It's truly baffling the 'negative' reaction to the game being high quality. Truly a mask-off moment for these incompetent developers/publishers. Good video.
It's not a negative reaction, they just said that they can't make games like BG3 because companies are making investments not art nowadays. But then they just got taken out of context and blown way out of proportion.
Well, if these game developers are so stupid as to, effectively, say "F**k all you gamers for wanting value for money"; they're doomed. As, to be fair, they should be.
@@OryxAU And that they consider us, their consumers, as an "investment" (= marketing bullshit translator: Cash Cow) rather than worthy players is NOT a negative and demasking thing in which world exactly?
The reaction of those other devs to Baldur's Gate 3's quality can easily be summed up by the one scene from Hot Fuzz: "Frankly, you've been making us all look bad."
Imagine selling a finished video game, the same way it's been done since the early 80s and it's "news worthy " because people have yet to realize that most game studios aren't actually making games anymore they are creating money extraction software.
That's what it's all about. BG3 isn't going to have the profitability as other major AAA games with MTX and Skins. So, when the community is like "wow, this is amazing," the entire dev industry is gonna be like "shhhh! Stop it! Don't make us sink more money into our games! The shareholders won't like it!!!!"
It's not about being 'finished' its about 'what BG3 promised' and what it delivered. Larian promised a sequel to BG2 - one of the greatest videogames of all time and also one of the most complex. It was a 2D game built on the 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons ruleset with 10+ companions each with their own unique quests and branching storylines. Unlike Bethesda who chose to 'simplify' the story of Fallout to convert it to 3D Larian chose to not only keep all the complexity/depth of the original - but also expand on it with deeper relationship systems, a potion crafting system, dye system and combine it with modern 3D graphics and character creation. This was just 'what was promised'. They delivered all of it - but then surprised everyone at launch by totally redoing parts of Act 1 and introducing a host of new systems, characters and mechanics that were never mentioned prior to launch. In contrast normal game developers make big promises about how awesome their game is years before they start making it - then deliver something that looks nothing like those original trailer videos and promises. The most ironic thing is Larian even gave the world a better film introduction to DnD than Honor Amongst Thieves.
@@christianrobloxserver7282 Not to mention a big middle finger towards majority of industry releasing the game as DRM Free. The studio either did not make it a marketing point or I must have missed it. While I agree on a scale of the game not every studio can do games with big scale due to constraints, the fact is no one is expecting this (well except from detached, delusional people). When I see new release of indie title for 20 or 30$ I check what this game is will I like it but I also know it was most probably smaller team and set my expectations right. I still expect quality but not the scale. The argument about “new standard” shows a sad thing gamer have lowered their standards ( we are at what 3rd, 4th generation of gamers?) and some justify bugs. A good quality game is rare. Well while I have a lot negative things to say about gaming industry, gaming is still my main entertainment (since ‘92). Have a nice time gaming!
@@V-u-l-p Yep. It's absolutely insane the number of people who want to speak on "finished products" yet use BG3 as an example. I absolutely love the game, but the last half of the game was a buggy mess on launch. It has gotten better in the last 2 months of patches but still has a long way to go. At this rate they shipped a year early.
The difference between Larian and other bigger studios is: Most of the big studios are funded by big Multi-Billion dollar corporations. Larian is not. They funded themselves, first with crowd-funding campaigns and later they funded the newest game with their earnings of the previous ones. And they want to stay independent, because they know, what it means to get into the stock shit show.
Large institutional shareholders are the real problems for any public company. Retail or small fund investors look at long term growth and company quality. They buy to see an equity they or their fund members can retire on. Large institutional investors have "fund managers" who get wealthy by showing quarterly growth of "their" funds. So we end up with finance people destroying gaming, automotive, abd so many more industries, because these fund managers have no clue of the real markets. /rant off.
Er I hate to burst your bubble but Larian are 30% owned by the not at all multi-billion dollar company Tencent. Sure 62% is owned by Sven and 8% by his wife and they did indeed do what you said to a degree - funded themselves and used profit to pay for the next game de but they have also had investment from Tencent so it's kinda disingenuous to say they aren't owned by the multi billion companies. However I do think one of the biggest changes is that Sven has the passion and does own majority stock so he can decide what's going to happen - in other cases the people who start the businesses have either died or retired after the buy outs so the life long 'corporation types' and shareholders are the ones left - and they are the ones that demand to max profit and screw quality (espec. with micro and dlc) without any of the care and passion to make good games that the companies were founded on - and it applies for more than just Video games - any industry - Wizards of the Coast have shown this with MTG and the changes to the licensing agreement (also it was reported some high ups made comments complaining about customers just getting in the way of 'their' money o etc - welcome to Capitalism Free Market.
@@alphaomega1328 You did not burst any bubble. I even upvoted your post, because of the information it contains. I am well aware, that the world is more complicated than we sometimes want it to be and particularly that founding and sustaining a company without a big corporation or a billionaire in the background is very difficult. Game development has also become very costly. So, it is no wonder that the founder had to bring in some other money -- but he sustained enough freedom, that he can make the choices he wants. Many companies have some kind of "silent partner" which just shares profits. But as long the founder has full control over the company, the situation is MUCH MUCH better than when it would be owned and controlled by a corporation.
@@alphaomega1328 The biggest thing is that they still have a controlling stake. There is nothing wrong with outside investment as long as you keep control (BioWareEA example) You get Dragon Age pre EA, What come after was worse. Mass effect 1 pre EA is a top game. ME2 was the last good attempt but the development started before EA could intervene to much. Now BioWare is dead.
BG3 isn’t the anomaly; Larian is. Been enjoying their titles without fail for years. Used to be able to rely on a handful of studios to produce quality titles. That list has been reduced to one name.
The reaction of other studios just shows: Envy and greed. Envy on the side of all which did not win the same price and greed on the side of big corporations, which do not pay their devs accordingly and wonder why the products are buggy like hell. A big mind always should recognize and grant others their wins, when they are earned.
I just saw Destin's reaction video to Laura and I came here to subscribe to Laura. I love Destin's original thoughts video on Baldur's Gate disrupting the game industry and Laura's excelent video puts the final nail on the coffin, or rips the final nail off the coffin. Either way, point made. Thank you Laura and Thank you Destin. Great journalism!
I've seen quite a few takes on this issue and I thought yours was the most insightful. While youtubers presenting the player's perspective is valuable, hearing support for improving standards with the context of decades in the industry is a really great perspective to hear.
Just found your channel. Brilliant. No notes. I have been GASPING for an experienced female executive perspective in the gaming space. Your channel is a treasure. I can't wait to see what you have coming.
I love Baldur's Gate 3. It's the most fun I've had (and am still having) with a game in years. I appreciate Larian's dedication and care. But, I think one of the biggest factors to their success (besides making an incredible game) is they way they interact with the player base. They're accessible, they listen to feedback, answer questions, laugh and joke and share fan-art etc. They also endorse little cartoons with the original VAs, play into the love for certain characters (Astarion's 'Only Fangs' account for example) and even encourage the voice actors to be super-involved with the fanbase too by streaming or playing tabletop. It's brilliant and gives off a real community/family vibe. That was one of the big selling points for me. I've always felt big AAA studios don't care about their players. They see us as a gullible commodity.
