Anachrony of Preorders

It is funny how some things get stuck in your life because you are used to doing them. One of these is the concept of preordering video games. I remember a time not all that long ago, at least in my span of time when I never ordered a game ahead of time. There was almost a thrill of the chase on release day, of trying to go out and find the last copy of something available in town. I remember when the Shadows of Luclin expansion for Everquest launched frantically spending my lunch hour trying to find a copy. I ended up going to three stores and finally found a copy at the Software Etc. in Woodland Hills Mall, where it was one of the last three copies they had.

Similarly I remember scrounging around desperately trying to find a copy of Trials of Atlantis for Dark Age of Camelot a few years later. I wound up picking up the very last copy they had at the EB Games in Promenade Mall and feeling like a freaking champion for snagging it. When Battlefield 2 released, the entire office was playing it and I remember my friend Chuck and I making a trek across town to pick up the last few copies at a Game Stop. There was something about the struggle of acquiring a game that added to the experience and to be truthful all of these years later I still remember these moments so there must have been some truth to that.

Something shifted along the way. Stores became more reliant on preorder numbers and midnight launches, making it a bit harder to get a copy of the game. I remember with World of Warcraft I walked into Walmart at midnight and snagged a copy off the giant display kiosk, and when Burning Crusade came out expecting to do the same. Difference being there was not giant kiosk and copies were delayed and I remember it being a few days before I could track down a copy and join my friends playing the new hotness. Getting a late start in an MMORPG expansion felt crushing, but I didn’t really learn from my lesson and I was back at Walmart at midnight for Wrath of the Lich King and managed to walk away with one of only two collectors editions they had.

At this point I was getting older and decided that the bullshit of trying to get to a store at midnight was nonsense so I just started placing a preorder online whenever they opened up, expecting that magically on release day a copy would show up on my door stop. Around this same time Digital Downloads were becoming a thing and I remember that Mass Effect 2 was one of the very first games that I purchased and downloaded. It was through a service called Direct 2 Drive, and they only had a handful of offerings but had Mass Effect 2 on day one. The problem being that I also had a 2 meg DSL connection and it took for freaking ever to download anything.

I am pretty sure that it was the a Steam Christmas sale circa 2007/2008 that converted me to the digital lifestyle that I have now. There was something about being able to purchase an entire publishers catalog of games for $50 that was way too appealing to ignore. I remember doing this for THQ and I still have games in my library from that one purchase that I have never played. Now I still had a shit internet connection that I think at that point had been upgraded to 6 meg but was still sheer misery as game sizes increases. I would set something to download before going to bed and in theory when I got not the next morning it would be ready to go.

Thing is if it was a game I was interested in and wanted to play on that first day, I would still pre-order the game because Steam introduced the concept of preloading. This would allow you to download almost all of the game save for a few critical bits that would patch in as the game officially released. This would allow me or anyone like me on a crappy connection to be on a level playing field with everyone starting at midnight or whatever the launch window happened to be. This began a habit of just locking down a purchase of any games that I was super into and wanting to play immediately.

The problem is that what used to be necessity, just turned into another habit that I followed without thinking about it. I’ve long since had reliable and fast internet and can download most games in a matter of minutes. Yet I still have continued the practice of locking in that pre-order as though there was some scarcity associated with it. I’ve realized that there are games in my library that I preordered and have never actually played. Doom Eternal for example, I locked that purchase in months ahead of time and never actually got around to playing it since I had never finished the original 2016 release. So it is sitting there on the digital shelf waiting on me and cost me a premium to do so.

There is a mindset that I developed of maybe missing out on something, because for the longest time there were tangible bonuses associated with getting you to lock in that purchase. This might have been the case that there was something worth having that you got exclusively through a pre-order. However in my experience these items tend to be largely throw away, as they might be useful for a few minutes upon immediately starting the game but will ultimately be trash after thirty minutes of gameplay. Additionally on the cosmetic front it seems that most games ultimately sell the preorder package after some time as a “priced to own” DLC.

Then there is the other side of the coin, that preorders support the hype fueled system of game marketing. Everything seems to be focused on getting you to lock in that purchase and often times had you just waited you would have realized that it maybe wasn’t a game you were willing to gamble full price on. Marvel’s Avengers and Godfall for example are poster children for games that I probably should not have preordered because as soon as they released the writing was clearly on the wall that there were issues. However there would also be gems that I love like Cyberpunk and Mass Effect Andromeda that I maybe would not have purchased given equally bad press. So I guess it is a bit of a double edged sword, but at a minimum I wouldn’t have been out full price for when I eventually experimented with them.

I get the concept of physical preorders because there is legitimate scarcity there. This has been shown clearly this year with the PlayStation 5 and them being nigh impossible to purchase. However for me at least I am beginning to realize that there is zero point to preordering a game I am going to purchase digitally ahead of release day. There are so few games that I am absolutely going to be trying to play at midnight as the servers click on, and even then… with my internet connection pending I go through a reputable broker like Steam it is highly likely I will still be able to download that purchase within a reasonable time frame. There is an anachronism associated with the digital pre-order that I think I am going to stop supporting.

There are a whole slew of games that I am super interested in playing, but my goal for 2021 is to preorder none of them. This is going to go against years of built up instincts, but I am going to wait and watch and then download it as the game actually releases. I am not going to allow myself to get caught up in the hype machine of a preorder going live six months before a game is going to release, regardless of how cool the sizzle reel ends up being. We live in this wonderful time when at the push of a button I can have pretty any bit of content delivered to me on a whim, and it is time that I start treating it as such. There is no scarcity in this system and I am not going to miss out on getting access to something, so I need to push down that FOMO and behave in a sane and rational manner.

So there you go. This is my year of no preorders. I hope I keep to that goal.