Pre-ordering is a practice that serves game companies and leaves you on the hook for half-baked games. How does it benifit you to send your money before the game is created?

This guy says it better

I think his premise that pre-orders are the CAUSE of shitty games is a bit incorrect. Pre-orders have been around a hell of a long time, but there wasn't always quite the absurd level of "eh, we'll fix it later" that's so common now in AAA gaming. The biggest influence that's happened in the past decade or so is the availability of patching on consoles, and centralised delivery platforms like Steam. There's no need to push a finished game when you can always patch it later, or charge for the rest.

But yeah, if the game does suck, you're still on the hook for it in the case of physical copies, usually. I got bit a couple times in the PS2 era.

And for my requisite genetic fallacy : It's Kotaku we're talking about.
[Achievement unlocked: Crap on Kotaku five times a week]

Yeah it's not the cause, but it is enabling a lot more of the bs going on these days. Also micro-transactions are garbage when we've already paid full price for a game. I rarely go there.

But... I want an M2000C. And Fallout 4. And that Horizons expansion for Elite.

I don't think there's any going back, if people are excited about something and are given the opportunity to pre-order or buy in to one of those "alpha release" things, they're going to. It's just just the free market at work. Long term, I don't think it's ruining video games, if developers continue to churn out shit and kick back because they've made all this profit from an unreleased product, it's going to catch up with them and the developers who don't do that will get the business.

Sounds good on paper but I don't think that's actually the trend.

Just look at COH2. Pre-order for $60 and then a year later you have a sequel that's worse than the original (imo) with day 1 DLC and micro transactions that are necessary to be truly competitive and even worse, are advertised relentlessly in-game. It's like buying a DVD with ads to buy the other half of the DVD which you thought you already had.

That's what pre-order does. Corporate can shaft you like that because you already paid for something that didn't exist. Therefor, they make up what you paid for after the fact. They can give you a 5 min demo for all they care because you didn't actually buy a game, you bought a title which had yet to be filled in.

That's extreme, but they do that don't they? Look at EA and the BF series. Ever since BF3 you don't actually get the whole game. Nope, you get parts and they're fed to you in 3 month intervals to keep you coughing up the cash. If you buy BF3 you get 1/6th of the actual game. The first sixth is $60 (I seen higher) and the remaining sixths are $15 a peice.

Oh wait, you can pre-order the whole thing for a mere $120 with premium and you also get badass dog tags and a dumb looking knife. This actually works on people, it worked on me...

Expensive games are one thing. iRacing can bust the bank if you buy it all but they're open about it and you decide if it's worth it. Also 'free to play' games are another thing. That I can at least respect but stuff with EA and Sega is slight-of-hand, or at least it used to be but now it's expected.
Heck even mobile games are set up to get you far enough into it that you feel invested and then you hit a giant wall where you either need to pay to get past it or grind for eternity to level up. It's all about the money. Am I the only one who would rather see what I'm getting and then pay to get the whole thing instead of being suckered in and then finding the truth?

I digress, but this is all intertwined with each other. Again I'll ask, what's in it for you to pre-order? The supporter's perks? Remind me again how long ago the A-10C was released, I bet those lucky pre-order guys are really enjoying Nevada.

Is it going to change? Probably not. I'm not saying the whole world of gamers need to put their foot down with some type of gamer's revolution; I'm just saying that for the guys reading this, maybe think twice... Why are you sending money?

My point is people are either going to come to the conclusion that a pre-order is worthwhile or not on their own. Making a pre-order available is just the supply responding to the demand and if they consistently eff it up enough on the supply side, the demand will disappear. I don't see people just stopping their habit to pre-order something because they read an article saying they should, they'll do it if they come to that conclusion based on their own experience.

In my experience, the only pre-order type thing I've ever been really screwed on was DayZ Standalone. I curse those developer sons of bitches to an early and painful death by fire and will never buy anything I find their name on ever again, but for the most part my experience with pre-ordered games has been satisfactory. I get the concept that you're obligating yourself to pay for something that isn't even completed yet and would agree that it's undesirable, it's good to remind people of that and discuss it, but still it comes down to a personal decision of whether or not it is beneficial for the individual. There's a market for peoples' enthusiasm about a particular video game and I don't see either the developers or the consumers opting out of it en masse any time soon.

If I pre-order anything, I know the risks ahead of time. That said I do agree that the majority of pre-orders are a scam. But I don't care anymore, I used to get upset over DRM and all that jaz, but in the end, people bought the crap, the companies made money, and so they continue to do it.

I on the other hand simply stopped buying those games or supporting those developers.

DCS is the only thing I purchased any pre-orders in since 2003ish.

My rationale for DCS is that it is a way for me to show support for a product I want to see succeed. I haven't been scorned by DCS yet fortunately. But who knows what the future holds.

I knew this was slowly going to turn into an interesting modern internet marketing thread, one way or another. If I remember rightly, that proposition for the third party DCS F-35 turned out to be a bit of a scam(?). Now the question is (and with it I might extend amplitude of this discussion), could supporting a kick starter be considered a type of "facet", of sorts, of the pre-order culture?

I quit buying the DCS planes until they are out of their Beta development. Though I may break that rule when they get the Hornet out.