Two common practices I just don't understand are pre-orders and buying used to save a few bucks, or even a SINGLE buck. Today I walked into a Gamestop here in Oslo and saw, among others, Deus EX new for NOK 179 ($30,72) and used for NOK 169 ($29). Thanks to Gamestop, Norwegian gamers have the chance to save a whopping $1,72!

Anyways, about the pre-orders, I guess I just see it as a pointless leap of faith. We are essentially giving our money to a publisher to make sure we'll get the game on day 1 based on nothing but the expectation that the game will be good and released in less than 12 years. As we have seen time and time again, especially in the HD era, such promises often disappoint, and since I've always been able to find new releases in stock (back when I used to buy them, that is), pre-ordering just never felt necessary, and even less so after Steam.

That all changed with Dragon Age 2. I am, or was, a huge Bioware fan. As far as I'm concerned, every Bioware RPG before Dragon Age 2 was a 12/10, and I don't care that doesn't even make sense. Bioware was just that good.

And I wasn't bothered by the EA buyout either. Unlike some, I'm not anti-publisher or anti-EA in principle, I'm just anti-being-shitted-on, although it's admittedly becoming harder and harder to distinguish between the two. EA talked a good game about learning from past mistakes, and the way Activision has been handling their take over of Blizzard (four years later we have yet to see yearly Starcrafts/Diablos and bi-monthly WoW expansions) boosted my confidence that all would be fine at the house Baldur's Gate.

Besides being a fan of the games, I had the utmost respect for Bioware as a company. I saw them in the same light as Valve or Blizzard, a consumer-centric company that knows how to make money AND treat their consumers with respect (looking at recent industry practices we might as well come to the conclusion that the two are mutually exclusive).

So, when Bioware dangled the Dragon Age 2 Signature Edition before my eager eyes, it didn't take long for me to take the bait. Pre-order before January 11, they said, and get over 20 dollars worth of DLC! Sure, "over 20 dollars" is code for "$20,01", but still, why not? I was in all likelihood gonna get the game in the first week anyways, and if my past experiences with Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 were anything to go by, I'd probably end up buying most of the DLC as well. So the choice was clear: don't pre-order and later spend the full game price plus $20 for the DLCs, or just pre-order the damn thing and save $20 right off the bat. I mean, it's freaking Dragon Age! It's Bioware! It's not like they would lie to me... right?

Well, guess what? It turned out that not only was $20 dollars ridiculously overpriced for the puny content they included, they outright lied, or, at the very least, were seriously misleading. I wasn't getting an extra $20 for pre-ordering, I was just getting $10, because what they called "20 dollars worth of bonus content" also included a $10 dollar DLC that is available with EVERY NEW GAME anyways. Oh well, they lied but at least the content would surely be worth it... right?

Wrong again! Guess what half of that $20 dollars bonus content that was available anyways with new copies consisted of? An item shop. Not a character, not a quest, not a location, just an item shop. At that point I half-expected the items to be priced in euros or dollars instead of gold coins, but mercifully I was wrong about that too.

There is no way in hell their "bonus content" is worth even remotely close to 20 dollar, but that's not really my beef. When I agreed to pay them in advance without really knowing what I was paying for, I accepted the risk I might not like what I would get. The problem is just that Bioware lied to convince me to pre-order their game, and I don't like being lied to. Had I known the bonus for pre-ordering was $10 instead of $20, I might have a made a very different decision.

And so ends the tale of my first and last pre-order, never to be repeated again. Fool me once... I hear pre-orders are very important to help publishers and retailers gauge demand for a game. Considering the decision to pre-order is based 100% on trust, a concept that seems increasingly foreign to most publishers these days, that can't possibly be true.