No, I wait 3 years usually. All bugs fixed, everything works, mods in great shape and price down 50%. Plenty of games older than 3 years also and much lower hardware requirements.
I made an exception for Elden Ring last time but that’s about it.
Never, ever buy anything based on IP. That is pure familiarity bias, a trick to make you think it will be good. In the particularly susceptible, it can even create self-delusion and confusion. (X is good, therefore this other thing that licensed the name ‘X’ must be good. It doesn’t feel good, though. No, clearly it is my feelings that are wrong. X is good so ‘X’ must be good. It uses the same mouth sounds. How could it not be?)
A change in medium is inherently a different product and can never be the same as the original. As anyone who has seen a movie based on a book can tell you, there is zero guarantee the movie will have anything more than a passing resemblance to the book coughEarthseacough and maybe not even that. coughWorldWarZcough Oof, pardon my coughing. The bullshit fumes coming out of the marketing and licensing departments are making it hard to see.
You make some really good points. The game I’m referring to is Osiris Reborn from The Expanse series, my favorite book series of all time.
It’s not exactly an unheard of IP and the developer is what I could consider midsized. That’s why I was leaning towards not doing it at all.
My only motivation is how passionate I am about this series and wanting to see more games, books, shows, movies, etc set in that world. I want to be proactive in spending my money thoughtfully to encourage development in places I support.
Obviously, one preorder isn’t going to change that for this game and a preorder would likely do more harm to me than it would be to the series if I don’t preorder.
I’m usually pretty staunchly again preorders since I think it’s bad for players as a whole (and often for devs too), but, if I’m being honest with you, I would probably have done it if my favorite series was being done by a small indie dev team so they could have as much money upfront to make the game as good as it can be.
That’s the sneaky thing about IP based projects. Even if it was a small indie team, even if they were in love with the original book, even if they had incredible respect for the original author and their work, a book and a game, or a movie, or an episodic show, are so inherently different as to make any IP deal simply a lie. They use different techniques, methodologies, and structures such that they can’t produce anything like the same experience, even with the same plotline. It’s a mask to trick people into buying the product, and the wildest part is that the mask can work so well that even the makers don’t realise it’s a mask.
Never in my life. I want to read the reviews, at a minimum. Too many games with some booshit on launch day, if not at least several months after. I am incredibly psyched for the new Control game but it’ll be at least a few months before I pick it up.
Nowadays? Not a chance. Preorders nowadays seem to be more of a incentive to allow a studio to just not have a decent final product because people have already bought in.
What about Early Access Games?
If I really like the concept, yes.
Do you feel differently about Early Access vs traditional preordering?
Early access is not pre-ordering, and as such is treated extremely differently. Preordering tells me that the product will be finished on release, EA means that it’s going to need a lot of work for a finished product.
If you are open to the idea in specific circumstances, what are those?
I am extremly open to EA as it helps studios develop a product that otherwise may not be able to be created. Actual preordering is a strict closed door, there is very little reason in the digital world we live in to preorder a game.
How do you decide if a game qualifies?
I more likely will buy an early access game if I can open the page and not see:
Major blockers:
Lack of Linux support or compatibility
Reviews talking about the game being dead
Reviews talking about how the developer ignores the community
Update history either showing no changes or minor changes stretching back for a few months(the longer the gap the less likely I am to support the studio)
Opening the developer page and seeing they are actively working on a different game. (this is an instant deal breaker)
Minor Blockers
Developer responses in community pages saying “for support go to external site” usually discord. If you don’t want to support your game on the storefront, don’t use the storefront.
Update logs saying that they are actively working on DLC for their early access game. (free DLC gets a partial pass… but paid DLC for an Early Access game is a huge red flag for me)
No developer interactions in the community forums or an un-moderated community forum.
Toxic community in discussion forums or support channels (I understand this is out of the devs control at times but it still dissuades me from wanting to spend money on the games)
Thanks for specifying how you decide. I know most people don’t preorder at all and there is some skepticism toward Early Access. I expected most comments to just say that, which is why I really appreciate the detail you added.
Generally I wait for release, or more likely years after release before picking up a game to wait for thr cost to drop. There isn’t a need to preorder in a digital store, like steam, so there is zero rush.
Early access if someone I know and trust will vouch for it and play too. Valheim is the best example of this for me.
I have purchased the ‘higher tier’ for a few games over the last few decades to get specific bonus stuff if they are continuing a series and I know for a fact I will play it a lot. But I don’t do the ones where that must be done as a pre-order. It is possible I did those as preorders to download prior to the release date, but only if I could jave made the same purchase a week after release.
It’s a rare breed of game that gets me pre-ordering these days. It has to be something I know I will want, from a dev/publisher with a proven track record of making good shit and not being exploitative to customers, and be more about multiplayer than single.
I haven’t pre-ordered for any other reason since they stopped giving you physical swag for doing so (and it only was $5 down and could be cancelled for a refund while still keeping the swag and digital distribution wasn’t even a thing, so they actually could run out of copies).
Preorder, no. I don’t usually buy brand new games. FF Tactics remake was the most recent and I needed to see a few days of reviews to build the trust to buy it. Maybe if Fromsoft releases another one-player game I’ll consider that. I’m not sure the types of developers I usually buy games from tend to even do preorder, it seems to be bigger studios from what I have seen.
Early access, yes for a few select indie developers that I want to support. ATLYSS because it’s priced low and looks great. Into the Unwell will be a day 1 purchase once it reaches early access, since I have played the closed beta and know I want it. Trinity 64 will be another one I’m excited for if it gets an EA release. I’m ok with EA for these because they’re the types of games I yearn for and I want more of them, and I know my contribution makes an impact to the devs.
It kind of makes me wish we got some sort of “Dungeon Master” tools to make our own campaigns, but then again, at that point just run D&D with some friends i suppose.
That isn’t DM mode, it is a very nice set of customization optimizations.
In Neverwinter Nights there was a DM mode that let one player be the DM instead of one of the characters. They could drop in creatures and objects and control them in real time, which was awesome! That is what I was hoping they would be adding, something where we could basically play DnD in the world maps of BG3, but with on the fly encounters and pacing instead of being preset.
Even Warframe will run on that puppy (with low settings and without all the particles, other than that they’ve got the whole efficiency thing down pat)
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