Jimquisition: The Poison of Pre-Order Culture

[Yo Bo]

I am DONE with pre-orders. I'll gladly buy the games at launch if need be like with the upcoming Persona 4 Arena Ultimax or the to be released 2015 localized version of Under Night In-Birth EXE: Late. But I am never going to pre-order for expensive LEs again. I and by extension, my wallet, have had enough. It just is not worth it.

I feel exaclty the same. I even did the same with the release of the first Persona 4 Arena. Pre-order incentives like DLC and goodies seem like a one-time thing only that you "absolutely need", since you can't get them otherwise. but once you get them you tend to realise how pointless they really are and remember that you really only wanted the game in the first place.

BTW as a notice, if you don't know, Adachi (the pre-DLC character in P4AU) will be free in the first week of P4AU's release on PSN and XBL. You can download him for free even if you don't own the game, but after that initial week you'll likely have to shell ~8$ for him. This is better than the usual pre-dlc shenanigans, altough it honestly isn't the optimal either since it hurts potential costumers in the future.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I stopped pre-ordering games a while ago. Before the subject was even tackled by video game journalists. And now I'm switching entirely to Steam sales. The only game I plan on buying when it's out is The Witcher 3. But only after I see how well it runs on systems similar to mine. Otherwise I'll wait until it's patched up or until I get a better PC.

Because I just can't do this shit anymore. It makes me feel like I'm an idiot and it makes me feel like I'm missing out a crucial part of the content. I'd rather not get anything at all than feel like I'm not getting the full experience. That's what the industry has done to me.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Pre-order culture should be dying out. But the stupid masses keep validating it enough to not only keep exploiting it, but to exploit it harder.

Oh but Jim, you shouldn't be saying things like "Lopped off and resold" or "Should be part of the core experience".
People will whip out their magical "you're entitled" spell, and through the power of ignorance and stupidity convince others you are wrong!

 

[FPLOON]

So... only pre-order if:

-The game's "obscure" to the point that we're even lucky that it even got a localized release...
-Physical Collector's Editions (with physical items that will not be available afterwards...)
-You trust the company in question...
-It's FUCKING Pokemon!

And, even then, there may be a chance for a physical Collector's Edition copy of a game to belong to a company you either lost all trust in and/or you've never trusted them in the first place... So, in other words, only pre-order basically any "obscure" game that come out of Japan... unless they, too, are a "GameStop Exclusive" somehow... (Damn you, Tales of Hearts R!)

 

[LazyAza]

No joke; I was completely going to buy this game, been hyped for it for a while. Saw the preorder thing, said nope. Not buying it now. Good job game industry, you've fucked up so much that even when I want to buy a thing you do whatever you can to make me want to change my mind.

So yeah, could have given the devs their 40 bucks or whatever, now I'm going to wait until its 5 bucks on steam.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

I mean, this is Creative Assembly, the company that sells the blood and gore in their Total War games as separate DLC for three dollars post launch. This was the best Jimquisition episode so far. Loved how tall Jim's soapbox was and his wonderful impression at the end.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

I definitely agree, I think preorders are extremely dumb in 90% of the cases.

For me the only situation in which I've preordered is when I already know that I'll purchase the game, and there is some form of discount, allowing me to plan my expenses in more detail ( like Dark souls 2 DLC, I got the season pass since it was slightly cheaper and I simply know I will purchase it.

I also pre-ordered Destiny because of the beta access and the same planned expense reasons.

The only game I've really preordered for no reason whatsoever is Bloodborne... but just knowing I "have" it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

In general though, yes.. fuck pre-orders.
In the case of Alien Isolation, particularly offensive too, since outside the US ( down where I live ) you cant even prepurchase it if you wanted it.

Anyhow.. that last re-enacted sphincter licking was rather arousing.

 

[UM536]

I realize that I'm way down the thread and this is like yelling into a hurricane but there seems to be a simple way to stop pre-order culture. Reviewers need to not be the first ones to buy into it. If something is sold separately it should be reviewed separately.

If companies are holding large content sections to ransom as DLC or pre-orders, only review the bare-bones released copy. This creates a split, those companies who want a high meta-critic will try to put as much content in the base copy of the game as possible to inflate there scores over the ones who don't. This means that any game which tries to cut content to sell or inflate pre-order numbers will not compete well on meta-critic, and large pre-order bonuses will be quickly seen as a lack of faith in the quality of the game.

Of course getting reviewers to turn-off the bells and whistles on their reviewer copies is going to have to move down the priorities list below getting them to return their thrones made of Doritos.

