- What about Early Access Games?
- Do you feel differently about Early Access vs traditional preordering?
- If you are open to the idea in specific circumstances, what are those?
- How do you decide if a game qualifies?
I’m interested in the community thoughts on preordering and I’d love to have a thoughtful discussion on the matter.
Personally, I’m against preordering, except in specific situations where I want to actively support the development of a game.
I have been thinking about this because there is a game I’m considering preordering from a medium sized studio, but the reason I want to preorder is for the IP, rather than the game and it goes against my typical stance on this. The game is based on my favorite book series and part of me wants to encourage more games be made based on this series. At the same time, the book series has found commercial success and as a whole does not need my help.
I did name the specifics here because I’m hoping to encourage discussion on preordering as a whole, rather than my example, but if you want to know, I’ll drop a comment and we can have a discussion in the comment thread. :)
EDIT: thank you all for the thoughtful discussion on this! I expected most people to slam preordering, but there was some very thoughtful dialogue here and that is why I appreciate you, Lemmy!
no i wait until they’re at least 50% off. no exceptions. unless someone buys it for me.
You might like [email protected] :)
Why would anyone still be preordering? It’s a complete gamble with no payoff. Preordering made sense when games were on physical media, but there isn’t any stock limit on digital goods.
I very very rarely pre-order but if reviews are out and you’re already planning on buying it, it could be worth it. Some stores provide a discount for pre-ordering games, I got Elden Ring for 15% off before it even released which is nice.
Pre-ordering existed for the customer’s benefit back when all games were physical and you wanted to guarantee you’d have a copy available for you at launch. At some point, companies realized that they could use it to forecast success or, more nefariously, entice you to buy a stinker of a game before you’ve had time to hear that it sucks. I haven’t bought physical games in a while now, but when I did, the last time I had a hard time acquiring one at launch was more than 20 years ago (I remember Halo 2 being the mile marker for when companies got to be pretty good at meeting demand). In the digital space, it makes even less sense. They still do pre-order incentives sometimes, for the same reason as above, even when the game is good, but the bonuses are so throwaway anyway that it usually doesn’t matter. Digital storefronts on PC have a pretty good refund policy, so if you’re diligent enough, you can pre-order the day before it comes out, get the bonus, let the dust settle on review scores, and decide if you want to keep the game with the pre-order bonus or just refund it. There’s very little risk in that. Without a pre-order bonus, there’s absolutely no reason to bother, and quite frankly, I don’t feel good about supporting those bonuses in the first place.
I have no issue with early access games, especially if the game lends itself to the model, which would be anything sufficiently sandboxy that can be heavily modified by changing some variables or adding a single mechanic. Larian’s RPGs are very freeform in the ways they let you solve problems and can be upended by different powerful abilities and whatnot; roguelikes are perfect for this model, because you’re replaying them a lot anyway; regardless of genre, the ones that would catch my eye are the ones that are looking for gameplay feedback and not outsourcing QA for finding bugs to a bunch of paid customers. The real problem with early access for me now is that there are so many finished games coming out all the time that look interesting that it’s difficult to justify playing one that’s not done.
I “built” my first desktop (that’s a whole story) for Cyberpunk. I preordered the game. Suffice to say I’ve never preordered a game since
im so sorry
We Do Not Preorder
Seriously, don’t reward this kind of anti-consumer bullshit.
The only acceptable justification I can see is if it’s an indie dev who has really, truly earned the trust of their players and proven that they will work tirelessly to deliver the product people want. And even then I’d be very, very unlikely to. I’m crazy excited for both of Owlcats upcoming games and I still haven’t pre-ordered them, for example.
Pre-orders encourage bad, buggy, incomplete or deceptively marketed releases by juicing day one numbers without any need for the dev / publisher to actually release a worthy product.
I never pre-order, there is no benefit.
Early access is misleading, there are games which are “released” and would barely count as early access and vice-versa, so I just treat them equally.
The criteria for me is that based on reviews or some gameplay footage it seems like I can get £1/hour worth of enjoyment out of it. I tend to look for how many hours do people have when they leave reviews and how many have they played since, rather than just what they say. If I’m unsure if I’ll like it and there is not enough videos or reviews to give me certainty, i may take a risk on £10 and below games depending on how bored I am at the time.
Never pre-order.
I do early access only in very specific cases where it’s an indie studio and the game already offers a lot of value. E.g. Satisfactory was in early access for a long time when it was basically a finished game you could sink hundreds of hours into. But I read and watch a lot of reviews before I buy into one of those. Can’t do that with a pre-order.
Definitely no preorder, I’m not buying a cat in a bag for no real benefit. Kickstarter is a bit different because the game might not be made at all if you don’t back, but in that case I’ll definitely research the people involved to get a better picture on how reliable they are and if they really need Kickstarter-style funding in the first place.
For early access, I try to judge whether the current state of the game is already worth the price. Games like Minecraft or 7 Days To Die provided great value even before their 1.0 version.
(continued) For your example, I’d be too worried about whether the game does the book justice to preorder. Maybe if the developer and publisher have a really good track record. But I don’t like to get invested like that, especially considering that I only play on Linux - even a really cool developer might release a game that is a bitch to get working on my system, even if their previous games worked great.
Never. I won’t buy a game until I’ve tried it. If no demo is available, I’ll pirate it first, and then buy it later if its good.
People really undervalue this. I have purchased many games I only got to enjoy because of pirating.
It lets you actually discover who deserves your money
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Watch_Dogs (2014)
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No Man’s Sky (2016)
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Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)
Nah I’m good …for like. Ever
This is a cursed list, but at least 2/3rds eventually lived up to their initial promise!
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No
Never. Why would I pay early for a digital copy of a video game? I can just buy it when it comes out, or better yet, when it goes on sale.
I never pre-order. I broke that rule exactly once and pre-ordered No Man’s Sky, boy did they make a fool out of me. Never again.
There are plenty of games I play that are on early access, the qualifier is whether the game is in a playable state and is fun to play (by account of online reviews or friend’s recommendations).
Exactly this. If it’s already fun, and especially if the early access price is good, then buying a somewhat janky game that will get better seems fine.
Never. If it’s something I really want or from developers I respect I may buy it on release. Otherwise we wait for sales.
I could be open to kickstarter or something, that’s how Divinity Original Sins 2 got funded, but there’s a level of transparency and trust there that isn’t quite the same as preordering. Perhaps this is a silly distinction to make, I havnt really thought about it very hard, but preordering feels like being scammed nowadays and supporting something on kickstarter simply doesn’t.
I don’t really care for early access because i already don’t have enough time to play all the games I want to play so…there’s no extra room for me here. I will simply go play something else until your game is ready 🤷♀️
I preorder Indie games, because even if they turn out to be crap I want them to make another one and get better at it !
I relentlessly fuck over AAA publishers by buying keys on resellers, and I have no remorse about it.
