| Within the culture of video games, the demo has many forms. From interactive aspirational tech advertisements to boisterous technique demonstrations, the demo is pervasive across gaming technoculture. I propose that this disparate family of media objects, while each functioning within its own subculture or economy, and furthering its own goals, can be viewed as a set of strategies for independent game designers engaged in practice-based research. In this paper, I will first explore the multiplicity of forms that the demo has taken, from the early days of shareware games and Commodore 64 intros, to the sophisticated productions of academic-game designers and fledgling independent game designers. I will then discuss the work I have developed alongside my collaborators in the game design collective RUST LTD. I will speak to the way in which time, resources, and a distributed collaborative production model has shaped our work and generated production templates for future works. Finally, I will cover in detail the production of Museum of the Microstar, an award winning interactive narrative and technology demo I produced alongside RUST LTD. This development overview will describe the ideation and production process of the work, and the manner which the demo forms discussed influenced the work, and enabled its success. |
