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).
I don’t think anyone should preorder. It’s a predatory way to suck a full price of the game or even higher than normal price out of customers by using often laughably cheap benefits to drum up FOMO.
For me personally, I rarely have interest in brand new AAA games, which are the most guilty of pre-order sales tactics, so the problem more or less solves itself.
Early Access games can be a different story. I’m more willing to throw money at a small studio or solo project that appears to have some passion behind it. Even so I only spend with the mindset that whatever state the game is in might be all I ever get, so match the price to that expectation. I recently played through Deathtrash. It’s unfinished and is historically slow to get updates, however for the $11 I got it for on sale, it had a lot of content and I felt happy with what I got.
Project Zomboid is another example of a “permanently Early Access” game. It might never get out of Early Access but it has so much content now that $20 is a perfectly acceptable price. The history of devs supporting it and the community around it means support for it is unlikely to simply disappear.
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.
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.
I don't preorder as a rule because unlike in the past when there was a limited amount of physical copies at any given time...The Digital Age has rendered preordering a pointless endeavor that major companies use as metric to decide success (which is honestly not the best play). However, it has helped influence the major corps when it came to pricing issues, The Outer Worlds 2 for example got a price drop because people cancelled their preorders. Another reason why I don't preorder is because quality and getting a feature complete game is not guaranteed even with a 1.0 release. Cyberpunk 2077 really burned me as it was one of the messiest launches that I've seen (aside from No Man's Sky); the Cyberpunk 2077 launch experience cemented my rabid disdain for the practice of even once in a great while preordering. I will only buy games after reading reviews from trusted sources, if there are too many launch day issues...Then it won't be purchased at the time or at all later on if those issues aren't resolved permanently.
In short: Early Access is a risk, that can often make a game that would've never released, become a feature complete game. However, you must always understand it's a risk. Evaluate the odds, ask yourself if you are willing to burn money in the hopes of getting something good.
At Length: My feelings on Early Access are slightly different. As users can actively shift the quality, priorities, and overall vibe of a game that is in progress. I only buy Early Access games that I believe will succeed and be influenced into excellent games; it's like taking a gamble a Kickstarter, the project, despite such monetary support may never leave early access and becoming fucking shit. While 7 Days to Die is in a redemption arc, it mutated wildly from Alpha to Alpha, and was rushed into a 1.0 state without addressing fundamental gameplay issues. Wholesale removing and changing fundamental elements that make a survival game, well...A survival game. Later getting readded in a weird and not properly balanced way, much to the chagrin of the fans of the game. If you plan on buying Early Access, access risk first. Then purchase!
There are currently 2 developers where I’ve pre-ordered before and would do so again but only because there was an additional upside to the pre-order (I don’t care about 3 cosmetic skins as pre-order bonus).
Larian Studios I’ve bought Baldurs gate 3 early in early acces because I’ve loved DoS2 and the early previews of BG3 blew me away. My main purchase motivations were showing interest in the product and I’ve considered playing EA to give feedback. However it got clear pretty early that the game will be awesome and I wanted to play it completely blind, so I’ve never really played the early acces.
-Fromsoftware They track record was so stellar that I’ve bought the collectors edition of Elden Ring, which IMO also counts as a pre-order. Don’t regret it till this day.
I guess both of my cases are prime examples since both of them became incredible games and won the GotY in their release year. I would consider pre-ordering smother in the future.
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.
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 🤷♀️
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.
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.
Are you looking for story or gameplay? Chaos Zero Nightmare is relatively new and is a roguelike deckbuilder with really good gameplay. Lots of synergies, lots of combos, lots of variations of every card letting you craft very specific decks that can make almost anything work if you just get lucky with finding just the right pieces and upgrades during a run.
The story is ass though (but at least there is a fast forward button) and some of the character designs do make me roll my eyes with how absurdly gooner-baity they are.
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