimate about the game by playing it. A good demo required a lot of investment on
the developer’s part, and a bad one could easily sink a game before it came out. This led to the rise of lets
June 16, 2020
plays and streaming culture as a way to show a game in its entirety.
Finding, Choosing, and
Managing Moderators Prologues could be best described as a self-contained miniature version of the game. Instead of leaving
content out, a prologue acts as a complete experience of the game, but a shorter take. Unlike demos that
The Pros and Cons of
Prologues aren’t usually updated after release, prologues can be updated and patched just as much as the game
they’re based on. Some developers will literally create a prologue—telling a story that sets up the main
Spilt Milk Devlog 02 -
game.
Black Lives Matter

5 tips for reducing stress

Regardless, the big difference about a demo vs. a prologue is that the prologue is not missing content—
as a game company
owner everything that you could do in the main game is featured in the prologue. To put it another way, if a
demo could be considered an appetizer, a prologue is a sampler dish. While this is a lot of work on the
Is It Really Worth to
developer’s part, it does come with some benefits.
Mesh-Bake Your Assets?

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16/6/2020 Gamasutra: Josh Bycer's Blog - The Pros and Cons of Prologues
I Asked Ian Deane A Free Sample
(Interview)
Having a prologue for your game gives consumers the best way of experiencing a game for free legally.
For games that feature unique or esoteric systems, this is a great way to allow someone to experiment
Press Releases with the game to see if it’s for them. As a developer, this gives you the chance of having a “soft open” for
your game to get people excited about it.
June 16, 2020

Games Press From a storefront point of view, having the prologue be its own listing also gives your game a greater
chance of being discovered if the prologue becomes popular enough. Having links to and from the
Conscript release a prologue and the main game makes sure that people know where to go if they want more or to try it out.
Demo
and a new Trailer for...
Thinking about it more, genres that are historically known for being hard for new players to get into would
Vertigo Arcades benefit the most with prologue versions. Fighting games and grand strategy games are notorious for
Transitions To New
taking hours to start mastering them, and new players will not figure them out within a two-hour refund
Normal
With... window.

'SOMETHING ATE MY
By providing new players with a squared down version of the game for free, it will give them the
ALIEN' STEAM
SUMMER... opportunity to play the actual game without fear of refund windows or investing money.

Action Packed UEDI:

As with a good demo, a good prologue can easily sell your game to consumers and get them excited
Shadow of the Citadel
Demo... about the title for whenever it comes out. With that said, it does present some unique problems to deal
with.
Control 32,000 Drones
in
Gripping Sci-fi Real Prologue Problems
Time...
The main problem with a demo for consumers is that oftentimes they don’t give enough content to get a
View All RSS fair representation of the game. With prologues, you can easily run the risk of giving too much away and
that no one would want to buy the main game.
About
This can happen if there is not enough difference between the prologue and the actual game. For
Editor-In-Chief:
example, let’s say the prologue gives someone 50% or more of the game away for free. At that point,
Kris Graft
would buying the game deliver that much more content than what people are getting freely? Some of you
Editor:
may think that the solution would be to charge people for the prologue, but you cannot do that. The
Alex Wawro
whole point of having a prologue is to provide consumers with a free representation of your game.
News Editor:
Alissa McAloon
You must find the balance between giving the player everything they need to experience the game
Contributors: without making the prologue more attractive than the main game. As I just mentioned about grand
Chris Kerr
strategy and fighting games, a good prologue for them would be allowing players to experience the game
Bryant Francis
with one faction or a few fighters while retaining all the other systems.
Katherine Cross

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Fighting games are not known for being new player friendly
Indie Games

Some of you will say that would be too enticing, and I have an argument for that. Expert players/hardcore
fans don’t want to play a watered-down version of a game. For them, outside of playing the prologue to
practice the game before release, they will have no further desire to use it.

A new player who wants to see if a game is for them is not your general consumer for that game/genre.
It’s far better to have someone play your game for free and decide it’s not for them, rather than being
stressed out by the two-hour window or buying a game they end up hating.

Positive Prologues

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16/6/2020 Gamasutra: Josh Bycer's Blog - The Pros and Cons of Prologues
Developers are always looking for new trends and options to help sell their games, and like remote couch
coop play that we covered a few months ago, prologues are a viable option. There are plenty of games
out there that could make use of prologues as a way of providing a “foot in the door” experience for
prospective new fans.

As we recently talked about, I don’t believe that there are niche genres, but niche examples of them.
Anything a developer can do to make their game more appealing or easier to check out will ultimately
help them.

If you enjoyed my post, consider joining the Game-Wisdom discord channel open to everyone.

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