the Baldur's Gate 3 controversy is... messy
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- Опубликовано: 14 авг 2023
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Thank you for your level-headed opinions, in an era were hatebait and click bait are abundant they are very neede
I really like this product. It looks interesting
I ❤ You
Most gamers don't make a distinction between devs and publishers. They paid for something, if it sucks they wanna blame someone and to them the term devs means "the thing where the game comes from".
i wish you can be fond of me too 😅
This helped me nail down my gut feeling.
"Don't hold me to this standard -- when my boss won't give me this level of support. I'm already working crunch until I pass out," is a reasonable outcry from the _labor_ side.
"Don't hold me to this standard -- I don't want to allocate this much time or budget to my workers," is a cop-out coming from upper management -- in this case, publishers.
Yeah that pretty much sums it up.
I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head here
That's it exactly
Yep.
🎯
My thing is Larian didn't start with 400 people. They took a massive risk taking on more employees during production. If BG3 failed they absolutely would have crumbled. I'll always commend people for taking a risk
They also had so many setbacks in production - including losing a good portion of their studio to a flood.
@@dps0610 And they ran face first into the pandemic too. Could you imagine having to do Mo-Cap sessions and not being able to be anywhere near each other? Having to hard shift your studio from in office to at-home to hybrid schedules with software that could have multi-thousand dollar restricted licenses? Larian survived hell and high water to get BG3 made.
@@GuidingOlive early access for as long as they were and selling units during that time helps a ton there as well though. Glad they made it through, and they deserve all the praise. This is just one of the prime examples of being a lauded pc dev gives way more options than a normal studio focusing on consoles (plural) first.
The same thing happened in DOS 2, they were literally bankrupt beforehand the 'wishful' cashflow. It also exceeded their prognose. CEO must be wildly passionate of table top CRPG etc.
Also I dont agree with not taking into account outsourcing numbers because why wouldn't you? 400 is low number compared to the 9 thousand people that worked on Diablo 4 lmao 😂
Going public always seems to signal the death of a studio's creativity. Hopefully that never happens to Larian.
Unfortunately, if they continue to have success as a game studio, it will become inevitable. The added revenue will be great at first, maybe for a game or 2, but after that it will be business as usual
Larian is already 30% owned by Tencent. I hope this number doesn't get bigger
I hate the tone when many game developers discuss Larian. All of their resources and capabilities are very often couched as unearned and unjustified privileges, as though they were simply given these things or were the result of simply luck, when Larian's budget, their staffing, their experience, their self determination as studio, were hard earned. They spent two decades making isometric CRPGs when no one believed in the financial viability of the genre. They self publish, develop within their means hence are not beholden to publishers, and decided not to sell their studio to be under a larger banner. They paid for the right to make Baldur's Gate 3. Yet the tone of many developers commenting on Larian is as though the development of Baldur's Gate 3 was free money while somehow also being an immense long shot gamble that succeed due to luck, that Larian was being thrown money, that all their talent just happened to be there. It's not exactly what is being said that's offensive, it's the undertone and implications of how its being phrased.
It's crazy thats the argument that they are doing. Destiny 2 used alot of money to make their game and look what state its in.
"I hate the tone when many game developers discuss Larian"
It's like 3 devs from a twitter thread from 6 weeks ago. "Many" devs is beyond an overstatement. Don't confuse the outlier with the norm.
I think this is missing the point. I don't think anyone is saying that Larian as a studio is privileged for the position they're in. They are saying that to be an individual developer working for a company in such a rare situation (that they achieved through smart decision making and hard work) is "privileged."
It's true, but this is why I hate the discourse of "privilege." Everyone's brains shut off because people are having different conversations by using the same word to mean many different things. Everything has become a "hot button" discussion where people just talk past each other or even intentionally take bad faith interpretations of each other's words to score "points."
I honestly think the Devs who are speaking out are frustrated but the restraints they have to work by enforced by their publishers as opposed to the freedoms Larian chooses to work by
@@andrewshandle well beyond 3 mate
You know the industry is twisted when a finished and polished game release causes drama.
