Pre-ordering video games used to mean securing your disc at a retailer before they sold out on launch night. Now it means paying full price (or more) for a p...
Honestly, if the idea of no trials don’t bother you, there are plenty more reminders why YOU shouldn’t preorder.
every game has a built in trial these days. trial the game for up to 2 hours in the first 2 weeks of buying it, and if you don’t like it, steam refund it.
I heard that if you “overuse” it though, steam will lock you out of that feature. With cases of using it 10 times / month being seen as overuse. Not sure how real that is though, or if these 10 times were exception.
True. My son has refunded so many games that he doesn’t like, they locked his debit card from the account and I don’t think it can be reinstated. We have to buy the games for him now with our cards.
To be honest, 2 hours is not enough to trial a game. I recall demos and trials in the old days can last 14 days, some for 30 days, if memory serves me right.
Wasn’t 14/30 days only for subscription/mmo games? From what I recall demos of single player games had from 15 minutes up to 2 hours, depending on the size of the game. That or where applicable it held only first chapter/first few levels.
I think it’s an age thing a lot of times. It’s like telling my kids to brush their teeth because of my experiences with dental, or you can plug any example like that.
I can tell kids not to preorder all I want. They just haven’t had the opportunity to be burned as many times as we have yet.
Hey it’s Lemmy, so I will happily use this opportunity to blame rich people as well. I know people doing very well for themselves, who constantly, say, “yeah it sucks, but I’ve got the money and it doesn’t hurt me so who cares?”
Because they’re so completely unable to to think of ANYONE else in a different situation, or even remember their younger selves, that they will continue to incentivize predatory behavior because “fuck you, I got mine”, and they’re such huge pieces of self involved shit that they won’t delay their gratification for a split second to help out an entire industry’s consumers.
If that sound harsh, it’s been a shit day full of people just like that; decide on your own if it applies here.
I don’t have numbers but I bet that a lot of people who preorder aren’t kids but adults with a proper income. Kids as a group don’t have the income to uphold the current presale figures, that’s done by working adults who can afford to preorder a game and take the not so small risk that it’s utterly shit.
If I want I could preoder a lot of games that come out this year without having to worry about the waste of money to much. I doubt that any regular kid can do that.
It’s funny when you get older how much you realize experience is what drives behavior. You can tell a child 100 times about something, but until they experience it themselves, your warnings more often than not will fall on deaf ears.
I did a quick search and couldn’t find anything that breaks down by age sadly. I really hope someone has the stats cause it would be fascinating to see.
I don’t have the figures either but when I think which age group could have the money to actually preorder a game on a whim without knowing if it will be good, then it really isn’t kids but working adults.
It made some sense when they came in physical format and there was a real risk of a highly sought game selling out. Nowadays they have put worthless digital incentives on preorders and they can’t possibly run out.
I mean, I usually buy physical and sometimes they do run out. Metroid prime remastered for instance was a pain to get. Granted it’s probably not the norm but it happens.
It didn’t make sense to me that people are pre-ordering digital copies at first too, then I remember mtx and streamers which didn’t exist back then.
It’s the boiling frog syndrome. Gradual implementation of predatory monetization practices like mtx and gachas have made us grown numb to being treated like cash cows for unfinished products.
The latest generation of gamers probably see this as a norm. It’s up to us oldies to remind them about the good ol’ days when you only pay once for finished products.
I think a lot of gamers just don’t care enough too. I know so many people that buy a game on release, play it for a few hours, and then drop it. Even AAA titles that are actually good.
Steam achievements kinda confirm that as well, there is a fair bit of drop-off on even the most popular games.
The demo really made me want to get it and actually caused me to preorder. I wasn’t even that excited about it until the demo. Once I turned it on and heard the music that instantly transported me to final fantasy, I was sold. Wound up shelving Diablo until I finish the story for final fantasy. It’s long and I’ve loved every moment. The side quests, while being typically fetch quests, have great stories in them that really build on the world.
Sorry, this was supposed to be about preordering and turned into me gushing about final fantasy.
I bought it after the demo, and while it definitely hit those highs again, the demo didn’t show just how low some of those lows would be. I made it about 60% though the game before abandoning it out boredom. While a demo is great, it is important to remember you’re likely getting a vertical slice of some of the best bits.
I miss the age of videogame demos, it feels like nothing but a distant memory now. And the only reason companies let people play their broken betas now is to gauge excitement for their games and fix any serious game breaking bugs.
We may just have very different tastes in gaming, but there’s really no shortage of solid game demos out there, they’re just usually for the indie stuff.
Yeah, I mentioned that to another person, Steam Next Fest was great this year, I got to try out a bunch of awesome games. But like if we’re talking triple A, or even just games on consoles demos are just a resource sink for a lot of these companies and don’t exist. When there’s a demo there’s usually a lot of marketing push behind it.
