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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 19:12 (2555 days ago)

I love you all (even Raga), and just want to remind everyone that buying pre-orders puts the onus of sale on the advertising for a game, whereas waiting for reviews to come out before you buy puts the onus of sale on the actual quality of the game itself.

Please don't pre-order this game or any other. Force game devs to focus on making great games rather than making great advertisements.

Of note: This ad was a better pre-rendered sequence than anything in vanilla Destiny.

Of double-note: If Bungie does put more effort into the game than they put into this ad, that means the game is going to be gorgeous, well acted, and have a plot! Get HYPED (but don't pre-order)!

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 19:20 (2555 days ago) @ Kahzgul

(even Raga)

Hi. :p

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by Kahzgul, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 19:44 (2555 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Hi!

( ^.^ )

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Harmanimus @, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 19:44 (2555 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I disagree with your supposition at a root level. No developer tries to create poor content. And advertising is not going to make a poor product successful. Bungie is a known quantity. Destiny is also at this point a known quantity. The product quality isn't going to be worse than Vanilla Destiny, which could be argued was the worst time for Destiny.

Side note: voting with your money only matters when applied to directly competing product. Abstaining from pre-order is a personal choice that should be weighed on cost/benefit, not on the assumption that a pre-order makes a worse game.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by CruelLEGACEY @, Toronto, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 20:06 (2555 days ago) @ Harmanimus

I disagree with your supposition at a root level. No developer tries to create poor content. And advertising is not going to make a poor product successful. Bungie is a known quantity. Destiny is also at this point a known quantity. The product quality isn't going to be worse than Vanilla Destiny, which could be argued was the worst time for Destiny.

Side note: voting with your money only matters when applied to directly competing product. Abstaining from pre-order is a personal choice that should be weighed on cost/benefit, not on the assumption that a pre-order makes a worse game.

(Bold added by me)

Advertising makes poor products successful all the time.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Harmanimus @, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 20:12 (2555 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

Please define "successful" in your context. I can think of where average products performed above average thanks to advertising, but an actual bad product? Second, what Bungie Product are you suggesting advertising made successful while being a identifiably poor product?

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Korny @, Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 20:21 (2555 days ago) @ Harmanimus

Please define "successful" in your context. I can think of where average products performed above average thanks to advertising, but an actual bad product? Second, what Bungie Product are you suggesting advertising made successful while being a identifiably poor product?

Well, Halo 2 had some outstanding marketing and ViDocs throughout, and it turned out to be a fairly lackluster (and buggy) product that still outsold pretty much everything else at the time...

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric gauging support

by CyberKN ⌂ @, Oh no, Destiny 2 is bad, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 20:32 (2555 days ago) @ Korny

Please define "successful" in your context. I can think of where average products performed above average thanks to advertising, but an actual bad product? Second, what Bungie Product are you suggesting advertising made successful while being a identifiably poor product?


Well, Halo 2 had some outstanding marketing and ViDocs throughout, and it turned out to be a fairly lackluster (and buggy) product that still outsold pretty much everything else at the time...

You misspelled "Destiny 1"

Also somebody misspelled "gauging" earlier.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Harmanimus @, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 20:37 (2555 days ago) @ Korny

Halo 2 did have some major troubles. But I think it is a stretch to place its success on marketing and not on the over game package. XBL and the "Couch" concepts of matchmaking did much more for the success of Halo 2 than advertisements. And the campaign was a quality co-op experience in spite of the buggy nature. Few of the bugs were expkicitly game breaking in my experience.

I Love Bees was spectacular marketing if you were involved, but it also was in many ways not selling the game either.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Leviathan ⌂, Hotel Zanzibar, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 22:25 (2555 days ago) @ Harmanimus

Halo 2 did have some major troubles. But I think it is a stretch to place its success on marketing and not on the over game package. XBL and the "Couch" concepts of matchmaking did much more for the success of Halo 2 than advertisements. And the campaign was a quality co-op experience in spite of the buggy nature. Few of the bugs were expkicitly game breaking in my experience.

I Love Bees was spectacular marketing if you were involved, but it also was in many ways not selling the game either.

Also, I'm pretty sure Halo 1 was perhaps the most powerful ad for its sequel! :)

(I also wouldnt say H2 was a bad product, just a significantly different game from the one advertised.)

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Vortech @, A Fourth Wheel, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 22:41 (2555 days ago) @ Harmanimus

I Love Bees was spectacular marketing if you were involved, but it also was in many ways not selling the game either.

You could argue that the marketing was too narrowly targeted, or not a good RoI, but I don't know a single Beekeeper who didn't increase their engagement with the game because of the ARG.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Harmanimus @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 00:45 (2555 days ago) @ Vortech

Selling the game in the "This is Halo 2" more than "the coveted beekeeper market is open to our game. "

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Schooly D, TSD Gaming Condo, TX, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 23:29 (2555 days ago) @ Harmanimus

Bungie is a known quantity. Destiny is also at this point a known quantity. The product quality isn't going to be worse than Vanilla Destiny

I can't believe someone would actually still believe this after the past five years.

"A triple-A developer would never release a broken game"
"My favorite developer could never release something disappointing"

And other such voices from the abyss

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So far, I haven't been disappointed in a Bungle game.

by Funkmon @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 00:00 (2555 days ago) @ Schooly D

Reach wasn't for me, but it was a solid game that ruined the story. I'm not really disappointed with it, it just wasn't my thing. Closest I've come.

As for a AAA developer releasing a broken game, I can't think of one since the PC release of Arkham Knight, and zero on the Xbox.

Buggy games, sure, but those don't bother me very much. I play Bethesda games; nothing's going to out bug those.

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The Division

by Schedonnardus, Texas, Friday, March 31, 2017, 11:56 (2554 days ago) @ Funkmon

there was a glitch at launch that if you equipped a specific backpack, it broke your cloud save on Ubisoft's server. Since the game is "aways online" like Destiny, you couldn't log in to play. Took a couple of months for them to find the bug and fix it.

There were literally a dozen other game breaking glitches throughout the past year. Most notably was a God Mode glitch where you could separate your character model from the hitbox and walk around in PvP invisible. That was just last week, a year after launch. All you had to do was to roll into cover against a wall, and tap X. That's it. A lot easier than BXR, or super bouncing on Ascension.

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I consider game breaking bugs different to broken games.

by Funkmon @, Saturday, April 01, 2017, 06:37 (2554 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

A broken game is basically unusable from the get go. A game breaking glitch makes the game unusable from that point.

Think about the iPhone 4. Was it a broken phone? No. If you held it a certain way, was it impossible to make phone calls? Yes.

Think of a flimsy stool. If you can sit on it, and use it in almost all situations, is it broken? No. If you sit on it a certain way, might it collapse? Yes.

So yeah, I believe The Division has tons of game breaking bugs. But the game isn't broken, it can just BE broken.

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I consider game breaking bugs different to broken games.

by Kahzgul, Saturday, April 01, 2017, 09:18 (2554 days ago) @ Funkmon

A broken game is basically unusable from the get go. A game breaking glitch makes the game unusable from that point.

Think about the iPhone 4. Was it a broken phone? No. If you held it a certain way, was it impossible to make phone calls? Yes.

