I fear you're going to be sorely disappointed by RDR2.

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.

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.)

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.

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...

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

Literally what I just said.

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?

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?

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

It usually sets off alarm bells tbh.

There are exceptions. Prey was great.

No Man s Sky

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.

Debatable that it was a great game at launch.

I'm not sure it is.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.