I feel like employee churn is a huge factor nobody's talking about, but makes a massive difference. When you have a piece of software that does a lot of different things, it doesn't matter how simple you make the code and how well you organize it - ultimately, it _does a lot of things,_ so there's a lot to learn. We've been hearing about mass layoffs at larger studios, from testers and more recently parts of development teams, and I can't think of anything more lethal to a complex software project than removing people who have learned the project. That's not something that you can just replace at the drop of a hat: you can't replace years of knowledge with months of onboarding and expect that to go well. You can have _more_ developers than before and be _less_ productive.
Here because of Destin and I’m here to stay. Amazing content and thank you for your influence in the gaming industry. You have a unique insight because of your experience and your opinions deserve to be seen!
Thank your for this statement! I feel like one factor that is sorely lacking in this whole debate is the responsibility of the consumer. Sid Meier (I think) once said "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game". Likewise, I'd argue that additionally "Given the opportunity, publishers will optimize the quality out of a game". Every incredible technological improvement we have made over the last 20 years has first and foremost been used to cut more corners when it comes to delivering a quality product. There will be a lot of people in the comments calling out EA, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard and other big studios but as long as enough people keep buying and even pre-ordering these bugged out messes of unfinished, unpolished software, studios will continue to make them. I'd personally like more curators like IGN (which for once did a great video on this situation) and even small, insightful takes like this to empathize this point. Either way, that's just my faint hope of a change coming. As someone who's in the tech industry for a love and fascination of the matter, it is pretty discouraging seeing the direction we're moving in.
Laura! I totally agree. I have over 400 hours on BG3 spread over multiple campaigns both solo and co-op. Larian should indeed be celebrated for what they accomplished. I believe we worked together at Epic Games back in the day. Glad to see that you are sharing your game dev experience on TH-cam!
I have worked at some places (not game industry) where management was very tolerant of poor job performance. Performing at a high level caused coworkers to get upset. This is basically the same thing.
The best part of how good Baldur's Gate 3 (And Elden Ring before it) is, is that it clearly shows that gamers still want to play single player games and that live service micro-transaction games aren't the only type of game that can be successful. It is also interesting that both Larian and From Software aren't publicly traded companies, they could survive on modest success and build up the skills and experience needed to make top tier games. There weren't any stockholders demanding maximum profit extraction which allowed them to make games without predatory monetisation. In both cases these studios didn't start out on top, they made multiple, less well received, games before reaching their current peaks of success.
It's like being the new guy at a new job. If you outwork your peers, they get mad, because you're making them look bad. "You need to chill. You're making us look bad. We have a good thing going here, where we can be lazy and work slow. If they see you producing more and better results, they're gonna want us to do that too."
@@legitplayin6977 I've been playing Larian games for years. I know they're veterans, but the mentality of the other devs is like that. They're upset that someone is showing them up, making publishers feel like their easy lazy garbage is threatened.
@legitplayin6977 it has more to do with how Larian respects their playerbase than the type of gameplay. BG3 is also a deeply rich story-driven rpg where choices actually matter instead of the illusion of choice that many rpgs have today. There will always be differences in combat and gameplay between games, but an rpg is still an rpg. The story, characters, companions, choice availability, customization, and freedom will always be compared between 2 rpgs. Larian also has set a standard with listening to and being in touch with the player base. Some game devs have actually attacked fans recently when fans criticize their game. Look at how Volition reacted to fans in their criticism to the new Saints Row. Now look where Volition is today. It's refreshing to see devs appreciate and listen to the players instead of ignoring and/or attacking them.
The funniest part of this is that AAA studios know what the secret ingredient is. It’s their kryptonite. To make an amazing game, you just can’t over monetize a good game. If you make an amazing game don’t chop it up and sell it in pieces of initial release, dlc, and micro transactions.
i agree with everything said, but i think a big thing missing around "quality" is the objectives developers are trying to achieve. So many big studios' objectives are to make as much money as possible and therefore make only a good enough game to acomplis this. Where as i feal Larian wanted to make a great game first and foremost within the constraints they had.
Not only that, their objective is also to spend the least amount possible in addition to having the highest revenue. Candy Crush makes Activision Blizzard 5-10x the revenue that World of Warcraft brings in. Why would their shareholders feel confident in a CEO that wanted to spend hundreds of millions on a huge budget great game that will only bring in a fraction of what mobile games are bringing them for a fraction of the expense? Large corporations taking over the games industry is what has ruined it. It is the self-publishers and indie devs are the ones making the good games now.
My big question here is though: are those good objectives to have? Is shipping a poor quality product an acceptable strategy to maximize profit? And as a customer, why would you want that?
While I agree with you, I'll have to make one correction here. It's not the developers that want to make the most money, it's their publishers and shareholders that do. If it was up to the devs and they had 100% control, games like Baldur's Gate 3 would release like crazy. But because publishers have to appeal to shareholders, who don't know or care about a game being good and feature complete, it's why their bottom line will always be at the forefront of their business model.
Part of that is that Larian published on their own. Many times the actual development teams know what gamers want, but publishers and their golden handcuffs have priority on design decisions and deadlines. Look at the industry examples of hit quality games, many are self published. This isn't the rule mind you, but its a very common correlation.
@@PatchedUpGaming Many headline studios ran by major publishers (EA, Activision, Ubisoft) are utilized like a clockwork assembly line. They are expected to churn out the next title in an IP every X number of years, at X time of year. At the corporate level, they note that game customers are extremely susceptible to advertising hype and habitual purchasing. Post launch reviews may be telling, but they already sold their millions of copies regardless. (Makes sense why Pre orders are so important)
Your explanation of the Money-Quality-Time triad of game development reminds me of a phrase I've heard regarding commercial projects in general: "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick Two." A semi-humorous way of reminding people that it is often functionally impossible to give all 3 aspects of your projects maximum priority at all times. Larian, for example, prioritized Good and Cheap (less expensive for the end cutomers) but gave the project more Time, via Early Access testing. Thanks for your video! Be well!
Everything you're saying is SPOT ON. Quality finished games on release date. Players offered to play unfinished game to improve it until it's ready for launch 👍
How did Larian do it? -They have people who have worked for decades on similar games. -Their founder and President Sven Vincke is an avid gamer who supports his company. -Larian believes in the 'old school' mentality of "quality at launch" as Laura put it. This meant being in early access for about 3 years. -Larian offered a $10 deluxe addition for those who want to pay more. -Larian understand that its reputation matters, and for it to make a worthy successor to Baldur's Gate, it MUST -feel- like Baldur's Gate! -Larian is for fun before profits because it understands quality = money & reputation.
BG3 is so good for the same reason why the Lord of the Rings trilogy was so impressive -community involvement. Both projects had a hardcore fandom to build on and involved those volunteering lore specialist in the developement process for years. We might see something similar with Vampire -but thats it.
Well said. Consumers and industry insiders need to keep hammering on this message that games like BG3 should be celebrated. It's the only way we can make the industry change for the better.
To me it seems crazy to launch an unfinished game. The damage to the devs rep is huge. Even if u fix ur game, the damage is done! 1st impressions are so important! These days 1st impressions are more important than ever!
Here from Destin’s channel. Having your expertise to back your sentiment on current game development trends really drives your points home. Thank you for sharing your views on the matter.
