• What about Early Access Games?
  • Do you feel differently about Early Access vs traditional preordering?
  • If you are open to the idea in specific circumstances, what are those?
  • How do you decide if a game qualifies?

I’m interested in the community thoughts on preordering and I’d love to have a thoughtful discussion on the matter.

Personally, I’m against preordering, except in specific situations where I want to actively support the development of a game.

I have been thinking about this because there is a game I’m considering preordering from a medium sized studio, but the reason I want to preorder is for the IP, rather than the game and it goes against my typical stance on this. The game is based on my favorite book series and part of me wants to encourage more games be made based on this series. At the same time, the book series has found commercial success and as a whole does not need my help.

I did name the specifics here because I’m hoping to encourage discussion on preordering as a whole, rather than my example, but if you want to know, I’ll drop a comment and we can have a discussion in the comment thread. :)

EDIT: thank you all for the thoughtful discussion on this! I expected most people to slam preordering, but there was some very thoughtful dialogue here and that is why I appreciate you, Lemmy!

  • MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.orgEnglish
    5·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • w3dd1e@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      The game I was considering does have a collector’s addition but it’s $300 for some physical collector’s items that I don’t think are worth the price.

      I don’t think I’m going to preorder at all, but the whole thing got me thinking about it the subject.