5 Rules Of Video Game Buying That Didn't Exist A Decade Ago

5 The Era Of The Preorder Has Ended

There was a time when video game stores had us all convinced that if we didn't preorder a game we would never be able to play it for the rest of our lives. There was such urgency behind a GameStop employee's insistence that I preorder a game, I wondered if his only food source was store copies of preorder receipts.

That urgency served a purpose at one point. Preorders were for people who wanted to ensure they could play a game on release day. No more calling every store in the tri-county area to see if a game was in stock -- preorders allowed you to walk into a place knowing a copy was waiting behind the counter because you ordered it 17 months ago when Electronic Gaming Monthly reported unsubstantiated rumors of its development, so GameStop immediately started selling a product that didn't exist yet.

I remember trying to buy Halo 3 from GameStop on the morning of its release. On big release days, GameStop has only enough copies to cover preorders. Walk-in buyers, like me, walked right back out empty-handed. So I went to the Best Buy up the road, where I found so many copies I could have Scrooge McDuck-dived into a pool of Halo 3s. That's when I got my first whiff of the bullshit behind preordering.

Pair that with the fact that while the bulk of consumers are still buying physical game discs (and it'll continue that way for a while) digital sales of video games are catching up fast. The beauty of a digital sale, other than the convenience, is that you don't have to nervously wonder if there's physically enough of something to go around. If you've got the cash, it's yours. Digital sales are bringing preorders to the brink of extinction.

Don't be fooled by the outdated allure of the preorder, no matter how many stupid-ass bonuses publishers use to ensnare you within their greedy trap. (Yay. A bonus weapon I'll find a better version of an hour into the game). Games are bigger and more complex than ever, which has led to some spectacular release-day fuck-ups. So before you buy a game at all ...

4 Make Sure The Game Actually Works First

Day 1 disasters are nothing new. Fellow columnist Luke McKinney recently wrote about games that were dysfunctional hunks of shit from the day they were released. With Triple-A games only growing more complex, we'd all better get used to the occasional release-day clusterfuck of bugs, glitches, and crashes with no patch in sight for weeks or months or kind of just ... "Eh, whenever."

One of the more recent release-day calamities was with Batman: Arkham Knight. You know all that stuff I wrote in the previous entry about how I long ago learned my lesson about preordering games? Well, see, about that: I'm human and I am susceptible to severe bouts of stupidity. In my excitement, I preordered Arkham Knight ... for the PC. A lot of you just made the same sound as the America's Funniest Home Videos audience during a compilation of guys getting hit in the dick.

For those who don't know, Arkham Knight flat-out did not work on most computers for months after its release. Months. I stupidly preordered a game that I had no legitimate reason to preorder. I didn't want to have to wait to feel the satisfaction of owning it. Preordering a digital copy had accomplished nothing, but doing it convinced me that servants should carry me on a golden bed.

What I should have done was wait two seconds to check out what people were saying after the game's release. I tricked myself into thinking a preorder for a game I knew I'd love would make me feel good when the opposite would have made me feel so much better. It would have made me feel superior to those poor impatient dipshits who did preorder. And, as we all know, feeling superior to the less fortunate is so fucking delicious.

So, you should wait. But then that brings up the question of how long? Well ...

3 You Should Wait A Year

I don't actually believe you should wait a literal year to play a game that has cock-teased you into lunacy with trailers, sneak peaks, first-impression articles, E3 demos, and the general hype-riddled chatter of fans across the Internet. If you're hyped, indulge on Day 1. Who cares? I'll probably be doing the same thing. A year is more of a rule of thumb to use if you're very patient and want to see a game in its most polished state.

If it's a glitchy wreck, waiting gives the developers time to work out the kinks. If it's one you bought on Steam, waiting a while also gives more time for competent people to create mods ... some of which are so complex they literally rewrite the game into something much, much better than the original. Hell, there are so many Skyrim mods out there right now, it no longer makes sense to play just the original version. You'd be robbing yourself of content.

If it's a DLC-heavy game, waiting for a "Game of the Year" edition will save you nutloads of cash. With a base game sold for $60 and all the extra missions and expansions running upwards of another $30, that's $90 spent on one game. To put it simply, fuck that shit. Just wait it out. GOTY editions are almost always cheaper, and they often include some (if not all) DLCs and special bonus items. Yeah, those bonuses are usually stupid cosmetic bullshit, but hey, I bought my Happy Meal for the burger and fries. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the toy in the bottom of the box.

