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Baldur's Gate 3's success is not about setting a new "standard"

Gaming @kbin.social

Larian Studio CEO Swen Vincke pushes back on Baldur's Gate III setting a new standard for games

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53 comments
  • There has been such a furor over this.

    The way I see it, there are enough quality indie games, retro emulators, and titles on the average Steam backlog (to the point that it's a tired joke) that gamers can afford to only pay for unmissable quality. People know what they like, and they talk.

    Economically, money is scarce. So is free time, for a lot of us. We don't care what you tell us to "expect" from you, game publishers with hot takes on BG3. If you can't release finished games at game prices, maybe you're not the beating heart of the game industry.

  • What devs see is "all those other devs are too lazy to make a good game".

    What players mean is "all those other games are full of micro transactions and sell missing content and features as dlc", which is not the same thing.

    What players want to be addressed is the bad influence investors have on the products. Publishers aren't interested in publishing good games, they only care about money.

    Devs don't go about making a game only for the money. Most of them would rather do it the same way Larian does it, focus on quality and provide a good gaming experience, but their hands are tied.

    So the message gamers try to get out goes to the wrong recipients, and it's obviously being taken the wrong way.

    Pretty obvious and epic communication fail.

    • And that's why I generally prefer indie games. Many indie games are made with passion, with money being down the list of priorities. AAA games are made with money first, though there is certainly passion as well, it's just not the top on the list. As studios and budgets get bigger, so will their expectation of profits.

      So if you want better games, buy from smaller studios. Show them that you value passion over high budget.

      • But when a game like BG3 comes out, with all the stuff no indie studio can afford to do and it has this level of passion without sticking its hand in your pocket, it absolutely reminds us that AAA doesn't have to be like it is.

        As good as indie RPGs are, Disco Elysium was only able to afford voice acting after being a giant commercial success. No small budget team is going to be able to have mocap work on the level of BG3. These things cost a lot of money and involve paying a lot of workers. BG3's Kickstarter got to be carried by the name recognition of Baldur's Gate and Dungeons & Dragons in general, following a huge popularity surge for the latter thanks to the rise of real-play podcasts and such.

        Do games need hundreds of voice actors and incredible mocap to be good? No. But it's something that only AAA studios have the ability to add, and it's a shame that it's all going into the next fifa/COD/whatever other money pit GAAS the industry is shitting out.

53 comments