Uhh… today’s AAA studios have THOUSANDS of employees, hundreds of millions of dollars in budgets, and huge IPs on which to draw. Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Diablo, Warcraft, Mass Effect, Dragon Age… these studios have VASTLY larger resources than Larian. Like, an order of magnitude larger. This is gaslighting and whining. I’m not having it. Do better, AAA devs. Do a lot better.
That’s why their games suck. Smaller teams and budgets make better products.
Well I wouldn’t say that exactly. GTA 5 had a huge budget and a huge team and it’s objectively a better product if you compare the two (which is only to say they’re both great games but the bigger budget game has and does more).
It’s a matter of the motivations of the developers and their financial backers. If your goal is to make an ok game that maximizes profit focused mechanics, most of these AAA developers are hitting the mark perfectly. If your focus is to make a good game like it seemed to be with the BG devs, they absolutely hit the mark and are being rewarded for it.
This is just a reminder to an industry that is trying to tell us that pay to win mechanics are the standard that they do not in fact get to dictate what those standards are. We do. If a game is shit people will abandon it even if you poured millions into that product. The recent battlefield game is a prime example of this. Even something as guaranteed as a new battlefield game isn’t enough to overcome a shitty leadership team emphasizing the wrong things. The community bailed on their product and they’ll never get them back. All those millions in guaranteed revenue are gone forever.
Not AAA devs, they’re doing what they can. The problem is with the AAA CEOs
Not AAA devs, they’re doing what they can.
Blaming consumers, in this instance. You could well be right that the problem is internal but in that case that’s where it needs to solved. Or if they want to get the support of consumers, be honest with their reasoning. Crying that the expectations of consumers are too high doesn’t help at all. It just makes them seem out of touch with reality.
The Divinity games are some of my favorites ever made. It makes me giddy that BG3 is doing so well to embarrass big companies 😂
This is partly why I ponied up full price.
I want more games from Larian.
Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Diablo, Warcraft, Mass Effect, Dragon Age… these studios have VASTLY larger resources than Larian.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the team that worked on Skyrim was significantly smaller than the Larian team that worked on BG3.
I have no problem if games reached this via a similar model that Larian used here (lots of experienced staff, pre-built systems, 6 years of development, 3 years of expertly done early-access with a highly engaged player base) but they’re not going to. They’re going to implement more crunch, more abuse, more destruction of the few people who want to work in games in order to get there. And that’s where I have the issue.
I want shorter games, with worse graphics, made by people who get paid more to do less. Because that’s what’s needed to make truly great games. People who are passionate, not burning themselves out just to barely make deadlines, make great games.
Sir… Socialism is already ruining this nation.and you are daring to propose communism?!
I want shorter games, with worse graphics, made by people who get paid more to do less.
Honestly that’s an excellent summary.
Don’t get me wrong BG3 is probably one of the best games I’ve ever played and I eventually want BG4 or whatever expansion/spin-off/sequel they want to make. However I waited 23 years between BG2 and BG3, I don’t want to wait that long again, but I can wait.
But to your point I want good games. I don’t need 100+ hour adventures. In general I don’t want 100+ hour adventures. Those should be rare. I want games that I can finish (at a casual pace) in a weekend or two.
Portal 1? Braid? Both are short puzzle games that are absolutely fantastic.
Stanley Parable? Gone Home? Excellent story games. You can beat them in about as much time as it takes to watch a movie.
It’s disappointing that AAA studios don’t recognize this. I don’t want a bloated game that takes 300 hours to experience most of it. I don’t want a giant map. I want a good game. I want a small map filled with life, not a large one with soulless procedurally generated dungeons.
I’m just putting it out there that I have finished almost 3 different playthroughs and I would 300% purchase DLC.
If the initial game is a full game and satisfactorily so, I would gladly fork over more money for additional content.
DLC is not inherently bad. It’s just the way most companies have done it is.
What’s particularly notable about this well above average gaming year is that the clearly top two games so far aren’t using state-of-the-art graphics.
Given how messy PC gaming has been lately, with a recent history of GPU shortages followed by an underwhelming new generation and some very poor game optimization, I wouldn’t mind seeing a trend of game development slowing down on graphics tech for a bit.
We have to go back!
But also legitimately. Like remember how good games would get near the end of a console’s lifecycle? Then a new console generation would drop and the games would look sharp, but also a bit wonky, until enough years has past, and thennn… another new console generation would drop, and the constraints would disappear again. Always too soon, I thought - just as the games were getting truly good again!
Heh, yes, I still have fond memories of the late 16-bit generation and early fifth-gen games that didn’t get on board the 3D bandwagon. Sprite-based games started to look mighty sexy until everyone decided that untextured polygons were the way to go for a while. 😑
Educate a pleeb here, I’ve been out of the gaming loop. What’s the notable exceptions of great games this year and what two that are not state-of-the-art graphics do you mean?