On how Larian manages work over multiple studios. Part of the trick is being from Belgium. It's a small country surrounded on all sides by bigger countries with different languages and different cultures. And it's a tri-lingual country itself. It translates into an environment where being multilingual and multicultural is the norm. So when Larian needed to scale up the simple thing to do was to scale out of the country. All language related work went to the UK and Ireland to have access to the best writers and voice actors. Quality assurance was spread around the world with studios in Canada and Malaysia spreading the work over a 24 hour working day while doing a regular 9 to 5. Larian Barcelona is specialized in console ports. And control is in Ghent, Belgium. If you can deal with the complexities of that place, going global holds no mystery.
this op-ed is the difference between when the games industry was lead by people like Laura and now, when it is lead by people like Jim Ryan and Phil Spenser - the former sees the challenges of the endeavor as a catalyst for creative solutions, and solutions like pushing updates over the internet to fix minor bugs as a tool to be used responsibly, while the latter sees the challenges as impediments to profit, and solutions like pushing out patches for games that were shipped broken as opportunities to abuse such tools in their quest for the Path of Least Resistance to Ever-Growing Profits.
What a wonderful, balanced, and positive view on this. I got fatigue as soon as this drama unfolded. But like a suicidal moth I kept being drawn to the flame. I finally feel like this is the final and best word on the subject. Thank you for releasing me from this absurdity.
Well said! Every project needs to make trade-offs. Too many companies are spending their efforts on low value, repetitive content in order to maximize some engagement metric or to sell micro transactions.
Great comment about Early access! This certainly helped too. I wish more large studios would utilize (something similar) and get the community’s feedback before they release a game.
Thank you for the great summary, and I loved the "Apollo 13" reference (one of my favourite movies)! All the publishers and journalists calling it an anomaly where honestly trying to gaslight the public. This should be (and, in my opinion, will be!) the new high bar for future RPGs.
People should just ignore these morons, and speak with their wallets next time. When their sales drop and their studios lay them off because the bar is “too high” the karma would be settled
While i agree with almost everything you said, BG3's launch was not perfect. BUT, we all knew that Larian moved the launch forward. As a result, us gamers, we can forgive the bugs that were still there at launch. We can forgive the lacking polish in act 3. It's a give and take. Most players understand why Larian moved the launch forward. And the biggest thing: despite the bugs, Bg3 was still lots of fun. It was enormously fun still. I had 8 crashes and various minor bugs in act 1 alone. I didnt really care. Because i was having true fun.
Great job on this video. Even though I've already heard about this story a bunch, I thought the writing and reporting you did on this video top notch, and that made it entertaining to watch/listen to.
I agree. I don't think we should expect the average studio to ever deliver something like BG3, but massive studios like Bethesda, Bioware and Blizzard all need to do much better.
I hate all these broken games on release day. It's unacceptable, and I never buy them. I always consume enough reviews to know I'm buying a complete game, without game-breaking bugs, as-is on the physical disc or cartridge.
@@laurafryer6321 I also never buy games on pre-order for the exact same reason. The one time I broke that rule was for Baldur's Gate 3, becuase I had played and loved Divinity Original Sin 2 so had confidence in the Larian delivering my current D&D hobby into digital - I could see the potential - paying £60 upfront is normally something I would resist - but as this was early access I felt I was getting a buy-in at the table rather than bidding at an auction sight unseen. I remember, after the owlbear cave and scratch leaping across the river and deciding to avoid the risen road (and the gnolls) and instead take the path along the river and under the bridge. I found something under a stone and thought "a-ha they expect some people to come this way!" and idly wondered if Larian was tracking that sort of thing: how many Tavs went to which locations and by what routes? Maybe, maybe not, but still the experience was one that encouraged creativity and trying things out. The iterations over the early access were great - particularly in the UI and UX, and the resting mechanic you could see the iterative developing and incorporation of feedback. Nevertheless I was trepidatious about BG3 as the PC release date neared: was mine a sound investment? - I've never been happier to have backed a winning horse. BG3 is amazing and rightly celebrated.
Its really telling when other companies don't want to follow up on quality really shows that there always willing to cut corners and give you the bare minimum. I wasn't gonna play Baldur's gate at first cause I'm not a fan of gore but I was like you know what I still want to support it so i bought...And then i was like uh may has well try it and oh my god i was hooked ;w; (I just look away if its really gorey which is kind of hard to do when your character has to say something lol)
That was a really lovely video. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and I hope what Larian has done resonates with the right people in the industry, instead of scaring them away. :)
Very, very good analysis of today game development and what is wrong with this industry. Totally agree with your views! Larian studios is, sadly, one of the few gems as a game developer studio which makes fantastic games
It was kind of the same for Elden Ring, though the criticism came from a different angle. ER didn't follow The Formula in so many ways and so it was a "bad game" according to devs from all these studios. Fast forward to it winning GOTY, which I hope is in the future for BG3 as well. So apparently the actual new standard is that whenever a game breaks through the boundaries of mediocrity set by all the big studios, they complain about it.
Great points. As someone who played BG1 and 2, IWD 1 and 2, Torment, DOS 1 and 2, and then early access BG3, I've gotten to see the growth of CRPGs, specifically, the CRPGs that pushed into new ground, or 'raised the bar'. The first Baldur's Gate was every D&D player's dream. It did a tremendous job capturing the D&D campaign vibe, even having a narrator that sounded like the DM filling in certain parts of the story... "You travel through the night, staying off the main roads, fighting off fatigue...." the flavor text that really consumes you. BG3's early access was fascinating, to see problems get resolved, to see advances in cutscenes, and the integration of party members. To see artistic choices about how the beginning should unfold, and every single time thinking "yeah, this makes more sense - this works better". Plus, the incredible feeling of knowing MY gameplay was helping Larian. I would uninstall and reinstall after new patches, and each time I'd get a questionnaire about why I was uninstalling, along with room to make comments. I'd always preface my comments with "Love the game so far, just waiting for the next patch to keep playing". Then, the day 1 release, to see how much had changed again, and to jump into character creation knowing 'this is it'.....this is the character that will see the adventure through. Of course, that character wasn't, and I ended up going a different route, because why not?
Fantastic video! Seeing devs complain about how doing what larion did would mean more work for them is heartbreaking to see as a fan. I thought the devs were the passionate artists who had to do their best to work around the limitations that thebcompany executives placed on them, but this debacle makes the ones involved in complaining look like corporate mouth pieces instead of artists
This video reminded me of that video from the Creator of Fallout who told of some of his experiences after moving onto other studios. One of them was how he asked for a simple feature to be added to the game which he knew could be coded in like an hour because he had done it before. Yet it came back saying it would take 4 weeks, so he called the guy over the guy insisted it would be 4 weeks, so he went to the project lead and the lead talked the developer down to 2 weeks. While he gave them the benefit of the doubt saying that padding numbers seem to be common in the industry I'm a little more skeptical. From my experience in development there is a huge difference in talent. I've seen people knock out projects in short order while other people assigned the same task take 3-4 times as long turn in a code base several times larger and buggy as all get out. Programming is as much of an art as anything. Just like you can't train any random person to write a Shakespearean play, you can't just expect any random programer to produce a master piece of coding. Talent plays a huge part in the behind the scenes coding to get things running. With cases of community made patches in the first week for things in some cases the devs don't fix for months if ever, you gotta start wondering how much of it is just incompetence. Cause in the cases of community patches it was because the bug was a major issue that in some cases prevented plays from playing.
