There’s an epidemic, ladies and gentlemen. One that seems to be infecting the gamer nation. It has been eating away at consumers for quite some time now, and the signs that things need to change have never been stronger than right now. Yet, despite clear evidence that this epidemic is harmful to us as consumers, people seem to be giving it a free pass it most certainly does not deserve. That’s why today, I plea to my fellow gamers: stop pre-ordering video games!
I know what some of you must be thinking: ‘This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Pre-ordering games make it certain that I’ll get the game I want the day it comes out AND gets me some bonus content I wouldn’t have otherwise. Pre-orders are great! Clearly, he’s just overreacting.” While I understand where those people are coming from, there are a couple big flaws in that defense:
1. Games rarely sell out on the day of release. This is obviously the case with PC games, most of which are digitally distributed and therefore physically cannot run out of copies, but the same tends to hold true with console games as well. Stores know which games are going to be popular; surprisingly, they’ve done this before. As such, they stock up on the big releases regardless of preorders because they know those copies will almost assuredly get sold. Consoles like the WiiU? Definitely at risk of selling out, as consoles take up much more room in storage and thus stores cannot physically hold that many copies. Video games are far more compact and lightweight; 99 times out of 100, they’ll have enough copies for you. So relax.
2. How often is that bonus content something silly like a bonus gun or a different texture pack on certain items? For Fallout: New Vegas, preordering from Gamestop got you a suit, a canteen, a pistol, and five stimpacks. Stimpacks are already in the game, so that doesn’t mean much. While the other items are unique, it’s not like there aren’t other perfectly suitable replacements in the game. Yes, the textures there are cool in a throwback-to-the-classic kind of way, but honestly, such touches should have been in the main game.
Tons of developers do this. Pre-ordering Portal 2 from Valve, the company that never gets anything wrong according to the internet, got you nothing more than a bonus skin for Atlas and P-Body if you did it through Gamestop. Because that couldn’t have just been included in the main game, right? If you pre-ordered Ubisoft’s Far Cry 3 from Amazon, you got the incredible prize of a whole two exclusive tattoos and dagger for the single player, and a tattoo editor for multiplayer. Two tattoos aren’t enough to justify risking $60, but they are definitely enough to piss people off, since it limits your combat abilities.
The most egregious example though? Metro: Last Night, which was going to published by now defunct THQ (but should still find its way towards a release date). For pre-ordering the game, one would receive an extra gun, extra bullets, and Ranger mode, which essentially serves as a hardcore mode. I feel a sudden need to repeat myself here. They are offering a DIFFICULTY MODE as a pre-order bonus. That’s beyond low. I get why the publishers do it; I have yet to understand why consumers keep falling for it.
3. Fallout: New Vegas is also a perfect example of the retailer-specific pre-order. The bonus mentioned above was only available through Gamestop, but Walmart, Steam, Best Buy, and Amazon each had their own starter survival kits that were similar in nature, but had different textures and slight variants on items. So, if you wanted to have all of the content available for the game, too bad. Sucks to be you, since I doubt you’re going to pre-order the same game from six different stores. Pre-order bonuses screw you out of content even when you pre-order. That’s insane.
Don’t think they’re the only ones, though. The already discussed Portal 2 and Far Cry 3 did the same. As did Dead Space 3, Rock Band 3, DmC: Devil May Cry, Hitman: Absolution, Dishonored, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Halo 4, Uncharted 3, and pretty much every game made in the last five years. They keep doing it because they keep getting away with it. No one should put up with being assured of lost content even if they pre-order the game, but here we are.
4. Let’s take the above point to its logical conclusion. People at these companies had to take the time to come up with, design, and create all the items listed above. We’re talking about multiple sets of pre-order bonuses that they had to work on. You don’t think that takes time away from other things? Of course it does! In that same time, they could have designed a new enemy type, or perhaps added another floor to a particularly interesting building. Hell, they even could have spent that time on DLC if that’s your thing (another topic for another day). Instead of making the game everyone would have better, they had to spend their time making a whole bunch of items most people will never see.
5. Let’s say it’s something more substantial though, like a new level (Assassin’s Creed 3) or a challenge arena (the upcoming Tomb Raider). Besides screwing over later consumers who won’t have the opportunity to experience these things, ask yourself this: will this bonus content matter if the game isn’t good? Because it probably won’t. If you don’t like the game in the first place, getting more of it won’t make things better. Bonus content is only relevant if the quality is there, and there’s no way to tell quality unless someone’s actually played it. (Same goes for discounts or money back like Portal 2; saving $5 means nothing if you wasted $55!) Which means waiting for reviews to come out. They’ll be there on launch day, I promise. Embargoes are over by that point. Wait a couple hours, see what people are saying, then go buy. Patience, people!
So, yeah, I don’t give credence to the whole “pre-ordering is fine” thing. But if you’ve been paying attention to the Aliens: Colonial Marines news lately, you already know that. Hell, Totalbiscuit just did a video on it on which I agreed completely, so I won’t waste any more time on that. I will say that when a game is (currently) the seventh best selling game on Steam due to its large pre-orders and receives the dismal reviews it’s gotten, there’s clearly a flaw in the system that needs to be addressed. The rule should be simple: don’t buy until you have the information you need to make an intelligent decision with your money. Yet here we are.