Think of a flimsy stool. If you can sit on it, and use it in almost all situations, is it broken? No. If you sit on it a certain way, might it collapse? Yes.

So yeah, I believe The Division has tons of game breaking bugs. But the game isn't broken, it can just BE broken.

I see where you're coming from, but I think the multiplayer aspect of the division pretty much guarantees that someone has sat on that particular stool in the wrong way and now is screwing up your game. In a single-player only game, you can easily control for things like game-breaking exploits, but in a multiplayer scenario, you're going to encounter people who want to win even if it means cheating, and that means you can't ignore or explain away game breaking bugs like this. Because of the nature of online games and the people who play them, any similar exploit, especially in pvp situations, will be abused. That's why you need nimble archetecture when you design your backend; so you can fix these issues pronto.

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So far, I haven't been disappointed in a Bungle game.

by Korny @, Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Friday, March 31, 2017, 12:14 (2554 days ago) @ Funkmon

Reach wasn't for me, but it was a solid game that ruined the story. I'm not really disappointed with it, it just wasn't my thing. Closest I've come.

Yeah, I thought Destiny was pretty dang great at launch. Deserving of the mixed reviews, but still really enjoyable.
Kind of like the new Power Rangers movie. it has a 47% on RT, but it's a really great and enjoyable film that does exactly what it sets out to do, while setting the stage for more to come. That was Vanilla Destiny for me.


As for a AAA developer releasing a broken game, I can't think of one since the PC release of Arkham Knight, and zero on the Xbox.

MCC not ringing any bells?


Buggy games, sure, but those don't bother me very much. I play Bethesda games; nothing's going to out bug those.

Same. Give me a game with some funny glitches to balance out the bugs, and I'm good.

So far, I haven't been disappointed in a Bungle game.

by ChrisTheeCrappy, Friday, March 31, 2017, 12:47 (2554 days ago) @ Korny

MCC only counts if you consider 343 AAA developer.

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burn :)

by Schedonnardus, Texas, Friday, March 31, 2017, 12:59 (2554 days ago) @ ChrisTheeCrappy

- No text -

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That's brutal!

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 15:31 (2554 days ago) @ ChrisTheeCrappy

- No text -

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I acknowledge that MCC may have been broken. BUT.

by Funkmon @, Saturday, April 01, 2017, 06:30 (2554 days ago) @ Korny

I played it just fine, with zero issues while everyone was claiming it was busted, even multiplayer.

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April fools!

by kanbo @, Seattle, WA, Saturday, April 01, 2017, 14:20 (2553 days ago) @ Funkmon

- No text -

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Harmanimus @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 01:05 (2555 days ago) @ Schooly D

I can't think of a Bungie release I would consider "broken" Bungie is marketdly not my favorite developer. They are pretty high on mylist of reliable developers. I might consider sometthing like Aliens: Colonial Marines broken. Or any number of Early Access games. In one of those cases that is what you're signing up for though.

Bungie being a known quantity is not a case of always amazing, but I know that I will be getting a Bungie game. Which is the same intent behind saying Destiny is a known quantity.

Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Avateur @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 01:10 (2555 days ago) @ Harmanimus
edited by Avateur, Friday, March 31, 2017, 01:13

I fully agree with Schooly and Kahzgul on this one. I'm pretty sure Schooly isn't just referring to Bungie here, but only using them as the latest example of potentially misplaced faith and blind ignorance (they could rock out hard and win the day with Destiny 2). I got a great company and a great game for you. 343 Industries and Master Chief Collection. All the marketing, all the advertising, all the hype, one ridiculously busted and nearly unplayable product at launch and for months after. And they're just one example. And yes, I can name more. And no, I'm not going to. You're overlooking way too much, and it's way too easy to look up other games that have marketed very well and released buggy and broken yet still pre-ordered and sold incredibly well (that hype though).

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Harmanimus @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 01:42 (2555 days ago) @ Avateur

I hope my very measured considerations on games and developers aren't being lost solely because I am being positive regarding pre-orders. There are a lot of games that have been really, really good that have been substantially pre-ordered. And not always with crazy good marketing schemes. I think the supposition that pre-order = diminished quality is absurd.

I am fine if you feel what has been shown does not merit a pre-order, or that you have had bad experiencs by pre-ordering bad games. But those games would have been bad before those pre-orsers were made available.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 04:02 (2555 days ago) @ Harmanimus

I disagree with your supposition at a root level. No developer tries to create poor content. And advertising is not going to make a poor product successful. Bungie is a known quantity. Destiny is also at this point a known quantity. The product quality isn't going to be worse than Vanilla Destiny, which could be argued was the worst time for Destiny.

Side note: voting with your money only matters when applied to directly competing product. Abstaining from pre-order is a personal choice that should be weighed on cost/benefit, not on the assumption that a pre-order makes a worse game.

My supposition is thus:

A game has a budget of $100M. With pre-orders driving sales, that game will likely spend $50M on game development and $50M on advertising. Without pre-orders, the numbers will look more like $70M on game development and $30M on advertising. This is my personal experience from when I worked in game dev, some 12 or so years ago. Perhaps it's different now, but I doubt it.

The developers are of course trying to make a great game that they can be proud of. But that's a hell of a lot easier with more tools, more coders, and longer development cycles. AKA more money for development.

Advertising sells poor products all the time. Remember No Man's Sky? Diablo 3? Destiny 1? Master Chief Collection? None of these titles lived up to the launch day, advertising based, hype. Some patched themselves to acceptability.

Also, Bungie is not a known quantity. Marty is gone, Joe is gone, many others are gone. The people who you "knew" at Bungie aren't necessarily there to steer the ship. They now work with Activision, who is pulling at least some of the strings. Destiny, for me, was a big letdown. I have been a massive fan of Bungie for decades because of their incredible story, writing, and gameplay. And Destiny had loads of setting but almost no story. The dialogue was a joke. The play control is amazing, but the enemies you fight with it are lackluster. It felt - it still feels like - the game a company would make before making Halo 1. Not 10 years after. Just my opinion. Bungie ceased to be a god to me with this game, and lost my undying loyalty. I'm glad you're still a fan.

The product could absolutely be worse than vanilla destiny. Don't you know about sequels? They can easily be worse than the game they were born from. Toe Jam and Earl 2, anyone? Assassin's Creed 3? Diablo 3? Also, I argue that the product quality now, with respect to the PvP game balance, is the worst it's ever been. The special ammo changes are horrid.

Side note response: There are tons of competing products. If you only ever buy games that are reviewed at an 8 or higher, for example, then your "vote" is going to any competitor that is a high scoring game. That puts pressure on companies to earn your money with a good game, lest you buy a different one instead.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Harmanimus @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 15:09 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

Other folks have touched on the money thing, and that is without considering that budgets for large projects can and do change from year to year. Regarding your examples (only one of which I pre-ordered) I would agree that there were problems. But Diablo 3's were design choices that would not have changed due to pre-orders, as the problems were rooted in the core design. I don't think a change to funding/advertisement would have impacted any of those games.

