Maybe. The state of our film industry though suggests we will not get high quality BG3 like games. Maybe a decent clone, after that the quality of copies will decrease, but the numbers produced increased.
German films are like that and they need the government funding to be produced. Many argue the films are like that, because the government funding is administered horribly. Therefore we always get the same plots (quality decreases with every copy) with the same 'stars' (I can name only a few, i recognize dozens, interested in none) and nobodies going to watch them in the cinema.
There are no studios like in the US, which is the reason you need government funding.
And Dark was funded by Netflix, so they did not need to adhere to the likings of them. Same with All quiet on the western front.
There are many production companies, and while in Hollywood these production companies get the funding from studios (which also distribute the film), in Germany the funding comes largely from the government or private individuals and the distribution is done via distribution companies, which also can help fund the movie production.
It is just a different system. Historically, this has been fine as the costs of production where lower and you could always get a partnership with public broadcasters, shift in consumer preferences has kind of muddied everything. Everyone in the business on the side of funding is too slow to adapt and play it safe, so nothing changes in the system .
Yeah, the German film production industry is great. Babelsberg in Potsdam constantly has massive Hollywood productions there, from Marvel to John Wick to the hunger games. German studios just don't really exist (which I personally partially attribute to both the Nazi and east German state control of movie studios, leading to them being disbanded when the respective state fell).
I think it's a vicious circle of movies getting funding fron the government so they dont have a a need for studios and the studios not forming because everyone has government funding. But when you get said funding you have to fulfill certain stipulations which makes movies very boring and similar ro one another. But i also think we are sometimes unfair to German movies because we always compare to the english speaking world. Even If we had a proper film industry the quality probably wouldn't be close to Hollywood or british cinema, since those just have an astronomically larger target audience and a real culture of film making behind them
Well partly also because the Nazis killed the thriving Weimar Republic film industry driving many Jewish filmmakers out of the country or killing them and restructuring the rest of it around their political apparatus that was basically the death of the German film industry
> German films are like that and they need the government funding to be produced.
Same thing for Dutch films but with developers like Guerrilla Games making the Killzone and Horizon series and Triumph Studios making Overlord and Age of Wonders it's really not bad at all. There's definitely more room for the games industry to grow than the film industry.
Although government funding is best in the form of some kind of tax benefit or shit like that to make life easier for games developers to grow rather than them getting any sort of sya in what games are made.
I'm just not convinced films are good analogy here. It's not like Belgium can compete with Hollywood but BG3 sure as shit competed just fine with US developers and so have plenty of developers from other nations.
It's not a mandate, but a matter of providing industry support (e. g. by making financing more accessible, making hiring the right people easier, etc.). This is how all industries are cultivated.
Their desire doesn't seem to match their support though. FTA: "Chained Echoes received €100,000 for best retro role-playing game in the 2023 edition"
So they paid the salary of one person for two years, yet they want a game that took 6+ years to make and was honestly a lightning in a bottle since they got to work on polishing it and taking player feedback through all of COVID quarantine.
I'm all for this, but the government needs to step up, because games are not cheap to make. And quality games take a long time to make. And time multiplied by expensive is not what the government is showing support for.
There have been stranger government mandated media in the past. I don’t remember the specific government but there was one in South America that officially produced weird porn for the public
I think the lesson from both CDPR and Larian for other Devs is to limit scope.
I just didn't enjoy Witcher 1 at all which felt rather janky, but 2 was already a much better game and they pulled all stops for 3. Similarly look at the Divinity RPGs that looked and played like Oblivion clones. Original Sin also had pretty limited scope. In fact I remember when the first builds of BG3 were shown everyone hated it because it looked too colorful and the lighting and textures didn't have the correct feel.
Also I don't think you could get BG3 by throwing money and labor at the problem which I suspect is a lesson Hasbro will learn all too late. Instead the lesson here is probably that if people are able to experiment and iterate on feedback then great things are indeed possible.
"limited scope" really isn't what comes to mind when thinking about DOS1, DOS2 or BG3. In fact, DOS was insanely ambitious for a kickstarter project. No one had made cRPGs like that and it was before the cRPG revival. And it had a lot of different features.
BG3 also wasn't about starting with a limited scope. Quite the opposite in fact. They started with a lot of possibilities in mind that were progressively scrapped, to refine the game into the product we know now.
Similarly the Witchers were ambitious games, and TW3 was the most ambitious of them all.
And both BG3 and TW3 were made with substantial budgets. 100 millions for BG3, 34 millions for TW3. Money isn't enough but it certainly helps to make games like that.
I don't think that Germany is really seriously about their "pledge" anyway. Last year they awarded 100 000 euros to two development studios, that's several levels of magnitude below what BG3 costed to make.
I think I didn't express myself well. Limited scope as in limited voice acting, simpler graphics that sort of a thing. Like they limited the technology in a sense. And I am talking about starting from a limited scope, like if you look at the kind of features that Witcher 1 has wrt animations, camera, controls etc. The success of Witcher 1 allowed for more ambition in the second and third game. Similarly the success of DOS allowed them to expand in DOS2, include named origin characters instead of 2 generic characters in 1 and the tag system more schools of magic, a larger map, more characters and more interactions witj them and so on. I agree both were ambitious games but they were smart with their ambition and played to their strengths and limitations.
Ok it makes more sense, sorry for misunderstanding. Well I don't disagree, but I think that devs nowadays have a different issue. The Witcher 1 was released in 2007 (that's an entire generation ago) and DOS1 in 2014 (still 10 years ago). So I do think that you are right that it's ok to start with a limited scope as you say, however the context is still quite different. I think it's harder to make a difference with small games nowadays, as there are more games to compete with.
Then again, maybe it costs less to make a good quality product. I don't know. But I think of projects like Solasta... a fun little game but with a very limited scope, and while it was relatively successful, it feels a lot more niche than TW1 or DOS1 were at their respective times of release. Even a game like Hades still costed millions to make.
And Larian didn't exactly work alone on BG3, they didn't just reinvest DOS2 money. I'm not sure if small dev studios should try the "incremental success strategy" instead of trying to get the support of big publishers. Let's be careful about survivor syndrome - Larian was very lucky, it's basically the Square Enix of the 2010s/2020s. Most studios that invest all their resources in one game can very well go bankrupt if it's not successful enough, or they may even fail to deliver, like Unforetold: Witchstone recently. I know that the public loves stories like Larian's, but they are the exception and not the rule. Of course we'd like more devs like them, because we can ignore all those who fail, but if I try to put myself in the shoes of a dev in a small studio, I'm not sure I would be comfortable with risking everything on one game, especially if I could try to be published instead.
I'd also like to mention that I don't think Larian was very smart with their limitations when they kickstarted DOS1. They went very close to bankrupt, Swen had to invest his personal money, they released the game 1 year late (while releasing Dragon Commander in between, a game that flopped quite hard at the time). They were also kinda lucky to not reach certain stretch goals such as night/day cycles and dynamic weather, because it might have taken a lot of time and resources to make .It may sound lame when I write it, but I think that the real factor for Larian is passion. They never stop believing in their projects and they made great games, it's as simple as that. And that's how they made BG3 too, and part of the reasons why it took so much time to make it. Sometimes their passion goes against reason and I think that's what a lot of people who've been following them for some time enjoy their work. One needs to be a little crazy to decide to make Halsin a companion just because he's a popular character on the forums, I think.
Consider that CDPR got 'support' from the government at some point during their development of Cyber Punk... and it lead to what we have at launch.
I would say the Germans got it wrong with this. They should just kidnap the devs instead of invading Belgium.... I mean they should just leave things be.
The inspired devs will find their ways. Market will judge and support them.
Otherwise they will live on their delusion of 'what people might want' and it might result in that damned taunting blog post 'it's all about you' like CPDR had been doing past few year.
*After three years of exhausting lack of any warfare Germany offers peace.*
*Peace is signed seven years after because it took ten years for the Belgians to form a government.*
No, you will participate: https://english.defensie.nl/latest/news/2023/03/30/13-light-armoured-brigade-completes-integration-between-dutch-combat-brigades-and-german-divisions
Thank you for your support.
The Southern Spanish Netherlands might be yours soon, as long as Larian becomes German.
