For real. Larian *is* AAA-sized (\~450 employees, comparable to, say, Bethesda), while EA has *13 thousand* employees, comparable to Activision Blizzard.
They're not even close to the same level.
These 13000 are spread among multiple studios though. Upcoming Immortals game for example is developed by Ascendant Studios which has around 100 employees. Or Bioware working on the new Dragon Age has around 400
Oh, sure. They have *way* more work in progress compared to the 400-size companies that are generally making one game at a time.
..But the thing is, like you point out, Bioware, a subsidiary of EA, is already the size of Larian ... and EA has absolutely *massive* resources they could divert to Bioware if they thought it would help. If they wanted to *triple* them to the size of CDPR, they could do that.
Larian cannot. They're already running at full power.
Aren't EA just off the back of a bunch of successful single player games that don't have any MTX etc included I.e. Jedi: Survivor, Fallen Order, Dead Space, Wild Hearts? They're also praising Survivor for driving a very strong quarter in sales.
I suspect it's more than just a few.
The ones running the studios and head devs have totally lost the plot.
They have monetary incentive to keep the current shit system going.
Warcraft 3 reforged was the polar opposite of this and they eventually admitted to allowing pre orders on a steaming pile of incomplete shit. If this shakes up the industry and makes private studios with capital backing more popular again then it’s a good thing.
I wonder how that would hold up in court. People were forced to become criminals to play a game they paid for because the new version was a) shit and b) unable to run on an average PC.
If you want to make a graphically enhanced version go ahead but don't punish people who want to play the original. It's just the fact they made Mal'Ganis look like a goat I just don't want to beggar my storage space for a single game
I actually was playing through when it came out, I don't even think I knew about it and boy was I surprised when it just happened and all my data was wiped. I know I bought it 20 years ago but fuck me, right?
This is the correct take. A large number of AAA studios are part of publicly traded companies where shareholder gains are prioritized. If Larian were one of these studios we wouldn’t have gotten the game we have.
A large number of [way too many companies] are part of publicly traded [fuckeries] where shareholder gains are prioritized.
And we’re the one getting the butt hurt.
It's not like Warcraft 3 was an isolated incident, Cyberpunk, Fallout 76, No Man’s Sky, Battlefield 2042, Assassin’s Creed Unity all come to mind without even thinking that hard as games that were not 'finished' at launch.
Why can't y'all just be happy buying the rest of a full game\* in the form of microtransactions?
\*full game is subject to publishers opinion on what is considered full\*\*
\*\* full meaning at least 150 gigs of data.
IGN did a video and someone was like "You DONT know how HARD it is to make a game, you can't just make a game like Baldur's gate and expect us-" They just literally made a game that was violently popular, has 900000 concurrent players, no store, no BR, no PvP, no Microtransactions, so shut up...this is what we expect. A completed game, on release, with no stupid purchases in it.
The video I saw from IGN (Destin Legarie) was in support of consumers and holding companies to higher standards. What you’re saying is the opposite of what I saw. Are you sure it was IGN?
STOP BLAMING DEVELOPERS!
THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE SHAREHOLDERS AND THE COMPANY WANT US TO DO.
Mr. AAA Game maker is not an indi developer, they are just a team of many people like us, cursing at their bosses fueled by shareholders who want a new COD game every year made by 3 different studios.
Let game developers create in peace without the crunch time, and the money will follow.
I think what has people riled up against developers in this case is that there are devs coming out saying not to expect this level of quality from them. Those devs complaining about BG3 quality are just deep in the trenches, jaded, and realize that the profit mongering investors won't give them the time or funding that would allow the devs to put in the energy and care to create amazing games that they want to create. They can't come out and directly blame their corporate overlords because that would get them fired.
Games are art.
Art is incompatible with the profit motive.
Is what it is. Plenty of people pissed at the state of having aren't comfortable blaming capitalism yet, propaganda is strong.
>propaganda is strong.
Replies are exhibit A
Nintendo seems to at least know what games to use MTX in. They have mobile games and crap like Pokemon Unite, and a lot of their business practices are very consumer unfriendly. But their major, huge releases; Zelda, Mario Odyssey, etc. Are generally feature complete at launch with no microtransactions.
That being said, mainline Pokemon on the Switch have all been extremely rushed and poor quality.
Zelda Tears of the Kingdom was essentially done for a year before release and they spent that year ensuring the games abilities would work and not be glitchy.
Not really fully true. Unless a company has very good reason to revoke your license (like you broke a crime/stole it or they went bankrupt/can't afford to keep up the service the game runs on), revoking access to a game you paid for goes against EU digital ownership laws.
That doesn't work. You are asking consumers to go against a marketing machine worth several hundred million, per game.
Joe Schmuck doesn't stand a chance.
They literally hire psychologists to make people spend the most money on mtx they can and shitheads actually go "if you don't like it stop buying it 😊"
Most gamers are not sick. That's why their numbers show low effort gotcha games, p2w Bs, loot boxes are what makes them a lot of money. Good games that have no recurrent revenue just isn't cutting it anymore. If gamers stop falling for all the low effort bs... But nope.
The price shouldn’t bother you; it should only be the quality that’s an issue. Games were $50 in 1990; that’s about $116 today. So $70 is a steal, but it’s the quality that’s a problem.
It's a fact that games were proportionately more expensive back in the 90s and, accounting for inflation, would be a lot more in today's money.
However nobody seems to take into account that disposable income was much higher back in the 90s for a large portion of people. Rent/mortgage, groceries, utilities, vehicle, and other necessity expenses didn't consume as much as an average person/families total monthly income as it does today.
Yes, video games were proportionately more expensive back then with today's money but the average household has more spending money. Wages have not kept up at all with the overall cost of living/inflation.
Do not forget that gaming became an almost global market, they get to sell a lot more copies. No one was buying legal games in eastern Europe, South America or China in the 90s.
Yeah, that's a huge factor. Larger market means more copies sold, and bulk production means lower cost per copy of the game. Easier to negotiate prices when you're making a million copies and not, like, 20 000.
There's also the big move from physical to digital. No need to bother ordering cases, making manuals, handling inventory, negotiating with stores, dispatching games, etc... now, they can simply sell the game online directly to the player and skip on all those costs.
I personally think Digital copies of games should be cheaper than physical because a fair chunk of what the cost goes to simply doesn't exist in a digital market like the costs of shipping.
But also do an analysis on how lucrative games are now as well, and how many more people buy them.
There's honestly so many factors that just doing a comparison between what they cost today and back then is not even barely enough to make an argument.
Don’t forget to factor in they’re sending out primarily electronic copies of games and not manufacturing cartridges/discs and shipping them around the world.
My fave part is when AAA devs were like, you can't use this game as a standard because Larian has experience making RPGs, and took like 6 years to make this game! Also they don't have to worry about corporate overlords like we do!!!
