Preorder a game before it's revealed? Fudging awesome.

So 11 Bit Studios, who you may vaguely remember made that reverse tower defense game Anomaly: Warzone Earth, put up a teaser trailer for their new game. 30 seconds, no gameplay, no title, not a very good idea of what kind of game it is. And you can preorder it now, at 50% off! That discount only applies before the game is properly announced.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/14/11-bit-studios-take-pre-ordering-to-the-absurd/

I don't care what any of you say, that's fucking fantastic. The balls on their marketing guy must be the size of goddamn watermelons.

Oh dear god that's the best. Watermelons? Nope. You ever play with one of those giant beach balls? Yeah, those.

I'd like to see Bioware do this :p

When people are giving over 3 million dollars to kickstarters that aren't even a trailer and little more than a concept, why not offer this option? At least they went out of there way to make a trailer.

Seems like a pretty good deal if you ask me, provided you have faith in the developer.

Cursing in thread titles is prohibited, your thread title has been altered accordingly.

Seems like a "I have blind faith in this dev, so might as well get this game at half price" sort of deal. Now, why would anyone have blind faith in 11 Bit Studios is beyond reason.

This is what funding Kickstarter games is all about.

I guess they have to try and promote themselves any way possible. Creating some buzz around the studio and game will help indie developer. This maybe the way to get on the sites and get some posts on forums. It may work.

I'll guess it's a good way to get the game instead of waiting for a steam sale.

Most of them are from well-known developers of already existing franchises. So, there's already trust working in their favor.

Why not? Seems like a good enough deal for the people who want to take a chance on it.

Akin to pre-order placeholders at retailers more or less. This seems a tad more sleazy and on the nose though.

Exactly, I really wonder to what lengths they have to go before people realize that paying before the product is done is fucking stupid. It started with pre-orders and just after what, 2 or 3 years (?) we have this....

If you're comfortable with the developer's pedigree, then why not? It's a sweet deal. I wish I could preorder Platinum Games next game for 50% off. I do it in a heartbeat.

Sleazy? You're getting 50% off.

@evo:Sleazy may not have been an adequate word to describe what I was hoping to convey. While there's merit to the notion of trusting the developer in question, I find the business practice of little to no content is displayed, followed by a "ORDER NOW" a tad questionable. A placeholder is merely a name and you buying into what you imagine will be an average or above product based on prior experiences, but it seems just a tad arrogant to publish the least amount of content and information about your product humanly possible and then chalk that up as 'good enough'.

But hey, at least they're offering it for 50% off which justifies their cause plenty. Blind pre-orders never really sit well with me otherwise.

Well, it's just a kickstart without Kickstarter, kind of.

While an awesome idea, I don't think I could pre-order a game I've seen nothing of unless it's from a studio with a good library. (Say Atlus or Shin Megami Tensei just to name my two favorites)

Yeah I understand why and how it comes about. My statement still stands as true. When companies are getting that much money out of good faith there is no incentive for any company well known or otherwise not to offer a preorder before actual gameplay has been seen.

Kickstarter is not for pre-ordering games. If you think it is, you've missed the entire point.

@bisonhero: Isn't this just Kickstarter?

Wow, that's pretty fucking cool.

Also this.

If that's true, he should probably see a doctor about that.

There are some studios I could do this for. Like Platinum Games.

Yeah, but what happens when they say "Surprise! It's a cart racer for the Vita!"

This is pretty clever from a business and marketing standpoint. It also shows how pre-ordering in itself is a weird thing, if you look at it from a consumer point of view, especially for digital games. It's intended use at some point, if I am not mistaken, was to secure yourself a copy of a game you really, really want at launch. Publishers are so dependent on pre-orders now that consumers are suckered into pre-ordering more and more with some extra content or a tiny discount.

I am not falling for these.

This isn't crowd-funding. Crowd-funding (especially Kickstarter) is based on "we need to raise funds to do this thing and without these funds this thing will not exist". In fact, that is a requirement with Kickstarter. This is just a marketing gimmick to generate discounted pre-orders and get websites to spread the advertising to their audiences. This is not fund-raising for a game that wouldn't otherwise exist. This is taking discounted pre-orders for a game that is already in progress and has a release window. At most, it capitalizes on any fans who have enjoyed their previous games (since, if you don't have a history with the developer's product, why would you have any interest in buying their next one without even knowing what it is?).

As for actual crowd-funding, I think you'll find that projects asking for (or getting) millions have a hell of a lot more than "a concept".

Initially, I find this marketing gimmick kind of gross. However, it's not like they're holding anything back from the rest of people who want to (sanely) wait until the 28th to find out what the game is even about. The only difference is those who say "fuck yeah, I loved your last game and I'll take a chance" get it for a discount. For the rest of us, we can just wait until later. And if the game turns out to not be so hot, we'll get it for a lot less than 50% on Steam a couple months after launch, anyway.

I mean, think about it -- if CDProjekt RED said "we're working on a game that will be released by the end of the year and though we're not going to give you any information about it at all until March 1st, we'll let you pre-order it for $30, instead of $60, if you order before March 1st" -- a ton of us would go along with it, based on their prior record.

Anyway, that doesn't really justify the whole "pre-order" abuse thing, across the board, these days . . . but in context, it's not particularly egregious, to me.

Though, to be fair, the misunderstanding around that is understandable. Of the almost 500 crowd-funded projects I have backed, at least a few of them have pledge tiers called "PRE-ORDER" that include a copy of the game.

Actually, since Kickstarter requires that projects follow through on pledge rewards, by making the end-product one of the rewards, you are essentially committing to an obligation to provide the end-product.

Not that we're going to see that put to the test any time soon, I suppose.

@wintersnowblind: @branthog:

When over half of the kickstarters offer a preorder option, and of those kickstarters the ones that are the most successful are the ones which have the preorder option, I can safely say that people are using Kickstarter as a preorder mechanism.

Also branthog, I know what crowdfunding is. The only difference between this preorder system that 11 Bit has come up with and the vast majority of projects that go through kickstarter is one thing. Kickstarter. If you're going to sit here and defend kickstarter but jump down 11 Bit's throat you're delusional.

@grimluck343: That's why it'd work with Platinum, because they're never going to make a game like that.

@jack268 I wouldn't put anything past that company in particular.

pretty strange to do that.