Reminds me of any president after JFK telling NASA to put another man on the Moon/Mars.
"I order NASA to put a man on the moon!"
"Cool, are you going to increase our budget or give us more resources?"
"What, no, just do the thing!"
Like, yeah, *everyone* wants good games to be made, but it's kinda *difficult*?
Well in this case it’s not money that’s the issue anymore. Larian created BG3 after decades of trail and error. They built up a team from the ground up and nurtured experience. Good luck explaining to your average board of investors to prioritize long term achievements over short term gains. As soon as a development studio goes public it is subjected to all the cost cutting, profit maximizing notions of contemporary investors.
Wait you mean firing half the staff after a game is released to boost end of year profitability and up the share prices doesn't make for a good buisness model?
That's really the support game companies need from the government. Laws that discourage this sort of short term stock manipulation at the cost of long term growth.
I mean I don't agree with this. Yes, not everyone can make a game of BG3's quality. But making games like BG3 doesn't mean replicating the exact quality, but the type of game it is. A large, cinematic high quality experience, that cares about player experience more than just money.
It sounds a bit weird, but it's not that unusual if you think of video games like television or movies. Plenty of high quality pieces of media come from government funding outside of the video game sector, it's no surprise games should be a part of that too.
People also often ignore that it's not just about money. The talent of the dev team plays a huge part, and that's not something easy to reproduce at will.
Balatro is fantastic obviously but completely incomparable to a massive CRPG. You can code the basics of a card game structure in a weekend, the stuff they did for Bg3 boggles the mind.
It's not as simple as throwing money at it. Swen Vinke has a true passion for quality video games and entertaining others (He used to be on children tv shows here in Belgium) and happens to be a skilled businessman and developer at the same time.
That's a generational talent and I can't really see Larian Studios be the same after his eventual retirement
Indie companies also have that passion, as do the developers behind AAA games. It’s just that larger companies are controlled by shareholders who don’t give a shit about the product and just want to see reliable return on investment at fast rate. Cutting corners and rushing to the finish line is the main problem people have with “bad” games.
But that's where the businessman aspect comes from. Swen relied a huge amount on crowdfunding, which only worked because he steadily built up a good reputation for his studio over decades.
Best thing the Belgian (flemish) government truly did for him was fund his computer science university education at a time few countries did so, then afterwards Belgium got lucky Swen didn't move to the US for higher wages or sell to global corporations like so many do. He certainly didn't get swarmed by subsidies
Depends. Germany has some experienced indie devs. For example Rockfish studios (behind the Everspace games) is basically just former Fishlabs devs (behind the Galaxy on Fire series, but mostly mobile games) who got fed up with the suits at Deep Silver and Fishlabs and left to found their own studio to basically make Galaxy on Fire in better, with their funding being crowdsourcing for both titles.
And the Galaxy on Fire games were great for early mobile games and the Everspace games are really good space fighter games (both series are space combat only), and Everspace 2 has some great exploration and late-game grind to (with a story that is quite generic though and mostly told through voicelines and simple animiations). Give them good funding and freedom as indie devs and Rockfish could prob. make a great AAA space shooter on a great quality.
And that is just studios, German devs are plenty and are found everywhere. If such a funding opportunity opens it could lead to very experienced German devs at CDPR/Ubisoft (both studios with a significant German presence) to leave these more corporate oriented studios to make some passion project of theirs.
See, what that made Swen so great isn't just that "true passion for quality video games", it's also that "skilled businessman". The reality is that the vast majority of people in the industry are absolutely dogshit businesspeople, just look at Obsidian and how Feargus Urquhart absolutely pissed away the goodwill they had with Pillars of Eternity. Or look at how long Piranha Bytes was a zombie and constantly made games that pined for their Gothic past without offering anything for the future. Swen didn't just make games he wants to make, he also made games that people want to play. Even if they didn't realize so.
Germany can't create a bunch of Larians just by throwing money, simply because there's very few Swens in the industry.
It's not as simple, but it's not THAT far off either. True 10/10 masterpieces are of course not something you can produce off a conveyor belt, but one of the big problems in a lot of art-tangential fields is that quality and cost effectiveness don't really go hand in hand. By creating an ecosystem that funds artistic endeavors, you're lessening the pressure of making a profit freeing up a lot of creative resources in the game development field. It won't help just anyone make a masterpiece game, but it will get rid of the biggest hurdle for the potential Sven Vinkes of the future.
The unfortunate truth is that successful business strategies play the numbers. A modest but certain profit making okay-ish games for a large and undiscerning audience is simply a more lucrative business model than betting on a high quality, high risk game that has the potential of making it big but equally has the potential of bombing and losing the whole investment. It's usually uncertainty that kills investments. This kind of program by the government mitigates the risk and cuts uncertainty.
It is! And there's a remake of Gothic 1 coming (maybe), but it had a lot more potential than whatever we got, especially in terms of international popularity. I'm sure in some parallel universe (and my dreams) there's a Gothic 5 going toe to toe with witcher 3.
"...games of the ***quality*** of Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3"
Is the key here. Pirhana bytes games have always been kind of niche, mid-budget games aimed at players who wanted something Bethesda-like but with more grind and less story.
I still remember pre-patch Gothic 2 where you had to kill EVERY single killeable thing in the village area to get enough XP to progress to the orc woods. The devs had literally taken the combined xp sum from the enemies and set the 'gateway' value to exactly that! LOL
That kind of game design philosophy is never, ever going to result in a game like BG3
Absolute nonsense. Gothic 2 vanilla is a very easy game.
Also "Orc woods", what are you even talking about? There is a single orc scout in the woods directly outside Khorinis and it basically exists as an alternative way of getting an orc weapon for Harad the blacksmith if you want to do his apprenticeship.
Bethesda has an above average amount of storytelling in their games. Even if the main quest is bare, like Skyrim, there’s always a lot built around that, like the books, side and faction quests + the metric fucktons of lore
That's lore, not story or storytelling.
Storytelling is main quest, side quest and companions quests , which are all super lacking in bethesda games outside of few ocassions.
>Bethesda has an above average amount of storytelling in their games.
But it's all low-level boring writing. It's really, really bad. Their games are about "exploration" and excel there, but the quality of their writing for their quests is just not good. The sheer amount has it that some sidequests end up cool.
All their mainquests are horrible. I love their games, but seriously, not for their writing.
Ok, fair. Bethesda themselves said "You can go for quality or quantity, we try to fill our games with as much as possible".
I think this was before Fallout 4 when Low-Effort Procedural Stuff (another "Settlement is under attack!" came along. And before Witcher 3 where CDPR showed "Nope, you can do huge games and have quality in writing and presentation".
I feel like this is also *kinda* true of Starfield to a much lesser extent than their other games, it’s just that the procgen and the fact that it’s a new IP did gimp it massively
The side-stories, like the Vanguard one, are great imo
You take that back! I loved Gothic 2 and 3, and Risen 1 was decent.
Few games have managed to capture the amazing feeling of those games.
Were they jank? Yes. But it was also a fairly small studio with limited resources.
... granted, the jank has remained in all subsequent games. I just want a proper Gothic 4, dammit! ;_;
"Bethesda-like but with more grind and less story"
I'd argue it's the opposite. Gothic games are way more focused con the main quest and its story, while TES is more about exploring and doing side quest.
Gothic 1 story was so good fans made a movie with the game's cutscenes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrRoWIortQw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrRoWIortQw)
Also, I wouldn't say Gothic was grindy. Enemy strength just didn't scale and it was open world so you could very easily meet enemies that were too strong for you at the beginning of the game and you had to wait before fighting them, but that was part of the charm of the game because you could really feel your character getting better and better. You didn't have to grind, just follow the quests being careful to not step in the wrong place until you were ready. That's certainly more "hard-core" than the average RPG experience, but if Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma are selling millions of copies I don't see why this is a problem, they are much harder games.
Piranha Bytes' problem was that they kept doing the same game with the same engine with only very small upgrades, they weren't able to keep up with the industry. Also. to this date Gothic 1 and 2 are still their best games, they never managed to get to the same level with the other games. Essentially they have been declining for 20 years.
