The practice of releasing game demos before the full and final version of the product launches has become increasingly rare as time has gone on. Sure, there are still plenty of betas- but those more of are test runs, as the name suggests, rather than previews and shorter bite-sized versions that are meant to be fully representative of the final product. Anthem, BioWare’s upcoming shared world shooter, is going to have a demo, which launches at the end of this month– and will give players plenty of content to dive into as well, thus hopefully giving them a fair idea of what to expect from the final product. When asked about why they chose to make that decision, lead producer Mike Gamble said that it’s all about transparency.
In response to a fan asking the question on Twitter, Gamble mentioned that BioWare have constantly been as transparent as they can be about the development of Anthem – which is true, they have been in constant communication with their fans to answer any questions they might have about the upcoming title – and the upcoming demo, which is a specific build of the game that they made just for this purpose, serves that same purpose. You can view his tweet below.
It’s definitely good to see BioWare being as transparent as they have been about anything to do with Anthem, especially when you compare it to the quite recent example of Bethesda’s Fallout 76. The contrast in the language of how Bethesda chose to market the game’s “beta” and what BioWare is doing with Anthem’s demo is perhaps the biggest indicator of the differences in both their approaches.
Anthem launches in full for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC on February 22.
Had a few people ask me about why we are doing an open Demo. This is why:your money is hard earned. Games are an investment. We think it’s fair you get to try before you buy.The entire campaign has been one of transparency, and we think Anthem is cool to watch but AWESOME to play
— Michael Gamble (@GambleMike) January 8, 2019