And Bungie is a known quantity. Bungie was never a handful of high profile faces. While that may be the way one interacts, the games themselves are reasonably consistently "Bungie." Obviously they tried new and different things for Destiny. But comparing it to Reach it is clearly iterative in most regards and at its heart still very Bungie. I could probably write a dissertation on what i mean about this but I'll stop here. The important thing is not to confuse my use of "known quantity" as "always amazing" as no developer has released a perfect game.

And I while I agree with the notion that sequels can be worse, Destiny has been functionally live in its development. You can see Bungie is learning from their mistakes, even if new mistakes may be getting made. But the overall game is better than it was at launch. I also won't start on PvP because I am keenly aware of major disagreements you and I would have there.

Biggest part of this that concerns me is that the last part reads like you would rather publishers buy reviews than invest in marketing.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 15:22 (2554 days ago) @ Harmanimus

Other folks have touched on the money thing, and that is without considering that budgets for large projects can and do change from year to year. Regarding your examples (only one of which I pre-ordered) I would agree that there were problems. But Diablo 3's were design choices that would not have changed due to pre-orders, as the problems were rooted in the core design. I don't think a change to funding/advertisement would have impacted any of those games.

I don't think anyone can reasonably say a game wouldn't be different if it had millions more dollars to spend on its development cycle. Diablo 3, in particular, completely changed their core design just a few months before launch. What that game really needed was stronger leadership, but the money could have helped give those devs more time to work with the changes. It certainly provides an opportunity that more advertising doesn't.


And Bungie is a known quantity. Bungie was never a handful of high profile faces. While that may be the way one interacts, the games themselves are reasonably consistently "Bungie." Obviously they tried new and different things for Destiny. But comparing it to Reach it is clearly iterative in most regards and at its heart still very Bungie. I could probably write a dissertation on what i mean about this but I'll stop here. The important thing is not to confuse my use of "known quantity" as "always amazing" as no developer has released a perfect game.

For me, Bungie was Jason, Alex, Joe, Marty, and a few others whom I'm embarrassed I can't remember off the top of my head right now (forgive me!). And yeah, the games were very consistent. Until, I feel, Destiny. I'm also not sure if "not having a coherent story" is the same as trying something new. Certainly on the tech side they're inventing new stuff which is very innovative, but they also built their backend horribly and it caused the entire development to stall out, forcing major changes. Also, I'd argue that, from a gameplay perspective, Destiny plays like a Borderlands clone that is an iterative step from borderlands towards Halo 1, rather than from Reach towards, I guess, Des2ny. The art is clearly next level stuff, but gameplay is the core of any game, and the enemies are boring, repetitive, and uninspired here.


And I while I agree with the notion that sequels can be worse, Destiny has been functionally live in its development. You can see Bungie is learning from their mistakes, even if new mistakes may be getting made. But the overall game is better than it was at launch. I also won't start on PvP because I am keenly aware of major disagreements you and I would have there.

The overall game is far better than it was at launch (PvP aside). BUT, I'm talking about pre-order ad money vs. more dev money. I'm not talking about post-launch adjustments (or microtrans money).


Biggest part of this that concerns me is that the last part reads like you would rather publishers buy reviews than invest in marketing.

This is a real and serious concern. It would be incumbent upon the reviewers to remain neutral and refuse bribery. Would this concern be more present than it is today if no one ever pre-ordered? Sure, there'd be more pressure to have a good review. But consumers would also have to find - just as they do today - reviewers whose sensibilities mesh with theirs and who seem to present honest reviews. Much like the movie biz, you can usually parse the real reviews from the paid ones. Also, journalistic integrity is a thing that I'd hope at least some reviewers would aspire to.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Harmanimus @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 15:54 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

The overall game is far better than it was at launch (PvP aside). BUT, I'm talking about pre-order ad money vs. more dev money. I'm not talking about post-launch adjustments (or microtrans money).

No. But we are talking about a game that has been iterative while being concurrent to the development of a sequel. this is something you can make assessment against.

This is a real and serious concern. It would be incumbent upon the reviewers to remain neutral and refuse bribery. Would this concern be more present than it is today if no one ever pre-ordered? Sure, there'd be more pressure to have a good review. But consumers would also have to find - just as they do today - reviewers whose sensibilities mesh with theirs and who seem to present honest reviews. Much like the movie biz, you can usually parse the real reviews from the paid ones. Also, journalistic integrity is a thing that I'd hope at least some reviewers would aspire to.

So you can have honest reviewers but not honest advertisers? You are putting the weight on the consumer to make the best decision for themselves regarding purchase of products, while also saying pre-ordering is he wrong decision. And time and again I have been shown it is neither right nor wrong. Just a different choice.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:15 (2554 days ago) @ Harmanimus

The overall game is far better than it was at launch (PvP aside). BUT, I'm talking about pre-order ad money vs. more dev money. I'm not talking about post-launch adjustments (or microtrans money).

No. But we are talking about a game that has been iterative while being concurrent to the development of a sequel. this is something you can make assessment against.

Fair point.

This is a real and serious concern. It would be incumbent upon the reviewers to remain neutral and refuse bribery. Would this concern be more present than it is today if no one ever pre-ordered? Sure, there'd be more pressure to have a good review. But consumers would also have to find - just as they do today - reviewers whose sensibilities mesh with theirs and who seem to present honest reviews. Much like the movie biz, you can usually parse the real reviews from the paid ones. Also, journalistic integrity is a thing that I'd hope at least some reviewers would aspire to.

So you can have honest reviewers but not honest advertisers? You are putting the weight on the consumer to make the best decision for themselves regarding purchase of products, while also saying pre-ordering is he wrong decision. And time and again I have been shown it is neither right nor wrong. Just a different choice.

If advertising was just as honest as reviews, there would not be a need for independent reviews at all.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Harmanimus @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:24 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

Everything has bias. The consumer has bias, as does the developer, publisher, advertiser, reviewer. The beauty and the terror of everyone being individuals leads to the fact that you can't lean too hard in one direction and seem legitimate. Regardless of how legitimate those actions are.

Back when I used to have to work sales jobs I had a hard time selling products I couldn't find value for the customer in. But things I already knew the value were easy to sell. Rarely are advertisers lying to you, and it is usually really easy to tell. Just like you have stated paid reviews are easy to identify. How your personal biases interpret their message is going to lead to different feelings about the advertising and the value you place on their message.

I don't trust a lot of critics because my experiences are different. But most advertising campaigns (as I acknowledge them as advertising) don't lead to me feeling deceived.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 17:09 (2554 days ago) @ Harmanimus

I hear what you're saying and agree with it, pretty much as a whole.

I don't think the advertisers are all evil villains lying to sell the game. I think the game they are selling would be better (generally) if the company spent more money making the game and less money selling it. Pre-orders encourage the opposite approach.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:29 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

There may be some truth in the idea that preorders do some harm to games, especially when viewed over the long term, but there are also major problems with the idea, like:
1. Have games' ad budgets been increasingly subtracted from their development budgets over the years, or has the market grown bigger so that there is more total money to spend?
2. If a game only starts taking preorders and running marketing five months from shipping, like Destiny 2, can a preorder boycott actually have any impact on development?
3. Would pouring all the marketing money into a game's development even work? Would more programmers, artists, etc fix a game's problems? And even if it did, would something like that be sustainable? That is: Does a perfect game that nobody knows about get any sales?
4. Finally, how much of a studio's time / effort is spent on the marketing vs the game they are making? It seems... questionable... that the two have much to do with each other. For instance, how many of Bungie's programmers, environment artists, tools designers, etc even touched the Destiny 2 teaser and trailer? And of the ~3 years Destiny 2 has been in development, what percent of the studio's time was spent on the advertising vs the game?