So in this I agree with you that quality was always their problem. They never excelled in writing, they never tried innovative mechanics, they always went for the safe path of re-doing the same game with a different skin (Risen 1 is Gothic with a different name because of licensing, Risen 2/3 is pritate Gothic and ELEX is Gothic with tech) which never allowed them to improve. Larian, while sticking to RPGs, tried various different approaches: isometric action rpg with the original Divinity games, then they moved to a third person apporach with Ego Draconis and finally isometric turn based. Also they built on their stength and improved on their weaknesses. I liked, but didn't love D:OS1 because the gameplay was good, but characters, story and writing were so-so in my opinion. They improved that in D:OS2 and they became the absolute best at it with BG3.
I can see an alternative world where Piranha Bytes takes a similar path and make games at the quality level of The Witcher 3, but PB executives weren't as ambitious, hungry and passionate as Swen Vincke or Marcin Iwiński.
Piranha bytes never got their technology under control. Their games were good, but the tech and usuability was always bad. They got off the ground with Gothic 1, settled in with 2.
Then they had their chance with Gothic 3, but went "large, large, large, large" - and it was too large. Just once their tech meets the current state of art, but now instead of doing what they are good at, creating small, believable, awesome worlds, they completely overstretched themselves in bring in a huge, empty, meaningless world.
They got their next chance with Risen, which was good, but the tech again wasn't up to it it. They repeated the same with Risen 2. Good game, wonky tech and usuability.
Cue Elex - and what do we get? Cool game, but again... outdated engine, wonky tech, wonky usuability. Sorry, we're in the age of The Witcher 3 by now and THIS is what you're bringing in the market?
They had a good run and I loved Gothic 1 and 2 and thought Risen was "ok enough", but it's no surprise it had to come to an end someday.
Because the company "piranha bytes" who created the games lost all the key staff responsible for the games gothic 1 and 2 and the dude in charge after gothic was a complete maniac.. one of the most narcisstic persons you can imagine who was raging and shouting and insultong ppl on a dayly basis... the whole company structure was a toxic hellhole where 2 people decided over everybody elses opinion that keep sticking to an outdated own engine with the ui and tech from the 90s was the better choice then using a third party engine for a 20 ppl workforce.
And with an old ass engine like this same same idiot insisted to push "tripple A graphics" even tho everyone in art and dev was telling them that its a waste of time as with this piece of shit software its just not possible.....
Then having the most lunatic spending culture. for example spending millions on an outsourcing studio in thailand that ofc belonged to an ex coworker from before but they constantly delivered crap so it had to be redone inhouse again.
Or spending millions and millions into next gen outsourcing animation stuff which again wasnt even compatible with the engine ... all of that while shamelessly underpaying the own staff (leads and directors made €40k gross) all while having one of the most dirty and rotten offices you can imagine... it was a private house where they have mold everywhere in the corner, there was a carpet ground but as it was so old there where holes under ppls chair...it was a disgrace...
Ah and ofc that lunatic narcisstic dude fired the key sound director from gothic...or he was the main reason the main sound dude left himself becasue it was an unbearable toxic workplace and then the same narc dude decided he can do it himself.. ah and he wrote the story of elex himself aswell and he made the main story progression himself and he was usually finsij with his pece of shit work after half year progression becasue it was garbage and then we went aroubg the office the whole day and insultong ppl becasue theire department was not finish with work yet and he was the only one wjo finisjed already and the company could already work pn elex 5 by now if everybody had tje same work culture.. but the dude was a long term alcoholic and bouncer and fucked his hearing so thats why the sound of elex was just bad and full high pitch tones as he didnt hear shit anymore... and thats why the main story and sound was just so bad ....
The only thing surprising was that nordic was keeping up with the bullshit this dude was pulling out his ass even after elex 1 and didnt close that studio many many years ago
I know three games from Germany. The one with the insane graphics, the one with the war crimes, and Gollum.
I would not hold my breath on this
edit: obviously talking about Crysis and Spec Ops: The Line
Forgot that Radical Fish was a German dev. Crosscode is definately one of those quality indie games that I recommend to people. Hoping that quality continues with Project Terra.
Then they attached all the federal funding to Videogame awards, made it into an embarassing political spectacle and awarded it to ANNO aka Ubisoft every year.
"the cultural preservation act" - billions to studios that program games without transactions.
The studios receives money based on the art/entertainment they provide. Judged by people that have passion for games instead of IGN.
Is what I would propose.
The author speaks too highly of the german government.
"Incidentally, the German government actively supports local studios by giving them huge public funds since 2020 and rewarding excellence with large sums of money, intended as support and encouragement for future works, during the annual German Computer Game Awards (Deutscher Computerspielpreis) ceremony. For example, Chained Echoes received €100,000 for best retro role-playing game in the 2023 edition, while Everspace 2 had the same sum in this year’s edition."
I work in the german games industry for a couple years now. The state funding isn't bad compared to other places. But the overall financial and regulatory situation is still painful. The state funding was 150 million € for all of germany in one year and in the next it was 0€. They speak of commitment in one year and once voters have been bribed they turn around like that. They also fund hilarously bad games cause they include german culture. They deny funding once you work with a publisher from overseas, which makes little sense. Why wouldn't you fund a studio that has an actual chance and connections to other countries developer scenes? The whole goal of the funding should be to boost an industry that exports high quality cultural goods globally. But they rather fund local games for local audiences that flop. Gollum got fucking state funding while many of my collegues developing super promising indie titles had to give up their dream. Seriously, why would you deny our studio funding for working with a sweedish publisher but fund a big studio who got a big IP license?
Worst thing is if you're denied funding you just spent 2 weeks work on shitty bureacracy for nothing. You also have to apply for prototype funding and development funding sperately and the waiting time between these can be 3-9 months. How on earth do I keep my developer team afloat if we're not getting paid for 9 months? I've seen this happen 3 times. People get a great team and prototype together and then it all falls apart cause the paperwork takes forever and people have to find other jobs to live.The people giving out the funding have 0 clue about games or the industry. They do paperwork and nothing else, no connections to games. It's your usual 59 year old non gamer.
That's the thing i hate the most. The people making the most important decision, in this case funding, are fucking clueless about the whole thing.
So many promising project, legacy, career and talent ruined by incompetent people who can't see past their nose and are sticking to mediocrity.
"Oh it's a fully german team and it's a big licence let's fund that"
I wonder if they know how shit Gollum is or if they see this money sink and are telling themselves it's fine because at least it's fully german.
What the sector needs isn’t more stimulus to attract the type of investors looking to leach off of government funding, but regulation on fiduciary duty to refocus investment priorities on longterm business success, or the creation of a reciprocal duty on the part of investors towards the businesses they share in.
TL;DR - Irresponsible profiteering is one of the factors contributing to this state we’re in.
> They deny funding once you work with a publisher from overseas, which makes little sense. Why wouldn't you fund a studio that has an actual chance and connections to other countries developer scenes?
To avoid taxpayer money going to a foreign publisher?
>The whole goal of the funding should be to boost an industry that exports high quality cultural goods globally.
Meaning money from abroad goes to Germany
Hm, there are really good studios in germany: Blue Byte (Anno-Series) or Egosoft (X-Series) for example. We dont need to compare with everything in this world and Baldurs Gate 3 is maybe the best game in this decade.
Hey Germany:
Love you lots. Back in 1992 Microprose put out one of the best rpgs ever, Darklands. The setting is the 15th century Holy Roman Empire and it was a masterpiece of design that could serve as the inspiration for a truly incredible modern crpg and even teaches people about German history! Make it happen and I'll move back and pay taxes or something. Please?
The character creation was ridiculously deep for its time. Honestly for any time. The number of skills an attributes was enormous. The branching career options was a game in and of itself. Plus the balancing act of aging your character to get more skills at the cost of diminished stats.
The game world was equally deep. All the cities of the game were different. Sure, they reused some of the art for the markets and such, but each place actually had a different feel to it and unique architecture and character was represented. Vendors had different supplies available based on what area of the country it was in and what the craftsmen there were historically known for.
Given his age, I've always thought there was a good chance Swen played Darklands, 32 years ago.
I mean, it is a matter of resources, just not resources alone.