Honestly it’s been more incentive for me to move away from the AAA stuff and lean way more indie. They have demos, deep sales, and they make an effort to engage with the community. It is a bummer the lack of demos available on consoles though.
That’s not a demo, that’s a return policy. Plus, in most cases you don’t get a good feel of a game in the first 2 hours of the game. A demo is a snippet of the game made specifically to let people get accustomed to most of the mechanics in a game, something that isn’t usually present in the first two hours.
You could’ve easily said Steam Next Fest and I would’ve agreed with you. Indie devs are the only ones who seem to care about their players these days.
On the flip side, back in the day, a lot of people bought a lot of crappy games based on nothing more than what the cover art on the box showed. The only source of info was video game magazines, and that applied only to new releases and only certain games.
Now upon release you can look up dozens of detailed reviews, even video reviews. You can watch full play through a on YouTube. You can ask for opinions in social media.
The amount of information you have to figure out if this game is for you is insane compared to before.
Depends really. Nowadays publishers push out fake CGI marketing trailers and paid reviews to premptively muddy those information sources long before release. Same goes for social media (not that they were ever reliably accurate or objective anyway). There are even promises of DLC roadmaps that never materialise such as the OW2 story mode.
By the time actual independent reviewers have their embargoes lifted, the preorder sales window has closed and it wouldn’t make much difference to those who already sunk money into the game. Those waiting in vain for DLC and patches are merely sacrificing their refund window.
I’m also not a fan of the DLC and change to video game design based on such payouts.
But even then, even with fake reviews, young gamers are completely spoiled with information compared to the black hole that existed in the 80s and 90s. I’m not sure how people argue otherwise.
The fact that I can go on my phone, jump on YouTube, and watch a play through is incredible. When I was young, I had to make decisions based on what the box art looked like ffs.
Normies will continue to pre-order games. You are just shouting at clouds. Please stop wasting our times with these posts. The battle was lost years ago.
Normies can change if burned often enough. I am a filthy casual, and used to pre-order games. Between digital delivery and getting a few stinkers in my library I don’t feel the need, and haven’t for about a decade.
Industry will keep punishing those willing to pre-order until that behavior stops.
I usually only pre order when I’m 99% sure I’m gonna love the game and it’s made by a company with a good reputation of having games be good at launch Ex: Zelda tears of the kingdom
I was 99% sure totk was gonna be amazing but I still pirated that shit and gave it a test run… I obviously loved it and went out and purchased a copy… I’m so jaded with games even nintendo is not safe in my book
I don’t even play half the games I buy. I just pre-order them so I get the cool goodies that come with the game like art books, metal cases, tapestries, etc.
I used to do that when I was about ten years younger, now I am mostly trying to get rid of them to save some space as all they do is collect dust on some shelf or box.
My cousins who are in their late 20s probably spend more time watching playthroughs than playing the games themselves. I think part of it is they simply can’t afford to buy all the games they want to play. Another part is some games are just a good story that can actually be viewed and experienced through a playthrough.
Personally, if the game is easily available to me, I’d prefer to just play it.
Availability is the thing though. Some games could be really demanding, or have a huge install requirements. Like I’m certainly never going to buy a console and a copy of the last of us to play it, that’s something I can just watch the cutscenes for. But then there was the new Zelda game and I refused to watch anything on it and only play it blind, knowing that watching people play the story would just worsen my experience lol. I’d say most games you can just watch to get the “gist” of it anyways. Also playing games uses more mental energy then just simply watching it.
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Same here!
Beta’s used to be free and would actually have an impact on the game getting fixed before shipping out
every game has a built in trial these days. trial the game for up to 2 hours in the first 2 weeks of buying it, and if you don’t like it, steam refund it.
I heard that if you “overuse” it though, steam will lock you out of that feature. With cases of using it 10 times / month being seen as overuse. Not sure how real that is though, or if these 10 times were exception.
True. My son has refunded so many games that he doesn’t like, they locked his debit card from the account and I don’t think it can be reinstated. We have to buy the games for him now with our cards.
To be honest, 2 hours is not enough to trial a game. I recall demos and trials in the old days can last 14 days, some for 30 days, if memory serves me right.
Wasn’t 14/30 days only for subscription/mmo games? From what I recall demos of single player games had from 15 minutes up to 2 hours, depending on the size of the game. That or where applicable it held only first chapter/first few levels.
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Other people have Xbox, PS, Nintendo…. Not to mention, 2 hours is not enough to trial a game
2 hours is enough to BEAT some games.
…b-b-but I won’t get the exclusive hat for my character!
They usually sell the pre-order stuff later anyways.
…b-b-but I don’t want to wait because some people will already have it!
Thank you for illustrating what parasitic marketing has executed so well and trained gamers to automatically feel: Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).
