Honestly, if the idea of no trials don’t bother you, there are plenty more reminders why YOU shouldn’t preorder.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Developer here - currently indie but was in the machine at one point. Cold hard fact is that demos hurt sales for AAA games, and pre-orders get cash in the door today to keep the lights on. With millions and years invested, they must hedge and limit risk as hard and as quickly as possible.
If demos hurt sales, that means that game devs depend on gamers buying games they don’t actually end up liking right? I understand making games has become pricier and pricier, but if the whole business model is dependent on “We want to trick people into getting stuff they don’t want”, then we have a problem.
The reality is probably closer to the flightily nature of us as gamers - We mostly just want to try the game because some part of it seems fun, if that can be tried for free with a demo, why buy it now that we got our fix? Why would a big AAA take that risk?
If people get enough from a free demo maybe it’s time to make shorter cheaper games, and start churning out 2 hour playtrough 15usd games, but with high quality graphics/acting/voices/etc. Or just abolish capitalism and make fun games no matter if they sell or not 😂
I don’t really understand how this is measured? I attempted to look up some research on it, but it seems most articles that say this are referencing one conference by Jesse Schnell who basically just correlated games with demos, sales, and expected sales. What measure is used to figure out if a demo causes someone to not buy the game? I suppose if they measured presales that were cancelled after a demo, but most anticipated games don’t have demos anyway so the data is already skewed in the favor of “no demos.” Does it take into account outliers like FFXVI? Highly anticipated game with a demo that sold very well…
I would venture to guess that the data is skewed because lots of AAA games don’t have demos and lots of indie games that might not have been purchased anyways trying to get a little markershare, but there seems to be such little research on it.
If you have an actual study on the topic, I would be very interested in seeing their method of results.
The study was they tracked sales across multiple games for years, here’s the first example I came across in the wild from ten years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us6OPbYtKBM&t=640s
I’m relying on some of you folks to do a “trial” for me and let me know. Your efforts are appreciated 😛
Financially, preorders without a “preorder bonus” are a zero interest loan to the developer. Preorders with the “preorder bonus” are a loan with the bonus as interest. Even if the game were guaranteed to be good, you could most likely be doing something better with the money until it comes out. Since the game is not guaranteed to be good, it is a risky loan as well. Without any of the protections you get when you make an actual loan.
Without any of the protections you get when you make an actual loan.
I’d say a 100% refund when requested with less than two hours of use within the first two weeks is a pretty good protection, and it’s pretty much the standard policy on PC.
I miss the days of game demos
Steam’s Next fest has brought back some demos on PC. You might not get a demo for a big IP, but you can try lots of smaller dev games without having to buy first.
My local currency is devaluating by the second, the price I see today may not be the price tomorrow.
In my oponion the two recent Steam Demofests have been a breath of fresh air for the gaming world and might be the first good thing in a long time to happen in gaming. Since the early 2000s demos grew mainly out of fashion and have been replaced by Early Access™ and consumer friendly refund policies. If a game had a Demo it was often out of date and a subpar representation of a game. But with definitve events like Demofest, developers have the opportunity to show of their goods through free and up to date Demos without the fear of piracy or location constraints of gaming conventions. If some Indie Dev shows me that the game is 90% done and the release is with a reasonable time, I surley can spend 20$ to help polish out the last flaws before release. Indie developers are often ride or die with their games and could use the income as early as possible.
Ironically the last games I preorded where AAA games. Resident Evil 2 and 4 Remakes, both of which had extensive Demos. I played them and immediately thought “Yep, this is it, that’s worth $60.”
Demos are an effective marketing tool and can fully justify a preorder.
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.
You don’t say? 🤔
Honestly every game I pre ordered I have been happy with especially bg3.
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
I already pre-ordered both Diablo 4 and Baldurs Gate 3 this year and am quite happy I did both.
What is the main motivation for that though? Being able to play the games a couple of days earlier?
A couple of days? BG3 started letting people play the Alpha almost 3 years ago (october 2020) if you pre-ordered.
I pre-ordered baldurs gate 3 after playing the developers previous game divinity original sin 2 and hearing a rather large amount of praise for the content available in the early access.
It’s something I wouldn’t regularly do but in their short line of recent games Larian studios have left a very good impression on me and I trust them individually.
Behave yourself, you just want to have gay sex with a bear
Did you pre order or buy early access? Buying a game in early access when you believe what is currently in the game is a good deal for the price is the same thing as buying a released game in my opinion.
DOS2 is such an insanely good game. BG3 is shaping up to be just as awesome.
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.
It’s installed when I want to play it. Usually the counter I hear is that internet is fast enough where that isn’t a problem. This is an argument, that gamers use to contend when the idea of online only was considered by Microsoft. The fact that I can preinstall 100GB of data beforehand at my leisure is worth it.
Especially now considering that steam offers free refunds up to 2 hours of gametime or 15 days after release? Realistically on PC there is very little reason to argue against it at this point in my opinion (obviously this is referring to PC, no need to do that for Consoles that don’t provide these opportunities.
This isn’t really a pro preorder, I just lost my frustrations with it when the risk was mitigated