EDIT: Due to the fact that people are getting bent out of shape because I used the word polish I'll elaborate further. Polish is not exclusive to performance issues. It is broad in meaning. That is the context for my use of the word polish. It's the full package. Are there issues to address? Absolutely. Don't believe me..check out what the developers said about these issues. Hopefully not too many more people are going to get bent out of shape now lol. Geez
It's not that, it's the size.
@@chand911The size is a deflection. Nobody is demanding every game be 80 hours, they just want finished games.
You're feeding into it dude. The game didn't cause drama. People on Twitter did.
@@darkphoenix2 noticing drama is = feeding into it??? Hmm, thats a new one!
@@fuzzy3932 if you're misstating what happened yes
It's so crazy that there is drama about a game that is TOO GOOD.
Envy does be a powerful emotion and probably the one that you will see people most twist themselves into knots to justify
Players getting a trash game on launch is the standard so publishers and devs are fine with that because players are used to it so they can continue releasing trash and then patch it over the months.
A polished and finished game being so popular like BG3 is a treat to studios and publishers because people might want to demand games to be finished in the future and players might stop pre ordering a game before knowing that its good.
@CharlieJones-jk8bt no, developers are because now their publishers are going to expect the same with even tighter constraints than Larian has had the luxury of being afforded.
@H2SJaeger it was literally one developer that worked for Ubisoft I believe. But way to completely miss the point of this video and continue to blame the devs instead of the publishers.
Remembered same thing happened with elden ring
They self published. Insane. After five restarts I feel ready to take the game beyond Act 1, even with playing a ton of early access. I’m currently making a game by myself that should be maybe 10 hours, and I hope I can scratch a bit of the storytelling itch this game does. A rising tide raises all ships. Quality should always be the guiding star for entertainment.
Good luck with the game hope you have fun the whole time your making it
I played a lot of EA and even now I’m still in Act 1.
I have played 40 hours, still in act 1
ony 5?? I have acute alt-i-tis. I get an idea for a character and boom.... another save file gets created.... I'll get to the rest of the game.... someday....
Not every game needs to be a sprawling 40-80 campaign. It just needs to be finished and complete at what it intended to do. WAY too many games release unfinished
You're right. An unfinished game that's "40-80 hours" is actually only 4-8 hours if it's broken or not fun to play.
That’s my and many others’ largest criticism. Studios have been pushing their game prices up to $70 recently while still releasing buggy messes that requires another $150 just to have a full game. Nobody thinks game developing is easy, but it certainly feels like a slap to the face when we’re told not to raise our expectations from game studios with more people and funding that have many times more the product cost.
@@lightshadow3683 You sit trough a video where this was explained to you, in detail. It's not the studios. ITS THE PUBLISHERS. You think the guy, who made 10 different hats for Mario was the one who decided that Odyssey will costst 70 bucks?
The entire issue with the IGN video is, that Destin blamed devs for 10 minutes, and didn't mention that all the issues in today's gaming caused by THE PUBLISHERS.
Also the writing, idk why today's game are so lazy when it comes to consequences and outcomes
@@hunterdnd It does not matter who is at fault, there is no reason for developers to come out and denounce BG3, claiming that they intend to take absolutely no inspiration from it. When the goal is to hold publishers to better standards so that polished games release in a full state, it certainly doesn't help anything when the developers themselves are pushing back against that.
It's interesting that Cyberpunk 2077 was the horror story that should have shown publishers what happens when you release a game *early* , now BG3 is potentially the fable (for lack of a better word) that shows them what happens when you give a studio *time* .
Hopefully, these two things together have a positive impact on the industry going forward.
Exactly. Although in Cyberpunk's case it was also poor management. It looked abundantly clear to me that the dev team was far more ambitious than they could afford to be, and either management did a poor job of managing expectations or there was a breakdown in communication, so they ended up scrapping a ton of work in order to meet a deadline imposed on them by the CDP publishing wing. My assumption is that they were either under contract or some kind of financial obligation to meet that deadline, and releasing a half-baked game was seen as the lesser evil. (Ironic for the former Witcher publisher to be forced into choosing the lesser of evils, really.)
I highly doubt it, considering CP2077 still made a bank despite launch issues.