I think it’s an age thing a lot of times. It’s like telling my kids to brush their teeth because of my experiences with dental, or you can plug any example like that.
I can tell kids not to preorder all I want. They just haven’t had the opportunity to be burned as many times as we have yet.
This right here. There will always be a steady supply of new gamers who don’t know better.
Hey it’s Lemmy, so I will happily use this opportunity to blame rich people as well. I know people doing very well for themselves, who constantly, say, “yeah it sucks, but I’ve got the money and it doesn’t hurt me so who cares?”
Because they’re so completely unable to to think of ANYONE else in a different situation, or even remember their younger selves, that they will continue to incentivize predatory behavior because “fuck you, I got mine”, and they’re such huge pieces of self involved shit that they won’t delay their gratification for a split second to help out an entire industry’s consumers.
If that sound harsh, it’s been a shit day full of people just like that; decide on your own if it applies here.
I just saw this video the other day, now it’s just all reminders that I’ve aged out.
I don’t have numbers but I bet that a lot of people who preorder aren’t kids but adults with a proper income. Kids as a group don’t have the income to uphold the current presale figures, that’s done by working adults who can afford to preorder a game and take the not so small risk that it’s utterly shit.
If I want I could preoder a lot of games that come out this year without having to worry about the waste of money to much. I doubt that any regular kid can do that.
It’s funny when you get older how much you realize experience is what drives behavior. You can tell a child 100 times about something, but until they experience it themselves, your warnings more often than not will fall on deaf ears.
This isn’t a kids thing, we’ve been pre-ordering games since before today’s kids were born
yeah, when we were kids ourselves. But after getting burned we stopped.
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I did a quick search and couldn’t find anything that breaks down by age sadly. I really hope someone has the stats cause it would be fascinating to see.
I don’t have the figures either but when I think which age group could have the money to actually preorder a game on a whim without knowing if it will be good, then it really isn’t kids but working adults.
Could you share what you’ve found, please? What other category breaks are there?
The only thing I could find was a statista link that claims to show US gamer’s proclivities toward preordering in 2016 based on a survey of 1560 people (https://www.statista.com/statistics/662626/game-pre-order-frequency-us-gamers/)
Everything other result seemed to be random news articles about topics tangentially related to preordering video games.
It made some sense when they came in physical format and there was a real risk of a highly sought game selling out. Nowadays they have put worthless digital incentives on preorders and they can’t possibly run out.
I mean, I usually buy physical and sometimes they do run out. Metroid prime remastered for instance was a pain to get. Granted it’s probably not the norm but it happens.
It didn’t make sense to me that people are pre-ordering digital copies at first too, then I remember mtx and streamers which didn’t exist back then.
It’s the boiling frog syndrome. Gradual implementation of predatory monetization practices like mtx and gachas have made us grown numb to being treated like cash cows for unfinished products.
The latest generation of gamers probably see this as a norm. It’s up to us oldies to remind them about the good ol’ days when you only pay once for finished products.
I think a lot of gamers just don’t care enough too. I know so many people that buy a game on release, play it for a few hours, and then drop it. Even AAA titles that are actually good.
Steam achievements kinda confirm that as well, there is a fair bit of drop-off on even the most popular games.
FF16 wasn’t preordered as much as they wanted. Then when the game turned out to be okay, people bought it (and it had a demo). It was a hit.
The demo really made me want to get it and actually caused me to preorder. I wasn’t even that excited about it until the demo. Once I turned it on and heard the music that instantly transported me to final fantasy, I was sold. Wound up shelving Diablo until I finish the story for final fantasy. It’s long and I’ve loved every moment. The side quests, while being typically fetch quests, have great stories in them that really build on the world.
Sorry, this was supposed to be about preordering and turned into me gushing about final fantasy.
I bought it after the demo, and while it definitely hit those highs again, the demo didn’t show just how low some of those lows would be. I made it about 60% though the game before abandoning it out boredom. While a demo is great, it is important to remember you’re likely getting a vertical slice of some of the best bits.
I was super happy for that demo. For me it let me know I wouldn’t enjoy it, so I saved some money.
Yeah, I love Final Fantasy. But I wasn’t very hyped for it. I bought it after I played the demo.
I miss the age of videogame demos, it feels like nothing but a distant memory now. And the only reason companies let people play their broken betas now is to gauge excitement for their games and fix any serious game breaking bugs.
for some reason indie games still seem to have demos semi-often, especially if you check their itch.io pages.
We may just have very different tastes in gaming, but there’s really no shortage of solid game demos out there, they’re just usually for the indie stuff.
Yeah, I mentioned that to another person, Steam Next Fest was great this year, I got to try out a bunch of awesome games. But like if we’re talking triple A, or even just games on consoles demos are just a resource sink for a lot of these companies and don’t exist. When there’s a demo there’s usually a lot of marketing push behind it.