I do like the idea that games should get sales based on their quality vs a flash ad campaign. And paying for a game before anyone even knows if it is good or not does seem silly. Especially new games in a series like Destiny 1. But even if a good ad campaign gets a lot of undeserved sales, wouldn't a bad or disappointing game cause hesitation next time?

Isn't that what we're kinda seeing around here with Destiny 2 right now?

Ultimately, I think a blanket statement that preorders hurt the quality of games is, at best, ignoring too many economic, marketing, and software development realities to be valid. Even when we do see an example of a game with good marketing turning out to be a disappointment, like with Destiny 1, it is probably the case that it was poor development decisions made long before a single pixel of marketing material was created that caused the disappointment. And not the fact that some millions of dollars were spent on that marketing two or three years later.

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+1

by Harmanimus @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:40 (2554 days ago) @ Ragashingo

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by cheapLEY @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:44 (2554 days ago) @ Ragashingo

1. Have games' ad budgets been increasingly subtracted from their development budgets over the years, or has the market grown bigger so that there is more total money to spend?

That's a valid point. I think it's probably the latter, but even then, that advertising money could probably be better spent on development (in an ideal world).

2. If a game only starts taking preorders and running marketing five months from shipping, like Destiny 2, can a preorder boycott actually have any impact on development?

For a single game, no, but if consumers stopped preordering altogether and did so consistently, it would be a trend and devs/publishers would know they'd have to focus on developing a good game rather than marketing hype to sell games. It's a weird issue, because other than some shady idiots on Steam Greenlight or whatever, I don't think any developers set out to make a bad game to just take the money and run. But if they used marketing money and used it to actually give the developers time to finish things instead of kicking the game out the door and hoping advertising will have sold enough copies, it'd probably be a net positive for games. I haven't played it, but Mass Effect: Andromeda looks like a perfect example of this. That's a game that clearly needs more work (and arguably a game that probably doesn't need a lot of advertising to sell). I wager that it would have sold quite a bit more if got great reviews and was known as the best Mass Effect game instead of (arguably) the worst. Sure, it probably sold well enough, but I'd bet quite a few folks are going to wait until it hits that $20-30 price point before they buy it, or pick it up used for even less, rather than rushing out day one to buy it at full price. Maybe it works out for them to have kicked it out the door like they did, or maybe it would have been worth investing the extra money to give the devs time to finish it. I don't know.

3. Would pouring all the marketing money into a game's development even work? Would more programmers, artists, etc fix a game's problems? And even if it did, would something like that be sustainable? That is: Does a perfect game that nobody knows about get any sales?

It's not necessarily about more programmers, artists, etc. It's about time. More money for the same amount of employees means a longer development period, which is probably always better (unless we hit a Star Citizen situation). Sure, having an unlimited amount of time means that you probably just never finish the thing and try to do too much, but being able to have a buffer period when you realize things aren't working would undoubtedly be better than having a strict deadline.

4. Finally, how much of a studio's time / effort is spent on the marketing vs the game they are making? It seems... questionable... that the two have much to do with each other. For instance, how many of Bungie's programmers, environment artists, tools designers, etc even touched the Destiny 2 teaser and trailer? And of the ~3 years Destiny 2 has been in development, what percent of the studio's time was spent on the advertising vs the game?

I'd actually be curious to know that, too. We know that Bungie didn't have total marketing control during the first Destiny because of what happened with Marty. So how much control do they have? Someone said earlier that they suspected that Bungie writers had basically nothing to do with the script of the teaser or the trailer and probably only looked it over for canon discrepancies, and I'd have a hard time believing that.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 17:56 (2554 days ago) @ cheapLEY

Agree with all of your earlier points :)

4. Finally, how much of a studio's time / effort is spent on the marketing vs the game they are making? It seems... questionable... that the two have much to do with each other. For instance, how many of Bungie's programmers, environment artists, tools designers, etc even touched the Destiny 2 teaser and trailer? And of the ~3 years Destiny 2 has been in development, what percent of the studio's time was spent on the advertising vs the game?


I'd actually be curious to know that, too. We know that Bungie didn't have total marketing control during the first Destiny because of what happened with Marty. So how much control do they have? Someone said earlier that they suspected that Bungie writers had basically nothing to do with the script of the teaser or the trailer and probably only looked it over for canon discrepancies, and I'd have a hard time believing that.

I can probably answer a bunch of questions about this. I've worked on several commercials as an editor, and been present for the dev side of several commercials as a Lead Production Tester.

The short of it is that marketing is a different department and doesn't really interact with development. In the case of destiny, ATVI probably just asked Bungie for assets, and then did whatever they wanted with the resulting footage. Occasionally you'll hire a real writer and director to come up with something more powerful and cinematic like the "wolves" trailer for Destiny (was that the name? The one with the guy from breaking bad in it), and that doesn't get much feedback from the studio beyond - as you said - cannon confirmation and maybe some help with art direction.

Lots of times you just hand your assets over to another company, and that company makes the thing. The ad agency will send back "we need this rigged to do a thumbs up" and then your animator will take some time to re-rig the asset and send it back. OR the ad agency will hire their own cinematic animator who will do the re-rigging himself (both are equally plausible. Often it depends on whether or not you want to preserve any rigging for the final game; reciprocal asset use saves money, and allows the devs to "steal" some of the advertising money to help their art team out, but lots of times you also don't need - or want - all of that extra rigging on the character models since you'll almost never be using it. That being said, Destiny has incredibly articulate character models, so I can see reciprocity being a thing for them.

Anyway, some studios (blizzard) have in-house animators and directors, and editors who all work to make the cinematics themselves. Other (most) studios hire out via their marketing departments, and some associate producer is tasked with collecting from the devs whatever resources the ad agency needs to make their commercial. Then there's several rounds of corporate approval, focus testing on messaging, and the ad gets released.

This is how you get things like "out here in the wild, this is how we talk" showing up in adverts. The materials were delivered to the marketing department probably months in advance, and were either not updated when they were removed from the game, or the ad was already complete and just not fully approved at the time of the changes, so they pushed forward with it anyway rather than reworking the whole thing.

Any other questions, let me know.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 17:46 (2554 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Great post and I'll do my best to address these concerns. Please keep in mind that my "no-preorders" advice has to do with overall, long term trends within the game industry, and will probably not have a perceivable effect on any individual game, especially if you only look at the actual pre-order window.

There may be some truth in the idea that preorders do some harm to games, especially when viewed over the long term, but there are also major problems with the idea, like:
1. Have games' ad budgets been increasingly subtracted from their development budgets over the years, or has the market grown bigger so that there is more total money to spend?