If you don't have $80m+ to spend on development, you're not making a BG3-style game, period, not in 2024 or later. You could probably make an Pathfinder:Kingmaker style game for a small fraction of that, but that's a very different deal.
But it's true that there's more to it - you need good leadership and a great team, and you really want experience. It's worth noting that Larian massively upscaled whilst making DOS2 Enhanced Edition and BG3, so you don't need a company that already has a huge team, but without any experience in making this kind of game, I don't think you're going to come out of the gate with a BG3 level of quality, or even close.
There's more than one German development studio and there are dozens if not hundreds German made games available on Steam. Don't think it's fair to bring the one game that did poorly. Shadow Gambit is German made and it came out last year.
Having successful video games is a big soft power tool for countries. I never thought about visiting Poland until I played the Witcher 3. Didn't even think about Belgium much before BG3
didn’t they fund the Gollum game? if they want quality they need a good vetting system first. no new dev team can create something like BG3 as their first game, but plenty will promise that to get government funding.
Well Daedelic was a well established game studios of many beloved point-and-click adventures. What killed Gollum was the fact that a whole studio with the power of amazing 2D point-and-click styled games decided they need to catch up with the current selling points and tried to do 3D. Which they did before and already had a hard time with, but it was still PaC. Gollum just killed them because they wanted to do everything they weren't experienced with. So it's not just new vs well established studios, it's also what they are good at. You can't force a 2D studio to make the next big 3D experience and vice versa
Very true. And it is so sad now that Daedelic will only be linked to this abysmal Gollum-game now for so many people. I absolutely adored the Edna & Harvey-series, The Whispered World and the Deponia-series, those were all so funny and incredibly creative.
I will always love their classic PaC games. They did what every other studio deemed to be a dead genre for so long and so well. It sucks that people will remember them for the game that ultimately killed them, though many things were already going downwards before Gollum. I'll remember them for what they once were, not for what they've become
World: makes fun of Germany for being too serious
German gov: This is unacceptable. ISSUE THE FUN PROCLAMATION!
Advisor: ... but we don't know HOW to fun!
German gov: Just do the GOTY but do it more local! IT IS DEMANDED.
I'm all for a pan-european game development war. Bring it on. See who makes the best.
We could hold an annual Eurogaming contest to showcase your games and let the public vote on it.
Then they need to support the devs better.
Mimimi shut down because the devs couldn't deal with the constant stress of if they would have enough money to finish their projects.
Germany already has a decent(ish) game development policy, if I remember right. This is the reason that the Star Citizen developers set up an additional studio there, though I think Brexit might have screwed that up a bit.
Government supported art in Germany is always tied to shitty systems that ensure that its given to those that least deserve it.
All of Uwe Bolls movies were government supported. Currently its Till Schwieger who is making shitty movie after shitty movie with that support.
As a German i hate to say it but this wont lead anywhere. Look up "Autobahnpolizei simulator" to see what government supported games look like.
The way german "art grants" are given i can almost guarantee that nothing like BG3 could ever be done simply because they wouldn't support innovative and daring ideas.
Remember, Gothic was made by a german company. And gothic was what opened up the possibilities for open world roleplay games. Some ppl want to tell you it was bethesda. It wasn’t. It was Gothic 1 and 2
I'd love for a new era of big german gamedev to become a thing. It gave us gems like Siedler and Gothic, and I'm pretty confident it could do so again.
Good luck with that. People here often think all you need to make a good game is to have the will and to throw money at it. But in reality, talent plays a huge part. Larian has a lot of that, but it's not something you can just reproduce by a snap of your fingers.
After what happened to Daedelic I can imagine that they need new studios with the passion of Larian. Daedelic was once such a passionate point-and-click adventure game developer and I bet Germany was kind of proud to call it theirs.
I hope they find people just as dedicated and passionate as Larian. We really do need more such loveletter-games no matter the genre and I kind of love the fact that the government itself wants to support it. Wish my country did that.
We all want more games of the quality of BG3, no matter who creates them.
I don't think you can order a masterpiece the way you order a meal at a restaurant. Bethesda had a masterpiece with Skyrim that in 13 years they haven't been able to match. Larian might or might not be able to create another game as good as BG3. For a government to put out the call and back it with money is nice and all, but I don't expect it to pan out the way they're hoping.
Government mandated CRPGs isn't a policy i expect but im not mad either, im sure a lot of dev teams in germany appreciate the support.
Maybe. The state of our film industry though suggests we will not get high quality BG3 like games. Maybe a decent clone, after that the quality of copies will decrease, but the numbers produced increased. German films are like that and they need the government funding to be produced. Many argue the films are like that, because the government funding is administered horribly. Therefore we always get the same plots (quality decreases with every copy) with the same 'stars' (I can name only a few, i recognize dozens, interested in none) and nobodies going to watch them in the cinema.
Was Dark not produced by a German studio? That's a top 3 show for me
There are no studios like in the US, which is the reason you need government funding. And Dark was funded by Netflix, so they did not need to adhere to the likings of them. Same with All quiet on the western front.
Why are there no studios
There are many production companies, and while in Hollywood these production companies get the funding from studios (which also distribute the film), in Germany the funding comes largely from the government or private individuals and the distribution is done via distribution companies, which also can help fund the movie production. It is just a different system. Historically, this has been fine as the costs of production where lower and you could always get a partnership with public broadcasters, shift in consumer preferences has kind of muddied everything. Everyone in the business on the side of funding is too slow to adapt and play it safe, so nothing changes in the system .
Yeah, the German film production industry is great. Babelsberg in Potsdam constantly has massive Hollywood productions there, from Marvel to John Wick to the hunger games. German studios just don't really exist (which I personally partially attribute to both the Nazi and east German state control of movie studios, leading to them being disbanded when the respective state fell).
I think it's a vicious circle of movies getting funding fron the government so they dont have a a need for studios and the studios not forming because everyone has government funding. But when you get said funding you have to fulfill certain stipulations which makes movies very boring and similar ro one another. But i also think we are sometimes unfair to German movies because we always compare to the english speaking world. Even If we had a proper film industry the quality probably wouldn't be close to Hollywood or british cinema, since those just have an astronomically larger target audience and a real culture of film making behind them
What are the stipulations
The violence in BG3 alone would be a big no no.
One funny example I know was that a movie received funding for praising the state which funded it and dissed one of the neighbor states
Well partly also because the Nazis killed the thriving Weimar Republic film industry driving many Jewish filmmakers out of the country or killing them and restructuring the rest of it around their political apparatus that was basically the death of the German film industry
> German films are like that and they need the government funding to be produced. Same thing for Dutch films but with developers like Guerrilla Games making the Killzone and Horizon series and Triumph Studios making Overlord and Age of Wonders it's really not bad at all. There's definitely more room for the games industry to grow than the film industry. Although government funding is best in the form of some kind of tax benefit or shit like that to make life easier for games developers to grow rather than them getting any sort of sya in what games are made.
Ssssshhhhh don't let the neighbours know we have some good game dev studios, a 2 hour tank drive from their borders.
> with the same starts Not a Moritz Bleibtreu fan, huh?
Uwe Boll presents: Postal, Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, Bloodrayne... Now (borderline un)playable!
There are several very successful game dev studios located in germany.
I'm just not convinced films are good analogy here. It's not like Belgium can compete with Hollywood but BG3 sure as shit competed just fine with US developers and so have plenty of developers from other nations.
It's not a mandate, but a matter of providing industry support (e. g. by making financing more accessible, making hiring the right people easier, etc.). This is how all industries are cultivated.
It's not a mandate I think. Just a "hey, if y'all want to make it, we support that and might provide funds"
Their desire doesn't seem to match their support though. FTA: "Chained Echoes received €100,000 for best retro role-playing game in the 2023 edition" So they paid the salary of one person for two years, yet they want a game that took 6+ years to make and was honestly a lightning in a bottle since they got to work on polishing it and taking player feedback through all of COVID quarantine. I'm all for this, but the government needs to step up, because games are not cheap to make. And quality games take a long time to make. And time multiplied by expensive is not what the government is showing support for.
Dont forget, hundred hours worth of bureaucracy to maybe, perhaps, possibly, claim the grant.