It also didn't help that the QA company CDPR used screwed them over by giving them bad info.
Just look at Ubisoft. Their stock price fell 68% in the last 5 years due to creative bankruptcy and underdelivery in their games. Thats entirely attributable to bad management with short dev cycles and no creative freedom.
@@DC-yf9vy And their stocks tanked, and they slowed production on anything that wasn't polishing 2077 into a decent game.
Every game doesn't need to be 40-70 hours, it just needs to be complete and fully realized. Also, it wasn't just the publishers complaining on Twitter (I'm sorry, X)
100%
agreed
Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice always comes to mind. Short game for today's standards but a complete and fully realised game.
This.
in an ideal world, yes. But these days, lots of people value big numbers and expect long campaigns when it comes to certain genres.
Executives are afraid to take risks now a days. From movies to games. Thats why you rarely see things like this anymore. George Lucas said it about the movie industry that studios used to be run by people who loved the art and now they are run by business majors who only see it as a way to make money.
Plenty of creative movies out here that take risk, ya'll just don't bother to see them. Same tired complaint every year..
If he phrased it like “if people want this quality, convince publishers to give us 7 years, a well coordinated team of 400 experienced devs with the type of game we’re making, years of early access, and the ability to delay different versions to ensure quality!” it would have been received better
I feel like people forget about Hades. It also had significant time in the oven on early-access, and it also was an anomaly. An indie (while still Supergiant Games) that took GotY and sold so incredibly well. What this man said was not incorrect, but he just kind of said it poorly. Instead of opening with pointing fingers at the players, he should have shown a light on how AAA/Publishers/Investors hold the reins.
Worth saying I think that Hades also had an interesting story and story mechanic that brought people back. Even if some modern games have a satisfying gameplay loop (BG3 and Hades do), they lack that story component. I played Hades as much as I did largely to advance the story, that last boss be damned. Dead Cells is another game like Hades: small indie team, critically acclaimed, spent some time in EA.
Hades is a great example. Supergiant Games has a team of like 12-15 people, even now after the great success of Hades.
Another example is Valheim. Pretty sure the developer was 3-4 people on release?
In other words, the AAA studios have no excuse.
Supergiant Games is my favorite developer and it always makes me laugh (sadly) that they seem utterly incapable of sticking in the minds of the press. Hades was a megahit driven almost exclusively by player word of mouth and memes. It's almost like if you're not a big publisher, you don't get coverage (except from No Clip, those guys were awesome).
@@jonafen5504 Supergiant is another anomaly. They have the same kinds of leeway that Larian had, which is why they're able to pull off what they do. When you say AAA studios have no excuse, who exactly is it that would be accountable and thus be the one attempting to excuse it? The studio, the developers, can make anything. They, however, are constrained by their publisher. That's THEIR excuse. Now, do publishers have the money to give these studios the leeway they need? Absolutely, and therefore THEY have no excuse. But the Publisher is not the Studio, and that's the thing everyone needs to wrap their head around.
Devs are artists, publishers are businessmen. There’s sadly always going to be a tug of war that in best cases ends up being mutually beneficial but most the time skews towards those with capital. Hopefully Baldurs Gate can be successful enough to prove that investing in artists through time and resources isn’t strictly a financial risk, but a long term model for success.
And sadly with gaming its the Devs that are the true businessmen in gaming. I think Baldur's Gate proves that eye candy alone is enough to sell a game, an ip, and a concept. But it has to be done in its purist intention and not just wanked out in hopes the 💩will stick to the fans.
To play devil's advocate even for publishers it's not as simple as it sounds. What they did was a huge gamble that's not always going to hit. Even teams who have already done it aren't guaranteed to hit every time. 7 years and massive funding for something that doesn't will sink basically any studio and all those people will be unemployed and the investment money lost. If it comes out that the only way this game makes a decent return was to be one of the best games ever and sell a billion copies to get a return no one will want to follow that lead. It's not worth the risk
But honestly, even with how successful BG3 has been, I would guess that it's still printing less $$$ than your average garbage AAA game with microtransactions. In other words, my guess would be that even with all this success, it still wouldn't be worth it if your goal is making the most money possible. I'm not even saying that negatively, just as a reality check.
