Deus Ex: They do listen!

[Undead Wolf]

What if I vote "I plan on buying the game anyways, so sure I'll take more stuff".

 

If you're okay with us consumers getting the shaft, then nobody is gonna stop you. Fact of the matter is that they cut this content out of the game to give to us as preorder incentives. I can't say I'm a fan of that.

 

Besides, now that they've decided to stop this ridiculous campaign, we get all of the "bonus" content anyway instead of having to pick and choose. 

[slash]

If you're okay with us consumers getting the shaft, then nobody is gonna stop you. Fact of the matter is that they cut this content out of the game to give to us as preorder incentives. I can't say I'm a fan of that.

 

Besides, now that they've decided to stop this ridiculous campaign, we get all of the "bonus" content anyway instead of having to pick and choose. 

 

this is at an impasse, no real point in addressing it anymore honestly  those of us who got burned understand how dumb pre-order "bonuses" are, and he claims he's never gotten burned by one ever.

Edited October 1, 2015 by slashvoid-13

[PleaseHoldOn]

this is at an impasse, no real point in addressing it anymore honestly  those of us who got burned understand how dumb pre-order "bonuses" are, and he claims he's never gotten burned by one ever.

 

I've never gotten burned because I don't preorder for the bonuses.  Why would I think getting a bonus for buying a game is dumb?

[starcrunch061]

Look - I think there is room for both opinions here (and more, in fact). Some people don't like pre-orders, or the enticements used to garner them. Some people like pre-orders, and are happy for additional bonuses. And some don't like pre-orders now, but are willing to re-think them with incentives.

 

In any case, for Deus Ex, this seems like a win for ALL of us, since now, there is even more content available for the pre-order crowd than before.

[StrickenBiged]

Does everything have to be coated as a life lesson?  You're being almost insultingly presumptuous.

 

Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about the rest of what I said.  Do you view my lax criticism of the system and willing participation as flawed?  As I've said, I've never been burned by a preorder yet.

 

Sorry if I sounded presumptuous, but you were the one who said "you don't pre-order from publishers you don't trust", implying that you do trust the publishers that you do pre-order from. Honestly, I meant no insult at all, and the last thing I want is for this interesting conversation to become hostile. 

 

Onto your other comments:

 

At the end of the day, you don't preorder games from publishers/developers you don't trust... and you preorder for functional reasons, not because OMG EXTRA MISSION!  I preordered Resident Evil 6 because I've loved every main entry in the series since Resident Evil on the PS1, and Resident Evil 6 was a phenomenal coop action game in my humble opinion.  I preorder physical copies of games from stores because a popular game can get sold out and, if I'm in the neighborhood, I may take advantage of a midnight launch and get started early.  I preorder digital copies of games because pre-loading is important to me given how awful servers handle heavy loads of people downloading on release day, and I'm in a household where people are frequently using bandwidth and I need to strategically time when I can use it all to download a 30+ GB game.  I literally haven't gotten burned yet, and I don't intend to.  The closest I've gotten was NHL 16, but I'm warming up to it.

 

Incentives are just bonus to me.  So the fact I get more when people more people pre-order is actually kind of fun.  I would've never expected to get a free copy of Resident Evil 5 out of the deal, but I checked the site every so often to see how close I was to getting it.

 

Those are all practical reasons to pre-order, provided that insufficient physical copies and/or slow internet are issues you face. Personally, in recent years, I have never not been able to get a physical copy on Day 1 if I decided to make a spur of the moment purchase. With digital distribution, you'll always be able to play day 1 if you are really desperate, although I appreciate your comments about having to compete for bandwith. This really comes down to us having different practical circumstances.

 

Whether or not you've felt burned by a game is subjective, but I'm glad you enjoyed your games. Personally, I felt burned by a number of "AAA" games last year and regretted buying into a lot of the hype. 

 

"Incentives are just bonus to me" - that's sort of the point. They're meant to incentivise you to buy a game now based on the marketing and hype the PR department is generating, rather than something like a review from a reviewer who's opinion you value.

 

I think there's a difference between getting something cool, like a copy of Resi 5, and getting something in-game for the game you're pre-ordering. The first is a cool bonus that doesn't take away from the base game for other players. A bonus mission or in-game content, by necessity, means that something was either carved out of the main game or development resources were diverted towards making the bonus content. I think there's a big difference. 

