As of late, many people have been questioning the validity and importance of pre-orders and what they really mean to the video game industry. With the rise of unfinished or broken games reaching the market, some have even stepped up and asked us to boycott the entire system. They suggest you wait a day or two for reviews to hit the web, which I’m obviously in favour of, but is this really a good idea? Isn’t it just so much fun to finally open a highly anticipated game and play it after coming home from a midnight release? Well, here’s why you might just want to wait.
The concept started out simple: pre-order a game to reserve yourself a copy when it arrives on the shelves. I thought this was a great idea, and quickly started reserving copies of titles I was excited about whenever possible. I quickly found out that many stores weren’t actually honouring this system at all. Myself and others I know were told on multiple occasions that they failed to reserve my copy, and I would have to wait until the next shipment arrived. This of course pissed me off to no end, as what was the point in reserving the game in the first place?
For the love of all that’s holy don’t miss out on your chance to pre-order this awful game and get this extra cheesy limited edition figure!
I stopped pre-ordering. I simply made sure to arrive first when I knew a game I was interested in was being released. This worked for a while, but developers and publishers figured out an even better way to drive sales. You’re already reserving the copy, now have some bonus content! I was hooked again. I started to pre-order games, although this time I was doing so online because I still didn’t trust local companies to actually reserve something for me. At first it was going pretty well, and some games had better offers than others. I actually liked this change and thought it was pretty cool. It makes sense right? I’m an early supporter and a loyal customer, so maybe I get a cool mount or an XP bonus for my character because I put money down ahead of time to show my convictions.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with those currently trying to rock the boat. Lately a few companies in particular have betrayed my trust and disappointed millions, and I’m sure they won’t be the last to do so either. For example, how many people pre-ordered Destiny only to get a game that felt unfinished and different from what they were promised? Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a lot of fun and I’ll continue to play, but many things obviously weren’t finished. The best example is the story, or lack thereof. It barely makes sense and feels rushed, when it seemed like Bungie had a much better idea to begin with. Vault of Glass wasn’t even ready at launch, and many were left with no end-game content whatsoever.
The game barely runs but if you give us your money now you’ll get these pants that make you run faster all at an amazing speed of 9 frames per second!
My second example of us consumers being burned is AC: Unity, the game so buggy at launch that Ubisoft gave everyone a free season pass of DLC. If the game wasn’t ready, why was it shipped? Even basic combat and movement wasn’t working properly, and that is completely unacceptable. If a game’s basic mechanics aren’t functioning, it is not complete or worth money, case closed. However, part of the fault here lies in the consumer. Myself just as much as the rest of you.
The problem is that big release dates are incredibly important, especially 4th quarter. Christmas and Black Friday involve crazy amounts of money being spent on material goods, and if your game isn’t ready by then, there’s a good chance you’re going to lose a big chunk of potential profit. That’s a huge reason why we see so many big name releases around that time, and a hundred thousand people pre-ordering the game as well doesn’t help anything. Now you not only have a solid window of opportunity to make more money, but you’ve also made your fans a promise: the game will be out on this date, so reserve your copy today. Game development doesn’t work like that. Things break, unexpected freak accidents happen, and not everything can simply be solved by a day 0 patch.
If you don’t act now and order Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare you’ll totally miss out on this color shader you’ll probably never use in Destiny! ACT NOW! ACT NOW!
See, it’s often not the developers’ fault. Not really. All they can really do is try their hardest to push a game out on time, for a date set by marketing or publishers who are mostly interested in the bottom dollar. When many companies are publicly traded and have stakeholders’ interest first and foremost, they tend to stop caring about how perfect the game is because hey, who cares when you’ve already essentially “sold” over a hundred thousand copies on day one? Destiny reportedly expected millions of people to play on day one. MILLIONS. Even if the game is terrible and nothing comes of it, corporate has made its money back and then some. Not only that, consumers have already forked over their hard earned money for an interest free loan for the devs to do what they will with. In my world a loan comes at 7.5% interest!
I think at this point we really are left with a choice. Stop pre-ordering, or stop complaining when a game comes out unfinished. I would really prefer we chose the latter, as not complaining about something that was purchased and feels incomplete isn’t ever going to happen. But really, who is to blame here? I honestly blame myself, for putting my trust in the hands of publicly traded companies who generally don’t have their consumers’ best interest in mind but their stockholders. I for one will also no longer be pre-ordering games, or purchasing on day one unless I have extensive proof that the game not only works but feels complete. I urge you all to do the same. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.