I think the answer is yes to both. Video games are an 80 Billion dollar industry. Compare to film, which is only 8 Billion globally. There's just a crapton of money flying around gaming. So while budgets are the highest they've ever been, a higher percentage of AAA game budgets is going to advertising than ever before, too. Actually, I'm not sure that's true. At Activision and EA it is true. Other AAA devs I can't speak to. This neogaf thread where a guy collates info about destiny indicates ATVI spent $140 million developing bungie, and another $360 million ($500M total) on marketing, licensing, and packaging. The packaging claim is kind of weird here, since it's always included in the sale price of a game and is thus "baked in." It also necessarily changes based on how many copies of a game you have to produce to meet demand. Let's be super generous and assume $100M was spent on packaging (there's no way it's this high, but screw it). That still means ATVI spent $260 Million on advertising and promotions for this game. Nearly double the actual development cost, both of which are astronomical amounts of money. I'm not aware of many games that outspend development with marketing, but I know 50/50 splits are fairly common in AAA devs these days. That's a recent development (last 10 years). Before that, you were hard pressed to find a game like Myst that had a 50/50 split, and I have been unable to find any game with more marketing expenses than development costs without going back to a time when games were developed pretty much on spec by a guy in his basement and marketing was 90+% of the initial cost because game development as an industry wasn't really a thing yet.

Again, much more money is available to both pools, but marketing % of total costs is higher now than it has been in years past (and still climbing).

2. If a game only starts taking preorders and running marketing five months from shipping, like Destiny 2, can a preorder boycott actually have any impact on development?

A preorder boycott will not impact a single game, especially if it starts so late in the development cycle. An overall trend in the industry away from pre-orders will influence budgets down the line, however.

3. Would pouring all the marketing money into a game's development even work? Would more programmers, artists, etc fix a game's problems? And even if it did, would something like that be sustainable? That is: Does a perfect game that nobody knows about get any sales?

No, and I wouldn't want to pour all marketing money into game dev. Rather, I'm looking for more of a 30/70 marketing/game dev split than a 50/50 (or worse) split. Usually longer development cycles are the most advantageous expenditures of money, rather than additional staffers. Not always though, it depends on the game. And no, a perfect game no one knows about doesn't sell at all, obviously. You still need to spend on marketing. I just don't think you should spend so much, and certainly not spend so much before launch as opposed to post launch (promoting your rave reviews, etc).

4. Finally, how much of a studio's time / effort is spent on the marketing vs the game they are making? It seems... questionable... that the two have much to do with each other. For instance, how many of Bungie's programmers, environment artists, tools designers, etc even touched the Destiny 2 teaser and trailer? And of the ~3 years Destiny 2 has been in development, what percent of the studio's time was spent on the advertising vs the game?

The studio doesn't spend very much time on marketing at all; it's a different department. Some people, like Deej, have a job that entails occasionally promoting the game with livestreams etc.., but that's all a very small impact on the other devs, most of whom are proud to show off their work and thrilled for the 15 minutes to share it with the world. Morale boost, if anything. For a fully animated game trailer, the development could have gone lots of different ways. It could have been fully produced out of house, but I highly doubt that. Maybe it's 100% in-house like a Blizzard games trailer (they have dedicated animators who do only the movies and split their times between games and ads etc. Often the ads serve double duty as cutscenes or splash screen teasers within a game, too). Usually it's a mix. You get a few artists to rig up your existing assets with more animating handles and bones, and you get a motion picture animator to do the actual work. The writers either write the script or hire a commercial writer who learns about the characters and writes to their strengths. The voice actors are obviously the same ones as in the game in this case (but aren't always). Sometimes you hire additional artists to upscale your textures and poly counts. Sometimes your game is built at very high scales to being with and we're only ever seeing downscale versions of the working models in the actual game, so those assets are already built. The actual editing and post processing is probably a contract hire (I do this kind of work from time to time as a freelance editor, myself - cody can probably speak to this as well, though I think he mainly does features? I'm not sure) It's usually a week's work, more if you're getting loads of notes from corporate, and it's pretty straightforward. Anyway, the point is that commercials aren't usually a drain on the development team's staff, even when they use the same assets.


I do like the idea that games should get sales based on their quality vs a flash ad campaign. And paying for a game before anyone even knows if it is good or not does seem silly. Especially new games in a series like Destiny 1. But even if a good ad campaign gets a lot of undeserved sales, wouldn't a bad or disappointing game cause hesitation next time?

Very true. A bad or disappointing game that has poor sales as a result, however, gives the developer who missed the mark all the more reason to make a better game the next time. A bad or disappointing game that has great sales because of strong pre-release advertising, however, has little reason to change anything (less so at a large corporate environment where the people making the decisions aren't really involved in actually making the game). I've actually been *very* impressed with Hello Games and the post-fiasco work they've been putting into NMS. I wish more studios had that sort of drive to make amends when they let down their customers.


Isn't that what we're kinda seeing around here with Destiny 2 right now?

Yes.


Ultimately, I think a blanket statement that preorders hurt the quality of games is, at best, ignoring too many economic, marketing, and software development realities to be valid. Even when we do see an example of a game with good marketing turning out to be a disappointment, like with Destiny 1, it is probably the case that it was poor development decisions made long before a single pixel of marketing material was created that caused the disappointment. And not the fact that some millions of dollars were spent on that marketing two or three years later.

Agree to disagree on this point, I think. I feel like pre-orders are detrimental, overall, to the quality of games because they remove some of the pressure from the development team to make an actually good game. It's totally fine to feel differently.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Friday, March 31, 2017, 18:13 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

Sorry I can't quote the pet I'm replying to, but deleting tons of text sucks on mobile.

To your point about the editing of the trailers, I can tell you with near 100% certainty it was editors that were hired by whoever Activision hired to do the spot. Activision has proven they have their own vision for marketing that is different than what Bungie may want. This is why we have Zeppelin and "fake" E3 videos, and why we DONT have Music of the Spheres.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are a metric guaging support

by Kahzgul, Saturday, April 01, 2017, 03:19 (2554 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Sorry I can't quote the pet I'm replying to, but deleting tons of text sucks on mobile.

To your point about the editing of the trailers, I can tell you with near 100% certainty it was editors that were hired by whoever Activision hired to do the spot. Activision has proven they have their own vision for marketing that is different than what Bungie may want. This is why we have Zeppelin and "fake" E3 videos, and why we DONT have Music of the Spheres.

Makes sense to me.

Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by Claude Errera @, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 19:49 (2555 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I love you all (even Raga), and just want to remind everyone that buying pre-orders puts the onus of sale on the advertising for a game, whereas waiting for reviews to come out before you buy puts the onus of sale on the actual quality of the game itself.

Please don't pre-order this game or any other. Force game devs to focus on making great games rather than making great advertisements.

Of note: This ad was a better pre-rendered sequence than anything in vanilla Destiny.

Of double-note: If Bungie does put more effort into the game than they put into this ad, that means the game is going to be gorgeous, well acted, and have a plot! Get HYPED (but don't pre-order)!

The fact that beta access is tied to a pre-order would suggest that in this case, your argument could be wrong. The best way to judge the quality of the game is to play it - and giving it a chance in beta format tells you at least whether the game is up your alley or not.

If it's not, you can cancel the preorder after you play - but without the preorder, you cannot play.

