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[Ozyton]

Being hyped for a game doesn't necessarily mean pre-ordering it.

[GrayFox]

you shouldn't pay for a game that you haven't seen or played before

I agree, at least slightly. I almost never pre-order games. I think the last one I did pre-order was GTA: San Andreas.  I also don't usually pay $60 for my games. I get them on sale, when the price goes down, or I borrow them. But I had to pre-order No Man's Sky. I already know I will enjoy it based on what I've seen, what I've heard, and things I've wished were in other games. Not everyone will feel this way, but I know I'll like it.

[MaximumZero]

I'm a little biased because I work for the largest video game retailer in the world, but I like it when people preorder because we get proper inventory levels. Preorders tell the corporate office how many to send each store. The more preorders we get, the larger initial shipment we order, and the more copies hit the retail floor. Nobody preordered Mad Max, we got two of them for each console, and whenever we got a shipment for three weeks, we were out immediately, and that screwed us out of a lot of sales. Only a handful of people preordered Fire Emblem Fates, and we got one extra and had to turn away thirty people on opening day alone. If you absolutely know you want a game, the cost of the preorder itself goes straight to your copy of the game (it doesn't cost extra to preorder,) and that money goes right into our initial order, which benefits the publisher greatly, because they get a big boost of initial sales at the corporate level. Think of it like this: If we have three preorders for a game, corporate views my market for the game as unimportant and sends us three plus maybe a couple to cover walk-in sales. If we have 70+ preorders, we get leeway to run a midnight event, and corporate sends us a boatload of copies (we got 150+ copies of CoDBlops3, with just over 70 preorders in a stupidly slow market,) because the title is obviously hot and we'll see a lot of walk in business. Spread that over 5,000 stores, and you have a lot of copies ordered. Activision makes a shitload of money on us each year.

We make the same amount on preorders because it doesn't cost you anything extra to preorder and guarantee that I can sell you the game. We aren't screwing you somehow by asking for your preorders. We want to know how many to buy as a company.

[Ozyton]

Pre-ordering physical copies may be one thing, but what about pre-ordering digital copies? Seems pretty silly to me. It's not like if you don't pre-order a digital copy that there'll be no copies left if you decide to buy the game later.

E: The only real reason to pre-order a digital copy are the incentives, and the only real incentive I'm interested in are discounts. It's sort of like saying "If you have faith that our game won't suck we'll let you buy it cheaper than if you had bought it when the reviews are out."

[MaximumZero]

That's cool. Some people are into other incentives, some people just want to make sure they get the game. A lot of the time, the only discount you get for preordering is bundling the season pass with a given game (which I kind of feel is disingenuous given the nature of DLC, especially day 1 DLC, but that's a different can of worms altogether,) or getting the strat guide or other knick knack with the game.

Those bonuses are strictly for people who absolutely 100% know they're going to like the game, though.

[Shadowlord]

IMHO, the quality and bugginess lotteries are rather good reasons to not pre-order. Bugginess and poor quality might get fixed over time, or might not. Or you may get lucky and get a fully functional quality game on release! (Like DX:HR seemed to be, for the most part, if you didn't mind the stuff about your character grabbing the idiot ball and walking out to get ambushed whenever it was time for a boss fight - not that that was ever fixed in a patch or anything anyways)

Examples of things that were or would have been mistakes to pre-order: Skyrim (PC version was buggy and crashy on release and the plot was so very dull - it got better but I could have waited and bought it cheaper), Spore (shallow but not buggy), Master of Orion 3 (basically complete shit on release, and still complete shit when the last patch came), Sword of the Stars II (incomplete, buggy, slow, but still better than moo 3 - got a few patches, one expansion, and then no more, leaving it incomplete and still buggy because the publisher (Paradox) wouldn't pay for any more, and Kerberos wouldn't, or couldn't, pay for more out of their own pocket, I guess).

At least if you're pre-ordering something like CoD you know what you're getting - they're that reliable, year after year, putting out a functional and reasonably fun game every time (if you aren't bored by the whole thing already).

If you're pre-ordering digital copies, if you're lucky valve will give you tf2 items (that are hopefully worth something if you don't play tf2) - the DX:HR ones were, anyways. Of course it'd have been far cheaper to just wait until it inevitably dropped to $5 rather than to pre-order it and then try to make some of it back by selling some of the tf2 items...

[Retropunch]

IMHO, the quality and bugginess lotteries are rather good reasons to not pre-order. Bugginess and poor quality might get fixed over time, or might not.

This - so very, very much this. It's crazy that gaming is the only market in which you can put out a massively buggy product and not have to give refunds. I honestly don't understand how there isn't better quality control. I know games are big, and there's lots of ways they can go wrong, but some releases have been just terrible. This is compounded by the fact that if not enough people buy the game, there isn't any incentive to patch it, giving it a whole vicious circle thing.

My only exception to this is for indie games where you're backing by your pre-order. More than that though, indie games -mostly- are pretty bug free comparatively, and if not they tend to get fixed more quickly.

[Greenbane]

Those bonuses are strictly for people who absolutely 100% know they're going to like the game, though.

How that's remotely possible when we're talking about an unknown developer and a largely unknown game in several regards is beyond me.

That's only PR and marketing doing their job, to obscure the fact preordering is a significant gamble, most especially in this case.

