At the same time, one really does need to be able to try the game in advance of purchase. Reviews help but aren’t going to address your unique set of tastes and hardware setup. So yes, for some people, the solution they’ve hit upon is piracy. Obviously that’s not one that’s very industry-friendly. What I’d like to see is a PC gaming rental option similar to console rental outfits like Gamefly (or the in-store rental options of places like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video). Better still, integration of PC gaming rentals with the console gaming rental plans. I’m more than happy to pay 15-30 bucks a month to try a number of games at once and then purchase the ones with staying power.

Of course, the obstacle is piracy. So I don’t know what to do, frankly.

Command & Conquer: Three levels from the GDI campaign, the first mission, the commando mission and a later base building mission that gave access to a fair amount of the tech tree. I played it to death, then bought the game. I liked how the demo missions were slightly different from the actual in game ones.

Jedi Knight II: A custom level just for the demo that introduced the good parts of the game that a standard first-level-of-the-game demo wouldn’t have had (force powers, lightsaber battles). I played through it after completing the actual game because it was new content.

I don’t work in the industry, but would it be so difficult and expensive to tell a small part of the team to put together a level/map/stage that shows a little bit of everything and is specially tailored to whet the players appetite?

Yeah, it seems obvious. But videogames are weird. First, it’s a creative field with shifting technology goalposts. Second, it’s one where there are relatively few “old hands”, and those that are there, grew up in a different era.
So development times grow longer, often longer than even the vets (if you have any) predict. (Well, sure, it’d be nice to have some folks whose job it was purely to predict, but if you could afford them, you’d rather spend the money paying that person to tell you whom to hire).
If you’re not established, you usually have to get money from somewhere, and that involves selling your soul to a deadline nobody can predict, but that economics require be sooner rather than later. And, if you’re not established, that’s where a demo really matters. So often companies are screwed: by the time the product is mature enough to build a demo, they don’t have time to put together a good one. The result: no love for the demo; players have no love for the game.

You can still get it here. Although I haven’t tested the download itself, it was added in 1998 so I’m pretty sure it’s the right one.

By the way, don’t confuse this with the Jagged Alliance 2 “demo” that’s the full game with a 2-hour timer. That was released by Strategy First a few years back.

However, DRM schemes (like limiting the number of installs) are technological means to circumvent the first sale doctrine.

I buy the vast majority of my PC games on eBay for $10 or so because that’s the most I’m willing to pay. Therefore, I don’t always need a demo because I can live with a $10 loss if the game is crappy.