RPG Maker Forums

First, watch this video.

As you'll see (and in case you decided to skip the video) a demo 22% of the time (but realistically 11% of the time) will be of any benefit to your game.  To make a demo work, you need both a fantastic demo and a wonderful game (or in some cases, a great demo with a mediocre game, but that will harm people's view of you as a developer).

Second, and especially in the RPG Maker world, people's goal tends to push towards releasing a demo.  Why?  Because we want to show off our stuff, we want people to play the things we create and go, "Wow, that was pretty good!".  We like the recognition.

Sadly, this turns your goal into releasing a demo, instead of releasing a game.  You started your project to finish, not to quit 10% through because you wanted to create something to show off to other people and boost your street cred as a developer.

And you know we see a very VERY low % of games finished in this world.

Third, some may argue that demos allow people to try out your game and say what is right/wrong with it so you can make improvements along the line.  That is a alpha/beta test build NOT a demo.  Demos should be for finished products only (and even then, I still don't recommend it as a marketing tool).  Get a group of people interested in testing your game, and make it more of a private release.  By throwing it to the public, you potentially deter people from showing interest for your game in the future because they believe this is the final result.

That is the current issue with Steam's Early Release program...but that's another conversation for another time :3