I respectfully question your logic. Using the same logic we could say:I swear to God, I have seen this thread on every forum for an upcoming game I've ever visited. TBH, I find this "cause" a little silly. The gaming industry has been using preorders for years and there are still good games coming out, somehow.
Do I sound like I'm saving the world? That's a huge deal. I mean, if I were capable of saving the world I would demand that everyone else build me a castle. Mr. Gordon James Ramsay would have to become my personal Chef. And there would be a constant parade of world-class beautiful, willing, young women parading around my pool. To the best of my recollection I have demanded none of these things, yet.If you don't want to preorder, don't - but don't make it sound like you're saving the world because of that.
So we both agree that smoking-gun evidence would be difficult to impossible to obtain. Good. Stop asking for it then! Stop dismissing the argument with, "Show me the evidence!" Instead lets reason together.Well, I was mostly clarifying what you were responding to and why the concept of proof as an ideal is irrelevant. I'm not really even sure of the extent of the claimed effects. I don't think games being bad is evidence of anything without being able to link those negatives with the result of pre-ordering.
For example, people are saying that pre-ordering results in a rushed buggy game. I agree games are rushed and buggy, but would people not pre-ordering lead to delays in release which would in turn lead to games being less buggy at launch? Ignoring the fact that some people want the game sooner despite bugs (because they still enjoy playing it), would this be something publishers would do? Would they opt to delay getting money from consumers that would have purchased on the original day 1? I don't think logic alone can demonstrate the answer. You would need knowledge of publishers decisions in the past and their reasoning or, at least, a clear sense of all of publisher's decision-making processes.
I know that that level of detail on publisher decisions is difficult to obtain, but that doesn't mean we should just accept any non-evidence-based argument as the truth just because it's the best we can come up with with our lack of information. It's valid to just accept that we don't know the effects.
I agree. It's a good article, but not directly related enough to forward the conversation.I don't see the link between that article and preordering.
It's about accepting flawed software. It is not related to preordering. The exact problems described there existed far before preordering even existed.
I agree with you here too - but only insofar as indie developers go. And with Indie developers and kickstarter as a whole it's understood that this is a high-risk venture. There are plenty of examples of Kickstarters that failed completely. I don't think you can draw a comparison between kickstarter asking for start up funding and established companies asking for preorders.As for (1) I disagree with too. Preordering also means getting more money, so putting more in the game (typically kickstarter stretch goals). Preordering allows the game to be developped. It allows the developper to rely more on its own funds than on banks to grant loans, and so it amounts to giving money to the developpers rather than the banks.
That article isn't remotely about preordering, it's about buggy games. In my experience this is the typical argument against preordering: pointing to problems and then arbitrarily blaming them on preorders without any good evidence (or even reason) to back up the claim.
First statement: I agree. On the latter, we obviously have different opinions.Publishers have always released buggy games before they were ready. Preordering has done nothing to change the situation.
This doesn't make sense. Patches have always risked creating more bugs...that's code for you Preordering, again, hasn't changed the situation. Developers have always been under the gun when a buggy game is released...they want to release patches as quickly as possible to avoid bad press from reviewers and gamers alike.
Please read my post entirely or at least quote me in a way that does not paint an incomplete picture of my opinion. I stated 2) and 3) of my initial post were true regardless of pre-ordering practice (I could have worded that better, I know), but in my view pre-ordering aggravates the situation insofar as it does support these practices and/or increases pressure on the named processes. If this does not seem obvious to you, that's a-okay.Again...nothing to do with preordering but rather with a long-standing industry practice.
You're average civfanatic in this thread is perfectly willing to be convinced, but no on has actually brought any evidence to the table.
So we both agree that smoking-gun evidence would be difficult to impossible to obtain. Good. Stop asking for it then! Stop dismissing the argument with, "Show me the evidence!" Instead lets reason together.
The thesis is: Preorders hurt the quality of video games.
Recognizing that there is no evidence that will immediately confirm/deny this thesis, what are some things we should consider?
Lets get back to basics...
A) Does paying someone for their work before the work is done negatively affect the quality of the work? Common opinion is yes, it does. Would you agree? If not I can provide countless examples across countless industries, but I feel that doing so would be pedantic.
B) Do people tend to prioritize short term gain over long term gain? This would be useful in showing a tendency for decision makers at a company to value the sales figures for an individual game over the sales figures for a brand. I think it's self evident and pedantic to cite examples for.
I could go on, and if need be I can, but we are all intelligent people here, right? I'm sure others can come up with concise easy-to-digest sound bites that support the idea that preorders hurt video games. I'm having a hard time with this because a big part of me feels that people are just trolling. It seems that self-evident to me, for one. But I've been told elsewhere in this thread that this may not be the case, that some people may not be applying some basic market understanding to this for some unknown reasons.
Anyways. Cheers.