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My thoughts too

by CruelLEGACEY @, Toronto, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 20:09 (2555 days ago) @ Claude Errera

I love you all (even Raga), and just want to remind everyone that buying pre-orders puts the onus of sale on the advertising for a game, whereas waiting for reviews to come out before you buy puts the onus of sale on the actual quality of the game itself.

Please don't pre-order this game or any other. Force game devs to focus on making great games rather than making great advertisements.

Of note: This ad was a better pre-rendered sequence than anything in vanilla Destiny.

Of double-note: If Bungie does put more effort into the game than they put into this ad, that means the game is going to be gorgeous, well acted, and have a plot! Get HYPED (but don't pre-order)!


The fact that beta access is tied to a pre-order would suggest that in this case, your argument could be wrong. The best way to judge the quality of the game is to play it - and giving it a chance in beta format tells you at least whether the game is up your alley or not.

If it's not, you can cancel the preorder after you play - but without the preorder, you cannot play.

This is exactly my approach to Destiny 2. I will preorder it specifically so that I can get access to the beta and play the game for myself. I expect I'll love it, but you never know how things will turn out, and there will almost certainly not be any reviews available before launch. So getting my hands on the game is the best way for me to form an opinion on whether or not I should buy it.

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My thoughts too

by cheapLEY @, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 21:06 (2555 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

Is beta access tied to a preorder? It says early beta access with preorder. I guess that could mean anything, but I just figured it means an extra few days or a week early or whatever. How long was the Destiny 1 beta?

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My thoughts too

by CyberKN ⌂ @, Oh no, Destiny 2 is bad, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 21:09 (2555 days ago) @ cheapLEY

"This summer will be your chance to get your hands on a controller. You’ll be invited to help us prepare for the launch of Destiny 2 by joining an open Beta. Players who pre-order will be the first to jump into action, but we’ll be calling on all Guardians to give their feedback."

The Destiny 1 beta was like 3 days on xbox, a week on PS4

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My thoughts too

by cheapLEY @, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 21:52 (2555 days ago) @ CyberKN

"This summer will be your chance to get your hands on a controller. You’ll be invited to help us prepare for the launch of Destiny 2 by joining an open Beta. Players who pre-order will be the first to jump into action, but we’ll be calling on all Guardians to give their feedback."

That's what I thought. Thanks!

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Yep.

by Funkmon @, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 21:26 (2555 days ago) @ Claude Errera

- No text -

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 03:47 (2555 days ago) @ Claude Errera

I love you all (even Raga), and just want to remind everyone that buying pre-orders puts the onus of sale on the advertising for a game, whereas waiting for reviews to come out before you buy puts the onus of sale on the actual quality of the game itself.

Please don't pre-order this game or any other. Force game devs to focus on making great games rather than making great advertisements.

Of note: This ad was a better pre-rendered sequence than anything in vanilla Destiny.

Of double-note: If Bungie does put more effort into the game than they put into this ad, that means the game is going to be gorgeous, well acted, and have a plot! Get HYPED (but don't pre-order)!


The fact that beta access is tied to a pre-order would suggest that in this case, your argument could be wrong. The best way to judge the quality of the game is to play it - and giving it a chance in beta format tells you at least whether the game is up your alley or not.

If it's not, you can cancel the preorder after you play - but without the preorder, you cannot play.

This is totally valid, and I apologize if I came across as sounding like I'm promising Destiny 2 will be bad or something.

I want to be very, very clear: I have no idea if Destiny 2 will be good or not. I hope it will be OMGWTFBBQAmazeballs11!!!111! but I really don't know. I am not saying "Don't preorder Destiny 2." I'm saying "Don't preorder. Anything. Full stop."

/me gets on soapbox:

The existence of pre-orders does not mean that any game that lets you pre-order it will be bad. Far from it. Rather, it means that the companies offering the pre-orders are spending more (FAR more) money on pre-launch advertising than the companies that are not offering pre-orders. This money doesn't come out of thin air. Rather, it is money that would otherwise have been part of the game's budget instead of the marketing budget. Did you love Destiny 1? It could have been $50-$100 million bigger and better if there hadn't been such a massive pre-launch, pre-order focused marketing campaign. Literally. A game with a big pre-order push will spend *half* of its budget on advertising. The other half is actual game development. Games without big pre-order pushes spend around 1/4 to 1/3 of their budget on advertising. That's still a ton of money, but when you have a (reported) $500M game, spending $250M on advertising vs. spending $125M on advertising means massive amounts of additional programming, art, and other developmental support.

I am a fan of video games. I want the good games to be even better. I want more of them. I want a larger percentage of my money going into making the game instead of into making the ads for the game. If you feel the same way, then pre-orders are a thing you want to discourage.

Secondly, when games are sold based on pre-orders, and most (definitely not all) retail outlets will not let you return a game once it's been opened, there is very little reason to guarantee the quality of a game. As long as full refunds for bad games don't exist, pre-orders remove the pressure of making a quality title from a dev team. They can spit out crap, package it all nice, and sell it to you before you or anyone else knows that in a month (or 4) you'll be getting crap. On the other hand, if you wait for reviews - if we ALL wait for reviews - before purchasing games, there's a lot more pressure on developers to make Quality games. It becomes far more important to their bottom lines that the games be good. Again, if you want the devs to feel more pressure to make good, fun games, rather than just shoveling out whatever crap they happen to have on their servers come launch time, pre-orders are bad.

Before you say it, yes, I know that most developers want to make great games. The guys I worked with put themselves under tremendous pressure to deliver quality. But we also know that sometimes developers just ship something broken and try to fix it with a 0-day patch. Why? Because they're also under tremendous pressure from corporate to deliver on certain deadlines. Deadlines they simply can't always meet. Corporate doesn't care if the game is crap if the game has made money on pre-orders. In fact, they'll see that they made 80% of their sales from pre-orders and think "man, if we spend even more of our budget on advertising, we can sell even more pre-orders!" They're not thinking "we only sold 20% after launch because our game sucked. We'd better spend more on game development." That's not how they operate.

So yeah, I view pre-orders as an evil that hurts game developers and the overall quality of video games in general. They totally help marketing teams though, so if you love some good marketing, I guess pre-orders are your jam.

/me gets off soapbox.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Friday, March 31, 2017, 04:31 (2555 days ago) @ Kahzgul

You assume throwing money their way can magically make the game better. The problems with Destiny's development were not from lack of money. I am sure when Jason's book comes out that will be clear.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 06:01 (2555 days ago) @ Cody Miller

You assume throwing money their way can magically make the game better. The problems with Destiny's development were not from lack of money. I am sure when Jason's book comes out that will be clear.

My point about pre-orders is a general one, generally applicable to the majority of games. Of course outliers will exist.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by cheapLEY @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 11:30 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I think you're making a huge assumption that any extra money spent on advertising would go to development, rather than just not being spent at all. I don't think Activision is just going to pay Bungie extra money because they go for a smaller marketing campaign.

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Exactly

by kidtsunami @, Atlanta, GA, Friday, March 31, 2017, 11:46 (2554 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I think you're making a huge assumption that any extra money spent on advertising would go to development, rather than just not being spent at all. I don't think Activision is just going to pay Bungie extra money because they go for a smaller marketing campaign.