Honestly it’s been more incentive for me to move away from the AAA stuff and lean way more indie. They have demos, deep sales, and they make an effort to engage with the community. It is a bummer the lack of demos available on consoles though.
No it isn’t! With Steam you can try most (if not every) game for 2h and return it if you didn’t like it.
That’s not a demo, that’s a return policy. Plus, in most cases you don’t get a good feel of a game in the first 2 hours of the game. A demo is a snippet of the game made specifically to let people get accustomed to most of the mechanics in a game, something that isn’t usually present in the first two hours.
You could’ve easily said Steam Next Fest and I would’ve agreed with you. Indie devs are the only ones who seem to care about their players these days.
Eh.
On the flip side, back in the day, a lot of people bought a lot of crappy games based on nothing more than what the cover art on the box showed. The only source of info was video game magazines, and that applied only to new releases and only certain games.
Now upon release you can look up dozens of detailed reviews, even video reviews. You can watch full play through a on YouTube. You can ask for opinions in social media.
The amount of information you have to figure out if this game is for you is insane compared to before.
Depends really. Nowadays publishers push out fake CGI marketing trailers and paid reviews to premptively muddy those information sources long before release. Same goes for social media (not that they were ever reliably accurate or objective anyway). There are even promises of DLC roadmaps that never materialise such as the OW2 story mode.
By the time actual independent reviewers have their embargoes lifted, the preorder sales window has closed and it wouldn’t make much difference to those who already sunk money into the game. Those waiting in vain for DLC and patches are merely sacrificing their refund window.
That’s true. I understand.
I’m also not a fan of the DLC and change to video game design based on such payouts.
But even then, even with fake reviews, young gamers are completely spoiled with information compared to the black hole that existed in the 80s and 90s. I’m not sure how people argue otherwise.
The fact that I can go on my phone, jump on YouTube, and watch a play through is incredible. When I was young, I had to make decisions based on what the box art looked like ffs.
Fuck the corps. That’s what piracy is for.
Pirating big games is probably morally fine. Pirating indie games is shitty, like stealing from a local business.
He is not talking about actual piracy though. Piracy for try-before-you-buy’s sake is even more morally fine.
Normies will continue to pre-order games. You are just shouting at clouds. Please stop wasting our times with these posts. The battle was lost years ago.
Normies can change if burned often enough. I am a filthy casual, and used to pre-order games. Between digital delivery and getting a few stinkers in my library I don’t feel the need, and haven’t for about a decade.
Industry will keep punishing those willing to pre-order until that behavior stops.
I just played the trial for Pikmin 4, then pre-ordered the game
came here to say the same thing, lol. I imagine most other AAA games aren’t finished early enough before release to offer trials like that, though
Nintendo may be shit sometimes, but for the rest of the time it’s almost guaranteed quality
Their games are great. Their lawyers can go skinny-dipping on Pluto.
I usually only pre order when I’m 99% sure I’m gonna love the game and it’s made by a company with a good reputation of having games be good at launch Ex: Zelda tears of the kingdom
But… why? What benefit does it give you?
To get it on release if you want the physical version.
this lol
That makes sense if there’s shortages in your area. I can’t help but feel that this isn’t the case for 95% of pre-orders though
no, but I just found it simply easier, don’t have to leave the house and such
Are people actually experiencing shortages tho? I just waltzed into the local store and picked up a copy. No biggie.
I was 99% sure totk was gonna be amazing but I still pirated that shit and gave it a test run… I obviously loved it and went out and purchased a copy… I’m so jaded with games even nintendo is not safe in my book
I will if I chose to.
I don’t even play half the games I buy. I just pre-order them so I get the cool goodies that come with the game like art books, metal cases, tapestries, etc.
The last pre-order bonus I got was a pair of socks. That killed my interest in extraneous offers.
I used to do that when I was about ten years younger, now I am mostly trying to get rid of them to save some space as all they do is collect dust on some shelf or box.
Preordering is 100% why the last console gen was full of half-assed releases. It has to stop.
Because you can just watch gameplay now
My cousins who are in their late 20s probably spend more time watching playthroughs than playing the games themselves. I think part of it is they simply can’t afford to buy all the games they want to play. Another part is some games are just a good story that can actually be viewed and experienced through a playthrough.
Personally, if the game is easily available to me, I’d prefer to just play it.
Availability is the thing though. Some games could be really demanding, or have a huge install requirements. Like I’m certainly never going to buy a console and a copy of the last of us to play it, that’s something I can just watch the cutscenes for. But then there was the new Zelda game and I refused to watch anything on it and only play it blind, knowing that watching people play the story would just worsen my experience lol. I’d say most games you can just watch to get the “gist” of it anyways. Also playing games uses more mental energy then just simply watching it.
I don’t pre-order really but I do get tempted with 18% off pre-order deals at various PC shops online