This thread’s on Baldur’s Gate 3, that’s one of them. I should have specified the other of the two most highly-rated games this year; it’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Both games are more or less running last-gen graphics tech and are ahead of the pack on review scores. Zelda looks good for a Switch game, though.
You could probably ask a dozen gaming enthusiasts and get a dozen different answers on why this year has been exceptional. I’d say it’s because we have a lot of big releases from venerable franchises arriving all in the same year (Baldur’s Gate is one, plus Diablo, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, Resident Evil, Star Wars, Street Fighter). There are hits from new IPs like Cassette Beasts, Dave the Diver, Hi-Fi Rush, and maybe Starfield in a few weeks if it’s not a disaster.
It’s a nice mix of old and new worlds and plenty of surprises. On top of all that, it’s only August. I think there’s a sense that the industry is starting to leave the pandemic behind, too.
I don’t think demanding quality games is inherently at odds with wanting studios to not abuse their workers. What we really should support is broad labor protections and labor unions for developers. Because clearly the AAA studios don’t need the excuse of high demand for features from gamers in order to abuse their people since they have been doing that for years while churning out trash titles.
Completely agreed. The issue is that gamers™ aggressively advocate for better quality, and do not care about workplace abuse or worse products with more features. This creates the current feedback loop we have where games that are longer, have flashier features, and aren’t finished at launch.
Labor unions and protections would be excellent, but isn’t something that I, a non-game developer, can do much to advance, besides avocation.
Why are they getting so much attention for it?
Nintendo does the same with BoTW and ToTK. Long dev cycles that releases a functional game without micro-transactions.
FromSoft does the same with most of their games. Where people actually beg them to release DLCs.
But no… it’s Larion they seem to go after.
Nintendo is huge. FromSoft has their own cult. But Larion? What’s can they blame there? Nothing. Most big studios that bitch about this is larger than Larion. Maybe because they are more scared that if Larion can do it. There’s no excuse anymore.
Most of the Sony exclusives are the same. God of War, Spiderman, Ghost of Tsushima.
Just solid AAA single player games, no nickel and dime bullshit.
Every F2P model is predatory as fuck, and relies on taking advantage of whales over a prolonged period.
…but I paid full price for D4 and still got a half baked game with an invasive in-game shop.
Not to victim blame, but if you looked at everything Blizzard have done over the last 10 years, and thought “maybe this one will be different” then perhaps the problem is you.
I’m as frustrated with D4 as the next guy, but I’d hardly call their in-game shop invasive. Their MTX has been minor and cosmetic thus far. There are far better examples including one within the Diablo universe.
I think it’s due to the little guy making a huge wave that other people don’t feel they’re “allowed” to make. These other devs work on “AAA” companies working on big name titles from studios everyone has heard of so. But now a small, indie studio comes along with a grand slam and they don’t like it kind of makes them look bad by comparison. Showing you can release a big complex game without it being an absolute buggy mess, doesn’t need microtransactions, doesn’t need to sell millions of copies to be considered a success, and isn’t just a copy paste of the previous game with a handful of modifications made to slap a new “FOR SALE” label on it…
But now a small, indie studio comes along with a grand slam and they don’t like it kind of makes them look bad by comparison.
Larian is similar in size, if not significantly larger, than Bethesda when they made Skyrim.
Less established though. I’d say that Larian wasn’t on most gamers’ radar until Divinity Orginal Sin 2.
I think the “problem” for those people is that the game broke out of its bubble. nintendo, from soft and also larion up until now all had their own bubble of fans. Larion broke that mold and even people who have nothing to do with the genre celebrate it.
I personally think this is because gaming journalism isn’t real journalism. They don’t actually care, they just want clicks and perceived relevancy when people repost their tweets to reddit
A lot of journalists do care, but they also have a job to do and a boss that tells them which articles to write.
Like I don’t care about whatever business my company is competing in, but I’ll keep working for them because they pay me.
but I’ll keep working for them because they pay me.
That’s just it, you can move to a different company that has a better working situation in environment. You just have to be a brave enough to fight the inertia that keeps you where you’re at.
And in fact, if you want your salary to steadily increase over your career, you’re supposed to move from company to company every couple of years.
There was plenty of distaste for Elden Ring when it came out – devs at Ubisoft I believe ridiculed how the UI wasn’t informative and such.
I think AAA studios are terrified because they’re seeing just how much consumers value quality over quantity and MTX bullshit. Games that should be in self contained bubbles are now hitting mainstream and becoming absurdly popular.
Lmao Ubisoft of all folks should shut the fuck up about UI, they are literally the source of the meme about cluttered and overly complicated UI. If Ubisoft is complaining about a UI I have to automatically assume it is a good UI.