As a PC gamer from 1981 buying a full game and playing it is normal. It's only fairly recently in gaming history that they've tried to normalise "Pay for it, keep paying for it, and pay for it some more", something they now do with software; Photoshop, 3DS Max, Teamviewer, etc. Reject it.
Im super glad to have found your channel. Thank you for doing this btw. It is so relieving to find quality information from a real source in this jungle. What can be done to support your channel? I would also love to get gaming reccomendations that fit your standards as im struggling these days to find the gold. I want to play the games that are made with love and avoid wasting time on half baked or algorithm based games that try to play me.
The big problem is: It is at the same time a curse and a blessing that Gaming has become the mainstream media it is nowadays in comparision to it's "niche" aura in in the 80's and 90's and maybe even still early 2000's. Since back then, developers wanted to create their vision and wanted to show it to the world, or at least as many people as they could reach with it, and having to work around technical limitations often was a big inititator for creative processes, like, a bit eaggerating here maybe: "Well, it's impossible to do it THAT way, but we COULD twist this screw upside down, hang this string from here over there and replace it with a hook and TADA, we got what we wanted, worked around the technical limitations and the player will NEVER know!" And when that vision made money, that was a nice and welcome bonus, but it was never the primary motivation. Nowadays where it is so mainstream money is the primary motivation and creative processes have pretty much come to an extreme halt, since now so many stuff is technological possible that wasn't before, so there's pretty much hardly any need anymore for creative thinking processes. And then there's the massive illusion that it ALWAYS has to be bigger and better and needs 40k FPS and ULTRA 20K HD or people won't like it, amping up the development cost for a factor that is impressive for like the first hour and then the effect already massively wears off. At least with Indie games going stronger nowadays and retro gaming becoming more and more popular maybe the big players will see that they also could stop burn money on features that only add so little to the game but cost an uneccessary fortune. You can achieve depth and rich gameplay by creatiity, not by money. The japanese even have a saying that fits perfectly on this whole situation, translated it's something along these lines: "Those who harvest on rich soil will not develop much mindpower"
My biggest complaint is that these are old standards that a lot of these studios "used to" be able to do. 15-20 years ago nobody would've thought of shipping a broken game. Over time they've gotten worse and worse.
There was a moment back in history then the military realized that sometimes they need LESS resources to win. Around 3-4 bc in the East this idea was already known and used. Where should be some moment in future, when the business will realize and adopt the similar idea. There are a few examples of that strategy here and there, but they are often interpreted as an artifact not as a method.
Excluding Total War: Warhammer. I have not purchased a new game that wasn't a survival game until 3-4 months ago. I bought Elden Ring. I was so blown away I bought all the souls games and Armored Core 6 with no real intention of playing them. I might. I don't care, I have never felt like I underpaid for a game so much in my life. I had no urge to play a turn based game but due to the overwhelming positive feedback I purchased BG3. Holy shit...........the game is amazing. 2 entirely different studios, of which I knew nothing or next to nothing about, revitalized my hope for the gaming industry.
The negative backlash caused me to buy the game. Never played one second of DND before. 60 hours into my first play thru and can’t wait to start a second run.
This video was super good and you're right. Things are in a bad place but with the success of games like Elden Ring and BG3 I'm confident the industry will attempt a course correction.
Imagine if devs in 2005 complained about Resident Evil 4( THE game that redefined 3rd person shooter games) being too good and that they cant deliver same graphics and high quality animations
Thanks for the awesome video Laura! I believe this is further exemplified by how a lot of the best, recently released games were made by the smallest teams. Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress, Disco Elysium, Project Zomboid, Inscryption, Factorio.... If these tiny teams can make games of this quality, then what the heck is Blizzard doing? Cyberpunk's team continuing to insist that the release "wasn't that bad" is wild. If consumers are spending 60 dollars on a product that they cant even use, then all the alarms should be sounding off as that is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Three classes of people involved in this topic: 1) corporate shills/devs that are surprised by the success of the game or at least pretend to be surprised 2) legions of gamers who have either not played the game at all or have not played much of it that ride the bandwagon to criticize microtransactions and/or unfinished/buggy products 3) people who love the game and actually made it to act 3 but have to admit that larian did not ship a finished, relatively unbuggy product at all
All those fancy MBAs have marketing baked into the equation since school. Every marketing team in the industry is crapping their pants in case one of the more interesting CEOs brings some Larian ammo to the next board meeting and starts spending half the marketing budget on things that actually matter in today's atmosphere.
As long as people keep buying half-assed, low quality games, nothing will change. Its that simple. No youtube videos or bad reviews or negative articles or ratings will chang that. Businesses only speak money.
It's truly baffling the 'negative' reaction to the game being high quality. Truly a mask-off moment for these incompetent developers/publishers. Good video.
Thank you!
It's not a negative reaction, they just said that they can't make games like BG3 because companies are making investments not art nowadays. But then they just got taken out of context and blown way out of proportion.
It's just the publishers. They're greedy.
Well, if these game developers are so stupid as to, effectively, say "F**k all you gamers for wanting value for money"; they're doomed. As, to be fair, they should be.
@@OryxAU And that they consider us, their consumers, as an "investment" (= marketing bullshit translator: Cash Cow) rather than worthy players is NOT a negative and demasking thing in which world exactly?
The reaction of those other devs to Baldur's Gate 3's quality can easily be summed up by the one scene from Hot Fuzz: "Frankly, you've been making us all look bad."
Imagine selling a finished video game, the same way it's been done since the early 80s and it's "news worthy " because people have yet to realize that most game studios aren't actually making games anymore they are creating money extraction software.
That's what it's all about. BG3 isn't going to have the profitability as other major AAA games with MTX and Skins. So, when the community is like "wow, this is amazing," the entire dev industry is gonna be like "shhhh! Stop it! Don't make us sink more money into our games! The shareholders won't like it!!!!"
Finished... u should play Act 3 ^^"
Anyway, it´s an incredible game. But don´t call it finished. It still needs a lot of patches.
It's not about being 'finished' its about 'what BG3 promised' and what it delivered. Larian promised a sequel to BG2 - one of the greatest videogames of all time and also one of the most complex. It was a 2D game built on the 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons ruleset with 10+ companions each with their own unique quests and branching storylines. Unlike Bethesda who chose to 'simplify' the story of Fallout to convert it to 3D Larian chose to not only keep all the complexity/depth of the original - but also expand on it with deeper relationship systems, a potion crafting system, dye system and combine it with modern 3D graphics and character creation. This was just 'what was promised'. They delivered all of it - but then surprised everyone at launch by totally redoing parts of Act 1 and introducing a host of new systems, characters and mechanics that were never mentioned prior to launch. In contrast normal game developers make big promises about how awesome their game is years before they start making it - then deliver something that looks nothing like those original trailer videos and promises. The most ironic thing is Larian even gave the world a better film introduction to DnD than Honor Amongst Thieves.
@@christianrobloxserver7282 Not to mention a big middle finger towards majority of industry releasing the game as DRM Free. The studio either did not make it a marketing point or I must have missed it.
