It makes me feel a bit torn. I see some advantages of playing a game on release: It’s the new hotness, and there is the most interaction possible with people streaming the game on Twitch, or other players discussing the game on various forums. But I am also seeing the advantages of waiting some time after release. For example, after having played some Medieval Dynasty, I am considering buying Sengoku Dynasty, a similar game from the same publisher, but different developer. That game released in August of last year, but on release still didn’t have all the features it has now, for example farming crops. And obviously, between Steam sales and key resellers, I can get Sengoku Dynasty now cheaper than I would have paid on release.

As I am still a content creator in a minor way, I also see this other aspect of playing a game early versus playing it later: Interest from the audience. It is less a problem for me, as I am not trying to make money from the content I create. But I see all those streamers playing Manor Lords now, because this is what is hot now, when I would consider that Manor Lords is one of those games that might better be played much later, in a year or so. I can see how a streamer doesn’t necessarily have the luxury of waiting that long, because it isn’t clear how many people will still want to watch Manor Lotds content in a year. As a consumer of such content I have to remark that sometimes it is hard to find new videos of last year’s games that show how a game has evolved since release. With the majority of content being created on release, it is as if the image of the game is frozen in time.

Waiting to play a game later is also a kind of gamble. Some games simply don’t get much better over time. Some “live service” games might even disappear completely while you wait for them to improve. Other games do improve, but that comes at a cost. Another reason why I wouldn’t want to dive back into Civilization VI is that to get the full Civ VI 2024 experience, I would need to spend a pile of money on DLCs. And it gets pretty complicated for a game with many DLCs to find out which of them are essential, and which of them don’t really add all that much to the experience. At my age, the added problem when waiting to play a game later is that I might simply forget about the game, being caught up in a flood of other games to play.

Overall, I find it difficult to perfectly time the moment when to best play any given game. It seems to me that there isn’t a general rule that helps to find the best moment for each game.