And what exactly would Bungie have done with that money? I'm not sure throwing another developer at the Asset system was going to solve that problem...

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Exactly

by Vortech @, A Fourth Wheel, Friday, March 31, 2017, 14:31 (2554 days ago) @ kidtsunami

Yet another counter point: spending more money on advertising actually does make destiny better. This is a game that only really is great when there are a lot of people playing it. Advertising will increase the number of people in the community, and therefore the chances that you'll have a group of people to play with when you want to. Destiny could've been a brilliant game, but if it didn't have a huge installed base of players it wouldn't have been "better" for the players.

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Exactly

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 15:09 (2554 days ago) @ Vortech

I mean, I'm not saying there shouldn't be any advertising. I'm saying that, in the long term, pre-orders shift the focus of financial investment from product development to product advertising, and I think that's a bad thing for game quality in general.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 15:08 (2554 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I think you're making a huge assumption that any extra money spent on advertising would go to development, rather than just not being spent at all. I don't think Activision is just going to pay Bungie extra money because they go for a smaller marketing campaign.

When I worked at activision the advertising and game dev monies came out of the same pool. Very rarely (like once a year) they would authorize additional advertising if the game was shaping up to be exceptionally great. This was a long time ago, so it could have changed, but I doubt it. Steering a corporation that big means it takes a very long time for the ship to change direction.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by cheapLEY @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:05 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

Activision doesn't own Bungie, though. Obviously we don't know the details, but they have a payment contract--they're not just going to arbitrarily give more money to Bungie if they spend less on advertising. The deal has already been made, with who knows what terms and opportunities for renegotiation.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:16 (2554 days ago) @ cheapLEY

Activision doesn't own Bungie, though. Obviously we don't know the details, but they have a payment contract--they're not just going to arbitrarily give more money to Bungie if they spend less on advertising. The deal has already been made, with who knows what terms and opportunities for renegotiation.

Very true, but i guarantee they did the calculations of total budget vs. ad budget vs. how much they'll pay Bungie before they entered negotiations with Bungie.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by cheapLEY @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:31 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

Activision doesn't own Bungie, though. Obviously we don't know the details, but they have a payment contract--they're not just going to arbitrarily give more money to Bungie if they spend less on advertising. The deal has already been made, with who knows what terms and opportunities for renegotiation.


Very true, but i guarantee they did the calculations of total budget vs. ad budget vs. how much they'll pay Bungie before they entered negotiations with Bungie.

Yeah that's true. FWIW, I generally agree with your point. It's not just about one game or one company--it's a trend throughout the entire industry. Horizon Zero Dawn was first game I've pre-ordered in a long time, and that's because reviews hit a week before the game launched (and were great!), so I was confident enough to take the gamble.

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Friendly reminder: Pre-orders are bad for game quality

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 17:58 (2554 days ago) @ cheapLEY

Activision doesn't own Bungie, though. Obviously we don't know the details, but they have a payment contract--they're not just going to arbitrarily give more money to Bungie if they spend less on advertising. The deal has already been made, with who knows what terms and opportunities for renegotiation.


Very true, but i guarantee they did the calculations of total budget vs. ad budget vs. how much they'll pay Bungie before they entered negotiations with Bungie.


Yeah that's true. FWIW, I generally agree with your point. It's not just about one game or one company--it's a trend throughout the entire industry. Horizon Zero Dawn was first game I've pre-ordered in a long time, and that's because reviews hit a week before the game launched (and were great!), so I was confident enough to take the gamble.

I think this is great. Pre-release reviews leading to pre-orders mean you're still getting the opinion of a reviewer you've grown to trust and are making an informed decision that's ultimately rooted in the quality of the game more than the strength of the advertising for that game.

I only ordered the Standard Edition, for the Beta.

by DEEP_NNN, Thursday, March 30, 2017, 19:58 (2555 days ago) @ Kahzgul

You never know, it might be a stinker.

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Indeed

by squidnh3, Friday, March 31, 2017, 09:47 (2555 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I didn't pre-order Destiny 1, and look what happened. Best game I ever played.

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Indeed

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 15:22 (2554 days ago) @ squidnh3

I didn't pre-order Destiny 1, and look what happened. Best game I ever played.

This is the experience I hope that everyone has. :)

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My thoughts on this

by kidtsunami @, Atlanta, GA, Friday, March 31, 2017, 11:45 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I love you all (even Raga), and just want to remind everyone that buying pre-orders puts the onus of sale on the advertising for a game, whereas waiting for reviews to come out before you buy puts the onus of sale on the actual quality of the game itself.

Please don't pre-order this game or any other. Force game devs to focus on making great games rather than making great advertisements.

Of note: This ad was a better pre-rendered sequence than anything in vanilla Destiny.

Of double-note: If Bungie does put more effort into the game than they put into this ad, that means the game is going to be gorgeous, well acted, and have a plot! Get HYPED (but don't pre-order)!

  • Activision and Bungie and their respective budgets are different things
  • Throwing money at problems does not guarantee a better solution, and can make things worse
  • This line of arguing is ideological ("Advertising is inherently bad" vs "No it's good", rather than "It's messy! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯")
  • I'm going to pre-order as I see it as an exchange for early beta access
  • I haven't pre-ordered anything that I've regretted (granted I don't pre-order many games)

I'd much rather be discussing the possible foundational changes of Destiny 2. Will Patrol be the same? Will NPCs exist? Are we still working with the same "Orbit" lobby system. Crap like that.

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My thoughts on this

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 15:30 (2554 days ago) @ kidtsunami

I love you all (even Raga), and just want to remind everyone that buying pre-orders puts the onus of sale on the advertising for a game, whereas waiting for reviews to come out before you buy puts the onus of sale on the actual quality of the game itself.

Please don't pre-order this game or any other. Force game devs to focus on making great games rather than making great advertisements.

Of note: This ad was a better pre-rendered sequence than anything in vanilla Destiny.

Of double-note: If Bungie does put more effort into the game than they put into this ad, that means the game is going to be gorgeous, well acted, and have a plot! Get HYPED (but don't pre-order)!

  • Activision and Bungie and their respective budgets are different things

Unlikely. ATVI reserved X pool of money for this game. They paid bungie Y of it, and are spending (X-Y) on advertising. Bungie, internally, is spending Z on their own promotions, live streams, etc.., which leaves (Y-Z) for game development. I assert that Y would be larger and Z smaller if the onus of sale was on delivering quality games rather than on upfront advertising.

[*]Throwing money at problems does not guarantee a better solution, and can make things worse

You're right, but in the long term having more money and longer development cycles and/or more expensive talent will generally lead to a net improvement in overall game quality. The rising tide raises all ships, and whatnot.

[*]This line of arguing is ideological ("Advertising is inherently bad" vs "No it's good", rather than "It's messy! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯")

No, it's not. The line of arguing is that I want developers to spend their money on development instead of on advertising. I see too many games come out that are all hype or overly advertised only to be flops once they come out because they were clearly rushed out the door. I'd much rather that those games were able to deliver on the promises their adverts make.

[*]I'm going to pre-order as I see it as an exchange for early beta access

This is your prerogative.