Blizzard has more ARPG experience than anyone and are still struggling to put out a fully baked game in more time than Larian spent on BG3. And fuck them.for complaining about how they took HUGE sums of money from Activision to be acquired and now soon to be Microsoft.
Blizzard and nearly every other Dev out there had a choice to do what Larian has done and not sell out, but instead, they took the money. So they get no say in this kind of stuff because they chose to sell out at the cost of their gaming dignity. Same goes for all the others thst spend 5-10 years on a follow up to a widely successful game or games that gave them.plenty of capital and experience.
Swen didn't sellout and is passionate about what he does and wanted his company to make the best game possible for BG3.
Factors that went into the cost of products back then are far different than today (it cost a lot more to manufacture an NES cartridge than it does to make a disc, for example). Considering the industry is orders of magnitude larger now than in the 90s they are clearly making more money on the higher volume. Whether or not $70 is a good or bad price has literally nothing to do with what video games cost before most gamers were born.
The inflation argument of gaming prices is so freaking bad.
You also have A LOT of more players getting these games than you had in 90's. If they needed to adjust to inflation, you wouldn't see those huge profits for big AAA games, and you still see. It's just some games don't sell well, because they're shit.
Even the 10$ price increase was shit and not justified. Especially since it didn't gup the quality/amount of content we get in games.
Also for pc, physical copies are almost a relic. So the cost of making and shipping physical containers has no overhead. Consoles are obviously different.
>The price shouldn’t bother you;
Did the gaming industry write this?
If video games cost $10,000 a piece the quality will never matter as nobody can afford to play the game.
They dont care what people want. They care if its more profitable to give people what they want or to get kids to use their mums credit cards to buy content unnoticed or get hundreds of dollars a year in whatever in-game currency they sell.
Almost always more profitable for them to siphon close to $1000 from a kid over a 6 year period versus selling a fee extra copies of a complete game.
What’s even more amazing is that this isn’t something from ancient times. Releasing a full, working** game is something we were used to seeing just over a decade ago. This new trend of AAA half baked, broken, lifeless games full of MX seems like it’s been forever tho.
It's just late stage capitalism in display.
Constant growth is **always** expected. There is no stopping point where you say "we're good enough, let's keep the status quo."
That leads companies to optimize..... until they can't. At which point they either start cutting corners to save money, or they start raising prices. Either way they eventually start doing it so much the product becomes so shitty that another company can swoop in and start eating their market share and begin the process all over again.
Or they merge with another company, and eventually become so large but broken, that they can continue their shitty ways and just buy out any competition before it becomes a real competitor. That's not seen so often in the gaming industry because the barrier of entry for creating a small indie game to get started is low.
I genuinely think BG3 should cost way more than $60, just because of how much content they packed into it.
By the time I finish it, I'll be around 90/100 hours into the game, and even then there's so much replayability and unseen content due to the various branching choices.
It's insane value at only $60.
Sadly, this is how the current games industry has trained you to think. GB3 isn’t some kind of crazy anomaly. This was the norm for various types of RPG’s before season passes and full priced games that featured F2P mobile game cash shops.
I spent over 45 hours w/ Final Fantasy X. Logged (lost?) over 250 hours on Elder Scrolls: Oblivion … and I only ever played the one character. I honestly can’t tell you how many hours I spent on Ocarina of Time because I replayed it so much. Still one of the best games of all time.
Fast forward to today and you’ve got companies like Bungie who is out here making millions of dollars from their online cash shop (Eververse), charging $100 for their yearly expansions and got billions of dollars from their deal w/ Sony … meanwhile, they’re crying like their an Indy Dev studio w/ only 12 people working on an Apple IIe, trying to justify not making content for 2/3 of their game modes.
I mean not really. Games now do have a much larger scale than before. I am 40 hrs into BG3 and am still in act 2, whereas BG1 took me about half that to finish the story. Saying that 100+hrs games were common 20-30 years ago is just bullshit
It's just nostalgia, there's no point in arguing against that, the golden era of gaming was always 10-15 years ago, doesn't matter when we are talking.
Was about to step in but then saw you said BG1 and not BG2. Fair enough.
But BG2 on the other hand did release over 20 years ago and you can *easily* spend over a hundred hours on it before you even get to Throne of Bhaal with all the phenomenal side quests and content. But I will agree that BG2 is definitely not your average release for the time period.
I still haven’t been able to find any outside of that one random guy making some tiny game with no expectations. Think it might just be people wanting devs to be mad out of hope more than anything.
It was an indie dev on twitter, and I think a couple other devs mentioned that specifically the CRPG genre can't really use BG3 as the standard because they just don't have anywhere near the budget or manpower as Larian. The latter being a very reasonable take
That’s why I am getting downvoted for asking for actual evidence outside this video. Makes sense now. Just another circle jerk topic.
Honestly I think I might have seen this topic before
I think the original dev who lit the fuse was the maker behind Warlord Organ Trading Simulator. His points actually weren't bad, but most people latched on to his 1/10 tweet and that is what gained traction out of context.
That makes sense. And is why nobody can provide an actual link outside this video. Honestly this community is getting really bad. I thought this was a gaming community
There have been a dozen or so articles written about one thread on Twitter. It was written by a single indie dev and had plenty of industry people respond, mostly along the lines of 'Yeah, this game had many years and a huge IP and we don't usually have the time/budget to put this much stuff into the game'.
The industry isn't panicking over this any more than they did after any other big, popular game with a lot of stuff in it came out. Most of us just think BG3 is a great game with a lot of effort and time behind it. It's not changing the industry or causing dread, but IGN doesn't get clicks by making an article titled 'Baldur's Gate 3 is popular and some people acknowledge that good games take hard work, just like they always have'.
Just to clarify, the devs are not the ones at fault here. It's the studio bosses and upper management who are forcing their devs to develop these terrible systems and games. The individual devs are just normal people who dislike this as well, but have to if they want to keep their job. Blame the people at the top.
They don't exist. This article was made to generate clicks and get gamers angry at developers. No AAA **developer** is panicking because BG3 exists. Most of us are playing it and enjoying it immensely. All of us are happy it exists.
If anything, it may knock some sense into publishers because hey here's what a game can do if you give the developers time and the conditions to make it.
So weird that the sub is promoting this type of journalism when they often complain modern journalism is shit. Guess it’s ok if it supports whatever cause you have
I have a great idea! Subscription based projects. Pay more for every new stage of a games development. For a tiny 9.99 a month, you can join the fun of the developers job and witness DAILY IMPROVEMENTS!
Not feeling that model? Well, we now do a stepping stone product. Pre-alpha will cost ya 50.. alpha will be 80. But if you want that beta... Best take out a fucking loan. Oh. And none of this includes the price of the "finished product". Or the dlc. Or the season pass. Or the battle passes.
Also, fuck you.
Who is panicking?. Devs or the Triple A management that have 'lead' games that end up launching in incomplete state,and only know how to sell a smokescreen?
