Re: I don't understand pre-orders. Do you preorder?

On Fri, 07 Feb 2025 10:03:45 -0600, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

I recently went to Epic to get my weekly freebie hit and was asked in a
banner at the top of the page if I wanted to 'pre-order' Civ VII.
>
Why would anyone do that with Civ? Civ has a storied reputation for being
unfinished at release and only being worthwhile when DLCs drop.
>
In this case, you get an extra Civ that isn't even an exclusive. You can
buy it in the Deluxe version. If I like a Civ game, I tend to eventually
buy all the add-ons.
>
It's also a general question for any game at all.

It's based on the age-old "Fear Of Missing Out". You wouldn't want to
be the last one to get The Newest And Hottest Game, would you? Get it
now before it's sold out!

Of course, that tactic best worked when there actually was a
(sometimes artificially) limited number of games to purchase. Twenty
years ago, you _could_ miss out on a game just because there weren't
enough copies in-store for everybody to buy. These days, with digital
distribution making the number of available copies essentially
infinite, there's a lot less incentive to get a game Day One.

Not that stops the publishers from trying to push the scheme; they
just use different tactics. Exclusives are the usual bribe, from
various cosmetics, to included DLC, to 'early access' privileges. Of
course, the publishers then repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot by
making those bonuses a lot less valuable than they'd otherwise be:
often, your early-access save-games become invalidated on the game's
actual launch, or they sell the 'pre-order exclusives' become a lot
less exclusive after they're included in Game of the Year collections,
or the included season pass has no real content.

Then there is the argument about getting the game before anyone else
so you can get the Skillz to master the game ahead of the rest. And I
suppose for a very small minority, that actually matters but for most?
Unless you intend to play only against strangers, what's the point?
Just wait until your friends get the game too --which can be six
months down the way-- and start the clock then.

The TL;DR is that pre-orders are a hold-over from a previous age of
gaming, and these days it's mainly aimed at the young and the stupid.
Except for a vanishingly small number of people, there's no advantage
to getting the game early, and a lot of reasons not to.