 

[stickmangrit]

... not to mention that you are paying upfront for a product/service you have not received and will not receive for a long while. Besides making your mom cringe for doing that, [bold]the AAA company is getting money for free which can bolster its financials and encourage this behaviour[/bold]. Interest alone is significant, just by having millions of dollars sitting pretty in the bank.

Nice salad toss, Jimbo

minor correction, the AAA company doesn't see a cent of that money, at least not until launch. that money goes into a high-interest savings account for GameStop, where it makes them interest for free so you can "reserve" a game they're going to have a shitload of extra copies for. that's why the employees are forced to push them so hard, to the point where not making weekly quotas on pre-orders and magazine subscriptions are fire-able offenses at those stores.

 

[DataSnake]

The only game I've preordered to date is Saints Row IV. Why? Because the review embargo lifted a week before release, so I could make an informed decision. I have nothing against preorders per se (in fact, I like them because preloading lets me play digital games day one, even on my shitty internet connection), but if you try to convince me to pay for your game before I've seen the reviews, I'll tend to assume you're hiding something. That goes double if you feel the need to hold a significant amount of content to ransom, triple if your games have failed to work at launch before [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6978-SimShitty], and quadruple if the last game in the franchise was sold in the most dishonest manner [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6832-A-LIE-ns-Colonial-Marines] I've ever seen, so Alien Isolation can eat a mountain of dicks.

EDIT: oh, so EA isn't publishing Isolation. I guess I just assumed that because of what a dick move this is. Anyway, "from the publisher of Colonial Marines" doesn't exactly earn a great deal of trust either.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

First off, Alien Isolation is going to be shit. It just is. Sega made the last two Alien-related games and they both have been lacklustre at the best of times. Just avoid buying the game period. Why can't we all just let the Alien licence die like it should have after Alien 4?

I spoke to a friend who pre-ordered a game he was interested in. When I brought up that the game could possibly turn out bad and he isn't even waiting for reviews, he just said "but I want it." No matter what I said, that was his rebuttal. He had ample time to cancel it and reclaim his money, so it wasn't regret speaking. From my limited experience, people who pre-order will do so regardless.

 

[lnin0]

Thank you, Jim. Excellent piece. Indeed, fuck pre-orders. We have the power to stop this madness...why won't we do it. Why do so many people agree yet turn around and jump to that whistle.

 

[God of Path]

Uh... why is this posted by Team Hollywood?

It looks to me as though it's posted by Jim Sterling.

 

[Dragonbums]

At this point, the only time I preorder games is for Pokemon. You ALWAYS know what your gonna get.

Actually I would say that preordering Nintendo games is the safest thing you can do. You hardly if ever get scammed.

No and no.

How do you know? You quite simply don't.

Then please. Care to tell me the last time a pre order controversy centered around a Nintendo game in recent memory?

Nowadays developers rarely keep exactly the same staff for long periods of time like they used to in the 80's and 90's so you can't even base it on knowing the developer.

Well whoever nintendo has switched staff with all these years they still don't piecemeal your game ala pre order bonuses. So my point still stands.

There's no way of telling in advance if game development has been fraught with peril.

That is irrelevant. If you are putting a game up for preorder than it can be assumed that the game is complete enough to warrant such a thing. Either way if they advertise the game accurately during preorder than there is no scam going on.

You could for example argue that the Battlefield series was always good and you roughly knew what to expect. I bought most games. Battlefield 4 says "hello".

I'm not talking about the inherent quality of the game. I'm talking about games that are advertised as they are during preorder and how so far Nintendo has yet to scam people out of money with piecemeal or lie about certain aspects of their games before release to gain quick money.
BF4 being a game I didn't buy because of the technical flaws and am really happy I didn't now.

I know of games in established franchises suffering because entire dev teams were swapped out - or having the game completed by another studio owned by the same publisher. There are almost infinite ways that a game can turn out shit because of how it was developed and just because the game prior to it was good - has absolutely no bearing on how the next title will end up.
Funds can be pulled, release dates shifted, directors changed - all of which can quite easily result in a games quality being substandard.

That's nice. What exactly does this have any thing to do with lying about preorder and piecemealing everything?

These are "only" games. They aren't made of rare metals and you and you can reproduce them infinitely. Why act as if they were?

Excuse me for believing that there are people out there that can't afford to put down $60.00 upfront.

 

[truckspond]

I would like to make a counterpoint to all of the preorder hate on here.