We can get statistical evidence on the correlation between reviews (since they are quantified) and sales. Game quality is not a quantity so correlation can't be measured - you would need to come up with a quantifiable and reliable measurement for the quality of games. You could theoretically do that and if someone has, then I'd like to see those statistics.So in essence you would also dismiss the claim that games magazines that are paid for false reviews would have a positive influence on the sales of a really bad game as compared to if they had written an honest review?
Simply because we cannot go into an alternative reality to get hard evidence?
Yes, the figures should be trated with a grain of salt. But this month peak simultaneous civ players is 70k, when the all-time peak is 90k, so it's not unlikely that many people took the game again, either because they never left it or because of civ 6.That website also claims that Civilization V hat 1 Million active players in the last two weeks. With 9 Million owners overall registered that would mean that 1 out of 9 players who own the game still play the game. Considering that only ~20% of all registered buyers have ever beaten the game at all, on any difficulty, I'm highly skeptical of those numbers, they seem to be very overblown.
On top of that: How many of those owners have actually picked up the game at or shortly after release? How many have bought it when it was on sale? How many would NOT have bought the game after release if it had been disastrously bad? etc. - lots of questions that remain unanswered.
Also, why would companies go the extra mile and create pre-order bonuses and intensives to pre-order if it wasn't profitable for them? Overall it seems very obvious to me that there's profit to be made that way.
But you seem to think that people are claiming that companies intentionally make bad games because they know they can get away with it because of preorder - I don't think that's what anyone here is saying. It is simply one of many factors that dampen the effect of a bad release and allow the company to keep going.
This is different from what you say, that is allowing the company to keep going.wouldn't that, by a percentage, reduce there incentive to improve the game to improve sales?
In anycase - I enjoyed your point. All the best.
A correlation is meaningless, because correlation doesn't mean causation. There's literally no way you could prove a causation of a gaming journal giving a favorable review because they were bought and sale numbers. Because you simply cannot prove that a person who has picked up a game would not have picked up the game had they not read about it in that specific games magazine.We can get statistical evidence on the correlation between reviews (since they are quantified) and sales.
I don't read it that way, that may be because we are running on different definitions of what we mean by "intentionally bad".And yes, I think some people here claim companies intentionally make bad games if they get all money from preorders. That's exactly what I read in post 93:
Sure. But do you agree that we base our expectations in the market around the idea that these two (of many) premises are correct (sometimes, not always)? In very few places do people pay for services/products before recieving those services/products. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that is a good practice that we have adopted? Why do you feel that shouldn't apply to this situation? What is different?To respond to your points: (a) sometimes, not always, (b) sometimes, not always. Pro and con examples can be given for both.
I think your claim of intelligent/unintelligent people on either side of the argument is misplaced at best, and insulting at worst. It is possible for intelligent people to have differing opinions. Likewise it is possible for intelligent people to come up with good arguments for the opposite side of the discussion they are on - which is what I suggested. You will save yourself grief if you don't make it personal to anyone, but more than that you will be correct.If we are being intelligent people, we would not come to a conclusion based on that information. And to be clear, I'm not calling you or gamers unintelligent, but all people make unintelligent decisions at times. This is a hard claim to prove or disprove based on evidence or logic, so people or even collective social groups often resort using biases - not "intelligence". (And since people on here are offended by claims of bias without proof, see Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow for extensive evidence on the presence of biases in human thinking.)
Apology accepted.I'm sorry, but the fact that you can't fathom people not believing the claim and its "self-evidence" to you shows that you are basing your conclusion on your intuition, which does not increase my confidence in the claim.
Ryika has already brought to the forefront some of the questions I would have about your interpretation of the data, but regardless of that I just wanted to say thank you for pointing this all out. It's rare that someone brings something tangible like this in to the discussion and I for one appreciate it.Okay, some figures.
According to this lawsuit : http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...-for-630k-over-company-of-heroes-2-pre-orders
CoH2 got 20,755 preorders over one year, for a total of about 1million dollars.
This is why I love civfanatics. Cheers mate.However, I do appreciate your responses to my points and whilst I respectfully disagree with a lot of what you are saying I don't think your perspective is objectively wrong, I just prefer a different interpretation of the data.
Regards.
The evidence that pre-order culture makes people buy a game that they otherwise would not have is equally sound, it just adds a theory that is well-accepted in behavioral psychology - the idea of investment and how it makes us see products in a different light.
If people can invest in a game - emotionally or physically - they are more likely to buy and stick to it, even if it later turns out to be bad. Therefor pre-ordering does produces sales that are not bound to the quality of the game, therefor companies can use pre-ordering to get people invested and more tolerant of the quality of the game.
Which does not mean that they deliberately produce a subpar game, but it does mean that any game that isn't on the "very good" level will end up with higher sales numbers than if they had not have pre-order available.