8 years ago
39
Stop Preordering Video Games
It seems like everywhere you look, a new video game is broken. Your time and your money deserve better. So stop preordering video games. This isn’t the first time I’ve said this. It won’t be the last. More than anything else—the advertising, the budgets, the DLC—it’s the culture surrounding preorders that is most responsible for the trail of broken and unfinished games that clutter the sales charts, and for the anger and angst that follow in its wake.
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There is also something to be said about early access... buying an unfinished product unless you are fully aware of what you are getting and then troubles that might be present.
Agreed. I've personally sworn off all Early Access games until Steam holds them more accountable for failures. DayZ hasn't failed officially yet, but I highly doubt I'll ever see a finished version; Towns development died and they released a half-assed "complete" version of the game; Nether development just died; Also The Stomping Land dev just up and vanished with everyone's money from KickStarter and Early Access.
Yeah, never trusting Early Access again. Only Early Access games I'll ever own are the ones I bought before I made this decision. So far I have never given in, not even for Besieged. As good as that game looks, I'm not buying until it comes out of Early Access.
I went for starbound despite the concerns you listed. Thankfully it has been delivering exceptionally well but I still worry that there's still a long way to go for them to implement the things they talk about.
Starbound is an exciting example of it paying off to support the dev. I anxiously await my son learning to read, so that our exploration can be begin.
we play terraria with our 6 year old, it's awesome :) exploration and platform games are the best when you play with kids co-op :D new Gauntlet as well is awesome for both of my sons (the other is 4) to play something with daddy xD
I;m looking forward to starbound adding in the villager quests and stuff. we took that chance on supporting them near the beginning when they had sectors and almost nothing but bumming about and I love it. we decided to go for it given how much playtime and value we'd gotten from terraria (like hundreds of hours for under a £1 per copy and we buy copies for everyone everytime there's a sale, lol).
wish I could say the same for gnomoria which was promising and hoped it would be the graphic answer to dwarf fortress but hasn't seen an update in ages.
I absolutely never support early access for AAA titles, companies with known tendency towards DLC or content locking or DRM practises beyond steam. And never if it's more than £10 because I assume I might at the very least enjoy it for a week on that price and that's ok, I spend more at the movies or the pub. thankfully steam has the refund for any reason thing now as long as you've played less than a few hours and it's shit which I think helps with returning unplayable crap. I can always repurchase at a later date if the situation changes. until then I don't need to waste my time or have rubbish cluttering up my games lists.
The lack of Gnomoria updates makes Cheski a sad panda. I too wished for it to be the graphical answer to DF.
graphical nethack was best thing ever, ascii made my head spin.
my gnomes were pretty stupid though they'd build themselves into corners and starve to death lol
I had those sorts of issues in Spacebase DF-9. Which was another Early Access mess up.
Its funny the first time but then its just annoying.
Spacebase df9 sounds awfully close to copyright/trademark infringements lol! I tend not to even look at early access titles now unless I get like a review code
I was fooled here because I didn't think DoubleFine would not properly finish a game. Real bummer.
Yeah they are usually pretty good at delivering
I can't wait till my son is old enough to start playing Video Games.
It will happen. No fear. Then we can all play together!
DayZ is a real heart breaker. I've wanted to get into a game like that for a long time, but it's development is just so bad. Breaking Point has actually managed to surpass DayZ in content as a mod for Arma3. :/
I'm not as bothered by Early Access games as most, but I tend to read whether a game is a safe by or not well. Generally, I end up feeling like I've bought a game, and there's just a lot of post-support for it. Darkest Dungeons and Ark: Survival Evolved are two that come to mind as amazingly playable games as is, that have dev teams pouring a lot of attention into them.
Breaking Point is great considering it is a free mod. It isn't without issue. I do like seeing forward progress and a lot of the features that BP has, such as Legions.
Is ARK worth the price tag is the given state?
If you've got the hardware to handle it, I would say yes, and of course the game's better if you have a group to play with...being a survival game similar to Rust. There are updates from devs on a very regular basis, a lot of communication, the game is very functional, and it's a good bit of fun. For an example, they did a fairly large change to taming just recently, the community really didn't like the changes, and in less than an hour they'd already tweaked it.
I'm trying to force my 560ti to handle it (when the game's low graphics preset says it's for a 770), so I'm stuck playing at 25fps most of the time. :P
Thanks! Finally upgraded to a GTX 980, so I'd better be able to handle it!
I never heard of The Stomping Land fiasco. Could you give me more information on it? it sounds really interesting.
Guy starts a kickstarter for awesome dinosaur game. Gets funded, and releases barebones Early Access version which other people proceed to buy. Absolutely vanishes and development stops. Reaches a head when the artist leaves because he can't get in contact with the developer who still owes him money. Steam removes The Stomping Land from the store. Everyone is angry and wants refunds that Steam and Kickstarter won't give. So pretty much this guy ran off with everyone's money.
