Why Pre-Ordering Video Games is Wrong

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Brian McIver, GoLocalWorcester Contributor

It’s summer time baby! Picnics, camping, the beach, pre-orders for fall video games. The former three are all great things; the last however is about as fun as getting your delicious Fourth of July BBQ minus all of the bread, condiments, sides, beer, and fun. Pre-ordering video games is like getting a lukewarm Oscar Meyer hotdog on a cheap paper plate. It’s sad, it’s wrong, and we won’t stand for it!

Of course it wasn’t always this way. It used to be that pre-ordering a high demand game was the way to be sure you could be playing said game on day one. It was a badge that you were one of the first to have this awesome new experience before anyone else, and you knew that it was going to be a good experience. You were the guy or girl on your block that was going to have a level 80/prestige/all characters before anyone else.

That joy, however is past. Today pre-orders have become a marketing tool used by developers and publishers to hook excited gamers into buying half finished products. It has allowed game developers to become sloppy and lazy and publishers to create BS marketing schemes to keep the money flowing.

Ten or so years ago the pre-order was what was mentioned before. You had a triple A title like Halo or Call of Duty about to release and you would place your pre-order in at GameStop so that you wouldn’t have to wait weeks to get to play with your friends. Pre-orders could also help publishers determine how many copies of a game they were going to need at launch. Imagine how nice this would have been back when Pokémon Yellow came out.

At some point though things started to change. This change began maybe four or five years ago when they started adding DLC (downloadable content) to pre-ordered games. At first this was a nice little bonus for gamers. Maybe you get a character outfit or some kind of weapon, nothing that made a huge impact on the game, but was just kind of fun to have.

Then it started to morph into retailer exclusive pre-order DLC. Oh you want the kick ass gun well you have to pre-order at Best Buy. Want the sweet looking armor pack? Well you need to pre-order at Wal-Mart. And retailers, developers, and publishers weren’t done there. They would create “Special Collectors Editions” that in some cases no more than just some extra DLC that added anywhere fro $10 - $20 on to the initial $60 game. You’d pay up because you’re whore for all that kitschy digital shit, and then three months later they are offering it all free or greatly reduced in a “Game of the Year” Edition.

Now that may seem frustrating to you, and it most certainly has been for gamers, but in the last couple of years things have gotten much worse. Not only are companies still pulling the DLC scams; they are now not even releasing completed games. Big name games like Drive Club, Batman: Arkham Origins, and SimCity released with problems that took months to fix just to make the games playable, and in Batman’s case they just bagged fixing it and moved on to the next game.

This has become a real problem for gamers of any age. Imagine you’re 8 years old on Christmas day. You get a Playstation 4 and the game you’ve been begging for for 6 months. You pop it into your machine and…. this game needs a 15GB update. Oh you only get 2Mbps Internet? Bummer kid. Oh you took your system to your friend’s house and got the update? That’s too bad our servers are down because we didn’t bother fully testing them before launch. Why? Profits and deadlines kid! Thank your parents for that pre-order though.

So this summer remember you don’t want a lukewarm breadless wiener during the holidays, so don’t pre-order your games no matter what awesome digital crap they are offering to entice you. The only way any of this will end is if the consumer speaks with their wallet and demands a finished product at launch without gimmicks or scams. Wait for the reviews. Wait for word from your friends. Then armed with that knowledge go out and buy the best possible product.