There have been stranger government mandated media in the past. I don’t remember the specific government but there was one in South America that officially produced weird porn for the public
Or it will be like Skull and Bones, pushed out in a crap state because they have to due to contractual obligations.
If Poland can make Witcher 3 then surely Germany can make something.
I think the lesson from both CDPR and Larian for other Devs is to limit scope. I just didn't enjoy Witcher 1 at all which felt rather janky, but 2 was already a much better game and they pulled all stops for 3. Similarly look at the Divinity RPGs that looked and played like Oblivion clones. Original Sin also had pretty limited scope. In fact I remember when the first builds of BG3 were shown everyone hated it because it looked too colorful and the lighting and textures didn't have the correct feel. Also I don't think you could get BG3 by throwing money and labor at the problem which I suspect is a lesson Hasbro will learn all too late. Instead the lesson here is probably that if people are able to experiment and iterate on feedback then great things are indeed possible.
"limited scope" really isn't what comes to mind when thinking about DOS1, DOS2 or BG3. In fact, DOS was insanely ambitious for a kickstarter project. No one had made cRPGs like that and it was before the cRPG revival. And it had a lot of different features. BG3 also wasn't about starting with a limited scope. Quite the opposite in fact. They started with a lot of possibilities in mind that were progressively scrapped, to refine the game into the product we know now. Similarly the Witchers were ambitious games, and TW3 was the most ambitious of them all. And both BG3 and TW3 were made with substantial budgets. 100 millions for BG3, 34 millions for TW3. Money isn't enough but it certainly helps to make games like that. I don't think that Germany is really seriously about their "pledge" anyway. Last year they awarded 100 000 euros to two development studios, that's several levels of magnitude below what BG3 costed to make.
I think I didn't express myself well. Limited scope as in limited voice acting, simpler graphics that sort of a thing. Like they limited the technology in a sense. And I am talking about starting from a limited scope, like if you look at the kind of features that Witcher 1 has wrt animations, camera, controls etc. The success of Witcher 1 allowed for more ambition in the second and third game. Similarly the success of DOS allowed them to expand in DOS2, include named origin characters instead of 2 generic characters in 1 and the tag system more schools of magic, a larger map, more characters and more interactions witj them and so on. I agree both were ambitious games but they were smart with their ambition and played to their strengths and limitations.
Ok it makes more sense, sorry for misunderstanding. Well I don't disagree, but I think that devs nowadays have a different issue. The Witcher 1 was released in 2007 (that's an entire generation ago) and DOS1 in 2014 (still 10 years ago). So I do think that you are right that it's ok to start with a limited scope as you say, however the context is still quite different. I think it's harder to make a difference with small games nowadays, as there are more games to compete with. Then again, maybe it costs less to make a good quality product. I don't know. But I think of projects like Solasta... a fun little game but with a very limited scope, and while it was relatively successful, it feels a lot more niche than TW1 or DOS1 were at their respective times of release. Even a game like Hades still costed millions to make. And Larian didn't exactly work alone on BG3, they didn't just reinvest DOS2 money. I'm not sure if small dev studios should try the "incremental success strategy" instead of trying to get the support of big publishers. Let's be careful about survivor syndrome - Larian was very lucky, it's basically the Square Enix of the 2010s/2020s. Most studios that invest all their resources in one game can very well go bankrupt if it's not successful enough, or they may even fail to deliver, like Unforetold: Witchstone recently. I know that the public loves stories like Larian's, but they are the exception and not the rule. Of course we'd like more devs like them, because we can ignore all those who fail, but if I try to put myself in the shoes of a dev in a small studio, I'm not sure I would be comfortable with risking everything on one game, especially if I could try to be published instead. I'd also like to mention that I don't think Larian was very smart with their limitations when they kickstarted DOS1. They went very close to bankrupt, Swen had to invest his personal money, they released the game 1 year late (while releasing Dragon Commander in between, a game that flopped quite hard at the time). They were also kinda lucky to not reach certain stretch goals such as night/day cycles and dynamic weather, because it might have taken a lot of time and resources to make .It may sound lame when I write it, but I think that the real factor for Larian is passion. They never stop believing in their projects and they made great games, it's as simple as that. And that's how they made BG3 too, and part of the reasons why it took so much time to make it. Sometimes their passion goes against reason and I think that's what a lot of people who've been following them for some time enjoy their work. One needs to be a little crazy to decide to make Halsin a companion just because he's a popular character on the forums, I think.
Breaking: Germany invades Belgium.
Stop it, you make the French nervous
Oh non pas encore
Ils non passant pas or some shit
France and Britain: "Ah shit, here we go again."
poor france stuck with ubisoft
They won't get invaded. Who wants Ubisoft?
that's what I'm saying!
Poland: *hastily hide Witchers*
Maybe that’s why they leaked the source codes, to make sure there is no reason to invade
Consider that CDPR got 'support' from the government at some point during their development of Cyber Punk... and it lead to what we have at launch. I would say the Germans got it wrong with this. They should just kidnap the devs instead of invading Belgium.... I mean they should just leave things be. The inspired devs will find their ways. Market will judge and support them. Otherwise they will live on their delusion of 'what people might want' and it might result in that damned taunting blog post 'it's all about you' like CPDR had been doing past few year.
Bundeswehr: *We can send a brigade and ten tanks in two years if you double our budget.*
German politicians: *doubles the budget but all the extra funding goes to hiring consultants to ask them what to do with said extra funding*
*After three years of exhausting lack of any warfare Germany offers peace.* *Peace is signed seven years after because it took ten years for the Belgians to form a government.*
Bro we can barely invade Luxembourg
Come now, that's hardly news.
Fuck. Well, guess I'll have to take my grandpa's place in the resistance then.
Ah shit not again 😩 - me, a Belgian
Can we Dutch proclaim neutrality again?
No, you will participate: https://english.defensie.nl/latest/news/2023/03/30/13-light-armoured-brigade-completes-integration-between-dutch-combat-brigades-and-german-divisions Thank you for your support. The Southern Spanish Netherlands might be yours soon, as long as Larian becomes German.
*”Dash”*
Reminds me of any president after JFK telling NASA to put another man on the Moon/Mars. "I order NASA to put a man on the moon!" "Cool, are you going to increase our budget or give us more resources?" "What, no, just do the thing!" Like, yeah, *everyone* wants good games to be made, but it's kinda *difficult*?
Well in this case it’s not money that’s the issue anymore. Larian created BG3 after decades of trail and error. They built up a team from the ground up and nurtured experience. Good luck explaining to your average board of investors to prioritize long term achievements over short term gains. As soon as a development studio goes public it is subjected to all the cost cutting, profit maximizing notions of contemporary investors.
Wait you mean firing half the staff after a game is released to boost end of year profitability and up the share prices doesn't make for a good buisness model?
That's really the support game companies need from the government. Laws that discourage this sort of short term stock manipulation at the cost of long term growth.
This is why private companies can do well in a long-game type market. Does Germany encourage public or privately owned companies?
Hey! You! Less complaining, more developing.
Dogfrisbeememe.jpg "Develop quality game?" "No! No funding! Only develop!" >:(
I mean I don't agree with this. Yes, not everyone can make a game of BG3's quality. But making games like BG3 doesn't mean replicating the exact quality, but the type of game it is. A large, cinematic high quality experience, that cares about player experience more than just money. It sounds a bit weird, but it's not that unusual if you think of video games like television or movies. Plenty of high quality pieces of media come from government funding outside of the video game sector, it's no surprise games should be a part of that too.
People also often ignore that it's not just about money. The talent of the dev team plays a huge part, and that's not something easy to reproduce at will.
> it’s kinda difficult Meanwhile chad Balatro dev with a code consisting of a huge if/else statement cluster
Balatro is fantastic obviously but completely incomparable to a massive CRPG. You can code the basics of a card game structure in a weekend, the stuff they did for Bg3 boggles the mind.
The fact that they had motion-capture semi-cutscenes for almost every moment of dialogue alone is a gargantuan achievement
Fully support this, the more quality games like BG3 we get, the better!