Exactly. I have many hours in DayZ and I feel like I have had enough fun to warrant the price of admission. I am still hopeful for it... But we'll see.
7 Days to Die has been getting a ton of updates since I backed it on Kickstarter, same with PULSAR.
Survive the nights is another I backed... While I am excited by the final announcement that the stress tests will finally be happening, is unfortunately 5 months past when it was originally supposed to happen.
When you already get the bulk of your money before you finish developing your game, you lose motivation to finish it. That's the bane of Early Access.
I was thinking the exact same thing. Too much money in such quick succession can get to a small developers head.
I will only purchase an early access game if I think it is fun as-is. I will never purchase an early access game in hopes that it will improve.
Take cubeworld for an example. That game had a huge hype and looked like it had huge potential but hasn't been an update in like 2 years.
True. I've only ever gotten games that had at least a couple reviews.
Preordering only ever made sense when there were a limited number of copies shipped on release. When it comes to digital copies, they are, for all intents and purposes, infinite in number. No need to ever preorder a digital copy of a game.
They cling to it because it still drives sales and mirrors the general interest of the consumer, which looks good to the investors. Tied in with vendor-exclusive bonuses they can probably also negotiate better shelving prices. So there's that.
Edit: Regarding shelving, I know we are talking about digital goods, but once you have a bonus for physical goods people would be mad if there weren't one for digital editions too. /edit
Until the majority of gamers has the same opinion on preorders or there is some major fallout nothing will change. They'll milk the cow until it doesn't pay anymore. To be fair, who wouldn't?
But the preorder has a bonus exclusive shield that has slightly better stats and is so shiny!
Games journalism again telling people what they already want to hear and already know. Surely those who understand the risks have stopped by now? The war on preorders is going around in cirlces, and it's getting boring.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Yeah I stopped buying games unless they were humble bundle or steam sales to 75%/under £5 xD
Except for heavensward. I didn't mind paying £45 for that which tells you something about how highly I think of squenix's dealings with ff14 and their epic decision to rebuild it from scratch when it failed on launch. I've never been so happy paying a sub its such a high quality product for me :)
Yep. The last game that I purchased brand new was Red Dead Redemption. Since then it's been steam sales and humble bundle. Doing so has allowed me to detach myself from the pre-ordering and dlc fantasy world. I've become more of a patient gamer; taking my time with games and simply not rushing out to buy the latest game.
I feel like there are some game though that do "Early Access" extremely well. I'm not sure of all the examples but Kerbal Space Program was an almost perfect example of how early access should work. Before the official release of KSP with the 1.0 update it was still an amazing game and I had a lot of fun playing it. The full release brought so many new things it felt like an entirely new game.
As far as preordering goes the whole "Preorder bonuses" is ridiculous and needs to stop, but to be honest the companies make a lot of money off of these basically non-refunded copies they sell. With the new steam refund I think this will be happening a lot less on PC considering what happened with the new Batman game. If Sony and Microsoft could also implement these refunds on their digital purchases (which it seems like a lot more people buying digital even on console) it would honestly stop a lot of these terrible releases in their tracks.
What about atlus products? Every video game i pre-order from them has lived up to the hype, not to mention they bundle all these goodies like with persona q- i got tarot cards, a special soundtrack, and a 3ds case! And the good thing about atlus is that they probably still have that offer up! I can make at least one exception in this era of distrust, right?
I agree. Though, the word needs to go out to those who do not actively read gaming news or social media sites. That is, the general audience.
I feel like this sentiment has been repeated so many times, that expecting people to stop pre-ordering because you told them to, then explained why, is kind of silly. Sure, some people will look at it and think they might listen, but if you weren't smart enough not to pre-order before, you're probably not going to be a changed man for long.
I agree, I just don't see the point of it anymore. It makes sense if something is going to be limited in supply on release day and preordering is the only way you can hope to reserve a copy. But I'm just going to purchase and download a copy on release day, why preorder?
I completely agree that preordering is dumb and I haven't preordered one game since 2010 but... Fallout 4 Pipboy edition man!! I don't even regret going against my morals on that purchase.
That's a different case. You're not pre-ordering just the game. You buying a special edition, limited quantity physical good (the Pipboy).
I knowm the limited number of Pipboys are a case of artificial scarcity, but I'm OK with that. I paid premium for numbered special editions of Termintor and Akira instead of just buying the regular items, there is a certain apeal in having a product that gives you bragging rights. We're humans after all.
It's completelly different when it's a pure digital purchase. Even if they offer an extra skin or a time-limited XP boost. I don't feel like those perks gives me the same satisfaction as a real, rare, object would.