If reception to Baldur’s Gate says anything, it’s that people hate microtransactions in their AAA games.
This is like saying, “people need air to breathe.” The fact this is a revelation to gaming studios is deeply concerning.
I played some when it was in early access, and I’ve been absolutely loving BG3 now that it’s officially released. I haven’t felt like this about a game in a long time, and it’s probably because Larian studios treated this like Divinity Original Sin - a complete game with loving care. As I saw in another review, they didn’t make a D&D game, they just made D&D.
Absolutely. I genuinely worried a bit about my group, myself as DM included, being sucked into this game or having unrealistic tabletop expectations because of how well this game has been done lol
I also saw that there are a lot of things for players and DMs to learn from this game and how, although we can’t compete with the years long process of making such a complete game (done by many, many, minds and hands and through significant man hours), tabletop GMs can definitely be inspired by such a complete work. Asessing what they can implement from it in their own game designing and seeing how the two mediums of tabletop and video game can complement each other and how they differ will definitely lead to more interesting content on the table and respect for what GMs and story designers do.
I love the game, but I do miss some of the “fuck around” shenanigans you can get into with a DM who can improvise based on if someone comes up with some WAY out of left field idea of what they want to do. It’s no replacement for the tabletop but there are definitely things both DMs and game designers can learn from each other here.
Agreed, I’m just astonished how they got the feeling of exploration/intrigue/investigation in the game down so well.
I’m taking notes on how best to bring that kind of suspense into my sessions. I’ve had players feel similarly suspenseful using Foundry Virtual Tabletop and a fog of war on a map I created, but it’s a little harder to accomplish that in person.
The improvisation is one thing and GMs definitely lend tabletop to be more creative in that way, but the suspense of not knowing what’s around the corner or behind the door is harder to relay with just description. I think the visual aspect is definitely helpful.
BG3 does have a few too many “the ceiling collapses and you all die” moments for my liking, but, for the most part, I do like it. It just came out, so it’s still going to probably get some balancing patches!
There are many spells and items in the game that would be pretty good in a TT game IMO
the question developers and publishers should ask themselves is this: are we trying to make a video game to sell, or are we trying to make an onlyfans with more button clicking ?
Larian makes video games.
That article completely misses the forrest for the trees.
It’s a complete game. It was created with vision, passion, love, and complete creative freedom. It has a great story and interesting characters. It provides lots of player agency. It is unflinchingly candid, mature, and uncensored. Your choices, actions, and inaction ACTUALLY MATTERS. There is no DRM. There are no live service strings. You can play alone and/or with friends. There are no strangers or PvP to ruin your game. And yes, there are also no micro-transactions.
The lesson that BG3 offers isn’t just one thing… it’s a LOT of things. But the best way to sum it up is: it’s a great game and it treats players/customers with respect.
It’s also a rare example of where a massive budget without restrictions (relatively speaking) can lead to amazing results.
Usually one of two things happens: the publisher is tired of dumping money into a project then force it to market too early, or scope creep happens and the developers bite off way more than they can chew and there’s nothing they can do past a certain point.
Larian managed to dodge both of these bullets. Not by luck, of course. But they dodged them nonetheless.
I think the most important part is that it launched without DRM on GOG and was able to be pirated from day 1 and it STILL was a huge success because people knew that the game isn’t trying anything shady to get even more money from you
It’s just something people actually want to support and not like people feel like even if they buy the game they only have half an experience if they don’t spend more money later
I really hope the next financial report from Larian is making people think differently about the necessity of putting aggressive DRM in their games
People don’t pirate because they don’t want to pay - they pirate because they don’t trust the game to bit pull more shady shit later and not be worth it in the end
-800k concurent player on launch
-no drm and can be pirated on first day
-some exec: that could’ve been higher if you get Denuvo in it.
I have avoided reading much about the game. I am loving it, but I have no idea at what point in the game that I currently am. It could end in the next ten minutes and I’ll be satisfied with my purchase, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another 10+ hours. This is what I was waiting for Bethesda to release as the next Skyrim successor if they hadn’t decided to milk that cow until troll cheese came out. It’s everything I want in a game. Story, gameplay, length, affordability, fun, and no microtransactions making my efforts feel worthless.
So far, every article I’ve seen about Baldur’s Gate 3’s effect on the gaming industry has been horse shit. Other studios and publishers are not “panicking,” they’re not going to rethink microtransactions, and they’re not going to be daunted by this release; some devs have said as much already along the lines of “Yeah don’t expect this breadth and scope from us going forward, because it doesn’t work for our games.”