 

Let me restate, I understand why people don't like preorders... I just disagree.  I think the fact the phrase "psychological battle" was used here is enough to convince me that this is just another case of bored gamers looking for a cause to take up.  We won guys!  We did it, we finally did it!  Now we can just enjoy our games again!

 

If this "Augment Your Preorder" is the latest in horrifying preorder scandals, then I think we're doing fine.  They didn't chunk out half the game and put them into selectable preorder tiers.  It's a digital comic, soundtrack, artbook, a bonus mission and some combat packs.  Half of which have nothing to do with your experience in-game, and the other's sound pretty minor to me.  Maybe... MAYBE the mission, but I'd venture it's probably nothing related to the main storyline.

 

It's not really a "cause", just a consumer preference from my perspective. I can't control what anyone else wants to do, I wouldn't want to, and I don't try to (except by trying to convince them with words, obviously).

 

I just want to support practices which respect the games themselves and gamers as consumers. I don't feel that "pre-order culture" is conducive to either of these because, on the one hand, it treats the game as something that can be carved up into little pieces for sale to the highest bidder and, on the other hand, it creates a divide between players - those who have the "full experience" at launch, and those that do not. 

 

Turning to your final paragraph, as you point out, there's a lot of different things that can be offered as pre-order bonuses. Non-game content I don't really have a problem with. It's cool extra stuff that doesn't take away from the actual game, which is what I'm all about.

 

The problems with this specific scheme, for me, were 

• the tiered unlocks, which incentivise gamers to do the advertising department's job for them;
• the in-game content, which either took things out of the base game or diverted development resources away from the base game - either way a bad thing for the game overall; and
• the early release for pre-orderers, which would have created a division in the fans, and just seemed very cynical to me, as hardcore fans would have lapped the pre-orders up (I'm glad they didn't) in order to get to play over a weekend, rather than have it release on a Tuesday. I say, treat all your fans as equals, and you'll have a lot more fans.

Probably not a point anyone should make with a Telltale game on their profile. Or supported Telltale Games by giving them money.

 

You'll probably be seeing games getting released in an episodic format or cut up and sold piecemeal more often, since Telltale made it their entire business model and is making money from it.

 

Nice try. All my Telltale games were bought after the last episode had released, and in full.

 

Edit: Even then, I don't have a problem with episodic releases - that's the way they do business and it's clearly communicated. The Hitman situation seems more like an attempt by the publisher to get paid earlier in the development cycle and/or create a longer tail to the interest generated by games media as each batch of content drops. Either appears cynical to me, and if there is another reason for it then I don't see or understand it. 

Edited October 1, 2015 by StrickenBiged

[PleaseHoldOn]

Look - I think there is room for both opinions here (and more, in fact). Some people don't like pre-orders, or the enticements used to garner them. Some people like pre-orders, and are happy for additional bonuses. And some don't like pre-orders now, but are willing to re-think them with incentives.

 

In any case, for Deus Ex, this seems like a win for ALL of us, since now, there is even more content available for the pre-order crowd than before.

 

Whenever this argument comes up, I try not to get on the case of people who would just rather save money by waiting or finding a better alternative to traditional preordering.  As a PC user, I'm guilty of it as much as anyone... you can't preorder triple-A big budget releases for 75% off or more on Steam before release without getting your hands a little dirty.

 

It's the "companies are out to get you, if you don't agree with us, you're just taking it in the ass and you like taking it in the ass don't you you little bitch" crowd that just gets me every time.  It's hilarious, I almost just want to go to such a passive extreme that I bait them into saying it... because I know people want to.  It's such a passionate outcry for something that really doesn't deserve it.  As I said before... if this "Augment Your Preorder" campaign is the latest "evil" that these companies are trying to sell us, with a single bonus mission and some combat packs, I want to say we aren't doing that bad.  Seriously.

Edited October 1, 2015 by PleaseHoldOn

[StrickenBiged]

It's the "companies are out to get you, if you don't agree with us, you're just taking it in the ass and you like taking it in the ass don't you you little bitch" crowd that just gets me every time.  

 

Please don't think I'm part of that crowd. I hope I have never said anything like that, although I can get a little passionate sometimes so I wouldn't be surprised if I have somewhere.

 

I really am sorry if I have come across as one of those guys at any point in this thread, or any others. 

[PleaseHoldOn]

Whether or not you've felt burned by a game is subjective, but I'm glad you enjoyed your games. Personally, I felt burned by a number of "AAA" games last year and regretted buying into a lot of the hype. 