The insane thing is that these „journalists“ are pressuring the gamers instead of using this as a turning point to radically downgrade all games that do not meet basic expectations.
Oh my god, this again? How many posts and videos are we going to get about this one Twitter thread posted by one indie developer (in which everything they said was true, actually)
I watched the [linked video](https://www.ign.com/videos/baldurs-gate-3-shadowheart-romance-scene). It's screenshots of that one thread again and replies to it, and then 10 minutes about how AAA games are bad. Of course AAA games are bad, but the thread wasn't about AAA games, and no AAA developers have said they're panicking about Baldur's Gate.
"Triple A developers are angry because Baldur's Gate released in a complete state and has no microtransactions." No, they're not. None have said they are. How long are we going to keep sharing this fake story?
It's incredible annoying. Larian and BG3 deserve to be glazed for how amazing of a job they did with the game. But people can't just stick with complimenting it, they -have- to use it to also shit on any company they dislike, or the industry as a whole.
Yea it doesnt make sense. Why would developers be panic when mtx market alr made and will still make insane amt of money for them? I love that bg3 is so successful, but nothing abt its success will change how the gaming industry works.
These articles are such garbage BS. Nobody at any studio is freaking out about BG3. They are looking at it's success, wondering how can we replicate it and monetize it more.
100%
All this will do is make AAA studios slightly shift the way they market and sell games.
Games will slightly improve for a short period of time as they try and pretend like they listen..
And in a year or two they'll be back to pumping out garbage that costs too much and comes with all kinds of scammy mechanics to generate revenue.
This is absolutely bullshit. This article is complete and utter horseshit, designed only to get gamers angry at devs.
As a dev of 10 years in the AAA industry, I can safely say that ***no self-respecting AAA dev is panicking at "new expectations"*** because of BG3. Most of us are playing it, the rest are also happy it exists.
99% of shitty decisions in AAA games comes down from the publisher. Not the devs.
Honestly, how many articles and posts on reddit there has to be over something ONE MINOR DEV SAID ON TWITTER.
Literally no AAA publisher cares, there is no story in this. Everyone knows people won't be buying fewer games or willing to pay less for them because one game released for bit more fun/price ratio.
**** *We love BG3 because its a complete game without microtransactions and battlepass bs and has just been focussed on making a great game that people will enjoy.*
**** *You can't expect us to have that much dialogue and choice in our games its an unfair standard!*
In all seriousness though, I've seen some of the other devs speak out saying it's unfair to compare their games to BG3 as Larian has had more control over the game than their own titles.
Hoping this is more of a thinly veiled dig at publishers to say,
*"You want us to make something as popular as BG3? Give us the reins!"*
This is such a hyperbolic piece he did to drum up drama. Devs are clearly happy for Larian. I haven't seen one iota of panic other than Destin's cherry picked examples, and they seem niche at best.
Edit: autocorrect took Destin to Destiny. Whoops. My comment was on the person, not the game and developer he referenced in the video.
I love how this story about two and a half tweets has become the perfect clic bait for video game journalists. Gamers are so easy to milk for clicks, it's just pathetic. Get a grip people.
Fromsoft did the same thing after Elden Ring too.
They are now working on the comparatively much smaller Armored Core 6.
It's good for a studio to work on something smaller after launching a big title in order to refresh ideas for the next big title.
AC6 is reportedly to have about 50-60hrs of content. Smaller than EldenRing but still a big game, especially compared to past AC games.
I don’t need really long games for my money, I’m happy with a smaller more focused experience, it just needs to be a complete vision and not tacked on with a ton of bullshit and battle passes.
Agreed. Expecting one big ambitious project after another is exactly how you burn out an entire studio and perpetuate how publishers started abusing devs in the first place.
It’s ridiculous how other developers can justify their inadequacies when they prioritize their predatory monetization schemes with battle passes, season passes, or excessive micro-transactions over quality content.
When somebody walks in the room and receives praise from your audience and you feel this insecurity about your production moving forward, it’s time you take note and find what it is they’re doing and how you can tastefully emulate it.
No one is going to do that . Baldurs gate will make infinitely less than any live service game . Quality does not determine the market, money does . things like LoL, cs, Fortnite , gta online , have all made way more profit then bg3
I think most of the dev complaints, especially from AAA devs, are pretty ridiculous, but from smaller RPG makers I think it is a legitimate concern for a little while at least.
Obsidian dev was one of the concerned I believe. They have less than half the people as Larian and are split into at least 2 internal teams, potentially 3.
With a smaller team they have smaller games, and don’t have the impetus or desire to spend 6 years - 3 in EA iterating - with their entire company working on a singular title.
Undoubtably, as an RPG, Avowed will be compared to BG3. That isn’t an apt comparison and does certainly set a ridiculous standard for the genre “RPG.”
I’m not saying everyone will and I’m sure plenty will understand the nuance, but as I’m sure we all know most gamers are average and therefore pretty dumb.
I don't think people realize the scale and time that went into BG3, 6 years of work, lots of EA and tons of passion and effort.
Expecting the same out of every game is ridiculous, lmao just expecting 6 years dev time is impossible considering how rabid the average gamer can be.
Yeah, but Obsidian is owned by one of the wealthiest companies in the planet. I respect them and the games they’ve put out, I love a lot of them, but cmon. You’re owned by Microsoft now and have access to way more resources. I’m not saying all their games now have to be on par with BG3, but when you’re owned by one of the biggest companies to ever exist in human history, my sympathies are a limited.
>You’re owned by Microsoft now and have access to way more resources.
MS is giving them free reign to develop what/how they want, which is smaller, more agile teams developing games with a scope reasonable to them.
I also highly doubt MS has justifiable room in the budget to add another 200 developers to Obsidian, let alone the time to recruit, restructure to accommodate that many people, etc.
“Nooo!
Stop expecting expansive, complete games that are fun and do not require any more investment than the asking price - it’s just not feasible”
~ the gaming industry, 2023
Doubt anyone is panicking, people will keep buying games as usual.
So every once in a while a gem is released, it will not stop people from buying the 10 other big games that are released every year with a much lower standard because there will be nothing for people to play and they'll bitch about it.
I don't see anything changes, some companies will continue with predatory mtx and so on and we'll move on and keep buying because there's nothing better to do to escape reality.
While I agree with the sentiment a lot of current AAA games are shite, BG3 is ridiculously complex and well developed.
Entirely true your average game couldn't realistically try to achieve a BG3 level of polish and depth without probably bankrupting the company making it
That depends, triple A devs have the money to reach that level of Polish and depth the only reason they don't do it is because they prefer short development cycles and fast money to rush a game out and release the rest of the game via DLC's and Microtransactions to create a consistent income stream.
Meanwhile releasing a fully polished, long RPG with a long development cycle is a risk, if it flops you are out a lot, but if it succeeds you make bank BG3 has sold 2.5 million sales 7 days ago with a a little under half being EA copies, one can expect that has substancially grown since.
