I used to pre-order a ton because I like collecting physical games and some come with special launch versions but now that I'm older I do it a lot more selectively. These days I pretty much only pre-order a game if I'm 100% sure I will love it (like I pre-ordered the Death Stranding collector's edition because I love Kojima's weirdass games and it ended up being one of my favorite games ever). Sometimes I'll pre-order a game if it's from a smaller-ish studio and I really liked their previous work (like Larian's DOS/BG3, Owlcat's Pathfinder games, Guild Wars 2 expansions, Yoko Taro's stuff, etc.) because I'm familiar with the kind of work those studios do and know I'll be getting it anyway.