 

"Incentives are just bonus to me" - that's sort of the point. They're meant to incentivise you to buy a game now based on the marketing and hype the PR department is generating, rather than something like a review from a reviewer who's opinion you value.

 

I think there's a difference between getting something cool, like a copy of Resi 5, and getting something in-game for the game you're pre-ordering. The first is a cool bonus that doesn't take away from the base game for other players. A bonus mission or in-game content, by necessity, means that something was either carved out of the main game or development resources were diverted towards making the bonus content. I think there's a big difference. 

 

 

It's not really a "cause", just a consumer preference from my perspective. I can't control what anyone else wants to do, I wouldn't want to, and I don't try to (except by trying to convince them with words, obviously).

 

I just want to support practices which respect the games themselves and gamers as consumers. I don't feel that "pre-order culture" is conducive to either of these because, on the one hand, it treats the game as something that can be carved up into little pieces for sale to the highest bidder and, on the other hand, it creates a divide between players - those who have the "full experience" at launch, and those that do not. 

 

Turning to your final paragraph, as you point out, there's a lot of different things that can be offered as pre-order bonuses. Non-game content I don't really have a problem with. It's cool extra stuff that doesn't take away from the actual game, which is what I'm all about.

 

The problems with this specific scheme, for me, were 

• the tiered unlocks, which incentivise gamers to do the advertising department's job for them;
• the in-game content, which either took things out of the base game or diverted development resources away from the base game - either way a bad thing for the game overall; and
• the early release for pre-orderers, which would have created a division in the fans, and just seemed very cynical to me, as hardcore fans would have lapped the pre-orders up (I'm glad they didn't) in order to get to play over a weekend, rather than have it release on a Tuesday. I say, treat all your fans as equals, and you'll have a lot more fans.

 

I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that you're right, you can't trust companies.  They aren't our friends or buddies, very few (if any) deserve anything unconditionally.

 

As such, when you say things like "they're trying to incentivise you to buy the game now"... my response is don't buy into it.  I don't take offense that they're trying because at the end of the day, they always will, and the bonuses don't matter all that much to me.  If I want a game, I'll look into it and decide if it's worth it.  If I don't or think somethings fishy, I won't.  I generally didn't buy into episodic games at first for this reason.  Now I've found that trying the first episode works pretty well, then waiting for the full thing if I like it.  Maybe I was a little too lax when I implied I only preorder games from publishers/developers I trust, because at the end of the day, I do my share of research into something before I hand off money for it.

 

A lot of this seems to be aimed at protecting the consumer, which is probably why we have this divide.  I don't care about other consumers.  I'm not going to crusade for their rights to make stupid purchases and take no accountability for it.  I don't blame Platinum Games because I preordered at full price and subsequently hated Metal Gear Rising Revengence (I forgot about that one).  I mean... False advertising?  Yeah, that's not fair.  Someone held a gun to their head?  That's not right.  Preorders?  A bonus mission?  Some combat packs?  Eh...

 

The answer IMO is to make the consumer smarter, make them accountable for their actions.  Not to force companies stop trying to make money and hope that it won't happen again.

 

 

Please don't think I'm part of that crowd. I hope I have never said anything like that, although I can get a little passionate sometimes so I wouldn't be surprised if I have somewhere.

 

I really am sorry if I have come across as one of those guys at any point in this thread, or any others. 

 

You haven't.  Don't worry.  It's mostly the other guys.

Edited October 1, 2015 by PleaseHoldOn

[StrickenBiged]

The answer IMO is to make the consumer smarter, make them accountable for their actions.  Not to force companies stop trying to make money and hope that it won't happen again.

 

 

 

You haven't.  Don't worry.

 

I agree, and thanks. 

[SuffyZorugelion]

I'm confused what the collectors edition is I tried to google but there were pictures of multiple editions

[Mournblade05143]

Probably not a point anyone should make with a Telltale game on their profile. Or supported Telltale Games by giving them money.

 

You'll probably be seeing games getting released in an episodic format or cut up and sold piecemeal more often, since Telltale made it their entire business model and is making money from it.

 

Some people, including me just wait til the season is done and buy it as a bundle at a cheap price.

[NICK16_06]

Great news. Great PR skillz there, I guess. This will be a hit, Human Revolution had a lot of potential and this already looks supa hot!

[Nihiris-]

I was looking forward to this game regardless, but it's really good to hear that they actually listened.

[xWinson]

I wonder if the PC gamers who tried to justify piracy because of the game bad pre-order campaign - are still gonna pirate the game -.-!?