Crimson Desert proves it's better to wait for games than play at launch

For every week I spend not playing Crimson Desert, I have more fun with it. I'm collecting this fun passively, bottling it up and letting it age. Soon, I'll uncork the stuff and play the game for real, and it'll be a delicious reminder that waiting to play new games is simply the best.

It's not that Crimson Desert was unplayable when it came out on March 19. Our Crimson Desert review gave it high marks even pre-release. The game was just filled with problems that have since been fixed. Ugly AI-generated assets and wonky controls were patched. Movement bugs were snipped. Storage space was expanded. Future Austin, the lucky me who will decant all that fermented fun, will eat well.

I am genuinely looking forward to playing this game. I have been for a while, even before the folks behind the engine that Crimson Desert uses walked me through all the cool stuff it's capable of. After all, I explored the previous desert, Black Desert, or Black Desert Online, developer Pearl Abyss' open-world fantasy MMORPG. My approach was to treat it like a single-player RPG for about 200 hours, just doing quests, exploring the map, building an empire of gatherers and craftsmen, and getting way too invested in the horse market. An actual single-player open-world game from Pearl Abyss was always right up my alley. (It is, however, a crushing disappointment that BDO's exemplary character creator was thrown out in favor of stamped-out hero John Desert.)

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But as soon as reviews rolled in, I knew I'd be waiting longer. Crimson Desert has got sauce, but it's also got jank, and when there's so much else to play there's no real reason to force myself to fight through jank which will surely be removed or polished. Crimson Desert has changed so much, so rapidly that it's developed the Early Access problem: when you play a game like this on day one, you are playing a worse version of that game. It may still be good, even great, but you know or suspect that it's going to be better later. It's also going to be cheaper.

A semi-patient gamer

There is a gradient here. I respect the devotion of the r/patientgamers community, which is filled with people who seem just about ready to rip the plastic off their copies of Binary Domain and Eternal Sonata. Sometimes I find myself in that camp, playing games that are older than most of the people I encounter in Arc Raiders. I just bought a new cable for my PS3 controller so I could play Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga again. But because of my job, I do try to stay more current, and I don't think you have to wait years or even months to play new games, especially smaller or simpler ones, to reap huge benefits.

It's amazing what waiting even a few weeks, sometimes a few days, can buy you. Inextricable limits in game development make it impossible to find and fix every last bug and technical hitch pre-launch, but you can bet a bazillion players will spot that stuff within an hour. Devs want their games to be bug-free, too, unless of course they're the makers of Killbug, so they're going to go after player-reported issues. Ubisoft and Bethesda games are the crown jewels of waiting. Playing those on day one is like biting into a frozen pizza when there's still six minutes left on the oven timer. When we do finally get The Elder Scrolls 6, you can bet it will be a lot better six weeks after launch.

A game with as many moving parts as Crimson Desert will unavoidably be more prone to jank. But with a simple and clean platformer like Demon Tides, there's a better chance of me lining up sooner. I already bought Pragmata, a similarly simple, short, and sumptuous game, because a new IP from Capcom styled as Dad Space is exciting stuff. A few hours in, I don't regret it one bit.

It's all about your personal opportunity cost. I get it; sometimes you just can't wait to play a game. Plus, it's fun to join in with launch discussions and memes (the Diana dance party edits for Pragmata are superb, for example). I've been playing Slay the Spire 2, which is actually in Early Access, because it's the sequel to the king of card games. But I'm playing it the way I did Hades 2's Early Access run: beat it a few times and then wait for update 1.0. Again, this is the worst version of a great game; I don't want to fill up now and be totally full when it gets really good. If I did have the strength of will to wait, I'd get a better first bite in the end.

I give into temptation sometimes. You can bet my stupid ass will play The Duskbloods as soon as it drops. But it's good to remember we're just plain better off waiting – always for reviews, especially for patches, and inevitably for discounts (unless it's a Nintendo game whose MSRP has the same half-life as bismuth-209). Do as I say, not as I do.

If there's a single piece of actionable advice in here, it's this: don't rush yourself to play a game, because odds are good it's only going to get better with time. I am going to have more fun playing Crimson Desert precisely because I have not played it yet. It's working out great so far, so I plan to continue treating most new games the way I treat gold items in Marathon: I'm going to put it right here on the shelf, and I'm just gonna look at it for a little bit.

I'm losing track of Crimson Desert patches at this point: rapid-fire hotfix targets broken difficulty settings and horse gear as players say "Pearl Abyss, rest is allowed."