While I agree on a scale of the game not every studio can do games with big scale due to constraints, the fact is no one is expecting this (well except from detached, delusional people). When I see new release of indie title for 20 or 30$ I check what this game is will I like it but I also know it was most probably smaller team and set my expectations right. I still expect quality but not the scale.
The argument about “new standard” shows a sad thing gamer have lowered their standards ( we are at what 3rd, 4th generation of gamers?) and some justify bugs. A good quality game is rare.
Well while I have a lot negative things to say about gaming industry, gaming is still my main entertainment (since ‘92).
Have a nice time gaming!
@@V-u-l-p Yep. It's absolutely insane the number of people who want to speak on "finished products" yet use BG3 as an example. I absolutely love the game, but the last half of the game was a buggy mess on launch. It has gotten better in the last 2 months of patches but still has a long way to go. At this rate they shipped a year early.
I love when TH-cam sugest great content like this
Same. Just scrolling through and this popped up. Just got this game too
Agreed. A lot of great creators out here and it's nice to have some fresh faces in my recommendations
The difference between Larian and other bigger studios is: Most of the big studios are funded by big Multi-Billion dollar corporations. Larian is not. They funded themselves, first with crowd-funding campaigns and later they funded the newest game with their earnings of the previous ones.
And they want to stay independent, because they know, what it means to get into the stock shit show.
This point cannot be understated. Corporate management will always push for money, and will forfeit a game's quality any day to do so.
Large institutional shareholders are the real problems for any public company.
Retail or small fund investors look at long term growth and company quality. They buy to see an equity they or their fund members can retire on.
Large institutional investors have "fund managers" who get wealthy by showing quarterly growth of "their" funds.
So we end up with finance people destroying gaming, automotive, abd so many more industries, because these fund managers have no clue of the real markets.
/rant off.
Er I hate to burst your bubble but Larian are 30% owned by the not at all multi-billion dollar company Tencent. Sure 62% is owned by Sven and 8% by his wife and they did indeed do what you said to a degree - funded themselves and used profit to pay for the next game de but they have also had investment from Tencent so it's kinda disingenuous to say they aren't owned by the multi billion companies.
However
I do think one of the biggest changes is that Sven has the passion and does own majority stock so he can decide what's going to happen - in other cases the people who start the businesses have either died or retired after the buy outs so the life long 'corporation types' and shareholders are the ones left - and they are the ones that demand to max profit and screw quality (espec. with micro and dlc) without any of the care and passion to make good games that the companies were founded on - and it applies for more than just Video games - any industry - Wizards of the Coast have shown this with MTG and the changes to the licensing agreement (also it was reported some high ups made comments complaining about customers just getting in the way of 'their' money o etc - welcome to Capitalism Free Market.
@@alphaomega1328 You did not burst any bubble. I even upvoted your post, because of the information it contains.
I am well aware, that the world is more complicated than we sometimes want it to be and particularly that founding and sustaining a company without a big corporation or a billionaire in the background is very difficult. Game development has also become very costly.
So, it is no wonder that the founder had to bring in some other money -- but he sustained enough freedom, that he can make the choices he wants. Many companies have some kind of "silent partner" which just shares profits. But as long the founder has full control over the company, the situation is MUCH MUCH better than when it would be owned and controlled by a corporation.
@@alphaomega1328 The biggest thing is that they still have a controlling stake. There is nothing wrong with outside investment as long as you keep control
(BioWareEA example)
You get Dragon Age pre EA, What come after was worse.
Mass effect 1 pre EA is a top game.
ME2 was the last good attempt but the development started before EA could intervene to much.
Now BioWare is dead.
It’s like when the whole class gets upset at the smart kid for setting the curve too high.
"Git gud" as the kids say.
Not even the smart kid. Just the kid who did the homework and nothing more.
It was only 6 years of development!?!?!?! BLOODY HELL! It's been such a long time since I enjoyed a AAA game
BG3 isn’t the anomaly; Larian is. Been enjoying their titles without fail for years. Used to be able to rely on a handful of studios to produce quality titles. That list has been reduced to one name.
FromSoftware too! But only if you enjoy their formula :)
The reaction of other studios just shows: Envy and greed.
Envy on the side of all which did not win the same price and greed on the side of big corporations, which do not pay their devs accordingly and wonder why the products are buggy like hell.
A big mind always should recognize and grant others their wins, when they are earned.
I just saw Destin's reaction video to Laura and I came here to subscribe to Laura. I love Destin's original thoughts video on Baldur's Gate disrupting the game industry and Laura's excelent video puts the final nail on the coffin, or rips the final nail off the coffin. Either way, point made. Thank you Laura and Thank you Destin. Great journalism!
I've seen quite a few takes on this issue and I thought yours was the most insightful. While youtubers presenting the player's perspective is valuable, hearing support for improving standards with the context of decades in the industry is a really great perspective to hear.
Thank you!
Just found your channel. Brilliant. No notes. I have been GASPING for an experienced female executive perspective in the gaming space. Your channel is a treasure. I can't wait to see what you have coming.
I love Baldur's Gate 3. It's the most fun I've had (and am still having) with a game in years. I appreciate Larian's dedication and care. But, I think one of the biggest factors to their success (besides making an incredible game) is they way they interact with the player base. They're accessible, they listen to feedback, answer questions, laugh and joke and share fan-art etc. They also endorse little cartoons with the original VAs, play into the love for certain characters (Astarion's 'Only Fangs' account for example) and even encourage the voice actors to be super-involved with the fanbase too by streaming or playing tabletop. It's brilliant and gives off a real community/family vibe. That was one of the big selling points for me. I've always felt big AAA studios don't care about their players. They see us as a gullible commodity.
Players don't want microtransactions and buggy games. It truly boggles the mind that the game studios don't get it.
I feel like employee churn is a huge factor nobody's talking about, but makes a massive difference.
When you have a piece of software that does a lot of different things, it doesn't matter how simple you make the code and how well you organize it - ultimately, it _does a lot of things,_ so there's a lot to learn.
We've been hearing about mass layoffs at larger studios, from testers and more recently parts of development teams, and I can't think of anything more lethal to a complex software project than removing people who have learned the project. That's not something that you can just replace at the drop of a hat: you can't replace years of knowledge with months of onboarding and expect that to go well. You can have _more_ developers than before and be _less_ productive.
I agree! It takes time to learn a new code base, process and team.
Here because of Destin and I’m here to stay. Amazing content and thank you for your influence in the gaming industry. You have a unique insight because of your experience and your opinions deserve to be seen!
Destin sent me here, as well
Destin sent me as well 😊
Destin sent me here too! 😊
Destin sent me too. Great content. Subscribed.
And I!
Thank your for this statement!
I feel like one factor that is sorely lacking in this whole debate is the responsibility of the consumer. Sid Meier (I think) once said "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game". Likewise, I'd argue that additionally "Given the opportunity, publishers will optimize the quality out of a game". Every incredible technological improvement we have made over the last 20 years has first and foremost been used to cut more corners when it comes to delivering a quality product. There will be a lot of people in the comments calling out EA, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard and other big studios but as long as enough people keep buying and even pre-ordering these bugged out messes of unfinished, unpolished software, studios will continue to make them. I'd personally like more curators like IGN (which for once did a great video on this situation) and even small, insightful takes like this to empathize this point.