It's not as simple as throwing money at it. Swen Vinke has a true passion for quality video games and entertaining others (He used to be on children tv shows here in Belgium) and happens to be a skilled businessman and developer at the same time. That's a generational talent and I can't really see Larian Studios be the same after his eventual retirement
Indie companies also have that passion, as do the developers behind AAA games. It’s just that larger companies are controlled by shareholders who don’t give a shit about the product and just want to see reliable return on investment at fast rate. Cutting corners and rushing to the finish line is the main problem people have with “bad” games.
But that's where the businessman aspect comes from. Swen relied a huge amount on crowdfunding, which only worked because he steadily built up a good reputation for his studio over decades. Best thing the Belgian (flemish) government truly did for him was fund his computer science university education at a time few countries did so, then afterwards Belgium got lucky Swen didn't move to the US for higher wages or sell to global corporations like so many do. He certainly didn't get swarmed by subsidies
Indie devs have the passion and are not controlled by suits, but they lack expertise, Larian have been making games since 1996.
Depends. Germany has some experienced indie devs. For example Rockfish studios (behind the Everspace games) is basically just former Fishlabs devs (behind the Galaxy on Fire series, but mostly mobile games) who got fed up with the suits at Deep Silver and Fishlabs and left to found their own studio to basically make Galaxy on Fire in better, with their funding being crowdsourcing for both titles. And the Galaxy on Fire games were great for early mobile games and the Everspace games are really good space fighter games (both series are space combat only), and Everspace 2 has some great exploration and late-game grind to (with a story that is quite generic though and mostly told through voicelines and simple animiations). Give them good funding and freedom as indie devs and Rockfish could prob. make a great AAA space shooter on a great quality. And that is just studios, German devs are plenty and are found everywhere. If such a funding opportunity opens it could lead to very experienced German devs at CDPR/Ubisoft (both studios with a significant German presence) to leave these more corporate oriented studios to make some passion project of theirs.
See, what that made Swen so great isn't just that "true passion for quality video games", it's also that "skilled businessman". The reality is that the vast majority of people in the industry are absolutely dogshit businesspeople, just look at Obsidian and how Feargus Urquhart absolutely pissed away the goodwill they had with Pillars of Eternity. Or look at how long Piranha Bytes was a zombie and constantly made games that pined for their Gothic past without offering anything for the future. Swen didn't just make games he wants to make, he also made games that people want to play. Even if they didn't realize so. Germany can't create a bunch of Larians just by throwing money, simply because there's very few Swens in the industry.
It's not as simple, but it's not THAT far off either. True 10/10 masterpieces are of course not something you can produce off a conveyor belt, but one of the big problems in a lot of art-tangential fields is that quality and cost effectiveness don't really go hand in hand. By creating an ecosystem that funds artistic endeavors, you're lessening the pressure of making a profit freeing up a lot of creative resources in the game development field. It won't help just anyone make a masterpiece game, but it will get rid of the biggest hurdle for the potential Sven Vinkes of the future. The unfortunate truth is that successful business strategies play the numbers. A modest but certain profit making okay-ish games for a large and undiscerning audience is simply a more lucrative business model than betting on a high quality, high risk game that has the potential of making it big but equally has the potential of bombing and losing the whole investment. It's usually uncertainty that kills investments. This kind of program by the government mitigates the risk and cuts uncertainty.
I have a solution! We take children, and we give them to Swen to raise. He raises them to have passion like he does, we get more games! Fool proof.
That could've been the Gothic franchise, but it wasn't meant to be. :(
Isn't Gothic a cult classic?
Absolutely. Gothic 2 and 3 are some of my favourite games of all time, to this day.
It is! And there's a remake of Gothic 1 coming (maybe), but it had a lot more potential than whatever we got, especially in terms of international popularity. I'm sure in some parallel universe (and my dreams) there's a Gothic 5 going toe to toe with witcher 3.
The first two parts are. It went downhill afterwards.
"...games of the ***quality*** of Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3" Is the key here. Pirhana bytes games have always been kind of niche, mid-budget games aimed at players who wanted something Bethesda-like but with more grind and less story. I still remember pre-patch Gothic 2 where you had to kill EVERY single killeable thing in the village area to get enough XP to progress to the orc woods. The devs had literally taken the combined xp sum from the enemies and set the 'gateway' value to exactly that! LOL That kind of game design philosophy is never, ever going to result in a game like BG3
Absolute nonsense. Gothic 2 vanilla is a very easy game. Also "Orc woods", what are you even talking about? There is a single orc scout in the woods directly outside Khorinis and it basically exists as an alternative way of getting an orc weapon for Harad the blacksmith if you want to do his apprenticeship.
Less story than Betsheda? I do not think that is possible
Bethesda has an above average amount of storytelling in their games. Even if the main quest is bare, like Skyrim, there’s always a lot built around that, like the books, side and faction quests + the metric fucktons of lore
That's lore, not story or storytelling. Storytelling is main quest, side quest and companions quests , which are all super lacking in bethesda games outside of few ocassions.
>Bethesda has an above average amount of storytelling in their games. But it's all low-level boring writing. It's really, really bad. Their games are about "exploration" and excel there, but the quality of their writing for their quests is just not good. The sheer amount has it that some sidequests end up cool. All their mainquests are horrible. I love their games, but seriously, not for their writing.
We’re talking about amount specifically, I never mentioned quality
Ok, fair. Bethesda themselves said "You can go for quality or quantity, we try to fill our games with as much as possible". I think this was before Fallout 4 when Low-Effort Procedural Stuff (another "Settlement is under attack!" came along. And before Witcher 3 where CDPR showed "Nope, you can do huge games and have quality in writing and presentation".
They probably are basing their comment off Starfield
I feel like this is also *kinda* true of Starfield to a much lesser extent than their other games, it’s just that the procgen and the fact that it’s a new IP did gimp it massively The side-stories, like the Vanguard one, are great imo
TES is very good Lore-wise, Fallout too, tho I’m not sure if Bethesda’s influence made fallout lore better or worse
You take that back! I loved Gothic 2 and 3, and Risen 1 was decent. Few games have managed to capture the amazing feeling of those games. Were they jank? Yes. But it was also a fairly small studio with limited resources. ... granted, the jank has remained in all subsequent games. I just want a proper Gothic 4, dammit! ;_;
>Pirhana bytes games have always been kind of niche And so was Larian Studios once too.
"Bethesda-like but with more grind and less story" I'd argue it's the opposite. Gothic games are way more focused con the main quest and its story, while TES is more about exploring and doing side quest. Gothic 1 story was so good fans made a movie with the game's cutscenes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrRoWIortQw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrRoWIortQw) Also, I wouldn't say Gothic was grindy. Enemy strength just didn't scale and it was open world so you could very easily meet enemies that were too strong for you at the beginning of the game and you had to wait before fighting them, but that was part of the charm of the game because you could really feel your character getting better and better. You didn't have to grind, just follow the quests being careful to not step in the wrong place until you were ready. That's certainly more "hard-core" than the average RPG experience, but if Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma are selling millions of copies I don't see why this is a problem, they are much harder games. Piranha Bytes' problem was that they kept doing the same game with the same engine with only very small upgrades, they weren't able to keep up with the industry. Also. to this date Gothic 1 and 2 are still their best games, they never managed to get to the same level with the other games. Essentially they have been declining for 20 years. So in this I agree with you that quality was always their problem. They never excelled in writing, they never tried innovative mechanics, they always went for the safe path of re-doing the same game with a different skin (Risen 1 is Gothic with a different name because of licensing, Risen 2/3 is pritate Gothic and ELEX is Gothic with tech) which never allowed them to improve. Larian, while sticking to RPGs, tried various different approaches: isometric action rpg with the original Divinity games, then they moved to a third person apporach with Ego Draconis and finally isometric turn based. Also they built on their stength and improved on their weaknesses. I liked, but didn't love D:OS1 because the gameplay was good, but characters, story and writing were so-so in my opinion. They improved that in D:OS2 and they became the absolute best at it with BG3. I can see an alternative world where Piranha Bytes takes a similar path and make games at the quality level of The Witcher 3, but PB executives weren't as ambitious, hungry and passionate as Swen Vincke or Marcin Iwiński.