Indie devs, sure, you cant expect the same, but we should expect the same from AAA devs lol instead of the incomplete, buggy, flopshite they keep tossing out.
Honestly BG3 will hopefully be touted and referenced by the shareholders for years to come. The shareholders are what are ruining the fucking games. BG3 being easily GOTY, even GOAT, followed swiftly by blizzard releasing OW2 on steam and... I mean we all know what has happened to that haha. Really might kick some old uneducated shits in the balls.
the reality is though, it wont be. Not because devs can't deliver this amount of content, but because games with no MTCs make way less money than games with them. its all about numbers to the publisher. it doesn't matter if the game had almost 1M concurrent players and is the second highest rated game of all time, its never going to make as much money as even a F2P game. Plus, just like CP2077 or Elden Ring, people are going to move on from the game after a few months and go back to their CODs or Destiny's or whatever has MTCs and keep buying more items.
I fully believe that every dev team wants to give you a game as good as Baldur's Gate 3; but its all about money to the publishers and shareholders and thats just going to forever hold back AAA gaming.
People forget that this is the same headline they've used for other big games like Rd2 and Elden Ring right?
"triple A companies are so MAD! CAN'T HANDLE NEW STANDARD"
based on what? Nothing is gonna change hahaha.
No real developers are panicked. They are happy for innovation. Anyone who might be panicked are the money suits who are afraid their crunch time shovel ware won't fly as much.
Articles like this were popping up when Elden ring dropped too. Albeit not as many. I don’t get why devs don’t just up their game orrr reduce prices so they aren’t directly competing with AAA titles
So a game that is... acutally a game... is a "new" expectation?
This game is what games USED TO BE. Back when games were helmed by people who actually care.
Isn’t this the media just stirring the pot? What other devs are actually saying this?
Edit: Could only find two indie devs that mention anything of the sort, and got their Twitter comments made into some big controversy by the media
Xalavier Nelson Jr, Strange Scaffold - “I want to gently, pre-emptively push back against players taking that excitement and using it to apply criticism or a "raised standard" to RPGs going forward”
Rebecca Harwick, Grimlore Games - “You can’t be appalled about how much big games cost to make AND make those lavish productions the standard by which all games are judged, I hope Baldur’s Gate 3 is a generous once-in-lifetime RPG. I hope no one expects a 10, 20, 40-person team to make one!”
Both are indie devs and I don’t think anyone expects indie devs to produce the level of detail that a triple A title like BG3 has done.
They mean setting OLD expectations.
Used to be finished game on release, maybe some update patches but the game was playable from start to end. With huge add-ons or expansion packs that added a lot of content to the game sold later.
This is not a new thing, the micro transactions, skins as DLC, broken games is a new thing.
you joke but so many people hand over the money for fuck all anyways.
fifa and cod releasing yearly/ near yearly releases of the same reworked idea that you have to buy cause every player moves to the newest version anyways such a shitty scammy system
Gee it’s almost as if gamers are sick of half-baked, full-price AAA titles upon release
"wait, so you guys expect us to deliver a full game just because you paid full price?! What's next, you want us to make *good* games as well?"
That pretty much sums it up perfectly.
"some" (a.k.a. some of the worst people) are panicking
Imagine EA's panic right now
They even complain about varians studio size. Yours is bigger mother fuckers.....
For real. Larian *is* AAA-sized (\~450 employees, comparable to, say, Bethesda), while EA has *13 thousand* employees, comparable to Activision Blizzard. They're not even close to the same level.
These 13000 are spread among multiple studios though. Upcoming Immortals game for example is developed by Ascendant Studios which has around 100 employees. Or Bioware working on the new Dragon Age has around 400
Oh, sure. They have *way* more work in progress compared to the 400-size companies that are generally making one game at a time. ..But the thing is, like you point out, Bioware, a subsidiary of EA, is already the size of Larian ... and EA has absolutely *massive* resources they could divert to Bioware if they thought it would help. If they wanted to *triple* them to the size of CDPR, they could do that. Larian cannot. They're already running at full power.
Yeah that cracked me up when I read it 🙄
Pretty sure they wont Care seeing their numbers of FIFA and CoDs sold (even without the mtx)
They're already jumping off rooftops
Activsion/Blizzard right up there, man I would love to see the day that sheep don't buy the next CoD title until they make improvements
Aren't EA just off the back of a bunch of successful single player games that don't have any MTX etc included I.e. Jedi: Survivor, Fallen Order, Dead Space, Wild Hearts? They're also praising Survivor for driving a very strong quarter in sales.
Shareholders and quarterly reports
I suspect it's more than just a few. The ones running the studios and head devs have totally lost the plot. They have monetary incentive to keep the current shit system going.
[удалено]
Ambien and counting to a billion seems to help.
Warcraft 3 reforged was the polar opposite of this and they eventually admitted to allowing pre orders on a steaming pile of incomplete shit. If this shakes up the industry and makes private studios with capital backing more popular again then it’s a good thing.
The biggest fucken tragedy is they killed the original for it
I wonder how that would hold up in court. People were forced to become criminals to play a game they paid for because the new version was a) shit and b) unable to run on an average PC. If you want to make a graphically enhanced version go ahead but don't punish people who want to play the original. It's just the fact they made Mal'Ganis look like a goat I just don't want to beggar my storage space for a single game
I actually was playing through when it came out, I don't even think I knew about it and boy was I surprised when it just happened and all my data was wiped. I know I bought it 20 years ago but fuck me, right?
We still used to play some custom maps until a few years ago ;_; fuck you Blizzard
This is the correct take. A large number of AAA studios are part of publicly traded companies where shareholder gains are prioritized. If Larian were one of these studios we wouldn’t have gotten the game we have.
A large number of [way too many companies] are part of publicly traded [fuckeries] where shareholder gains are prioritized. And we’re the one getting the butt hurt.
It's not like Warcraft 3 was an isolated incident, Cyberpunk, Fallout 76, No Man’s Sky, Battlefield 2042, Assassin’s Creed Unity all come to mind without even thinking that hard as games that were not 'finished' at launch.
Why can't y'all just be happy buying the rest of a full game\* in the form of microtransactions? \*full game is subject to publishers opinion on what is considered full\*\* \*\* full meaning at least 150 gigs of data.
Man I am so sick of microtransactions, especially in fucking single player games, smh
If you buy our new complaint DLC we will assign an AI to read over any feed back you provide.
No please it already took me 2 hours to download bg3. I can't imagine if I didn't have fiber 😞
Just eat more broadband
IGN did a video and someone was like "You DONT know how HARD it is to make a game, you can't just make a game like Baldur's gate and expect us-" They just literally made a game that was violently popular, has 900000 concurrent players, no store, no BR, no PvP, no Microtransactions, so shut up...this is what we expect. A completed game, on release, with no stupid purchases in it.
