• 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. :)

  • AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zipEnglish
    4·
    17 hours ago

    Last, and only time, I ever got to preorder was BioShock Infinite. Got the game an a guidebook ( still have that guidebook, even if I’ve never really used it ). Was kinda lackluster, IMO, but at least I got the game and didn’t have to wait outside for hours like my brother did for GTA V.

    Nowadays I stay away from preorders because they’re basically all digital and you don’t even get anything besides maybe early access for a week and some useless cosmetic things that eventually get handed out to everyone who wants to buy it. At least in the case of triple AAA games.

    I haven’t seen much for preordering for indie titles besides being a kickstarter backer. Even then, I was able to not be a kickstarer for one of my favorite gamed released the last couple years ( Broke the InvestiGator ) and still managed to snag some of the leftover kickstarter rewards. Never backed one besides a tie-in comic for the game, so not much of an opinion either way since I don’t have enough experience to say one way or another.

    As for early access, it depends on the game and if it either looks interesting to me and/or if I’ve seen someone else play it and looks fun. It’s the main reasons I got into games like Peggle, Shotgun King, Dungeon Clawler, etcetera. All games I saw plenty of videos on and/or played demos of, if they had a demo.

    I don’t have a problem with early access so long as your game isn’t early access throughout its whole life cycle. A game that has been in development as early access for 3 years? At that point, if you’re still giving updates, why not put it in alpha or beta and be upfront about it? I swear some devs don’t do that so they can just disregard all criticism of their title because It’S sTiLl In EaRlY aCcEsS.