But all of that stuff -- the savings, mods, patches -- seems to take six months to a year before players have settled in and declared, "The best way to play this is to buy this DLC, then use this patch, then add these mods." It definitely saves the Day 1 headaches of, "Dammit, every time I try to reload my pistol, my character shoots himself in the face. Anyone find a fix for this yet?"

Oh, wait, before we get too far away from the issue of money ...

2 With Just A Little Patience, You Can Buy Games For Damn Near Nothing

I hate to pick a side in the long-running PC vs. console debate, but there are some facts that are too difficult to ignore. Like this one: When the prices on digitally distributed PC games are discounted, they're discounted to an extreme -- discounts that can be ruinous to compulsive buyers. (More on that in a bit.)

Earlier I mentioned how once I started making money like a big boy I immediately started blowing it on video games like a child. "That's irresponsible!" you say. "You're bad with money!" you say. While my gold-plated robot money-burner will confirm all of that to be true, it isn't true when it comes to my video-game-spending habits. Online retailers like Steam, Good Old Games, Humble Bundle, and Green Man Gaming have made buying digital copies of video games so cheap that it makes me feel bad for the people who made the games in the first place.

Hundreds of people poured their souls into these games, often in awful working conditions, battling long stretches of sleepiness nights and borderline insanity, just so I can buy their game for less than the cost of a McDonald's burger that will constipate me. That's demoralizing. But if I can ignore the cries of the Chinese children who make my phone, I can ignore the goateed white guy in California who coded my game.

For most of the year, $10 can't buy you very many games. But come December, when every online retailer starts selling off games like they're going out of business, $10 can keep a person playing until the following December. Last year's Steam winter sale was ridiculous. Not only were huge titles marked down by as much as 80 percent, but those awesome old black holes of nostalgia like Knights Of The Old Republic were as cheap as one fucking dollar. And it wasn't a case of having to carefully hunt and search for the good deals, either. They had thousands of them on sale, and they were all listed front and center. Right there in your face, taunting you. Daring you to not buy them.

Though, this comes with a warning, and it is the final, perhaps most important rule for buying video games nowadays ...

1 Fight The Urge To Buy Every Cheap Game In Sight

Digitally purchased games have become the modern-day equivalent of books. I mean that in the most negative way possible. For a lot of people, bookshelves are the place aspirations go to die a slow, dusty death. People buy books knowing damn well they've got stacks of them at home or on their Kindles that they have yet to open. Bookshelves, real or digital, are monuments to all the times people say, "I'll get to that one day."

Digital video game purchases bring out the same behavior in people. Oh, is that pretentious puzzle game that I heard was mediocre on sale for $1.50? Add To Cart. Hey, is that generic space marine first-person shooter on sale for $5? Add To Cart. Whoa. Is that game where you just kind of walk around for a bit and then you die and then supposedly learn something meaningful about life or some such horseshit on sale for whatever loose change I can find beneath my driver seat? ADD TO FUCKING CART! Buying has become too easy, and that has created a whole new problem that stems from something great.

Video games are usually an excellent investment. Not in terms of resale value but in terms of time. For $12.50 I can watch a two-hour movie. For $60 I can play Fallout 4 or The Witcher 3 for over 100 hours and still barely scratch the surface of what they have to offer. When the prices of those games are eventually reduced, their allure, which was already strong, will grow stronger. The perceived need to own them will become undeniable. But to play them, that's a different matter. That's the conundrum of the modern video game market: Anyone can feel satisfied after buying a 100-plus hour game for an ultra-low price, but there isn't a store in existence that sells the time needed to play them all.

When the urge to buy every game in sight crops up, take a second to ask: If I buy it, am I doing it because I'm optimistic I'll soon find the time to fit it in among my growing backlog of everything else that's vying for my attention, or am I doing it simply because I can't resist a good deal?

The search for an answer should be easy, but those goddamn discounts are little dickheaded fairies that snatch the answer from your hands and hide it beneath a pile of every game you've ever wanted on sale for 80 percent off. They should make a game about that. I'd totally buy it. But probably not until it went on sale.

Luis is just coming up with rules for everything, and you must all obey. In the meantime, find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

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For more rules on video games that will stand the test of time (like how all video games should allow you the option to play with another actual human being) check out The 7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey and maybe you can explain to us why almost any generic key can open any door after you read 29 Baffling Rules of Life in Video Game Universes.

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