Either way, that's just my faint hope of a change coming. As someone who's in the tech industry for a love and fascination of the matter, it is pretty discouraging seeing the direction we're moving in.
Laura! I totally agree. I have over 400 hours on BG3 spread over multiple campaigns both solo and co-op. Larian should indeed be celebrated for what they accomplished.
I believe we worked together at Epic Games back in the day. Glad to see that you are sharing your game dev experience on TH-cam!
I have worked at some places (not game industry) where management was very tolerant of poor job performance. Performing at a high level caused coworkers to get upset. This is basically the same thing.
The best part of how good Baldur's Gate 3 (And Elden Ring before it) is, is that it clearly shows that gamers still want to play single player games and that live service micro-transaction games aren't the only type of game that can be successful. It is also interesting that both Larian and From Software aren't publicly traded companies, they could survive on modest success and build up the skills and experience needed to make top tier games. There weren't any stockholders demanding maximum profit extraction which allowed them to make games without predatory monetisation. In both cases these studios didn't start out on top, they made multiple, less well received, games before reaching their current peaks of success.
It's like being the new guy at a new job. If you outwork your peers, they get mad, because you're making them look bad. "You need to chill. You're making us look bad. We have a good thing going here, where we can be lazy and work slow. If they see you producing more and better results, they're gonna want us to do that too."
Larian Studios was founded in 1996, that’s hardly “the new guy at a new job”
@@legitplayin6977 I've been playing Larian games for years. I know they're veterans, but the mentality of the other devs is like that. They're upset that someone is showing them up, making publishers feel like their easy lazy garbage is threatened.
@@waynetec13 I mean, is it threatened? CRPG’s are a niche genre and I don’t see them going mainstream.
@legitplayin6977 it has more to do with how Larian respects their playerbase than the type of gameplay. BG3 is also a deeply rich story-driven rpg where choices actually matter instead of the illusion of choice that many rpgs have today. There will always be differences in combat and gameplay between games, but an rpg is still an rpg. The story, characters, companions, choice availability, customization, and freedom will always be compared between 2 rpgs.
Larian also has set a standard with listening to and being in touch with the player base. Some game devs have actually attacked fans recently when fans criticize their game. Look at how Volition reacted to fans in their criticism to the new Saints Row. Now look where Volition is today. It's refreshing to see devs appreciate and listen to the players instead of ignoring and/or attacking them.
@@MjollTheLioness-o4y this. All of this.
The funniest part of this is that AAA studios know what the secret ingredient is.
It’s their kryptonite. To make an amazing game, you just can’t over monetize a good game.
If you make an amazing game don’t chop it up and sell it in pieces of initial release, dlc, and micro transactions.
i agree with everything said, but i think a big thing missing around "quality" is the objectives developers are trying to achieve. So many big studios' objectives are to make as much money as possible and therefore make only a good enough game to acomplis this. Where as i feal Larian wanted to make a great game first and foremost within the constraints they had.
Not only that, their objective is also to spend the least amount possible in addition to having the highest revenue. Candy Crush makes Activision Blizzard 5-10x the revenue that World of Warcraft brings in. Why would their shareholders feel confident in a CEO that wanted to spend hundreds of millions on a huge budget great game that will only bring in a fraction of what mobile games are bringing them for a fraction of the expense?
Large corporations taking over the games industry is what has ruined it. It is the self-publishers and indie devs are the ones making the good games now.
My big question here is though: are those good objectives to have? Is shipping a poor quality product an acceptable strategy to maximize profit?
And as a customer, why would you want that?
While I agree with you, I'll have to make one correction here. It's not the developers that want to make the most money, it's their publishers and shareholders that do. If it was up to the devs and they had 100% control, games like Baldur's Gate 3 would release like crazy. But because publishers have to appeal to shareholders, who don't know or care about a game being good and feature complete, it's why their bottom line will always be at the forefront of their business model.
Part of that is that Larian published on their own. Many times the actual development teams know what gamers want, but publishers and their golden handcuffs have priority on design decisions and deadlines. Look at the industry examples of hit quality games, many are self published.
This isn't the rule mind you, but its a very common correlation.
@@PatchedUpGaming Many headline studios ran by major publishers (EA, Activision, Ubisoft) are utilized like a clockwork assembly line. They are expected to churn out the next title in an IP every X number of years, at X time of year. At the corporate level, they note that game customers are extremely susceptible to advertising hype and habitual purchasing. Post launch reviews may be telling, but they already sold their millions of copies regardless. (Makes sense why Pre orders are so important)
The first 20 seconds of this video SAYS IT ALL. A completed game. No mtx, no bs.
Your explanation of the Money-Quality-Time triad of game development reminds me of a phrase I've heard regarding commercial projects in general: "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick Two." A semi-humorous way of reminding people that it is often functionally impossible to give all 3 aspects of your projects maximum priority at all times. Larian, for example, prioritized Good and Cheap (less expensive for the end cutomers) but gave the project more Time, via Early Access testing. Thanks for your video! Be well!
Everything you're saying is SPOT ON.
Quality finished games on release date.
Players offered to play unfinished game to improve it until it's ready for launch 👍
Comparison (as much I read): BG3 = 400 working on it. D4 = 9.000 working on it.
Now compare the content!
How did Larian do it?
-They have people who have worked for decades on similar games.
-Their founder and President Sven Vincke is an avid gamer who supports his company.
-Larian believes in the 'old school' mentality of "quality at launch" as Laura put it. This meant being in early access for about 3 years.
-Larian offered a $10 deluxe addition for those who want to pay more.
-Larian understand that its reputation matters, and for it to make a worthy successor to Baldur's Gate, it MUST -feel- like Baldur's Gate!
-Larian is for fun before profits because it understands quality = money & reputation.
Great Art is great business (I believe a quote attribuable to the founder of Pixar John Lassater)
BG3 is so good for the same reason why the Lord of the Rings trilogy was so impressive -community involvement. Both projects had a hardcore fandom to build on and involved those volunteering lore specialist in the developement process for years. We might see something similar with Vampire -but thats it.
Well said. Consumers and industry insiders need to keep hammering on this message that games like BG3 should be celebrated. It's the only way we can make the industry change for the better.
To me it seems crazy to launch an unfinished game.
The damage to the devs rep is huge.
Even if u fix ur game, the damage is done!
1st impressions are so important!
These days 1st impressions are more important than ever!
Here from Destin’s channel. Having your expertise to back your sentiment on current game development trends really drives your points home. Thank you for sharing your views on the matter.
Larian having experience at making games in this genre and also using a well known rules set for the basis of the game are two strong advantages.
Thanks Laura, it's nice to have someone with your history in the industry discussing this!
Im about to fire up BG3 for the first time, I am soo stoked to play this game!
The consumer standpoint can be summed up with 3 simple words: Respect our time.
Cheers to channel growth!!! Great video
I’ve never heard of you but I love your realistic take on the gaming industry.
On how Larian manages work over multiple studios.
Part of the trick is being from Belgium. It's a small country surrounded on all sides by bigger countries with different languages and different cultures. And it's a tri-lingual country itself. It translates into an environment where being multilingual and multicultural is the norm. So when Larian needed to scale up the simple thing to do was to scale out of the country.