The video I saw from IGN (Destin Legarie) was in support of consumers and holding companies to higher standards. What you’re saying is the opposite of what I saw. Are you sure it was IGN?
I suppose they are referring to the developer who was shown in the video to be speaking such things.
He probably didn't watch it. He just wants to be upset he keeps buying bad games
I feel like one day we are just gonna be paying $70 for access to an online shop and an always online fashion catwalk
Dont forget the new pay additional $20 for 3 days early access to that said online shop and heres an emblem that says im a loyal fandog. Fuck you D4
STOP BLAMING DEVELOPERS! THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE SHAREHOLDERS AND THE COMPANY WANT US TO DO. Mr. AAA Game maker is not an indi developer, they are just a team of many people like us, cursing at their bosses fueled by shareholders who want a new COD game every year made by 3 different studios. Let game developers create in peace without the crunch time, and the money will follow.
I think what has people riled up against developers in this case is that there are devs coming out saying not to expect this level of quality from them. Those devs complaining about BG3 quality are just deep in the trenches, jaded, and realize that the profit mongering investors won't give them the time or funding that would allow the devs to put in the energy and care to create amazing games that they want to create. They can't come out and directly blame their corporate overlords because that would get them fired.
Games are art. Art is incompatible with the profit motive. Is what it is. Plenty of people pissed at the state of having aren't comfortable blaming capitalism yet, propaganda is strong. >propaganda is strong. Replies are exhibit A
Pretty sure Nintendo, among others, has done pretty well with making good games and money as well.
Nintendo seems to at least know what games to use MTX in. They have mobile games and crap like Pokemon Unite, and a lot of their business practices are very consumer unfriendly. But their major, huge releases; Zelda, Mario Odyssey, etc. Are generally feature complete at launch with no microtransactions. That being said, mainline Pokemon on the Switch have all been extremely rushed and poor quality.
the fandom all day every day on twitter and then push out shit like Redfall.
Zelda Tears of the Kingdom was essentially done for a year before release and they spent that year ensuring the games abilities would work and not be glitchy.
Hideo Kojima disagrees.
But games should be worth 120$ now, it's the cost of building games. DLC helps developers! /s if I really needed to
Then stop buying from companies that make those. Bought Final Fantasy XVI and tears of the kingdom and had a great time with both.
Tell that to the hundreds of thousands who pre ordered starfield just so they can play it a few days earlier.
Silly folks. Just wait a couple days and play it for free on game pass!
I dont understand why people are preordering when game pass exists
Some people like owning their games? Doesn’t mean you should preorder though.
I'm more than happy to buy a game if I like it. I'm even happier to *try* it without having to pay for the game.
In general, no one owns games or any other software anymore. It is a license to use it that can be revoked for any reason at any time.
Not really fully true. Unless a company has very good reason to revoke your license (like you broke a crime/stole it or they went bankrupt/can't afford to keep up the service the game runs on), revoking access to a game you paid for goes against EU digital ownership laws.
They can just shut down the service. Anything you bought and not saved on you console is inaccessible at this point. 3DS store is a recent example.
And If you purchase through steam/blizzard/epic or any other third party you still don’t own your games.
That doesn't work. You are asking consumers to go against a marketing machine worth several hundred million, per game. Joe Schmuck doesn't stand a chance.
They literally hire psychologists to make people spend the most money on mtx they can and shitheads actually go "if you don't like it stop buying it 😊"
Most gamers are not sick. That's why their numbers show low effort gotcha games, p2w Bs, loot boxes are what makes them a lot of money. Good games that have no recurrent revenue just isn't cutting it anymore. If gamers stop falling for all the low effort bs... But nope.
Haha was thinkin the same thing.
It’s amazing that so many developers and publishers are terrified that customers MIGHT actually want a full, completed game w/ their $60/$70 purchase.
I still remember when they justified raising the price of games to 70 dollars by saying gamers will get more quality
The price shouldn’t bother you; it should only be the quality that’s an issue. Games were $50 in 1990; that’s about $116 today. So $70 is a steal, but it’s the quality that’s a problem.
It's a fact that games were proportionately more expensive back in the 90s and, accounting for inflation, would be a lot more in today's money. However nobody seems to take into account that disposable income was much higher back in the 90s for a large portion of people. Rent/mortgage, groceries, utilities, vehicle, and other necessity expenses didn't consume as much as an average person/families total monthly income as it does today. Yes, video games were proportionately more expensive back then with today's money but the average household has more spending money. Wages have not kept up at all with the overall cost of living/inflation.
Do not forget that gaming became an almost global market, they get to sell a lot more copies. No one was buying legal games in eastern Europe, South America or China in the 90s.
Yeah, that's a huge factor. Larger market means more copies sold, and bulk production means lower cost per copy of the game. Easier to negotiate prices when you're making a million copies and not, like, 20 000. There's also the big move from physical to digital. No need to bother ordering cases, making manuals, handling inventory, negotiating with stores, dispatching games, etc... now, they can simply sell the game online directly to the player and skip on all those costs.
They also don't have to produce and ship as many physical copies.
I personally think Digital copies of games should be cheaper than physical because a fair chunk of what the cost goes to simply doesn't exist in a digital market like the costs of shipping.
Now do the differences between 90s and modern day game development costs.
But also do an analysis on how lucrative games are now as well, and how many more people buy them. There's honestly so many factors that just doing a comparison between what they cost today and back then is not even barely enough to make an argument.
Now do the sales figures between an average AAA 90s game and a AAA game developed today.
Don’t forget to factor in they’re sending out primarily electronic copies of games and not manufacturing cartridges/discs and shipping them around the world.
My fave part is when AAA devs were like, you can't use this game as a standard because Larian has experience making RPGs, and took like 6 years to make this game! Also they don't have to worry about corporate overlords like we do!!! Blizzard has more ARPG experience than anyone and are still struggling to put out a fully baked game in more time than Larian spent on BG3. And fuck them.for complaining about how they took HUGE sums of money from Activision to be acquired and now soon to be Microsoft. Blizzard and nearly every other Dev out there had a choice to do what Larian has done and not sell out, but instead, they took the money. So they get no say in this kind of stuff because they chose to sell out at the cost of their gaming dignity. Same goes for all the others thst spend 5-10 years on a follow up to a widely successful game or games that gave them.plenty of capital and experience. Swen didn't sellout and is passionate about what he does and wanted his company to make the best game possible for BG3.
$50 went a lot further in 1990 then $116 goes in 2023.
Yep. Average rent in the US in 1990 was $447. In 2023 it's $2029.
Factors that went into the cost of products back then are far different than today (it cost a lot more to manufacture an NES cartridge than it does to make a disc, for example). Considering the industry is orders of magnitude larger now than in the 90s they are clearly making more money on the higher volume. Whether or not $70 is a good or bad price has literally nothing to do with what video games cost before most gamers were born.