@@MJSGamingSanctuarywanked out 😂
@@RemoG0915 oh I totally agree with you, there is inherent risk to that kind of business and it is far from black and white, more of a give and take. There is a lot of nuance to business decisions that could have a significant impact on people’s livelihoods. Fair point.
It's the same in engineering. There always are the sales guys and the executive floor and on the other side there are the engineers who actually do the work under great pressure.
But it's important for those anomaly to come by every now and then ... to remind the decision makers what suddenly can happen if you trust the guys who are actually making that product.
I was really hoping to get a more in-depth coverage of this from you, thanks for taking the time! Keep up the amazing content!
I have two problems with Xalavier tweet (not knowing anything about him as a person). The first one is that is was completely unnecessary. Not a single person who plays these kinds of games will be expecting smaller studios to make Baldur's Gate 3. Everyone understands the scope of what Larian proposed, and achieved, wich is part of the reason for all the excitement.
The second is how he worded the reasons behind why he believes it was possible for Larian to achieve that (size of the studio, time of development, the amount of people working on the game, budget). It felt kinda dismissive, like Larian was handed this opportunity, when the whole context tells a different story. For what I understand Larian was a smaller studio on the brink of collapse when they were making the first DOS. Hard work e sticking to their vision of making a proper single player RPG, with no extra faff, was what saved them. They them established themselves with DOS 2, and only after that they were able to get the license for BG3 and start hiring people for this task.
Lots of other smaller studios could have created Divinity Original Sin. But Larian did. They made this possible.
As a note, Swen Vincke (CEO and majority shareholder at Larian, as well as lead game director for BG3) has discussed the situation regarding getting the contract for BG3 from WoTC in interviews. Per Swen, Larian was in active negotiations with WoTC for the contract prior to the release of Divinity OS2. One of the first milestones for negotiating the contract (writing the first draft for BG3's script) had a deadline that was set a week prior to the release of Divinity OS2.
My only issue with the Xalavier thread was that I sensed how he expected the wider gaming audience to be stupid enough to whine at the next indie RPG that doesn't have as much choice and consequence as fricking Baldur's Gate 3...surely gamers are intelligent enough to set their expectations accordingly? But since then I've watched the discourse become twisted and more and more stupid that I kinda lost respect for the average gamer. I've since read a lot of devs putting themselves out there to talk frankly about the realities of working in the industry and the replies will most likely be a shitty "Pff lazy devs giving more excuses" or "these devs hate consumers". Like, please educate yourselves...
The Xalavier thread was so retarded. I feel that anybody making these arguments are paid shills.
@@waveplay3978
Arguably, that's also down to the limited form of communication provided by these platforms. Tweets contain next to no room for contextual detail. The average person does not deep dive into everything. And given the recent slew of shit from corporate gaming, a lot of the reactions look and feel entirely valid at surface level.
Exactly, thank you
While I agree in theory that this is an anomaly because of the time and power larian had... I feel like that excuse is doing a disservice to larian in general. They didn't just come out of nowhere with a giant team and years to go. First they crafted 2 excellent games with much smaller teams in DOS1 and 2,which were such high quality they were able to expand their company and purchase the IP for BG.
They built this. They didn't get lucky. And other studios could also build this credit... Build their status so that people are willing to wait with faith. But they don't.
This should be the standard. It's understood that it's not, but the only way to make it that way is to be like Larian and build good rapport with your customers and create quality so they are willing to put their faith into you.
Luck is when planning meets opportunity.
Agreed. I feel like all the Divinity series (even the ones before DOS1) was the perfect run-up for working on BG3. I'd be curious how much additional work was needed to expand the existing engine. I imagine it gave them a great jumping off point. (Not a game dev, just curious)
We should just call it a magnum opus or something similar really.
FYI they don't own the Baldur's Gate or Dungeons and Dragons IP. Wizards of the Coast does.
This is the key point everyone needs to understand. Baldur's Gate 3 is an anomaly*... because Larian spent years getting their shit together, hiring competent developers, and making good management decisions.
