I always wait for release, even if I’m planning it to be a release day buy. Early Access could be an exception if the product they offer is good even in that stage, like how I got Rhythm Doctor when they finished Act 4. (The game has recently came out of Early Access and it’s really good). A demo could incentivise me to preorder, a game I could give example for that is Diesel Knights. While it’s not available for pre-order yet, I would absolutely do so if it did. But nothing released : no preorder
Strictly against it in AAA titles, anything above 60 is a never buy in the first place for me but a putting a preorder for a game in that price range is something that is straight up NOT happening under any circumstance.
There’s isn’t anything particularly wrong about preordering something you’re most certainly going to get day-one, although those are few and far between these days. After all, even fan favorites often come with bugs and glitches day one and you can still encourage producers (and raise kpis) by wishlisting a game instead so they know demand exists. Same for downloading a pre-release demo - they track that.
Early access is usually indie with a few exceptions, so supporting them is good too except when you’re a big fan and would rather see the finished work without spoilers. None the less, support can still exist in other forms.
I personally do neither, but this is more because of financial reasons and my already stupidly huge backlog. The only game I might have preordered this year would have been Silksong and only didn’t because they didn’t permit it. I knew it wouldn’t be released with… ahem, bugs… and that I would certainly play and enjoy it.
Every other 2025 gem was a surprise after release, though.
No. I’ve pre-ordered a couple in the past though. Diablo 3 is the only one that comes to mind though, also the last one I ever did. I can’t think of any company that has a good enough track record for me to even consider it. Not even Paradox.
Also, since you don’t have to worry about copies running out anymore there is really no reason to anyway. It was only a concern when everything was physical.
I only preorder a game if I know I want to play it right when it comes out and want to be able to preload the game, and if it comes from a developer I know will not disappoint me (FromSoftware, Kojima Productions, anything from Yoko Taro, etc.).
In the past I used to preorder to reserve a physical copy as soon as it was released, but there is generally no need for that anymore. This makes me both happy and sad, because for all the hassle it was, I kinda miss some aspects of the simpler times. In some ways, I do wish the world could rewind to the 2000s.
Early Access is different from preordering because you gain access to the product instantly, and generally can influence the direction of the game in a hopefully positive way. Providing feedback on what works and what doesn’t is an important part of playing and early access game. A lot of people seem to ignore this.
Situationally. I carefully consider the developer in question to try and judge the risk of failure, while also considering the chances that my contribution will actually make any meaningful difference to the likely outcome.
Basically, if it’s a passionate and seemingly competent indie dev working on something that I personally want to see become a reality in the world, I might throw some early money their way despite the obvious risk. If it’s a tentative and inexperienced indie dev with goals too big I’ll probably wait and see. If it’s some AAA publisher who don’t actually NEED the money and have a high chance of fucking everything up anyway, they can shove their preorder and preorder bonuses right up their own ass where they belong.
If there are reviews out and I’ve looked at some raw gameplay from a streamer getting early access or something then I might pre-order mere hours away from release if there’s some benefit in doing so.
Otherwise absolutely not in the digital only age. Can’t run out of copies.
I don’t consider Early Access a pre-order. If I buy an unfinished game it’s because there’s enough content from my point of view at that asking price that even if the game never gets finished I’ll still be satisfied with my time/money spent.
Physical copies, yes. If it's a game I absolutely know I'm definitely buying and I want it badly enough to spend full price and I want to play it on day 1, I'll preorder to ensure it ships on day 1. Because if I actually ordered it on release day, it'd take a few more days to ship. Last game I preordered was Kirby Air Riders, and I'm very happy with that purchase.
As for Early Access, my criteria is to just evaluate the game in its current state - if it offers enough to be worth buying now, I'll buy it now.
My only complaint is that (at least last time i checked) for version 3, there’s no option for multiplayer that isn’t a dedicated server or LAN, which sucks when you want to play with friends
Is it a separate library entry now? Last i checked you had to do some weird stuff with the launch options. If it’s that easy i might look into setting up a server to play with some friends
Truly a massive game that gets overshadowed by people talking about Factorio, which Factorio is of course a classic undoubtedly but Mindustry has been in pretty consistent development for years now and is a great game with a lot of good content, it deserves more attention!
I just wish the game was better set up for joysticks/gamepad control out of the box, last time I tried to set it up on my Steam Deck I got frustrated.
This is mostly for AAA games not so much indies… and not neccessarily just dying light
One thing about older games that tends to be better imo is the world design, even with the worse tech a lot of the time they feel more tightly designed around the mechanics, being more densely populated with content, instead of just being massive open worlds even when that doesn’t serve the gameplay loop, or having the far cry 5 “tackle zones in whatever order” thing, which just leads to them all feeling inconsequential and kinda samey, cause you don’t get zones designed for specific skills you pick up later etc. and in general newer games feel more homogenized imo, like every game is an open world first person shooter, with light RPG elements (unless it’s an online arena hero shooter), and what would’ve been the central mechanic boils down to a small part of it. so dying light for me feels like a parkour game while more of the modern games that feature those mechanics feel like games that happen to have parkour in them
Also in general older games feel less intrusive, newer games just have pop-ups and collectables and UI for every little thing all the time, it feels like it just wants you to buy a battlepass and DLC and whatever else
But where they are a lot worse is accesability. I mean dying light’s controller settings are weird, like you have 4 presets you can change, but you can’t bind the buttons individually, and some games I played don’t have options to rebind at all even if they detect the controller. I always end up just using steam input anyway tbh, but if not for that replaying those games would be a lot more painful, also I often find a lot of settings like FOV or whatever else lacking (dying light is fine in that regard :3), and there’s also things in a lot of older games where they don’t neccesarily remind you what quest you’re on, or teach you certain mechanics etc. So sometimes when I take a break from one for a while I end up needing to just run around or look up what im actually meant to be doing lol :3 maybe that’s just me
Though overall I do enjoy a lot of the older games more than modern ones in the AAA scene lol. I do still play a lot of modern indies as well :3
Good description of the problems! I don’t play many big games nowadays but the tutorialization definitely feels heavy handed. I’m reminded of the newer Doom games that want to make sure players don’t get confused with pops for every single enemy. I think it’s a result of trying to scoop up a wider net of players to recoup those crazy dev costs.
Accessibility is a big win, replaying older games is sometimes very jank because of how games have evolved!
A puzzle game where each (2D) map spawns with lasers and corresponding targets, and sometimes mirrors etc. You get to place some mirrors, T pieces, beam splitters etc. and have to fulfill each target.
There are so many clones of this out now it’s nigh impossible to find, especially as the game is literally just called Laser. This one’s also a clone I think but I just love this particular one.
I did recently finally find it again after more than a decade of looking.
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