[Beggars` Sect]

Isn`t it possible to refund games on Steam now?

[Shadowlord]

Two weeks, unless they've changed it. Did they?

[GrayFox]

Those bonuses are strictly for people who absolutely 100% know they're going to like the game, though.

How that's remotely possible when we're talking about an unknown developer and a largely unknown game in several regards is beyond me.

That's only PR and marketing doing their job, to obscure the fact preordering is a significant gamble, most especially in this case.

I've already stated my reasons. If you don't like 100 percent, then I.... 99% know I will like it? I don't see the gamble. I know enough to know it's going to be great. It's pretty much what I've been trying to find from a game for many years, so why should I suddenly think it will be awful? It's not even going to be Early Access. My reasons won't work for everyone, but they're still pretty good reasons.

I really think people are worrying too much.  I don't know what else to say. 

[Chiefwaffles]

1.) Developers want money.
2.) Developers want to sell games.
3.) You have to want a game to buy it.
4.) Developers can convince you to buy a game by hyping it up.
5.) Developers can hype up game to be better than it is to sell more copies.

Of course, they may not do step 5. But they can.
But even with the likelihood of them not overhyping it, the chance of you liking the game is not 100%, and it's definitely not 99%. But if you feel comfortable enough to spend your money on it, feel free to.

[GrayFox]

I won't go lower than 99%.    If, somehow, I'm actually wrong, then I'll say "oh no! the pessimists were right!" But all indications are that I'm (almost) definitely going to like it a whole lot.  I don't see what there is, for me, to not like. I really just don't see anything awful like that! Also, I rarely pre-order games, and I rarely pay $60, like I said before. I never would have done so if I had major doubts.

I notice a lot of people online mention Spore when talking about NMS. This isn't Spore.  Spore was hyped up with features that weren't even in the game. They couldn't be bothered, or didn't have time, or whatever! They watered it down and simply did not give people what they promised. Hello Games has pretty much only told us confirmed features. Spore was deceptive hype. No Man's Sky's hype seems a lot more genuine. They're skipping that step five.

[Catmeat]

I laugh at how its stated multiple times people will get bored of it.
So you waking up eating breakfast to go to work to earn money to buy your food and clothes for work to then sleep and begin again isnt boring??
You say variation spices it up for you? Then do just that, I guess people like to complain.

I see it playing like this:
You see a colourful blur then the world forms around you.
A planet for you to explore and document.. after finding your ship you realise its crap and mine some ore to upgrade or buy upgrades, you fly to a station seeing a few craft, all too expensive. You sell the ores/elements and decend to the planet, document any life, elements and compounds, try to find your reflection.
After a little grinding and a possible death you will buy your first ship with hyperdrive and buysome fuel, then you will probably visit all the planets in your starting star system before venturing to the next star system.
This will be repeated 50+ times depending on hour decisions.
Oh and yoh will find it hard to beat the game without dying.
Please do try though... maybe there is a gift for you if you make it

[Greenbane]

I won't go lower than 99%.    If, somehow, I'm actually wrong, then I'll say "oh no! the pessimists were right!" But all indications are that I'm (almost) definitely going to like it a whole lot.  I don't see what there is, for me, to not like. I really just don't see anything awful like that! Also, I rarely pre-order games, and I rarely pay $60, like I said before. I never would have done so if I had major doubts.

I notice a lot of people online mention Spore when talking about NMS. This isn't Spore.  Spore was hyped up with features that weren't even in the game. They couldn't be bothered, or didn't have time, or whatever! They watered it down and simply did not give people what they promised. Hello Games has pretty much only told us confirmed features. Spore was deceptive hype. No Man's Sky's hype seems a lot more genuine. They're skipping that step five.

It is a gamble because marketing shows you want they want you to see, and the problem is they aren't showing nearly enough. A good bunch of the game is unknown. Therefore, what you know for a fact is a small percentage, and the rest of that alleged 99% is filled with hopes and dreams. A cynical person would've filled that remainder with pessimism. The truth is that remainder could be anything: it could be as excellent as you've convinced yourself it will be, as awful as the most cynical could've predicted, or anything inbetween. The company doesn't even have a meaningful track record to make a rough prediction from that angle.

How do you know they're skipping step five when you don't have the game before you to test its actual quality?

You might say you don't see what there is not to like, and that's exactly part of the problem: they aren't showing enough, and therefore you can't ascertain just how much of that you won't like.

I'm not among the most cynical, but I have my share of skepticism due to videogame history patently showing us several cases of games which were hyped up to the moon and turned out to be busts. Spore is one of them, and while you might say it's different because the hype was "deceptive" and NMS' is "more genuine", but the truth is you don't know. We're all in the same position now. Nobody realized Spore had all those missing features until it finally came out and people found out for themselves. It could've had them all, for all we knew beforehand.

You won't know whether NMS' hype is deceptive or genuine until you can play it yourself and determine its actual, real worth to you. Well, perhaps deceptive doesn't quite qualify, as the devs are just not telling. And while you may have been left with an illusion of quality about the third they did showcase (because, as I mentioned, they show what they want you to see), you don't even have that for the rest.

Anyway, best of luck. There's always the possibility to win a gamble, and ultimately, wasting 60 dollars isn't the end of the world.