Cyberpunk 2077, Anthem, No Man’s Sky, Mass Effect: Andromeda; modern games have become too dependent on hype to generate revenue instead of the actual games themselves. Overpromising features or gameplay when the development team knows that it’s far beyond their scope is one of the biggest reasons these games flop. People are drawn to the hype and need to have that game as soon as it’s out.

The year is 2007, Master Chief is falling out of the sky ready to kick some alien butt and gamers are lining up outside the local Gamestop waiting to snag their own copy of Beyoncé’s third “Halo” single. You’ve sat in line for an hour and you get up to the counter and ask for Halo 3. 

“What’s the name under for your pre-order?” the person behind the counter asks. 

“Pre-order?” I ask.

I just sat in line to pick up a copy of Alien Shooty, and you’re telling me I need to make a reservation for The Chief and Arbiter’s wedding?

In a CD-era, it made sense for people to be pre-ordering games since there’d be a limit on how many copies a store got. For small business shops, this guaranteed they got a sale.

Collectors editions, Legendary Editions, Ultimate Gamer Editions and The Super Dangerous WAD WAD Edition. These game versions, which come with a limited run item or items, are obviously going to garner some type of desire to have them whether buyers like the game or not. I mean come on, who wouldn’t want to sport Lean S. Kennedy’s slick leather jacket from one of the worst Resident Evil games? 

In 2022, digital copies for games are more common than not. In fact, the recent generation of consoles have been released with both a digital and physical game version, with the digital ones being cheaper.  

The number of incentives games have for pre-ordering is astonishing and only lead to more people giving in to the problem, such as in game currencies that give players a lead over those who bought the standard edition, a fancy cosmetic item that’ll become outdated a month after launch and, in more recent years, one free battle pass. 

I’ll admit, I’ve succumbed to a couple of the games that came out in recent years, (Cyberpunk 2077 and Battlefield 2042), but that hasn’t stopped me from enjoying them. I know what flaws there are in preordering and why you should wait on a product before enjoying it yourself, but sometimes the hype is just too much to handle. I will always tell myself,try to remember and preach it: stop preordering games.