"what funding?"is a dumb question. all companies have funding. especially software. very few companies legit started in a basement and progressed to international status relying purely on profit and loss sheets.
you are ignorant… you don’t understand what he’s talking about… they are both talking about VC funding… that means Venture Capital, which you did not know… for some reason you are here being ignorant and loud about something you do not understand…
You ain’t wrong but why so smug?
Learn some tact if you are actually looking to educate people
Larian recieved debt funding to found in 2009, late stage VC in 2011 (presumably to offset loan repayments), recieved ongoing support from Arkafund VC and has crowd funded every year 2013–2019. Tencent bought 3006 shares for 30% stake in either 2020 or '21 (not sure exact date).
Meanwhile:
Jan 2022: “Heres xenoblade 3, an absolutely gigantic single player game, no microtransactions, pushes the console to it’s absolute limit, Monolithsoft at the top of their fucking game. Announced today, out in september.”
April 2022: “Lol, it’s now out in july. Enjoy.”.
Baldurs gate is fucking sweet, but let’s not act like it’s a unique occurance in AAA gaming.
No, that was 2. That mechanic and plot point doesn’t exist in 3. 3 has very little, if any, fanservice, most due to its dark subject matter (infinite war, limited lifespans)
And yes, AAA. It cost multiple millions, hundreds of staff working on it, hundreds of hours of VA including notable UK talent (Jenna Coleman, etc), a fully orchestral soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda recorded in multiple countries, and the game itself pushes the switch to breaking point. It absolutely counts and is considered by Nintendo as one.
There’s loads of other examples of decent single player experiences without bullshit, this one just came to mind first. And I hope Baldurs Gate’s success brings more like these
This isn’t a pissing contest and no one is acting like this is unique. We saw the same excitement for the last 2 Zelda games, God of War, Spiderman, Elden Ring etc. (post more examples, I don’t pay as much attention to the industry anymore so I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch). Let’s celebrate them if that’s what you’d like to see more of. They’re all awesome and they all add to the evidence that there is a large population that still want to experience games this way.
no one is acting like this is unique.
Yes actually, they are. That’s the entire reason this debate began; some developers claimed that Baldur’s Gate 3 is a unique occurrence and should be treated as such, rather than an example of a AAA video game meeting the expectations of consumers.
I think that was the point the person you replied to was getting at: not only is it completely fine for consumers to have these expectations, but it’s actually not even as rare as these developers are making out. There are other examples of AAA development studios and publishers who aren’t engaging in blatantly anti-consumer practices, so the ones that do really have no excuse.
That’s a bingo
My example was just the first that came to mind. But like baldurs gate, you can tell the amount of care and passion that has been put into it. And it’s a AAA title no matter whether people think otherwise due to it being a Switch exclusive (admittedly, I only play switch games nowadays on my PC emulated in 4k60fps but still…)
Tencent owns 30% of Larian iirc, so most likely from them
Time to kneel down and pray to our future Chinese Overlords, for they are everywhere and everything.
Interesting I didn’t know that, how long have they owned 30%?
This post is a bit reminiscent of r/gamercirclejerk but at least your comment taught me something new and salvaged it
Not sure, at least since 2020 https://twitter.com/GamerTrader1/status/1431899588324175873
“what funding?” Bro you’re kidding right?
They made a D&D video game. The most popular and successful board game ever made. They had BUCKETS of funding from wizards of the Coast for this. They also had a massive studio with more than 400 people working on it.
James Stephanie Sterling did a fantastic video about Baldur’s Gate 3. Essentially, everything came together in just the right way for this game to be made. It’s not responsible to call this the new standard in the same world where we vilify overwork and ‘crunch-time’, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t expect more from game developers. You absolutely should. But you should do so reasonably.
I’m pretty sure EA and Activision-Blizzard have similar or bigger budgets for their AAA games and they either make shit or microtransactions-filled games.
2K is huge and they always make NBA2K decent/good but full of terrible microtransactions
Nintendo is huge and look at Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
Reportedly, Wizards of the coast made around 1.3billion in revenue, while EA made around 7billion, and Activision-Blizzard made around 1.5billion.
I’m no financial expert so maybe I’m mistaken in some figure, but the bottom line is WotC is not the only big (and growing) company, so this are nothing but excuses.
Ok, but what does that have to do with addressing the dude who claims the game had no funding implying it had a small budget when it didn’t?
He’s not saying anything about the MTX or lack thereof; he’s calling out the idiot saying BG3 had no funding.
What does my answer have to do with that? I’m answering the post that I actually commented on, which says the game is great because:
They had BUCKETS of funding from wizards of the Coast
I’m saying others also have similar or bigger amounts of money and don’t make a game like this.
They had BUCKETS of funding from wizards of the Coast for this. They also had a massive studio with more than 400 people working on it.
They had the IP; they did not receive a single cent from WotC. They funded the game with money from their previous games, and in fact, they paid WotC for the IP.
Just ignore the day 1 DLC.
Just clarifying what you meant. I thought I missed something. DLC to my mind is like… an extra race or somthing a bit more relevant than purely cosmetic stuff. Not going to argue semantics here, fair enough to call that a micro transaction and it’s certainly DLC.
That’s a courtesy for people who didn’t pre-order but want the dice cosmetic. It was originally a pre-order exclusive but they changed it when asked to.
Even excluding the cosmetics, this DLC includes the soundtrack. I haven’t purchased it myself (yet), but I’d imagine that a soundtrack to a game with over 200 hours of cinematic would be rather extensive (again, I have not seen it, so I don’t know). Even if it’s only 30 to 40 minutes of music, at $10, that’s at least on par with the cost of most albums anywhere else. I feel it’s got to be more than only 30ish minutes of music, though, so, for the album alone the price seems legit.
It’s the soundtrack and some DSO2 cosmetics that everyone who bought the game during early access got for free. They’re selling it to everyone else for $10.
Technically it’s DLC, not MTX as MTX almost always entails individual purchases of items, usually in-game. It’s more of a Collector’s Edition than anything. That no one seems to care about, even the people who detest predatory practices.
Do you mean the Mask of the Shapeshifter? That allows, once per long rest, to change appearance to another random character. Effectively a Disguise Self cast.
There’s also the dagger that’s 4-7 weapon. But I replaced that before I even dealt with the goblin camp. There’s so many magic items I wasn’t worried about it.
The biggest coup is the hat and cape. They offer no bonuses but they look so fly I’m probably never taking them off.
You consider DLC a microtransaction?
Edit: Maybe I’m just too old, but I thought microtransactions were something you get prompted to purchase while playing the game. Is that no longer the case?
Microtransactions are ‘small’ purchases made in a game (or via some kind of store that allows you to buy stuff to be used inside of a game).
DLC is any additional downloadable content that is not included with the game (so something like a day 1 patch wouldn’t be considered DLC, I’d say).
All microtransations are DLC, but not all DLC are microtransactions, generally (before someone comes along with some kind of physical microtransaction or something I guess)
I personally just view microtransations as anything that isn’t ‘playable content’. So buying a mount from an in-game store would be a microtransaction, while buying an expansion wouldn’t be. Map packs kind of blur the line in this instance, because one could argue that they’re essentially ‘world cosmetics’, but its a hard and fast rule and not something I’d try to enforce as a law, ya know?
It’s clear that there are multiple different definitions that people have for “microtransactions”. I think it’s safe to assume that larian has a definition similar to mine. No time in the game that I’ve noticed did I get prompted to buy the DLC. In fact, I didn’t buy it; it seems early access people got it for free.