This game is not the industry-spanning “gotcha” these writers have been trying to make it out to be. AAA devs or publishers are going to continue their nonsense because people will continue to buy their shit anyway, and they know it.
All that said, BG3 is the best game I’ve played in a number of years and hands-down the best cRPG I’ve ever played. It smokes Divinity, Icewind Dale, the previous BG games, NWN, etc. So if any studios do happen to have a positive takeaway from this, maybe we’ll see at least some of that polish in games down the line.
A lesson that isnt needed Mtx are as prevelant as they are cause they sadly work
“Everybody”.shits on d immortal and overwatch 2 Yet they still bring in huge profits
I keep seeing the posts about OW2 where everyone is acting like blizzard is getting destroyed by the poor reviews, but, like you said, they still already made bank on these games in spite of all the complaints that have existed since launch. Blizzard just out here like:
The industry can’t learn this lesson from their customers, because they didn’t get the bad idea from their market. It’s a society-wide trend, a symptom of a whole economy under the control of a narrow coproate elite that knows little to nothing about the industries they control or the products they produce. They contribute nothing to the productive process. They only work to streamline the parasitism that infests our society.
I have experienced this on the production end, as well. I used to work in pest control. For a brief period of my career, I was lucky enough to work for a midsized regional company, grown from a small family business, that was focused on solving actual customer problems. We did tons of one shot work. We did do quarterly and bimonthly service, but there was no particular pressure to subscribe, or to cajole customers who wanted to cancel service (because we’d successfully dealt with the problem) into continuing service.
Then the elderly couple that owned the company sold us to a global megaconglomerate (one of the “Big Three”). Over the course of a year, our focus changed. “Recurring revenue” was now the watchword, which is a tough fit in an inherently seasonal industry. And the reason they do this, in pest control, in game development, in every industry that can potentially produce any kind of surplus wealth, is because the owners (“investors”) neither know nor care about any of the details of the industries they control. All they want is regular and ever-increasing revenues, in exchange for nothing at all. You can’t even say it’s in exchange for access to their savings, because though there is a little actual savings in the system, that’s chump change compared to the ever growing wealthy elite that controls our society and devours our productivity.
Earning revenue by caring for your customers and the industry takes strategic direction, time, money and effort, and the kind of effort needed is different between industries.
Earning revenue by sucking the living shit out of a company works (at least temporarily) for any industry and a multinational C-suite executive can employ it to any industry to give themselves the guise of success.
It’s like instead of cooking and following a recipe, just take all the ingredients and stick it into a blender and call the smoothie a meal. You’ll get sustenance but you ruined what made food interesting.
Beautifully written and entirely spot on. The question is whether we will do anything about it. We probably have 10-30 years before this elite will entrench themselves forever with some kind of robot police that truly can’t be overthrown. (And it’s not like anyone is rising up now, even though the power is clearly with the workers)
And then this elite will Habsburg-jaw themselves into oblivion and all that remains of humanity are machines built in the name of shareholder profits. What a sad way for things to end.
I see a different future. The tendency of wealth to be drawn upwards as position comes to replace labor as the primary means of gaining wealth ultimately puts a cap on progress. It’s a soft cap, meaning it might happen sooner or happen later, but it will happen sooner or later. Eventually, the imbalance reaches a tipping point, where the slightest jolt to the system sends the entire thing crashing down. Maybe people get pissed enough that general rebellion breaks out. Maybe the population becomes sufficiently stressed and undernourished and, therefore, immunocompromised that a global pandemic goes well beyond COVID into Bubonic Plague territory. Maybe peoples faith in the system becomes so thoroughly damaged that law breaks down generally, forcing those ultra rich to devote so many resources to security the people providing the security become the new elite. Allowing “position” (in Classical Economic parlance, “Land”) to be in itself a source of private revenue sows the seeds of destruction for a progressing society.
Of course, once enough people die and enough capital is destroyed, society starts over again, going once again through an age where labor is in the drivers seat, until population and capital base recovers.
Or, alternatively, they’ll ruin the earth’s climate in their selfishness and greed and either find a way to leave the planet and abandon the plebs to die, or more likely, die right alongside us as the climate collapses and ecological disaster wipes out the human race.
Either way, greed ends up destroying us all.