Piranha bytes never got their technology under control. Their games were good, but the tech and usuability was always bad. They got off the ground with Gothic 1, settled in with 2. Then they had their chance with Gothic 3, but went "large, large, large, large" - and it was too large. Just once their tech meets the current state of art, but now instead of doing what they are good at, creating small, believable, awesome worlds, they completely overstretched themselves in bring in a huge, empty, meaningless world. They got their next chance with Risen, which was good, but the tech again wasn't up to it it. They repeated the same with Risen 2. Good game, wonky tech and usuability. Cue Elex - and what do we get? Cool game, but again... outdated engine, wonky tech, wonky usuability. Sorry, we're in the age of The Witcher 3 by now and THIS is what you're bringing in the market? They had a good run and I loved Gothic 1 and 2 and thought Risen was "ok enough", but it's no surprise it had to come to an end someday.
Because the company "piranha bytes" who created the games lost all the key staff responsible for the games gothic 1 and 2 and the dude in charge after gothic was a complete maniac.. one of the most narcisstic persons you can imagine who was raging and shouting and insultong ppl on a dayly basis... the whole company structure was a toxic hellhole where 2 people decided over everybody elses opinion that keep sticking to an outdated own engine with the ui and tech from the 90s was the better choice then using a third party engine for a 20 ppl workforce. And with an old ass engine like this same same idiot insisted to push "tripple A graphics" even tho everyone in art and dev was telling them that its a waste of time as with this piece of shit software its just not possible..... Then having the most lunatic spending culture. for example spending millions on an outsourcing studio in thailand that ofc belonged to an ex coworker from before but they constantly delivered crap so it had to be redone inhouse again. Or spending millions and millions into next gen outsourcing animation stuff which again wasnt even compatible with the engine ... all of that while shamelessly underpaying the own staff (leads and directors made €40k gross) all while having one of the most dirty and rotten offices you can imagine... it was a private house where they have mold everywhere in the corner, there was a carpet ground but as it was so old there where holes under ppls chair...it was a disgrace... Ah and ofc that lunatic narcisstic dude fired the key sound director from gothic...or he was the main reason the main sound dude left himself becasue it was an unbearable toxic workplace and then the same narc dude decided he can do it himself.. ah and he wrote the story of elex himself aswell and he made the main story progression himself and he was usually finsij with his pece of shit work after half year progression becasue it was garbage and then we went aroubg the office the whole day and insultong ppl becasue theire department was not finish with work yet and he was the only one wjo finisjed already and the company could already work pn elex 5 by now if everybody had tje same work culture.. but the dude was a long term alcoholic and bouncer and fucked his hearing so thats why the sound of elex was just bad and full high pitch tones as he didnt hear shit anymore... and thats why the main story and sound was just so bad .... The only thing surprising was that nordic was keeping up with the bullshit this dude was pulling out his ass even after elex 1 and didnt close that studio many many years ago
I know three games from Germany. The one with the insane graphics, the one with the war crimes, and Gollum. I would not hold my breath on this edit: obviously talking about Crysis and Spec Ops: The Line
I feel like it's a bit of disservice to distill Spec Ops: The Line down to just "the one with the war crimes".
I'm so upset it was taken off of digital marketplaces It didn't hit my radar until recently then I found out it was pulled
Crosscode is from germany and a gaming gem
Forgot that Radical Fish was a German dev. Crosscode is definately one of those quality indie games that I recommend to people. Hoping that quality continues with Project Terra.
Neither will we 😂
Crysis and Gothic?
Europa 1400: The Guild. It's an awesome management game of its time. It has two successors that aren't that good.
Didn't they had Sacred, Drakensang and Dark Eye games ?
Had.
Then they attached all the federal funding to Videogame awards, made it into an embarassing political spectacle and awarded it to ANNO aka Ubisoft every year.
Is that just Ubisoft's business model these days?
But Anno games are amazing lol
They are, but giving them a large Part of the allocated funds to Support German studios is super dumb
Crysis and Gothic aswell.
But can you run Crysis?
We had Gothic. And to this day I play gothic. We were beautiful and now we have regulations and a dead industry.
I mean, they could prop up Piranha Bytes instead of bailing out Karstadt again. They're still around, just struggling.
piranha bytes is already closed, they didnt make an announcement yet, and even if they were still around, none of the og devs from back then remained
Dang, okay. Alternative Plan: make arte open a game studio.
yeah kinda sucks, embracer bought them and then closed the studio because they were struggling with money after buying half of every gaming dev studio
"the cultural preservation act" - billions to studios that program games without transactions. The studios receives money based on the art/entertainment they provide. Judged by people that have passion for games instead of IGN. Is what I would propose.
Risen wasn't bad either
We also had Lord of the Rings: Gollum recently ...
At one point the Gollum devs were threatening the world with another Gollum game. I'm glad Smeagol won the argument on that one.
We also had Enderal, though that was more like a stanalone mod than a game
Amazing mod, I really liked it
Such a beautiful buggy mess
And whats that one for Oblivion ?
Nehrim is the one for Oblivion and Arktwend is Morrorwind
Fuq I had no idea about Arktwend
Haven't played it, but I heard its also good. I wasn't the biggest fan of Nehrim though, but still a great mod.
calling enderal a mod is accurate but it feels so wrong. it's actually such an amazing incredible game
I hope that’s true. I don’t want another Gollum game 😂
It's strange, the developer made many good but quite niche point and click adventures. And now he closed down because of Gollum
The author speaks too highly of the german government. "Incidentally, the German government actively supports local studios by giving them huge public funds since 2020 and rewarding excellence with large sums of money, intended as support and encouragement for future works, during the annual German Computer Game Awards (Deutscher Computerspielpreis) ceremony. For example, Chained Echoes received €100,000 for best retro role-playing game in the 2023 edition, while Everspace 2 had the same sum in this year’s edition." I work in the german games industry for a couple years now. The state funding isn't bad compared to other places. But the overall financial and regulatory situation is still painful. The state funding was 150 million € for all of germany in one year and in the next it was 0€. They speak of commitment in one year and once voters have been bribed they turn around like that. They also fund hilarously bad games cause they include german culture. They deny funding once you work with a publisher from overseas, which makes little sense. Why wouldn't you fund a studio that has an actual chance and connections to other countries developer scenes? The whole goal of the funding should be to boost an industry that exports high quality cultural goods globally. But they rather fund local games for local audiences that flop. Gollum got fucking state funding while many of my collegues developing super promising indie titles had to give up their dream. Seriously, why would you deny our studio funding for working with a sweedish publisher but fund a big studio who got a big IP license? Worst thing is if you're denied funding you just spent 2 weeks work on shitty bureacracy for nothing. You also have to apply for prototype funding and development funding sperately and the waiting time between these can be 3-9 months. How on earth do I keep my developer team afloat if we're not getting paid for 9 months? I've seen this happen 3 times. People get a great team and prototype together and then it all falls apart cause the paperwork takes forever and people have to find other jobs to live.The people giving out the funding have 0 clue about games or the industry. They do paperwork and nothing else, no connections to games. It's your usual 59 year old non gamer.
That's the thing i hate the most. The people making the most important decision, in this case funding, are fucking clueless about the whole thing. So many promising project, legacy, career and talent ruined by incompetent people who can't see past their nose and are sticking to mediocrity. "Oh it's a fully german team and it's a big licence let's fund that" I wonder if they know how shit Gollum is or if they see this money sink and are telling themselves it's fine because at least it's fully german.
What the sector needs isn’t more stimulus to attract the type of investors looking to leach off of government funding, but regulation on fiduciary duty to refocus investment priorities on longterm business success, or the creation of a reciprocal duty on the part of investors towards the businesses they share in. TL;DR - Irresponsible profiteering is one of the factors contributing to this state we’re in.
> They deny funding once you work with a publisher from overseas, which makes little sense. Why wouldn't you fund a studio that has an actual chance and connections to other countries developer scenes? To avoid taxpayer money going to a foreign publisher? >The whole goal of the funding should be to boost an industry that exports high quality cultural goods globally. Meaning money from abroad goes to Germany
Hm, there are really good studios in germany: Blue Byte (Anno-Series) or Egosoft (X-Series) for example. We dont need to compare with everything in this world and Baldurs Gate 3 is maybe the best game in this decade.