There are two special cases I’d like to address here, though, since the argument above applies mostly to AAA releases with a whole bunch of marketing that tries to sucker people in with those kind of bonuses. The things I’m talking about from this point forward are unique, but still flawed.
First, let’s talk about Kickstarter. Kickstarter can be a great way for games with limited but passionate audiences to get the releases they deserve. Look at Brian Fargo’s Wasteland 2 Kickstarter, for instance. It’s a project he’s been passionate about for years and has tons of great ideas for, but hadn’t been able to make due to the classic RPGs of that era being nearly extinct in modern times. He called to the fans to support the endeavor, and they came through. Now, Wasteland will get the sequel it so rightfully deserves. Awesome.
That said, Kickstarter has a darker side of which people should be wary. For that, we look at Tim Schafer‘s famous Double Fine Adventure Game Kickstarter, the project that paved the way for video games to be crowd-funded, or at the very least, raised the method’s popularity in the public eye. The project received over $3.3 million in funding. What is the project, you ask? Well, let’s let Tim Schafer tell you himself:
“Other than that it will be an old school adventure, we’re not sure.”
In other words, Schafer asked people to donate their money not so they can get a definitive product that he or she will definitely desire, but instead so that they can get whatever point-and-click game he chooses to make with no guarantee the game will be good other than ‘Tim Schafer is making it’. Don’t get me wrong; I love Psychonauts as much as the next guy, but it’s not like the guy hasn’t some mediocre or even buggy games.
Before I’m willing to put my money down for anything, I need to see something that makes me feel like there’s a good chance I’ll yield a good return for my investment; otherwise, I’m better off spending that money on something I know will be good. A name is not enough. Show some concept art. Bring some ideas to the table. give me something, anything, that gives me an idea of what it is you’re wanting to create, and no, a very broad genre is not enough. That’s why I felt great giving money to the Wasteland campaign and why I refused to donate to the Double Fine project; on the former, I know what to expect and can trust them to execute the plan, but on the latter, I know nothing and can therefore expect nothing, even if I tend to like the developer. One’s simply a safer bet, and as consumers, we should hold developers to a certain standard and protect our best interests.
I hope the Double Fine Adventure game will be good, but the way it’s been done, I can guarantee that not everyone will be happy. Some will want to go into space, while others will want to be a Western hero. Some will want to time travel, and others will want a gritty, noir feel. You can’t appease everybody when the starting ground is so vague. And those that will be frustrated by the final product will have no one but themselves to blame.
The last thing worth discussing is the recent ploy by indie developer 11Bit Studios to try to attract attention to their latest project. What’s their plan? Well, I’d like to explain through a simple thought experiment.
Let’s say you’re walking down a street in a big city where a ton of vendors are selling things. One man is sitting at a large table with a giant box in front of him. You ask him what he’s selling, and he tells you it’s a secret. You can buy what’s under the box now for $7.50, but if you ask to see it first, it will cost $15. Would you buy this mystery box for a 50% discount before seeing what’s inside? Of course not!!! That’d be ridiculously dumb. For all you know, the box is filled with poisonous spiders or a pile of used needles. Hell, let’s assume it’s not all that malicious and say it’s a $5 bill. Do you feel better? No! You lost money on something you wouldn’t have bought had you known what it was. Clearly, this is a terrible idea.
And yet, that’s exactly what 11Bit Studios is asking you to do. (Note: the link is to a news article about the pre-order sale they’re offering. I refuse to link to the site’s main page out of principle) You can buy their new mystery game for 50% off, but you know nothing about it. I mean, I know their last game was pretty good, but to ask for this much blind trust from a consumer is downright insulting.
They claim the first thing you’ll get from pre-ordering this mystery game is the “satisfaction of having supported indie gaming”. Bullshit. That level of pretension is ridiculous. You can support indie gaming by buying tons of great indie games that have already been released and are deserving of your attention. Being dumb and spending money on something you know nothing about does not make you “brave”, as they continue to claim. It makes you foolish. What makes me angriest is their response to people who are worried they won’t like the game once it’s announced:
“If you’re not sure whether you’re willing to pay for the game, we ask that you please just wait until we actually announce it. Sure, you’ll pay full price, but this deal is for those brave souls who are willing to jump into the abyss with us and take a chance on a mystery.”
Fuck you, 11Bit Studios. It’s not brave to take chances with your income; it’s a signal to other developers and publishers that consumers are idiots who are willing to risk their hard earned cash on what amounts to absolutely nothing. Consumers need to demand more respect than this. People need to stand up and say, “No, I’m not giving you my money until you earn it.” Spend money on the studios that deserve your hard earned cash, not the ones that know how to pull a shallow and insulting marketing technique.
I know that anger is something many bloggers use to get views, but believe me when I say I hope 11Bit’s newest game crashes and burns. I hope people demand refunds when the announcement comes in two weeks and the shitstorm of bad PR consumes them. Gamers deserve better treatment than that. I hope we can start making our financial decisions with our brain instead of our curiosity, because otherwise, moves like this will only be the beginning.
Chase Wassenar, aka MaristPlayBoy, is the Lead Editor and Founder of the Red Shirt Crew. He urges you to spend the money that would go to 11Bit to support Bit Trip Runner, his latest indie obsession that deserves your cash and recognition. You can read more of his stuff at Toy-TMA, follow him on Twitter at @RedShirtCrew, or email him at theredshirtcrew@gmail.com.
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