Be Excellent To Each Other

Horse stunts off an eagle doing a barrel roll.

It could happen. (If RDR2 is a buggy as RDR was on release)

Or the rest of us are going to be horribly confused.

Worth it just for the byline really.

3 hours with the game :

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/ ... sm-preview

I have pre-ordered this, mainly because I'm an idiot with poor impulse control.
Let's hope I don't play it for a couple of hours and then never turn it on again, as I did the last one...

What do you get for pre ordering?

Nothing special really, a better horse and some supplies or something. I assume the horse has grippier shoes and a more streamlined saddle, probably.

Well worth giving them your money early then.

I’ve preordered it too and I get the pleasure of not having to leave the house to find a copy in town.

Those 100-hour weeks had better be worth it!

Absolutely!

We don't even know what the game is yet, they might have fucked the single player campaign with micro-transactions and other such nonsense.

Pre-ordering is us as gamers telling the companies that we'll literally buy anything whether it's any good or not or even if it fucking works properly or not.

(And yes I have pre-ordered in the past, but I'm better now.)

Broadly, I agree with you, but some developers have earned the benefit of the doubt (FLOOKBURGH, for example.)

And I generally expect rockstar to get their games to a respectable level. And RDR had some awesome hilarious bugs on release

Normally I’d agreed too but a new big triple-A release from Rockstar is like a gaming event.

I'm glad I can't afford it as otherwise I'd be very conflicted, considering the Housers are boasting about flogging their workers into an early grave.

Also, has anyone ever not managed to get a copy of a game on day one anyway? I guess it's different these days as it's the only way to get a physical copy through the post on the day of release but I remember working at Game and we were told to hassle people within an inch of their lives to pre-order everything. Not once in my five years of working there did we run out of copies to sell on the release day.

It happened with one of the CoD games maybe and I think that cast a pretty long shadow with people still thinking that they won't be able to just walk into a shop and buy big games on release day.

Funnily enough the one time it happened to me was when I was working in Leicester city centre and I went looking for a copy of an unknown game called Red Dead Redemption for the Xbox 360. I went to GAME, HMV, Virgin and about 2 other shops and there wasn’t a single copy available. If I remember rightly on release day the only copies available were for people who had preordered and they had none left to sell. This went on for about 3 weeks or so until I finally stumbled across a copy.

Woolworths was another one I tried. Ah, if they’d only ordered more copies they might still be in business today.

Yes, exactly. And unless you have serious internet then the preload download might be the only way to get a launch-day digital copy too.

I'll pre-order solely so the download version can download prior to the launch time unlock.

Literally what I just said.

You weird goulash.

But what if the game's shit? You'll have just managed to play a shit game as quickly as possible.

Yes I get that this is unlikely with a AAA Rockstar release, but where's the pain in waiting for the reviews to come in (peer or otherwise) and making an informed decision?

No, you said launch day. I mean launch minute.

Where's the pain in pre-ordering, waiting for reviews to drop, and cancelling the pre-order if you don't like the cut of its jib?

There was a first three hours play test on the guardian website this weekend. Go find the link yourselves. It sounds pretty epic

I'm guessing in the pre-ordering and cancelling.

Also if review embargoes don't drop before launch second (better than launch minute).

That's a cancellin'.

(I've done exactly that a couple of times.)

It usually sets off alarm bells tbh.

There are exceptions. Prey was great.

The first Batman Arkham game, too.

No Man s Sky

Isn't that just a Bethesda general policy rather than a Pre-specific thing? The review embargo I mean, not the game being good.

Also, the general idiocy of giving someone money sight-unseen aside, the best argument against pre-ordering is the chopping up of all the fucking content just so different places can have different bonuses. Not least when the publisher will usually 'generously' offer to sell you the other bonuses as DLC later. It's anti-consumer bullshit and you're all turkeys voting for Christmas.

Debatable that it was a great game at launch.

Same here. Except Croydon rather than Leicestershire.

So I missed out on all the awesome animal men that you got on launch

I'm not sure it is.

I mean, I could try, but I'd fail.

I have never yet seen an example of that being something important/useful/fun instead of pointless digital tat or yet another cookie-cutter side mission. I'm sure the publishers love it, but as far as I've seen, the games developers view it as an exercise in box-ticking to be completed via some scraps of phoned-in leftovers that would otherwise have been cut from the game.

Arkham Knight had an entire story DLC for Red Hood (which was also the only time the character appeared in the game) which, as a pre-order bonus, was only available from Gamestop. And, of course, was paid DLC for everyone else. Whether that hits your definition of "cookie-cutter side mission" is up to you but it's still a bullshit practise either way.

ETA: similarly, Tesco and some other set of missions:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011 ... -exclusive

And now RockStar are getting grief because manager bloke mentioned 100-hour weeks, the idiot, and then said "we don't force people to work hard", which is a worrying attitude.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018 ... -criticism

We should all debate this now that Grim... has brought it up for the first time.

I saw some gamer bro reply saying "as long as it's a freaking masterpiece it will all be worth it!" and lost my goddamn mind

He's basically saying that as long as it's not him that's working 100+ hours a week, he doesn't care.

It's worrying. I think I've always known that developers push their teams when deadlines are approaching but I guess I've never really thought about it... until now.

It wasn’t the “teams” it was the Senior Writers, just to clarify. About 4 people I think.

Everyone thinks about it every time it comes up (e.g. the notable "EA Spouse" stuff from a while back) but nothing ever really changes.