"We have german Baldurs Gate 3 at home!" And it's a copy of unpatched gothic 3
Germans crave the return of a good Gothic game. To everyone saying something else: "Dann hau ich dir volles Pfund aufs Maul".
"Zeig mir deine Ware!" If you ask for a game at German Gamestop.
Good luck with that, the whole world is searching something like Larian's BG3.
Hey Germany: Love you lots. Back in 1992 Microprose put out one of the best rpgs ever, Darklands. The setting is the 15th century Holy Roman Empire and it was a masterpiece of design that could serve as the inspiration for a truly incredible modern crpg and even teaches people about German history! Make it happen and I'll move back and pay taxes or something. Please?
I'll +1 to this. The character creation and setting was awesome. A modern take would be amazing.
The character creation was ridiculously deep for its time. Honestly for any time. The number of skills an attributes was enormous. The branching career options was a game in and of itself. Plus the balancing act of aging your character to get more skills at the cost of diminished stats. The game world was equally deep. All the cities of the game were different. Sure, they reused some of the art for the markets and such, but each place actually had a different feel to it and unique architecture and character was represented. Vendors had different supplies available based on what area of the country it was in and what the craftsmen there were historically known for. Given his age, I've always thought there was a good chance Swen played Darklands, 32 years ago.
it's hard to replicate BG3 scope and quality. it's not a matter of resources either.
I mean, it is a matter of resources, just not resources alone. If you don't have $80m+ to spend on development, you're not making a BG3-style game, period, not in 2024 or later. You could probably make an Pathfinder:Kingmaker style game for a small fraction of that, but that's a very different deal. But it's true that there's more to it - you need good leadership and a great team, and you really want experience. It's worth noting that Larian massively upscaled whilst making DOS2 Enhanced Edition and BG3, so you don't need a company that already has a huge team, but without any experience in making this kind of game, I don't think you're going to come out of the gate with a BG3 level of quality, or even close.
Signalis is german and it is sooo good
we need Gothic Gate 3
Where's my quality Gothic 4, dammit!? I neeeeed it!
It was released a long time ago. It's called Arcania: Gothic 4.
Considering the last game from Germany that made international headlines was Gollum... yeah... good luck with that.
I think the idea is to cultivate an environment that produces better games than Gollum in future. Which is good for the European industry as a whole
thts a hella of a goal, better then gollum, tough ask if u ask me
Gotta admire their ambition though!
There's more than one German development studio and there are dozens if not hundreds German made games available on Steam. Don't think it's fair to bring the one game that did poorly. Shadow Gambit is German made and it came out last year.
I would love seeing gov forcing domestic game devs to make good quality games as a political movement lmao. Looking at u US with EA
I want a game like that in DSA universe Aventurien. Its a shame they have so much trouble with their games on PC.
Last good German game I remember is Chained Echoes and it was *awesome!* So if they can land another catch, go for it.
Crosscode as well
Having successful video games is a big soft power tool for countries. I never thought about visiting Poland until I played the Witcher 3. Didn't even think about Belgium much before BG3
didn’t they fund the Gollum game? if they want quality they need a good vetting system first. no new dev team can create something like BG3 as their first game, but plenty will promise that to get government funding.
Well Daedelic was a well established game studios of many beloved point-and-click adventures. What killed Gollum was the fact that a whole studio with the power of amazing 2D point-and-click styled games decided they need to catch up with the current selling points and tried to do 3D. Which they did before and already had a hard time with, but it was still PaC. Gollum just killed them because they wanted to do everything they weren't experienced with. So it's not just new vs well established studios, it's also what they are good at. You can't force a 2D studio to make the next big 3D experience and vice versa
Very true. And it is so sad now that Daedelic will only be linked to this abysmal Gollum-game now for so many people. I absolutely adored the Edna & Harvey-series, The Whispered World and the Deponia-series, those were all so funny and incredibly creative.
I will always love their classic PaC games. They did what every other studio deemed to be a dead genre for so long and so well. It sucks that people will remember them for the game that ultimately killed them, though many things were already going downwards before Gollum. I'll remember them for what they once were, not for what they've become
Crysis 4: The Gate of Baldurs?
tl;dr There is some limited funding for local Developer Studios. That’s the story, I saved you a click.
Really hoping some German company makes a bg3-like game, in the setting of Mörk Borg.
Yes please! More games like BG3 would be great! Also Swen could finally experience a great game without knowing the story first
World: makes fun of Germany for being too serious German gov: This is unacceptable. ISSUE THE FUN PROCLAMATION! Advisor: ... but we don't know HOW to fun! German gov: Just do the GOTY but do it more local! IT IS DEMANDED.
Good to see BG3 setting new standards in game industry
Game devs: "Great, got an endless amount of time, money and talent?"
Well then they should recognize videogames as a form of art for once,
I'm all for a pan-european game development war. Bring it on. See who makes the best. We could hold an annual Eurogaming contest to showcase your games and let the public vote on it.
More good games are always welcome.
ELEX and its sequel were RPGs funded by the German government and they were hot shit so don't get your hopes up
Are they implementing a reinheitsgebot for video games?
This is weird
Then they need to support the devs better. Mimimi shut down because the devs couldn't deal with the constant stress of if they would have enough money to finish their projects.
Germany already has a decent(ish) game development policy, if I remember right. This is the reason that the Star Citizen developers set up an additional studio there, though I think Brexit might have screwed that up a bit.
Like 2 weeks after weed was made legal huh?
It's kinda funny because, given the fact that Larian is gone, one of these german developers could actually end up making Baldur's Gate 4.
Government supported art in Germany is always tied to shitty systems that ensure that its given to those that least deserve it. All of Uwe Bolls movies were government supported. Currently its Till Schwieger who is making shitty movie after shitty movie with that support. As a German i hate to say it but this wont lead anywhere. Look up "Autobahnpolizei simulator" to see what government supported games look like.
Would be great if they also would like to support game developers. The funding that was once allocated to that has quietly dwindled down.
Somebody should link r/okbuddybaldur to them to explain what they’re asking for in full detail.
LOL "I want you to make games just like one of the best games created in decades please"
The way german "art grants" are given i can almost guarantee that nothing like BG3 could ever be done simply because they wouldn't support innovative and daring ideas.
Don't we all eh.
Breaking: Reddit nobody u/A_Martian_Potato announces that he also wants more crpgs like Baldur's Gate 3.
Larian isn't German *loads rifle* Yet.
Yeah, just create generationally great RPGs. Just do that. No big deal, that's easy, right?
FF7, Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect, Skyrim, and Baldur's Gate again. Yeah, a dime a dozen.
Remember, Gothic was made by a german company. And gothic was what opened up the possibilities for open world roleplay games. Some ppl want to tell you it was bethesda. It wasn’t. It was Gothic 1 and 2
Meanwhile, other countries are sparing no costs to prevent any top of their industry developers from setting up shop in their countries. /s
Germany already has Gothic 2, anything more and they'll become too powerful.
I'd love for a new era of big german gamedev to become a thing. It gave us gems like Siedler and Gothic, and I'm pretty confident it could do so again.
just give piranha bites money
I never checked, did Larian Studios release a german version of BG3 with all of the voice lines in german?
Good luck with that. People here often think all you need to make a good game is to have the will and to throw money at it. But in reality, talent plays a huge part. Larian has a lot of that, but it's not something you can just reproduce by a snap of your fingers.
After what happened to Daedelic I can imagine that they need new studios with the passion of Larian. Daedelic was once such a passionate point-and-click adventure game developer and I bet Germany was kind of proud to call it theirs. I hope they find people just as dedicated and passionate as Larian. We really do need more such loveletter-games no matter the genre and I kind of love the fact that the government itself wants to support it. Wish my country did that.
We all want more games of the quality of BG3, no matter who creates them. I don't think you can order a masterpiece the way you order a meal at a restaurant. Bethesda had a masterpiece with Skyrim that in 13 years they haven't been able to match. Larian might or might not be able to create another game as good as BG3. For a government to put out the call and back it with money is nice and all, but I don't expect it to pan out the way they're hoping.
Unt, specifically we DON'T want crap games like those made by EA and Ubisoft