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RE: Fallout 76: How Not to Launch a Game
I'm sure you agree, but I honestly wish pre-order wasn't a thing. Customers feel compelled to preorder because often the shiny reward is pretty great... but it also means the company makes a ton of money (maybe the bulk of their money) before they've even released a product... which is bizarre. I think it also means that companies are willing to release games that aren't quite right because they've already made a good amount of cash. If their revenue was solely dependant on releasing an incredible game, we wouldn't see the launch disasters happen again and again.
Pre-Orders are a great idea that was abused beyond any reasonable measure, not unlike DLC.
Being able to put money asside in advance on games is convenient. It can also show that smaller studios may have more interest in them then they originally realized, allowing them to make more copies of a game and keep it from being a small obscure release.
But then AAA studios had to start pushing pre-orders, and even locking content behind it, ruining a good thing for everyone.
Admittedly, Bethesda's work process is such that they probably had 76 "mostly done" when they announced it (which makes it a little more ironic that it's still only "mostly done" in most people's eyes).
I'm not against the concept of a pre-order, but I think you need to think critically about it. I use Kickstarter a lot, and I've had a lot of good experiences and bad experiences with it.
The video games industry has taken the concept in a very toxic direction. It's often more of an elite/"real fan" distinction that they draw with pre-orders. It relies on FOMO rather than "help us build this game." Big developers know what they're making anyway, and the early funds go toward their next game instead of improving their current title. I really think an early access system would have been ideal here, and generally would be better than pre-orders for AAA titles, but that flies in the face of traditional publishing and will therefore never be adopted except in a similarly crappy, toxic way.
But I work with print rulebooks, where you've got less complicated design processes, so I'm predisposed to judge video games harshly because they're the glitzy "dad's favorite" younger brother.