Beware early adopter syndrome

Wariness of being an early adopter is appropriate to all things but the tech world in particular.

Tech tends to be all about getting the shiniest devices or the flashiest games to the market as quickly as possible, so money can be made from the latest iGadget. Speed is vital because if the iPhone 67 comes out before Android v34, iPhone 67 gets all the attention and all the sales.

And that's how it's been with the phones and tablets recently - the iPad and iPhone got to the market early and got seen as The Item to have. To be fair to Apple there, they got it bang on with their early devices and it's only on the more recent ones (iPhone 4 Antenna-gate, 4g support etc) that they've got caught out from rushing a device to market before it's truly ready as Apple's software and design quality control has dropped.

The game world gets hit very badly by this too. On my shelf, there's a game called Master of Orion 3. There were 7 long years before the essential and incredible Moo2 got its sequel Moo3. But when Moo3 did come out, it was a massive letdown in both gameplay (which was atrocious - it played itself with no input possible from the player) and stability. Even worse was Championship Manager 3, which was a bug ridden pile of filth. To show what I think of CM3, I will break my no swearing rule :

CM3 was an abomination that the developers should have been ashamed of. Out of the box, it was barely playable through half a season if you were lucky. It was a steaming pile of crap, which was followed by the developers throwing even more manure at us through full price sequels that fixed hardly any of the bugs in the original CM3. It was a disgrace to gaming and the developers are very lucky they're still in business.

Yes - I wasted my cash on several of those sequels in the hope I'd finally get a playable game. Didn't happen.

What makes it worse is that the magazine reviews said it was awesome. I'm a firm believer that the magazines don't actually play the same games as the ones that end up on the shelf. Or they're so much in the pocket of the publishers that they suppress the bad points. This is what makes the opinion of people like Totalbiscuit ever more important, as he's honest about what he thinks about a game. If it's a stinker, he lets us know. If it's really bad, he'll rant which can be hilarious.

Yet we still see people going down the early adopter route.

Sticking to the game world - Diablo 3 came out this week and people will have been seeing it hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The developer, Blizzard, have a mantra "we shall release when it's ready". In Diablo 3's case, that appears to have been replaced by "we shall beat the competition to release date". The game isn't finished and the infrastructure wasn't up to the release loading :

Missing pvp - I wouldn't be bothered by this but I know others see it as essential
Missing auction house - this was a major feature
Inability to play - it's an online only game and the servers weren't letting people in

That "inability to play" is something where the pirates have spoiled our fun by the way. It's an anti-copy mechanism that is aimed at stopping people freeloading. But that's me getting sidetracked.

Early adoption syndrome hits all sorts of things.

The early hybrid cars weren't particularly worth having as they didn't have enough power. It's only on Gen3 Prius (which forms the basis mechanically for my Lexus CT) where they got enough power to get great economy and great flexibility. People who switched early to HD tellies got tellies that don't have all the dots to let them be sharp. Similar with my amp, early adopters wouldn't have got HD quality sound.

And you'll see people all the time get caught out by rushing to buy the latest and greatest new gadget. Take care when you see Shinies, waiting before jumping will :

Let you get it cheaper
Let you sensibly think - will I actually use this ?
Often get you something more polished
Allows other people to find out it's a stinker before you open your wallet

But then again, we are talking Shinies here ... and Shiny Gadgets are very tempting indeed.

PS I'm getting the stiffness after the games now. May not be able to move much over the weekend (not a problem - cricket's on telly). Thighs and hamstrings feel like they're on fire, bruise on right shin now extends over 9 inches. Bruise on left shin hasn't come out yet. Will I be fit for Wednesday's game ? We shall see. Fingers crossed.