All language related work went to the UK and Ireland to have access to the best writers and voice actors. Quality assurance was spread around the world with studios in Canada and Malaysia spreading the work over a 24 hour working day while doing a regular 9 to 5. Larian Barcelona is specialized in console ports.
And control is in Ghent, Belgium. If you can deal with the complexities of that place, going global holds no mystery.
this op-ed is the difference between when the games industry was lead by people like Laura and now, when it is lead by people like Jim Ryan and Phil Spenser - the former sees the challenges of the endeavor as a catalyst for creative solutions, and solutions like pushing updates over the internet to fix minor bugs as a tool to be used responsibly, while the latter sees the challenges as impediments to profit, and solutions like pushing out patches for games that were shipped broken as opportunities to abuse such tools in their quest for the Path of Least Resistance to Ever-Growing Profits.
What a wonderful, balanced, and positive view on this. I got fatigue as soon as this drama unfolded. But like a suicidal moth I kept being drawn to the flame. I finally feel like this is the final and best word on the subject. Thank you for releasing me from this absurdity.
Laura. Great video. Thank you for making this.
Well said! Every project needs to make trade-offs. Too many companies are spending their efforts on low value, repetitive content in order to maximize some engagement metric or to sell micro transactions.
Great comment about Early access! This certainly helped too. I wish more large studios would utilize (something similar) and get the community’s feedback before they release a game.
Thank you for the great summary, and I loved the "Apollo 13" reference (one of my favourite movies)!
All the publishers and journalists calling it an anomaly where honestly trying to gaslight the public. This should be (and, in my opinion, will be!) the new high bar for future RPGs.
People should just ignore these morons, and speak with their wallets next time. When their sales drop and their studios lay them off because the bar is “too high” the karma would be settled
I bought bg3 5 times. 3 times in early access for myself and friends, and again at release. ❤
While i agree with almost everything you said, BG3's launch was not perfect. BUT, we all knew that Larian moved the launch forward. As a result, us gamers, we can forgive the bugs that were still there at launch. We can forgive the lacking polish in act 3. It's a give and take. Most players understand why Larian moved the launch forward. And the biggest thing: despite the bugs, Bg3 was still lots of fun. It was enormously fun still. I had 8 crashes and various minor bugs in act 1 alone. I didnt really care. Because i was having true fun.
Great job on this video. Even though I've already heard about this story a bunch, I thought the writing and reporting you did on this video top notch, and that made it entertaining to watch/listen to.
Thank you!
Games used to come out complete. Its not a new standard, its the old standard.
I agree. I don't think we should expect the average studio to ever deliver something like BG3, but massive studios like Bethesda, Bioware and Blizzard all need to do much better.
Ironically smaller studios are producing much better experiences and original content compared to AAA studios.
@@andyd3447 in some cases
every game you pay should be like this if not we should not buy it
@@radu9944 Is this a joke?
Baldur's Gate 3 is such a triumph for gaming and art in general.
I hate all these broken games on release day. It's unacceptable, and I never buy them. I always consume enough reviews to know I'm buying a complete game, without game-breaking bugs, as-is on the physical disc or cartridge.
If more people followed your lead, things would change.
@@laurafryer6321
I also never buy games on pre-order for the exact same reason. The one time I broke that rule was for Baldur's Gate 3, becuase I had played and loved Divinity Original Sin 2 so had confidence in the Larian delivering my current D&D hobby into digital - I could see the potential - paying £60 upfront is normally something I would resist - but as this was early access I felt I was getting a buy-in at the table rather than bidding at an auction sight unseen.
I remember, after the owlbear cave and scratch leaping across the river and deciding to avoid the risen road (and the gnolls) and instead take the path along the river and under the bridge. I found something under a stone and thought "a-ha they expect some people to come this way!" and idly wondered if Larian was tracking that sort of thing: how many Tavs went to which locations and by what routes? Maybe, maybe not, but still the experience was one that encouraged creativity and trying things out. The iterations over the early access were great - particularly in the UI and UX, and the resting mechanic you could see the iterative developing and incorporation of feedback.
Nevertheless I was trepidatious about BG3 as the PC release date neared: was mine a sound investment? - I've never been happier to have backed a winning horse. BG3 is amazing and rightly celebrated.
Its really telling when other companies don't want to follow up on quality really shows that there always willing to cut corners and give you the bare minimum. I wasn't gonna play Baldur's gate at first cause I'm not a fan of gore but I was like you know what I still want to support it so i bought...And then i was like uh may has well try it and oh my god i was hooked ;w; (I just look away if its really gorey which is kind of hard to do when your character has to say something lol)
Destin pointed me here. You make so much sense. I’m a subscriber now for sure, and I look forward to more.
The backlash against the high quality of the Baldurs Gate 3 release, shows how much control corporate greed has on social media.
You got noticed. Thanks for sticking up for the gamers on this topic.
That was a really lovely video. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and I hope what Larian has done resonates with the right people in the industry, instead of scaring them away. :)
First time I’ve come across you but I’m so impressed with your experience, insight, balance and thoughtful statements. A real breath of fresh air.
Thank you so much!
Very, very good analysis of today game development and what is wrong with this industry. Totally agree with your views! Larian studios is, sadly, one of the few gems as a game developer studio which makes fantastic games
It was kind of the same for Elden Ring, though the criticism came from a different angle. ER didn't follow The Formula in so many ways and so it was a "bad game" according to devs from all these studios. Fast forward to it winning GOTY, which I hope is in the future for BG3 as well.
So apparently the actual new standard is that whenever a game breaks through the boundaries of mediocrity set by all the big studios, they complain about it.
I found your channel via Destin, looking forward to hearing more of your commentary!
Thanks for stopping by!
Amazing video. Thanks for adding to the conversation in such a productive way
I love this peek behind the curtain from such a knowledgeable voice. I've subbed and will be taking a look through your backlog!
Thank you for watching and subscribing!
This is one of the best takes I have heard regarding Larian and its impact on the gaming industry.
Great points.
As someone who played BG1 and 2, IWD 1 and 2, Torment, DOS 1 and 2, and then early access BG3, I've gotten to see the growth of CRPGs, specifically, the CRPGs that pushed into new ground, or 'raised the bar'.
The first Baldur's Gate was every D&D player's dream. It did a tremendous job capturing the D&D campaign vibe, even having a narrator that sounded like the DM filling in certain parts of the story... "You travel through the night, staying off the main roads, fighting off fatigue...." the flavor text that really consumes you.
BG3's early access was fascinating, to see problems get resolved, to see advances in cutscenes, and the integration of party members. To see artistic choices about how the beginning should unfold, and every single time thinking "yeah, this makes more sense - this works better". Plus, the incredible feeling of knowing MY gameplay was helping Larian. I would uninstall and reinstall after new patches, and each time I'd get a questionnaire about why I was uninstalling, along with room to make comments. I'd always preface my comments with "Love the game so far, just waiting for the next patch to keep playing".
Then, the day 1 release, to see how much had changed again, and to jump into character creation knowing 'this is it'.....this is the character that will see the adventure through.
Of course, that character wasn't, and I ended up going a different route, because why not?
Just came here from Destin. Really insightful, subscribed.
