Well slap me and call me Sally, that's almost exactly what I was envisioning. A system where instead of putting more on GOG to support other platforms, it could be compiled from user feedback. And here I was tinkering on my server with setting up a WINE AppDB-esque site for GOG games. Instead, I'll just start contributing to GOGWiki. Thanks!

Another +1 for Youtube here. I don't like "Let's play"s, but rather type in "xyz gameplay". Thus far it hasn't let me down.

Pennies for the games? Maybe for you but not for everyone. Back on topic, I think that asking GOG for demos is asking for too much if you are interested in what I think. It is like asking your friend if you can use his or her mobile phone to make calls everyday.

Id rather not have demos. I would rather the gog guys spend their getting us new games. Not to mention taking a old game and splitting it down to a demo cant be a simple task.

besides, the games on here are cheap enough Im willing to risk 5 bucks for a game that sounds interesting. Its not like were paying 60 bucks a game here.

Another +1 for youtube, im always jumping back and forth before i make puchase, all you need is 1 or 2 good gameplay vids per game.

Many are suggesting other places to go and alternatives, and while appreciated, I don't feel I should need to seek out alternatives. I would like to be able to see videos, download the demo, read reviews and purchase a game all from gog. I don't like the inconvenience and, more importantly, uncertainty of having to search for it. Random demos may not work, have viruses, require other downloading clients, require an account and much more. Random videos online can be poor quality, have undesirable voice overs as in some Let's plays, skip over aspects of the game, be modded etc. I simply would rather be able to have everything accessible gog.com. I highly doubt having, at the very least, a link to youtube and a link to the demo would cost them much at all.

At the end of the day we are the consumers and we should always demand more for our hard earned cash which the companies very survival depends on. To rationalize them doing [/i]less[i] seems a bit absurd.

You didn't work hard enough for your money. Your employer worked hard for it, so why should your hard work be sufficient to get it? Your survival depends on that money, you should work much harder. :p

http://www.classicdosgames.com/index.html
http://www.dosgames.com/
http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://lparchive.org/
http://www.mobygames.com/
http://www.fileplanet.com/

I could go on and on, point is, there are already sites out there for reviews/videos/demos. I want GOG to concentrate on releasing games and improving the things like the wishlist. Someone also posted a link to a thread with most the demos for games on here.

EDIT: Hmm, I thought someone posted that thread, anyways here it is Click me.

While having demos here would be nice, I believe it would require a tradeoff with negative consequences for the actual game releases. GOG is a small company with limited resources. They don't have a lot of employees, and quite frankly customer service and tech support often seem overwhelmed as it is. It's not because they are being lazy, though, they just don't have enough manpower. Diverting their attention away from the games themselves would make the situation worse.

Offering demos here would require substantial effort. The demos would most likely not be provided by the publishers, so GOG would have to track them down, make sure they work, are not modified and don't contain viruses. They would have to negotiate the rights to offer the demos on this website, create an installer for them and provide support to people who are not even paying for it.

I would rather have the GOG team focus on releasing new games, ensuring compatibility and fixing technical issues. To me, demos are like a nice extra, but by no means essential. The games sold here are old, and oftentimes people have already played them before. Really, the worst that can happen is that you spend 10 bucks on a game you don't like. People have pointed out important ways how you can form an opinion even without a demo.

GOG can't really post links to YouTube videos on the games' store pages since the videos are user created and not in any way official. Can you imagine Steam linking to a user-created video? You can often find interesting links on the forums, though. The problem with linking to demos for old games is that they are almost never hosted on the publisher's servers anymore. They are often uploaded by fans, leading to many of the problems you have listed yourself. Technically such demos might be piracy, might contain malware etc. Linking to them would require verification in each case that the downloads are fully legal and free of problems, which is probably not feasible.

not necessary for demo's not because (most) games are great but because they already can found elsewhere.
personally i would have enough with just a gameplay video (youtube)
what would be next? reviews? hints and tips for gameplay?
in a store you wouldnt go either; hey i would like to see a demo first before i buy a game.

Sadly this would be nice. I'm a fan of D&D games but I'd like to try a few without having to wait and shell out the money for it

When you find a demo, add a link to it on the appropriate GOG Wiki article, please!

That sounds good (a bit how ntcompatible.com was originally conceived in order to see how well Windows games run on e.g. Windows NT, and it has expanded from there...), but of course the problem still are the first buyers who are the guinea pigs for the games. :)

I know there are discussion forums for the games already, but getting the compatibility info from them is quite a lot of work (e.g. to get the big picture, how widespread are the compatibility problems etc.).

If gog.com were to announce tomorrow that they were going to host videos, demos and the like, I bet everyone here arguing about the availability of alternatives, the immense and unconfirmed costs of implementing them and the general lack of need for it, would praise gog.com and then start using the services when convenient. I could understand people saying they shouldn't implement if it would be a detriment to providing games, but the arguments here are they are guaranteed to hinder gog's performance and thus should be avoided. However, perhaps the resistance to the idea itself is already an answer as to whether or not gog will provide these services.