First let me make one thing perfectly clear: I do not live in the United States. I live in Australia where physical media still reigns supreme because for the majority of the population a game like Watch_Dogs takes four days of constant downloading to get to a playable state however with the actual game disk right there it's simply a matter of putting it into the DVD reader on my computer (I won't upgrade to Blu-ray until game publishers start putting PC games on those disks), installing the game and then playing right away. Thus saving me four days of an agonizingly slow download process because digital distribution assumes that everyone has a direct fibre connection running to their house and due to a change of government scrapping that particular project it is no longer the case that will happen so while games retail may be in decline over there, it is thriving over here.

As for games I have preordered at retail: There has only been one that I have gone through with and that is Portal 2 which was worth every cent. I also currently have a preorder for Call of Duty Advanced Warfare because so far it looks like the single-player version of Titanfall that I wanted out of Titanfall. Multiplayer is good but outside of TF2 it's dead within a year and if your main campaign is just a layer over the multiplayer then your entire game is useless once the multiplayer dies. However an offline single-player campaign means that you can enjoy the game long after the multiplayer has gone the way of the dodo which means that the game still has a decent value attached to it several years after it has come out rather than being completely and utterly worthless.

The other reason I have that preorder is because the game costs AU$89 at the cheapest and I can't afford to spend that much in one go right now however with a preorder I put down a $10 deposit and I can now make a payment towards it every couple of weeks or so when I can afford to do so and as such I still get the game at launch but I am also on the most flexible interest free finance plan available for it which means that it is well within my affordability range. And another thing that I find interesting is that every retailer has the same preorder bonus which is the Advanced Arsenal psck for the multiplayer. There is no retailer exclusive content so far which means that I can shop around for the cheapest price and should a retailer have the same game for less than where I have currently preordered it from then I can cancel my current preorder for a 100% refund (Guaranteed under Australian Consumer Law) and give that money to the cheaper place because for some bizarre reason the Australia Tax is still a thing and the retailer that can cut it down the most should be rewarded for doing so.

 

[Andrew Majik]

Have you seen the mind-boggling shit that they are peddling over at https://www.eternalcrusade.com/ yet? Buying cosmetic content for a Freemium game, before the game has hit the shelves. Before the game is in ALPHA stage! Last weekend they did a live streamed in which they showed off PRE-ALPHA footage, with grey tanks, and stand-in EVERYTHING while at least 2 weeks before, they open their "founder's store" where you could buy individual pre-order content. THE GAME ISN'T IN ALPHA. They PROMISE the game will be out some time in the next 9 months. Like a gestating Zygote.

Please Jim, take a look at this thing. I'm sure you'll just shake your head, but wow. Actually, the pre-alpha stream was interesting for seeing the mind-set behind the game's development, and they do even talk about their monetization scheme, which is quite interesting. But I still find it galling that they have some of the most BS pre-order mania I have ever seen.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I will never ever EVER pre-order a game no matter what incentives they offer.

 

[Kameburger]

The Poison of Pre-Order Culture

Sega is selling the cast of Alien separately from Alien: Isolation. GameStop wants to help developers make exclusive pre-order content. AAA is getting desperate, and as usual, the customer has to face publishers' consequences for them.

Watch Video

I really don't think this was fair, alien isolation was originally pitched as a seperate story and although I agree with pre-orders being bad in general these really do seem a lot more benign then you give them credit for. I mean it's one preorder bonus with one specific piece of content for all platforms not like watchdogs. And even then it's greasy fan service content that they aren't even marketing as anything more then that. They haven't been pulling a lot of the preview garbage that many others have and they've been letting people play their game at least from what it seems. It just seems like you're preparing to be disappointed by the potential disappointment of another alien game dragging the franchise through the mud and maybe deservingly so but aren't you leading a charge a little early?

 

[Cooperblack]

Never preorder anything but i do think people are complaining about the wrong company here - It's more than likely this preorder nonesense is NOT the making of the developers, More likely SEGA and their marketing department.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

Yep that's pretty much why I don't preorder unless there is a lengthy art book involved and even then i have to actually be interested in the art to bother and it can't be priced at 100 fucking bucks. Otherwise like Jim said, what's the rush? I can just walk into Future Shop any day of the launch week or on launch day and pick up a copy of the game. It's not like it will be a hard item to come by.

Heck the last game I preordered was Mortal Kombat 2011 and before that it was MK Deception aaaah my first preorder heh back in 2004 when they actually came with content that was worth while and were kind of a rare thing.