Lately I’ve been seeing more virtue signaling from gamers warning each other to not pre order upcoming games. What are you 5 years old lol you need reminders from internet strangers to not spend your money on a series that burned you in the past?

  • DragonBallZinn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Yes, there’s even a joke among the Pokemon fandom that: “you’ll buy it anyways” that I saw all the way back in Gen 5, when people were upset that you were forced to play with all new mons (and many of them were too obvious of rehashes to the point you might as well have added that pokemon in or it was just sloppily designed).

    Hence why I don’t call myself a freeze-gamer anymore, just a guy who likes video games. Besides I have plenty of games to finish, or even begin. It’s an old stereotype that pc gamers have tons of games they bought off steam they never even touched.

    • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      I’ll be honest, Pokemon is the one that gets me in that way. I will always buy buy a pokemon game, even if the reviews are bad. And I’ll play it all the way through even if I’m complaining the entire time.

      I’m putting the blame on it being the thing from my childhood though, less than the gamerness. I’ll buy the pokemon game every time because even while I’m complaining about it my inner 8 year old is just going “Yay Pokémon!” the whole time, the same thing he’s said to every pokemon game for 20+ years

      Even then though I still don’t consistently preorder Pokémon games. I’m against pre-orders on principle and I only do it for games I do have very high expectations for. I preordered Elden Ring and Spider-Man 2, I don’t think I’ve preordered anything else in like 5 years. Spider-Man I preordered 6 hours before release, so that I could play it at midnight. Elden Ring was dumb, I should’ve waited, good game though so I got lucky.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      It’s an old stereotype that pc gamers have tons of games they bought off steam they never even touched.

      The stereotype is perpetuated by the freeze-gamer themselves, often while euphorically saying “feeemales waste money on shoes amirite?” smuglord

  • Cammy [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    It’s just the cope people go through to navigate a worsening economy while lacking class consciousness. If you perpetuate the belief that the responsibility is on the consumer, then you can look at the exploitation and say it’s because they weren’t smart shoppers who did their homework. The system doesn’t need to change, you just need to be smarter.

    It’s just another permutation of personal responsibility politics used to ignore the systemic problems we’re seeing. It’s telling customers not to be stupid instead of questioning why videogame companies keep selling low quality garbage with pre-order bonuses to hook people who want to look forward to something.

    It’s bad to do the pre-orders and get invested like with Starfield, but the people offering warnings like that are more just trying to prove they are being a smarter shopper. That they won’t get duped by the hype.

    • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      2 months ago

      I understand when it comes to more complicated, important things like predatory loans. But if I pay gourmet meal prices and I ended up eating a piece of dog shit every time, eventually I’m not going to return there again on the off chance they might serve wagyu lol

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    The calculation people make is “this game might be good” and “I want the exclusives”. They determine that the risk of it being bad is worth paying on the offchance it’s good and they won’t get the exclusives.

    It’s annoying but it absolutely works on much of the audience.

    • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      That’s only fair when they buy the more expensive copie that has exclusives.

  • Babs [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    I preordered Pokemon Yellow from Toys R Us as a kid for a $5 deposit, and it was such a good preorder that I don’t ever need to preorder anything again.

  • the_post_of_tom_joad [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    I preordered my N64 from ToysRUs and i learned back then a pre-order meant morning as i still had to wait a week or 2 extra. And PS was better. Ahhh I’m still mad about it anyway Nintendo never got another dime from me after the 64.

    Anyway these cats are all trying to use their non-existent market power in a fantasy where voting with your wallet is a thing that works so it means they’re probably libs…

    so maybe it would be a funny bit to reverse uno the vote blue crowd somehow by telling em you’re supporting the devs no matter what because they did their best and “maybe try advocating next game sweaty”

    Could be cool. Or could be i need more sleep

  • ouRKaoS@lemmy.today
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    2 months ago

    I haven’t pre-ordered a game since Halo 2.

    Midnight release, hundreds of gamers waiting in line at GameStop, telling stories, trading gamertags, having fun…

    Games going digital killed the social aspect of pre-orders, since now you just push a button and you have the game. No worries about copies running out and having to drive a city over to the Kmart no one shops at to find one in stock.

  • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    If I don’t buy it now, the scalpers will get the finite copies of the game!

    (I generally early access indie games that I really like the idea of, in the hopes I can vicariously live out some of the energy I used to get from game modding)

  • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Oh this is pretty old. Gaming companies have become more and more predatory with their pricing schemes over the past 20 years or so. So some people who still haven’t gotten over the very existence of DLC still harp about not pre-ordering stuff. Their problem is twofold. The gaming community at large is the sort of person who spends money on games instead of I dunno going out. If you aren’t spending money on drinks or airline tickets it turns out that this game’s subscription, that other game’s DLC pack, and so on do pack a lot of ‘entertainment hour per dollar spent’.

  • Gorb [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    The power of fomo and not having that pointless preorder exclusive treat. You see the preorder bonus is now play the game a week early and its incredibly popular for some reason

    • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      Ironically, I don’t think it’s the FOMO of the game itself that drives them, it’s the FOMO of the pseudo-social experience of the day one purchase-play-social media feedback cycle.