Also, if AAA developers have been paying attention for the last decade, they would know that consumers have valued quality and shown disdain for MTX since MTX started becoming pervasive. MTX overall can generate a lot of revenue, but it isnt sustainable, hence why there is always some sort of FOMO characteristic included with the MTX system, making things limited time and constantly shovelling low effort “new content” to fill out the MTX system.
The lesson here is you can trust most big Japanese publishers/developers and it’s the opposite for American/European ones. Christ, Death Stranding was almost ruined by all the “subtle” product placements they put
Would it be so bad if games didn’t have insane budgets? Most of my favorite games from the past decade are from small studios operating on pizza and hope.
BG3 did have a pretty huge budget though. I would totally be fine if games took notes from BG3 but reduced scope a lot. Bioware used to make games similar to BG, but they stopped and now make garbage. The idea other studios can’t make similar games is wrong. They can’t make games this big usually though without publishers telling them they need to include microtransactions and other bullshit.
BioWare didn’t just make games similar to Baldur’s Gate, they created Baldur’s Gate.
Wasn’t that Black Isle? Or had they already evolved into their future downfall? It’s been a hot minute since I’ve last looked at BG credits.
Lower budgets would probably be better. High budgets mean high risk, developers and publishers try to minimize that risk and you get bland games that try to cater to too many tastes. Movies suffer from the same problem. They get budgets in the hundreds of millions and you wonder what they spent it all for.
High budgets are killing the film industry. In the case of gaming, it plays a factor, but greed is probably the main issue. Most big budget AAA games in the past made large amounts of money even if they didn’t have universal appeal. Because companies realised that they could make large amounts of money off loot boxes, microtransactions, cash shops and battle passes, they started trying to funnel players into games, mainly so that players would buy things. That’s one of the main reasons the AAA industry is getting worse: games need to appeal to as many as possible, while coming out as fast as possible, all so that players will buy the overpriced in-game items endlessly shoved in players’ faces.
I love me some good AAA games and want them to stick around. But I think it would be much better if they were a bit fewer and further between, and the big studios shift to more regular AA games, and give their devs chances to do some more oddball stuff with even lower budgets. More expiremntation and risky projects can only enrich the industry.
I can’t remember who it was. A famous actor, anyway. They were talking about what’s happened with movies. There’s nothing in the middle.
It’s either $100m+ or less than $3m. Either it gets a big producer and they pump so much money into it that it must be safe because it can’t lose money. Or is a small producer doing it for the love, but a small budget doesn’t go very far. The risky narratives done well would be funded somewhere between the two extremes but it’s just not how it’s done anymore.
In a strange way, to get more money in for the riskier productions, we need to get the money out of Hollywood. Can’t see it happening, myself.
You can’t? We just had a summer filled with high-budget flops, and now both the actors and the writers are on strike meaning that the studios won’t be able to recoup their losses any time soon. Add the reduced to non-existent theatre turnout in the first couple of years of the decade due to COVID and there’s been a hell of a lot of money “getting out of Hollywood.”
You could give studios unlimited budgets and they’d still complain they don’t have enough time / money to get things right. The rhetoric is that “games are just so complex nowadays” and that justifies their 4/5/6 year development periods.
I’m not seeing the complexity that warrants that type of long development period. The visual fidelity on some games is impressive, but is it actually worth that 5 year dev time?
Imagine whining about how people prefer to play good games that work on launch.
From what I gather, there is a real fear in develper spaces that executives will take the wrong lessons from BG3. They will want the same scope, choice, narrative, & mechanics but through crunch, shutting down smaller projects, & homogenized visual & narrative focus. IE all the shiny bits without the time, work culture, & creativity that came with creating BE3. It isn’t developers just being pissy this is their way of trying to stop their idiot boss from ruining their current project or making massive projects without enough time or staff.
That’s because these executives don’t care about learning. They want examples that they can use to rationalize their shitty decisions.
So the answer is for the ones who make nice things because of a nice system they have to just stop because the other crabs can’t get out of the bucket. Maybe their beef should be with their idiot boss, not with the guys who do the work.
Whatever happened to companies learning from other’s successes instead of trying to keep others down?
The above post isn’t saying that Larian or other devs shouldn’t make games like BG3. It’s saying that we shouldn’t expect the massive amount of content and options in BG3 for every game
Yeah, to the OP in the posted tweet… I did put a lot of thought into it. If a game that’s just $60 can do this, then all new games are measured against it. Go compete. If your business model is outdated, convince your investors to change or be downgraded to B tier game dev.
Don’t come me, the consumer, complaining about your poor ability to hedge business markets. You saw BG3 in early access for 3 years, you knew it was coming.