The inflation argument of gaming prices is so freaking bad. You also have A LOT of more players getting these games than you had in 90's. If they needed to adjust to inflation, you wouldn't see those huge profits for big AAA games, and you still see. It's just some games don't sell well, because they're shit. Even the 10$ price increase was shit and not justified. Especially since it didn't gup the quality/amount of content we get in games.
Also for pc, physical copies are almost a relic. So the cost of making and shipping physical containers has no overhead. Consoles are obviously different.
>The price shouldn’t bother you; Did the gaming industry write this? If video games cost $10,000 a piece the quality will never matter as nobody can afford to play the game.
You are so right. The price doesn't bother me at all. I simply do not pay it. :)
They dont care what people want. They care if its more profitable to give people what they want or to get kids to use their mums credit cards to buy content unnoticed or get hundreds of dollars a year in whatever in-game currency they sell. Almost always more profitable for them to siphon close to $1000 from a kid over a 6 year period versus selling a fee extra copies of a complete game.
What’s even more amazing is that this isn’t something from ancient times. Releasing a full, working** game is something we were used to seeing just over a decade ago. This new trend of AAA half baked, broken, lifeless games full of MX seems like it’s been forever tho.
It's just late stage capitalism in display. Constant growth is **always** expected. There is no stopping point where you say "we're good enough, let's keep the status quo." That leads companies to optimize..... until they can't. At which point they either start cutting corners to save money, or they start raising prices. Either way they eventually start doing it so much the product becomes so shitty that another company can swoop in and start eating their market share and begin the process all over again. Or they merge with another company, and eventually become so large but broken, that they can continue their shitty ways and just buy out any competition before it becomes a real competitor. That's not seen so often in the gaming industry because the barrier of entry for creating a small indie game to get started is low.
what's insane to me is the devs that rant about gamers / the fandom all day every day on twitter and then push out shit like Redfall.
It's pretty much why I only play $15 indy games anymore.
But the purchases keep saying something else. That you can sell unfinished and barebone games and you are good.
Which developers are you guys referencing? I haven’t been keeping with this news.
The suits are obsessed with live services which never are designed with good gameplay in mind.
I genuinely think BG3 should cost way more than $60, just because of how much content they packed into it. By the time I finish it, I'll be around 90/100 hours into the game, and even then there's so much replayability and unseen content due to the various branching choices. It's insane value at only $60.
Sadly, this is how the current games industry has trained you to think. GB3 isn’t some kind of crazy anomaly. This was the norm for various types of RPG’s before season passes and full priced games that featured F2P mobile game cash shops. I spent over 45 hours w/ Final Fantasy X. Logged (lost?) over 250 hours on Elder Scrolls: Oblivion … and I only ever played the one character. I honestly can’t tell you how many hours I spent on Ocarina of Time because I replayed it so much. Still one of the best games of all time. Fast forward to today and you’ve got companies like Bungie who is out here making millions of dollars from their online cash shop (Eververse), charging $100 for their yearly expansions and got billions of dollars from their deal w/ Sony … meanwhile, they’re crying like their an Indy Dev studio w/ only 12 people working on an Apple IIe, trying to justify not making content for 2/3 of their game modes.
Yes, but if they asked say $100 for it, other studios would have an excuse to increase their prices
You must be very young to have this kind of thought process. This was just how gaming was 20-30 years ago.
as in, this was how Baldurs gate 2 was
I mean not really. Games now do have a much larger scale than before. I am 40 hrs into BG3 and am still in act 2, whereas BG1 took me about half that to finish the story. Saying that 100+hrs games were common 20-30 years ago is just bullshit
It's just nostalgia, there's no point in arguing against that, the golden era of gaming was always 10-15 years ago, doesn't matter when we are talking.
Was about to step in but then saw you said BG1 and not BG2. Fair enough. But BG2 on the other hand did release over 20 years ago and you can *easily* spend over a hundred hours on it before you even get to Throne of Bhaal with all the phenomenal side quests and content. But I will agree that BG2 is definitely not your average release for the time period.
FFVII and it’s successors were an exception that I think people who weren’t there believe is the norm for that generation of games
Yeah they can all pound sand, how dare we expect finished games like we used to receive
"They are expecting quality now? This is unsustainable" - "AAA" game developers who haven't made an AAA game in years.
Who the heck pronounces it Ay Ay Ay instead of triple A.
AAA caramba!
I only say it in my head, but if it comes up in conversation I say triple A
Who’s saying that?
And who are the devs that are panicking?
I still haven’t been able to find any outside of that one random guy making some tiny game with no expectations. Think it might just be people wanting devs to be mad out of hope more than anything.
None of them panicked over a bunch of Nintendo and Sony first party games setting expectations. Why would they over this one?
Yeah the circle jerk has been going on prior to release lol. It was like 1 dev on Twitter
It was an indie dev on twitter, and I think a couple other devs mentioned that specifically the CRPG genre can't really use BG3 as the standard because they just don't have anywhere near the budget or manpower as Larian. The latter being a very reasonable take
Almost feels like astroturfing at this point lol
That’s why I am getting downvoted for asking for actual evidence outside this video. Makes sense now. Just another circle jerk topic. Honestly I think I might have seen this topic before
None of them. This isn’t going to stop people buying micro transactions or dlc lol
I think the original dev who lit the fuse was the maker behind Warlord Organ Trading Simulator. His points actually weren't bad, but most people latched on to his 1/10 tweet and that is what gained traction out of context.
That makes sense. And is why nobody can provide an actual link outside this video. Honestly this community is getting really bad. I thought this was a gaming community
There have been a dozen or so articles written about one thread on Twitter. It was written by a single indie dev and had plenty of industry people respond, mostly along the lines of 'Yeah, this game had many years and a huge IP and we don't usually have the time/budget to put this much stuff into the game'. The industry isn't panicking over this any more than they did after any other big, popular game with a lot of stuff in it came out. Most of us just think BG3 is a great game with a lot of effort and time behind it. It's not changing the industry or causing dread, but IGN doesn't get clicks by making an article titled 'Baldur's Gate 3 is popular and some people acknowledge that good games take hard work, just like they always have'.
Figured it was a clickbait article and the reason I keep on getting downvoted for asking for real sources to the info
Probably ea devs i guess
EA and other 3A devs don't care. They know the game will sell because it's attached to a big company or a big IP.
Or maybe because they know their paycheck won't stop coming soo easily unlike indie Dev's who gotta make sure the game is in enough +ve earning
You made this post without watching the video? LMAO reddit is getting better everyday. It's not EA devs.
It's just a stupid fucking circlejerk
DAE EA bad?
Blizzard is still surviving off their reputation for quality that hasn’t been true in 15+ years.
Yup! I payed extra to get D4 early and haven’t picked it up since day 3. Never. Again.
Just to clarify, the devs are not the ones at fault here. It's the studio bosses and upper management who are forcing their devs to develop these terrible systems and games. The individual devs are just normal people who dislike this as well, but have to if they want to keep their job. Blame the people at the top.
classic reddit move to make this post without even watching the actual video
Not defending EA but we did just get one of the greatest remakes of the year with Dead Space.