Fantastic video! Seeing devs complain about how doing what larion did would mean more work for them is heartbreaking to see as a fan. I thought the devs were the passionate artists who had to do their best to work around the limitations that thebcompany executives placed on them, but this debacle makes the ones involved in complaining look like corporate mouth pieces instead of artists
This video reminded me of that video from the Creator of Fallout who told of some of his experiences after moving onto other studios. One of them was how he asked for a simple feature to be added to the game which he knew could be coded in like an hour because he had done it before. Yet it came back saying it would take 4 weeks, so he called the guy over the guy insisted it would be 4 weeks, so he went to the project lead and the lead talked the developer down to 2 weeks.
While he gave them the benefit of the doubt saying that padding numbers seem to be common in the industry I'm a little more skeptical. From my experience in development there is a huge difference in talent. I've seen people knock out projects in short order while other people assigned the same task take 3-4 times as long turn in a code base several times larger and buggy as all get out. Programming is as much of an art as anything. Just like you can't train any random person to write a Shakespearean play, you can't just expect any random programer to produce a master piece of coding. Talent plays a huge part in the behind the scenes coding to get things running.
With cases of community made patches in the first week for things in some cases the devs don't fix for months if ever, you gotta start wondering how much of it is just incompetence. Cause in the cases of community patches it was because the bug was a major issue that in some cases prevented plays from playing.
As a PC gamer from 1981 buying a full game and playing it is normal. It's only fairly recently in gaming history that they've tried to normalise "Pay for it, keep paying for it, and pay for it some more", something they now do with software; Photoshop, 3DS Max, Teamviewer, etc.
Reject it.
Thank you for posting this video. I could not agree more.
Thank you for watching!
I'm on my third playthrough and I still anticipate I will see brand new things in my 4th playthrough, that's the mark of true quality...
very good and underrated channel. definitly subscribing
Im super glad to have found your channel. Thank you for doing this btw. It is so relieving to find quality information from a real source in this jungle. What can be done to support your channel? I would also love to get gaming reccomendations that fit your standards as im struggling these days to find the gold. I want to play the games that are made with love and avoid wasting time on half baked or algorithm based games that try to play me.
The big problem is:
It is at the same time a curse and a blessing that Gaming has become the mainstream media it is nowadays in comparision to it's "niche" aura in in the 80's and 90's and maybe even still early 2000's.
Since back then, developers wanted to create their vision and wanted to show it to the world, or at least as many people as they could reach with it, and having to work around technical limitations often was a big inititator for creative processes, like, a bit eaggerating here maybe: "Well, it's impossible to do it THAT way, but we COULD twist this screw upside down, hang this string from here over there and replace it with a hook and TADA, we got what we wanted, worked around the technical limitations and the player will NEVER know!"
And when that vision made money, that was a nice and welcome bonus, but it was never the primary motivation.
Nowadays where it is so mainstream money is the primary motivation and creative processes have pretty much come to an extreme halt, since now so many stuff is technological possible that wasn't before, so there's pretty much hardly any need anymore for creative thinking processes. And then there's the massive illusion that it ALWAYS has to be bigger and better and needs 40k FPS and ULTRA 20K HD or people won't like it, amping up the development cost for a factor that is impressive for like the first hour and then the effect already massively wears off. At least with Indie games going stronger nowadays and retro gaming becoming more and more popular maybe the big players will see that they also could stop burn money on features that only add so little to the game but cost an uneccessary fortune.
You can achieve depth and rich gameplay by creatiity, not by money.
The japanese even have a saying that fits perfectly on this whole situation, translated it's something along these lines: "Those who harvest on rich soil will not develop much mindpower"
My 14 year old son has completed this game twice and still going back for more.
Wow! Thank you for watching!
My biggest complaint is that these are old standards that a lot of these studios "used to" be able to do. 15-20 years ago nobody would've thought of shipping a broken game. Over time they've gotten worse and worse.
There was a moment back in history then the military realized that sometimes they need LESS resources to win. Around 3-4 bc in the East this idea was already known and used. Where should be some moment in future, when the business will realize and adopt the similar idea. There are a few examples of that strategy here and there, but they are often interpreted as an artifact not as a method.
Excluding Total War: Warhammer. I have not purchased a new game that wasn't a survival game until 3-4 months ago. I bought Elden Ring. I was so blown away I bought all the souls games and Armored Core 6 with no real intention of playing them. I might. I don't care, I have never felt like I underpaid for a game so much in my life.
I had no urge to play a turn based game but due to the overwhelming positive feedback I purchased BG3. Holy shit...........the game is amazing. 2 entirely different studios, of which I knew nothing or next to nothing about, revitalized my hope for the gaming industry.
Clarity and insight. Thanks so much for these videos.
Thank you! I'm glad you've enjoyed them!
The negative backlash caused me to buy the game. Never played one second of DND before. 60 hours into my first play thru and can’t wait to start a second run.
I knew Larian won't fail us.
Right now, there's only one Studio I can name.
The only way devs will take Larian as a positive example is if we vote with our wallets and stop buying their tripe.
Amazing video. I just hope more people see this.
I really hope another game studio picks you up Laura. You're ahead of your peers in understanding what gamers want.
Very well constructed video. Thank you.
This video was super good and you're right. Things are in a bad place but with the success of games like Elden Ring and BG3 I'm confident the industry will attempt a course correction.
Imagine if devs in 2005 complained about Resident Evil 4( THE game that redefined 3rd person shooter games) being too good and that they cant deliver same graphics and high quality animations
Thanks for the awesome video Laura! I believe this is further exemplified by how a lot of the best, recently released games were made by the smallest teams. Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress, Disco Elysium, Project Zomboid, Inscryption, Factorio.... If these tiny teams can make games of this quality, then what the heck is Blizzard doing? Cyberpunk's team continuing to insist that the release "wasn't that bad" is wild. If consumers are spending 60 dollars on a product that they cant even use, then all the alarms should be sounding off as that is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Huzzah Laura! You and Destin keep up the truth! Much thanks.
Thank you!
Baldur's Gate 3 *FIXED* the games industry.
I am here from Destin's recommendation.
Who's here because of Destin's recommendation of the channel. Loved this video! Subbing and looking forward to more content! :)
Basically the argument is that BG3 is too amazing and developers are jelly.
If Starfield gets 10's and 9's from "professional" reviewers, then the same reviewers should give BG3 at least an 11/10.
Three classes of people involved in this topic:
1) corporate shills/devs that are surprised by the success of the game or at least pretend to be surprised
2) legions of gamers who have either not played the game at all or have not played much of it that ride the bandwagon to criticize microtransactions and/or unfinished/buggy products
3) people who love the game and actually made it to act 3 but have to admit that larian did not ship a finished, relatively unbuggy product at all
All those fancy MBAs have marketing baked into the equation since school. Every marketing team in the industry is crapping their pants in case one of the more interesting CEOs brings some Larian ammo to the next board meeting and starts spending half the marketing budget on things that actually matter in today's atmosphere.
As long as people keep buying half-assed, low quality games, nothing will change. Its that simple. No youtube videos or bad reviews or negative articles or ratings will chang that. Businesses only speak money.
In addition, they shipped without shipping.
Just came by to like and drop a comment since I watched a commentary on your video, always want to support the source in fair use. Cheers!
Thank you!