[Semi-ironic] Can we pre-order on future, unannounced games?

koteko

Sounds weird, uh? But here's my reasoning:

I'd love to play Torment EE and/or BG3. I'm happy to pay, in advance, like a pre-preorder.

If you do not end up developing either, I get the money back. If you do develop one of these, I get the actual preorder.

Is there any way this "trust fund" can be setup? I bet a few other people would join.

Silverstar

Wanting to support Beamdog/Overhaul is admirable. Wanting to play more new EE games is understandable. Blindly throwing money at them is stupid. Each purchase should be earned independently. Just because someone does a good job with release X does not mean they'll do a good job with release Y, and it's usually hard to determine until quite far into development.

koteko said:

If you do not end up developing either, I get the money back. If you do develop one of these, I get the actual preorder.

Though honestly, that there sounds a lot like a Kickstarter project. There are differences though; Kickstarter takes a cut of each project (which wouldn't be a good deal for this particular developer as they have their own distribution handled) and you can withdraw your support within the funding deadline.

Cartman's view on pre-ordering, while crude, is somewhat correct.

koteko

I respectfully disagree on the "stupidity" of giving money in advance, on "trust". It's the fundamental of all investments, in any business. In this case, with two EE and a new game, they have proved they can deliver so it would even be low-risk investment.

It's just unusual to do "micro-investments" from the players themselves, but it's not fundamentally different than normal investments. I would still get future value, with low risk (they don't deliver, or close down).

I have been supporting games on Kickstarter for years and never withdrew support, as during the campaign you have no idea how they will fare later on. It makes no sense to withdraw in the funding period, unless you pledged by mistake or really changed your mind in those 30/60 days (which is rare, IMHO).

So yeah, I wrote "semi-ironic" because such a thing requires infrastructure. They won't just take my bank transfer :P but I'm seriously ready to support an internal "fund your future game" system.