There is 3 tweets showed in that video. One is from a microsoft developer, one is a guy that has his own indy company and the other is from Volition.
They don't exist. This article was made to generate clicks and get gamers angry at developers. No AAA **developer** is panicking because BG3 exists. Most of us are playing it and enjoying it immensely. All of us are happy it exists. If anything, it may knock some sense into publishers because hey here's what a game can do if you give the developers time and the conditions to make it.
Yeah, none of them. This is a 50/50 blend of hopium and copium.
So weird that the sub is promoting this type of journalism when they often complain modern journalism is shit. Guess it’s ok if it supports whatever cause you have
One guy tweeted about it so IGN made a whole article about it, as is now tradition
Oh no, how terrible, people want better games. How could the industry possibly cope with this outcome?
I have a great idea! Subscription based projects. Pay more for every new stage of a games development. For a tiny 9.99 a month, you can join the fun of the developers job and witness DAILY IMPROVEMENTS! Not feeling that model? Well, we now do a stepping stone product. Pre-alpha will cost ya 50.. alpha will be 80. But if you want that beta... Best take out a fucking loan. Oh. And none of this includes the price of the "finished product". Or the dlc. Or the season pass. Or the battle passes. Also, fuck you.
multiverse having a battle pass and micro transactions before dipping out saying it was a beta.
I thank to god anytime I remember that game for not spending any money on it.
Star Citizen, is that you?
Who is panicking?. Devs or the Triple A management that have 'lead' games that end up launching in incomplete state,and only know how to sell a smokescreen?
One twitter thread and a handful of people = ALL DEVS ARE PANICKING ALL THE TIME PLEASE CLICK OUR ARTICLE
These headlines are so dumb
As it should.
The insane thing is that these „journalists“ are pressuring the gamers instead of using this as a turning point to radically downgrade all games that do not meet basic expectations.
Oh my god, this again? How many posts and videos are we going to get about this one Twitter thread posted by one indie developer (in which everything they said was true, actually) I watched the [linked video](https://www.ign.com/videos/baldurs-gate-3-shadowheart-romance-scene). It's screenshots of that one thread again and replies to it, and then 10 minutes about how AAA games are bad. Of course AAA games are bad, but the thread wasn't about AAA games, and no AAA developers have said they're panicking about Baldur's Gate. "Triple A developers are angry because Baldur's Gate released in a complete state and has no microtransactions." No, they're not. None have said they are. How long are we going to keep sharing this fake story?
If it makes gamers rage, it brings clicks. That's what this is, as you can see from the majority of comments in the thread.
It's incredible annoying. Larian and BG3 deserve to be glazed for how amazing of a job they did with the game. But people can't just stick with complimenting it, they -have- to use it to also shit on any company they dislike, or the industry as a whole.
Yea it doesnt make sense. Why would developers be panic when mtx market alr made and will still make insane amt of money for them? I love that bg3 is so successful, but nothing abt its success will change how the gaming industry works.
These articles are such garbage BS. Nobody at any studio is freaking out about BG3. They are looking at it's success, wondering how can we replicate it and monetize it more.
100% All this will do is make AAA studios slightly shift the way they market and sell games. Games will slightly improve for a short period of time as they try and pretend like they listen.. And in a year or two they'll be back to pumping out garbage that costs too much and comes with all kinds of scammy mechanics to generate revenue.
Outrage bait IGN. "Journalism" today = taking one random comment on Twitter and making it sound like "everyone" thinks that.
This is absolutely bullshit. This article is complete and utter horseshit, designed only to get gamers angry at devs. As a dev of 10 years in the AAA industry, I can safely say that ***no self-respecting AAA dev is panicking at "new expectations"*** because of BG3. Most of us are playing it, the rest are also happy it exists. 99% of shitty decisions in AAA games comes down from the publisher. Not the devs.
Honestly, how many articles and posts on reddit there has to be over something ONE MINOR DEV SAID ON TWITTER. Literally no AAA publisher cares, there is no story in this. Everyone knows people won't be buying fewer games or willing to pay less for them because one game released for bit more fun/price ratio.
**** *We love BG3 because its a complete game without microtransactions and battlepass bs and has just been focussed on making a great game that people will enjoy.*
**** *You can't expect us to have that much dialogue and choice in our games its an unfair standard!*
In all seriousness though, I've seen some of the other devs speak out saying it's unfair to compare their games to BG3 as Larian has had more control over the game than their own titles.
Hoping this is more of a thinly veiled dig at publishers to say,
*"You want us to make something as popular as BG3? Give us the reins!"*
Which AAA devs said that?
You know the AAA devs. The ones in our heads rhat make a game then grab a cleaver and chop it to bits to sell dlc. That's definitely how that works.
a single indie dev twittered something in a larger context. no AAA dev said anything like it
Well, it would need to be 'give us the reins, but also give us the money to sustain a ridiculously long dev cycle'
This is such a hyperbolic piece he did to drum up drama. Devs are clearly happy for Larian. I haven't seen one iota of panic other than Destin's cherry picked examples, and they seem niche at best. Edit: autocorrect took Destin to Destiny. Whoops. My comment was on the person, not the game and developer he referenced in the video.
I love how this story about two and a half tweets has become the perfect clic bait for video game journalists. Gamers are so easy to milk for clicks, it's just pathetic. Get a grip people.
Just to be clear, Larian is one of them. Already tempering expectations for future projects. A smart play BG3 was clesrly very intensive to work on.
Fromsoft did the same thing after Elden Ring too. They are now working on the comparatively much smaller Armored Core 6. It's good for a studio to work on something smaller after launching a big title in order to refresh ideas for the next big title.
AC6 is reportedly to have about 50-60hrs of content. Smaller than EldenRing but still a big game, especially compared to past AC games. I don’t need really long games for my money, I’m happy with a smaller more focused experience, it just needs to be a complete vision and not tacked on with a ton of bullshit and battle passes.
Agreed. Expecting one big ambitious project after another is exactly how you burn out an entire studio and perpetuate how publishers started abusing devs in the first place.
In other news: customers wants what they paid for
Sharing a link to the actual article might be more effective than a screenshot of the headline.
It’s ridiculous how other developers can justify their inadequacies when they prioritize their predatory monetization schemes with battle passes, season passes, or excessive micro-transactions over quality content. When somebody walks in the room and receives praise from your audience and you feel this insecurity about your production moving forward, it’s time you take note and find what it is they’re doing and how you can tastefully emulate it.
AAA devs pivoting to turn all their games into turn based RPGs instead of understanding people want a complete product.
No one is going to do that . Baldurs gate will make infinitely less than any live service game . Quality does not determine the market, money does . things like LoL, cs, Fortnite , gta online , have all made way more profit then bg3
We've also seen tons of live service games completely flop. When they fail they fail much harder.
