My thoughts on this (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Friday, March 31, 2017, 15:30 (2885 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.