[*]I haven't pre-ordered anything that I've regretted (granted I don't pre-order many games)

Anecdotal. The fact that you're able to predict the future when making pre-order decisions doesn't change where the onus of sale is for the company allocating budgetary funds.

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I'd much rather be discussing the possible foundational changes of Destiny 2. Will Patrol be the same? Will NPCs exist? Are we still working with the same "Orbit" lobby system. Crap like that.

Sure, but we have basically zero information on these things right now. I was only offering a PSA, not trying to tell everyone 2Des2ny will be bad, or good, or anything. I sincerely hope it makes the pre-orderers happy, but I also hope that consumers as a whole trend away from pre-ordering any game.

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My thoughts on this

by Harmanimus @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:01 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

Your arguments are also anecdotal. And make many assumptions while being severely reductive. You are assuming where money is allocated. How much, when, and how it is allocated. Disregarding alternate income (promotions, varied revenue sources) and that money can simply be shifted.

You are acting like things are set in stone until someone pre-orders a game then things can turn on a dime. I have never seen anything in any major project budgeting that implies that is common.

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My thoughts on this

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:19 (2554 days ago) @ Harmanimus

Your arguments are also anecdotal. And make many assumptions while being severely reductive. You are assuming where money is allocated. How much, when, and how it is allocated. Disregarding alternate income (promotions, varied revenue sources) and that money can simply be shifted.

I think my arguments are grounded in logic, not anecdotes. If the point of sale is pre-launch, the content of the game is not important to making the sale, only the pre-launch advertising is. If the point of sale is post-launch, then the content of the game is very important to making the sale and advertising serves to get the word out about that content.


You are acting like things are set in stone until someone pre-orders a game then things can turn on a dime. I have never seen anything in any major project budgeting that implies that is common.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Nothing is set in stone until the game launches, and even then it can be patched. It seems like maybe you're missing my point that pre-ordering emphasises advertising quality over game quality.

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My thoughts on this

by Harmanimus @, Friday, March 31, 2017, 16:38 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

My comments there were regarding budgeting, primarily.major budgets change all the time on many projects. Usually negotions are built into contracts so that both sides can attempt to better do business over the life of a project. The projects I have anecdotal experience with have had different end budgets than starting budgets as situations are fluid. So unless you have major insider knowledge about the budgeting conteacts between Activision and Bungie, your claims of spending v quality are purely anecdotal experience.

One way or another the sale is about the content. Because consumer backlash exists. If you don't ballpark your promises from advertising, you will destroy your return on investment. At this point in video games it is naive to assume that a publisher like Activision isn't playing the long game.

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My thoughts on this

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 18:04 (2554 days ago) @ Harmanimus

My comments there were regarding budgeting, primarily.major budgets change all the time on many projects. Usually negotions are built into contracts so that both sides can attempt to better do business over the life of a project. The projects I have anecdotal experience with have had different end budgets than starting budgets as situations are fluid. So unless you have major insider knowledge about the budgeting conteacts between Activision and Bungie, your claims of spending v quality are purely anecdotal experience.

One way or another the sale is about the content. Because consumer backlash exists. If you don't ballpark your promises from advertising, you will destroy your return on investment. At this point in video games it is naive to assume that a publisher like Activision isn't playing the long game.

I know firsthand that ATVI only cares about next quarter's profits and will fully cut off their nose to spite their face in that regard. The number of wasteful and disgusting decisions that corporate handed down in my tenure there really soured me on the entire company. Sabotaging entire games just to fire a single producer, hiring excessive staff for the optics of doing a big hire, shortening development cycles in order to convince shareholders they had the same sort of "high buzz" product coming out as their competitors... it was all pretty poorly managed from the top level on down.

Also, consumer backlash is minor in a world where game retailers don't accept returns on open boxes (and you can't return most digital purchases whatsoever - steam being a limited exception) If full refunds for bad games was a thing, then I wouldn't care about pre-orders because, obviously, the money would only be made if the game was any good. But that's not the case here. Most of the time, once the company has sold you the pre-order, they have your money for keeps.

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My thoughts on this

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, March 31, 2017, 21:57 (2554 days ago) @ Kahzgul

Your arguments are also anecdotal. And make many assumptions while being severely reductive. You are assuming where money is allocated. How much, when, and how it is allocated. Disregarding alternate income (promotions, varied revenue sources) and that money can simply be shifted.


I think my arguments are grounded in logic, not anecdotes. If the point of sale is pre-launch, the content of the game is not important to making the sale, only the pre-launch advertising is. If the point of sale is post-launch, then the content of the game is very important to making the sale and advertising serves to get the word out about that content.

This one wasn't.

Even at this early stage, the content of Destiny is very important to me even though I have only about a paragraph of vague details about the game. Yes, I will be paying money sight unseen, but I'm willing to do so because of Bungie's long history of making games and because I liked the last game in the Destiny series. Sure, there is an assumption on my part that I'm going to get something more than a sticky note that says "Thanks for the preorder, now go to hell. - Love Bungie." but if that's what I got I would at the very least return the game and my preorder would be nullified.

And then the real backlash would start. There would be very few sells as the early adopters would tell everyone that there is no Destiny 2, there's just a virtual sticky note. There would be an unending stream of criticism from players and the gaming press. There might even be lawsuits and there would certainly be mass firings at Bungie and Activision by the time it was all done. And then I and millions of others would not even consider buying a Bungie game for several years.

You seriously need to rethink your argument, starting with the part that you think people don't care about the content of a game they are preordering. You could argue that they are putting more faith in the developer than someone who orders post launch after reading a number of well written reviews, but "...then content of the game is not important to making the sale..." is so bizarre a claim that I'm honestly not sure if you are trolling us.

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My thoughts on this

by Kahzgul, Saturday, April 01, 2017, 03:31 (2554 days ago) @ Ragashingo

It's a measure by degrees, not absolutes. If you could have 20% more Destiny because of a shift of a few millions of dollars away from pre-order hype advertising and towards development, wouldn't you want that? That's what I'm talking about. Reversing the incremental budgetary swing from development towards advertising that's been trending for two decades now.

Yes, of course there would be backlash if all you got was a sticky note. But come on, I'm not saying pre-orders are lies. I'm saying that pre-orders have resulted in some money which would have been used for development being used for advertising instead. Boycotting pre-orders will eventually swing the pendulum the other way. This is not an all-or nothing plan - companies need to spend money on advertising as well as game development, for sure. This is about ensuring you know the real content of a game before you buy it. Yes, there is a supposition here that current return policies of most brick and mortar stores remain in place (namely, no returns on open boxes). If a robust return policy became the law of the land and you could get a full refund within, say, a week of your purchase, then pre-ordering wouldn't matter at all. Right now that's not the case. I know that steam has a limited return policy, but I'm not super familiar with it. Amazon will sometimes take things back, but again, not always the case with video games.

So yes, there are absolutely changes to the current business model that would make me be totally fine with pre-ordering. That being said, the only place where I can have a direct effect, right now, today, is the decision to pre-order or not. I choose not to, because I think that if enough of us do the same, we'll influence the business model to shift money back towards development rather than marketing, and eventually influence the changes that will allow full refunds if a game stinks, which will put pre-orders back on the menu in a more healthy (for the game industry) way.

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