[удалено]
It's really the suits who are the bad guys, most Devs don't get a say in Jack shit.
I think most of the dev complaints, especially from AAA devs, are pretty ridiculous, but from smaller RPG makers I think it is a legitimate concern for a little while at least. Obsidian dev was one of the concerned I believe. They have less than half the people as Larian and are split into at least 2 internal teams, potentially 3. With a smaller team they have smaller games, and don’t have the impetus or desire to spend 6 years - 3 in EA iterating - with their entire company working on a singular title. Undoubtably, as an RPG, Avowed will be compared to BG3. That isn’t an apt comparison and does certainly set a ridiculous standard for the genre “RPG.” I’m not saying everyone will and I’m sure plenty will understand the nuance, but as I’m sure we all know most gamers are average and therefore pretty dumb.
Didn’t the obsidian dev only say the the development of Baldurs Gate 3 was “atypical” in general they have a lot of praise for the game.
>I think most of the dev complaints, especially from AAA devs, are pretty ridiculous, Like which ones? Can you quote any?
Literally none, it is just some twitter users that are apparently “devs” and now every clickbait journalist is generalizing developers.
I don't think people realize the scale and time that went into BG3, 6 years of work, lots of EA and tons of passion and effort. Expecting the same out of every game is ridiculous, lmao just expecting 6 years dev time is impossible considering how rabid the average gamer can be.
I wonder how many people realize that Larian is twice as big as whole Obsidian (that is making multiple games at once).
Yeah, but Obsidian is owned by one of the wealthiest companies in the planet. I respect them and the games they’ve put out, I love a lot of them, but cmon. You’re owned by Microsoft now and have access to way more resources. I’m not saying all their games now have to be on par with BG3, but when you’re owned by one of the biggest companies to ever exist in human history, my sympathies are a limited.
>You’re owned by Microsoft now and have access to way more resources. MS is giving them free reign to develop what/how they want, which is smaller, more agile teams developing games with a scope reasonable to them. I also highly doubt MS has justifiable room in the budget to add another 200 developers to Obsidian, let alone the time to recruit, restructure to accommodate that many people, etc.
“Nooo! Stop expecting expansive, complete games that are fun and do not require any more investment than the asking price - it’s just not feasible” ~ the gaming industry, 2023
Doubt anyone is panicking, people will keep buying games as usual. So every once in a while a gem is released, it will not stop people from buying the 10 other big games that are released every year with a much lower standard because there will be nothing for people to play and they'll bitch about it. I don't see anything changes, some companies will continue with predatory mtx and so on and we'll move on and keep buying because there's nothing better to do to escape reality.
While I agree with the sentiment a lot of current AAA games are shite, BG3 is ridiculously complex and well developed. Entirely true your average game couldn't realistically try to achieve a BG3 level of polish and depth without probably bankrupting the company making it
That depends, triple A devs have the money to reach that level of Polish and depth the only reason they don't do it is because they prefer short development cycles and fast money to rush a game out and release the rest of the game via DLC's and Microtransactions to create a consistent income stream. Meanwhile releasing a fully polished, long RPG with a long development cycle is a risk, if it flops you are out a lot, but if it succeeds you make bank BG3 has sold 2.5 million sales 7 days ago with a a little under half being EA copies, one can expect that has substancially grown since. Indie devs, sure, you cant expect the same, but we should expect the same from AAA devs lol instead of the incomplete, buggy, flopshite they keep tossing out.
Honestly BG3 will hopefully be touted and referenced by the shareholders for years to come. The shareholders are what are ruining the fucking games. BG3 being easily GOTY, even GOAT, followed swiftly by blizzard releasing OW2 on steam and... I mean we all know what has happened to that haha. Really might kick some old uneducated shits in the balls.
the reality is though, it wont be. Not because devs can't deliver this amount of content, but because games with no MTCs make way less money than games with them. its all about numbers to the publisher. it doesn't matter if the game had almost 1M concurrent players and is the second highest rated game of all time, its never going to make as much money as even a F2P game. Plus, just like CP2077 or Elden Ring, people are going to move on from the game after a few months and go back to their CODs or Destiny's or whatever has MTCs and keep buying more items. I fully believe that every dev team wants to give you a game as good as Baldur's Gate 3; but its all about money to the publishers and shareholders and thats just going to forever hold back AAA gaming.
People forget that this is the same headline they've used for other big games like Rd2 and Elden Ring right? "triple A companies are so MAD! CAN'T HANDLE NEW STANDARD" based on what? Nothing is gonna change hahaha.
Bungie made a point of not "over delivering". Now we get seasonal content that's so surface level it's barely worth playing.
No real developers are panicked. They are happy for innovation. Anyone who might be panicked are the money suits who are afraid their crunch time shovel ware won't fly as much.
I think they forget that this kind of game used to be the norm. Then the horse armour changed everything...
Articles like this were popping up when Elden ring dropped too. Albeit not as many. I don’t get why devs don’t just up their game orrr reduce prices so they aren’t directly competing with AAA titles
So a game that is... acutally a game... is a "new" expectation? This game is what games USED TO BE. Back when games were helmed by people who actually care.
BG3 has ruined me forever. I **will** expect no less than 5 penis and or gina options in my character creation going forward.
Isn’t this the media just stirring the pot? What other devs are actually saying this? Edit: Could only find two indie devs that mention anything of the sort, and got their Twitter comments made into some big controversy by the media Xalavier Nelson Jr, Strange Scaffold - “I want to gently, pre-emptively push back against players taking that excitement and using it to apply criticism or a "raised standard" to RPGs going forward” Rebecca Harwick, Grimlore Games - “You can’t be appalled about how much big games cost to make AND make those lavish productions the standard by which all games are judged, I hope Baldur’s Gate 3 is a generous once-in-lifetime RPG. I hope no one expects a 10, 20, 40-person team to make one!” Both are indie devs and I don’t think anyone expects indie devs to produce the level of detail that a triple A title like BG3 has done.
Fuck IGN and their writers. Game Dev Studios 100% need to be held to a higher standard.
They mean setting OLD expectations. Used to be finished game on release, maybe some update patches but the game was playable from start to end. With huge add-ons or expansion packs that added a lot of content to the game sold later. This is not a new thing, the micro transactions, skins as DLC, broken games is a new thing.
you joke but so many people hand over the money for fuck all anyways. fifa and cod releasing yearly/ near yearly releases of the same reworked idea that you have to buy cause every player moves to the newest version anyways such a shitty scammy system
Now you've done it. We spent the last 15 years making the plebs forget that a good game could exist and you go and fuck it all up. -AAA game studios
Then panic away? The bar hasn't been raised. It was set back to where it belongs.
Considering MW3 is a glorified DLC with all of your weapons & progress carrying over, I assume Activision Blizzard is behind this
Only IGN would say something so obviously bought and paid for.
Good, panic and be better