No, almost no developer is independent and not beholden to some profit monger. Larian could do that because they didn't have shareholders breathing down their neck telling them to ship the game now.
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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That’s an excellent and salient point.
It also cuts to the very core of my deep frustration around finance types more or less calling the shots entirely throughout the entirety of my career as a software engineer. The choice is very, very often between building good, reliable, well-thought-out systems that are genuinely helpful and barely scraping by (or in some cases, not) financially… or creating crappy, slapped-together, ad-riddled, society-destroying bullshit while taking a paycheck that’s decent enough to support your family.
When people talk about wage slavery, this is exactly what they mean.
Edit: revised awful wording
Woe be to man, struck down by his own invisible hand. As Oroborous, we consume, orchestrating our own doom.
Ok that's a fantastic quote. Are those lyrics to a song? Where did it come from?
I pulled it from my mind starfish.
In that case, you should know that a random person on the Internet thinks it's pretty kickass. It'll stick with me for a while.
This isn't exactly true as tencent has a 30% stake in Larian. I imagine it definitely helps to have an owner like Sven and his wife that are fully bought in though with 70% stake.
No, say it ain't so. Please, it can't be the generosity of outlier shareholders.
Meanwhile, games that do have huge teams and budgets like starfield and Diablo4 kind of suck. It's not just about resources.
Bethesda and Blizzard no longer have a soul. They're just coasting for cash grabs now.
Click bait title designed to cause division and working as intended it seems.
If you actually read the article, Owlcat have nothing but positive sentiment for BG3 success.
How is the title counter to that? This reads more like a "temper your expectations for our game, we cant build something that big."
I think you take a more level-headed approach than most of gamerdom
Larian is relatively small compared to lots of developers. This is BS
But they're massive in terms of talent and knowledge of this genre.
And owlcat will be there soon. They have a fantastic track record, similar to Larian. Larian didn't experience mega success until DoS2.
What resources? Actual passion, a loyal fambase, and a development cycle that prevents crunch and burnout? Yes, these are foreign concepts to most developers
Resources also refer to employees. Larian essentially have a massive talent pool very specific to this genre.
Is Larian considered a massive studio? On Wikipedia is says Larian is 450 people and on LinkedIn it says Owlcat is 201. I assume that Larian didn't have everyone working on BG3 given their other efforts, so isn't the total headcount not that far apart?
It's just another round of excuses for the lackluster state of modern RPGs, and I don't even think BG3 is that good, it's just that the bar is so fucking low that something decent like BG3 gets touted as the best RPG in years, because in truth it sadly is.
To call it "decent" is so disrespectful to the complexity of BG3. Hardly anything else even comes close to the scale of BG3, let alone any game fully voiced, in terms of decisions, outcomes, dialogs, and campaign paths of BG3. I'm 70 hours into my first playthrough and still likely have another 10-20 hours left of act 3. And all of those hours have felt impactful and engaging; none of that filler garbage you see in other games this size like AC or starfield.
Eh.
Nowhere near as good as the old Bioware and Black Isle CRPGs, and if it's going to call itself Baldur's Gate then I'm going to hold it to those standards like it or not. It's a fine game, but it's ridiculously and disproportionately overrated by both the media and players alike, especially when it looks, plays and feels nothing like the original games that it claims to be a sequel to.
There's almost no way you have played BG3 or you're just being contrarian. I love the old bioware and black isle and crpgs, BG3 absolutely stacks up to 1/2.
No, I've played it alright, just didn't finish it. If anything it's you who probably never played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 or, in fact, none of the CRPGs of old, because if you did you'd likely agree with me instead of calling me a contrarian.
Yeah, this sums up really well. BG3 still have many flaws and flow issue but because of the shit other publishers did pushed our "good game" bar so far below it's actually not hard to have a passion project that come out ahead.
I haven't played GoW:R Valhalla yet but that's also something they put together while financially successful without putting a price tag on it. I don't mind if SantaMonica put a price on it and than ask for more money, but their decision to keep GoW series DLC/MTX free just keep me on board for their future launch window sale.(and I am willing to fork out extra for digital deluxe. I might do a pre-order like 1 day before next time to get the pre-order limited stuff, which turns out pretty decent in GoW:R, not necessary, but decent gear. ) I am still upset about Sony's PSN Plus price hike and no save back ups, but I will keep supporting the developers I love.
It's weird how aggressive everyone in here is being. As if attacked. Like the assumptions of knowing how things are and having the answer to everything is par the course, but the aggro is really strange. I hope ya'll get some hugs this holiday.
Well you’re not wrong but I think you also are ignoring why people are frustrated with an industry that is largely profit focused and marketing forward leaving consumers with underwhelming experiences sold as premium product.
My dude the game developers are even more frustrated by this. You think we take pride in releasing unpolished products too early then letting them die a slow death by not supporting them because our corporate overlords only care about their bottom line and next quarter's results ?
I feel that but there are also so many great games. It's an old tired horse to bring out, so forgive me, but the indie world is very cool right now.
I was more commenting on why people are so aggro to this comment by the Owl peeps though. I could see why they feel they can't accomplish as much, Larian has probably done well for themselves with good game, before better game, prior to glorious game. No doubt though that Larian also took a swing they couldn't afford to miss and that is to be commended, if mostly so I can go without seeing more gaming-related layoffs in my feed.
I honestly prefer the rules and fight mechanics of their pathfinder games over BG3, and would argue they're better RPG games, just not as visually pleasing thanks to unity. But hopefully they feel inspired when it comes to fleshing out their gameplay interactivity and NPCs. Even the main villains and your companions aren't fully voiced in their games.
The Owlcat Games lead doesn't point to any one specific asset, but given the broader tone of the interview-fueled article, it can fairly safely be assumed that he's referring to the collective whole of Larian's unique access to funding through more than three years of paid Early Access, a veteran team of developers with decades of experience in RPG development, license access, a technical foundation, and probably more factors we aren't privy to or that I'm not thinking of.
The irony is that some development companies have access to a large part of those resources and they've been fumbling for a number of reasons. Bioware is a prime example, with ME:Andromeda and Anthem pretty much killing them. Blizzard is another, just look at Diablo 4, Overwatch 2 and World of Warcraft.
Management doing the job they're actually supposed to (making the vision of the final product clear to everyone, keeping annoying stakeholders off the workers' back, etc) can make or break many projects. One success case of that is actually No Man's Sky after release, where Sean Murray dealt with the shitstorm while the team worked on patching the game.
Also most people won't play past the first act. The first act was well worth the price of admission, and now I just kind of want it to be over.