The solution to that "problem" is not gamers lowering their standards. The solution is game companies making better business decisions.
*Also I'd argue that Divinity Original Sin 2 was _almost_ as good as Baldur's Gate 3, so it's not even really an anomaly. Lower production value certainly, but it's up there in terms of quality. So Larian have done it before. I think what we're seeing here is basically the Demon's Souls to Dark Souls effect, where fans of the previous less popular game catapult its successor into the mainstream through word of mouth. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a bunch of retrospective DOS2 praise a couple years from now once all the BG3 players go back and check it out, like what happened with Demon's Souls.
Counterpoint....Kingdoms of Amalour had everything it needed to make a great game and failed miserably leaving taxpayers on the hook for millions. These guys did an amazing job.
It released too close to Dragon Age 2 and EA clearly gave the established property the bigger marketing budget.
Pretty sure Skyrim DLC dropped around the same time, so Amalur needed a way bigger advertising push.
Then there’s Star Citizen with $600 million and counting, laden with micro and macro transactions, over a decade of development, and still in pre-alpha with no end remotely in sight. I suspect an infinite budget and limited to no oversight still results in few BG3s regardless of intentions.
@@singlespace I kinda feel bad for the people who spent money on Star Citizen and here comes Starfield in 2 weeks.. an actual finished game! Hopefully it’s enough of a wake up call for them to stop spending money but there’s probably a lot of “sunk cost fallacy” going on in Star Citizen. It’s never a good sign when the hype becomes the product.
now that hasn't aged too well, has it :)@@HolyBlowhole
It really comes across to me as an issue of being realistic vs striving for the ideal. Xalavier Nelson Jr. is asking gamers to be realistic and to understand that most devs, as you said, don't have the luxury of pulling off a game like BG3. On the other hand, Destin Legarie is telling the community that they should push for more games like BG3 as it would be the ideal scenario. Personally, I think they're both right and that we should expect better quality games, but we'll have to wait until publishers actually cooperate. At least, that's my takeaway from this.
Tbh I also think they’re both right and sort of talking about different things.
I'll have to go through their arguments again to make sure, but it seems like Nelson Jr. is focused on the effects this could have on the game-making process and Legarie is talking more about the quality of the final product. Obviously, those aren't entirely isolated from one another, but they aren't the same thing. (I do think it is a bit unfair for the IGN article to portray the concern as "panic" but that's a separate issue)
I feel like the problem with this controversy is that the developers are catching all the flack for things the PUBLISHERS are pushing (in-game spending, not enough dev time, etc.) Especially the IGN piece which wholly conflates publisher business decisions with developer intentions
To be fair they're getting flack for it because they're coming out and talking about how things aren't going to be as good as this. They could have just kept their mouths shut. The people complaining don't care who is to blame. They're just tired of companies taking their money and saying don't worry we'll get it fixed in 6 months, in the meantime have you checked out our nice store to buy skins and other things? Pretty nice ay
While true... That's because the devs are opening their mouths about it while the publishers say nothing. They're sticking their foot in there.
If they want to talk about it, they need to be far more articulate and put the blame where it belongs... And that shouldn't be on the expectations of consumers.
Which devs? Do we have a list of them? What did they say? And what do we mean by dev? The backend guy making code? The artist? The managers that coordinates the efforts?
I just don't agree with this. I think there are a lot of devs who are or have become subpar. Game mechanics, level design etc. publishers aren't making. Publishers aren't coming out and saying all these things. Devs are. And there is a reason, they know what they are failing to deliver.
They want my money right? It's not my problem that the thing they want money for is terrible because of them or because of someone else. They still want my money. So I can hold them accountable for whatever they sell. If we want to get into the morality of it, they could quit their job working for a shitty publisher. But they don't.
The problem with Xalavier's take on this is that it is defeatist. He is ready to assume that because things are like this now, they cannot be changed in the future; thus, audiences shouldn't expect things to get better. Yes, he comes from a “realistic” side of things with his take, but because he offers no solutions to the massive issues AAA games have been having in the latest couple of years. His take doesn't add anything positive to the discussion, only negativism.
At least audiences know they can celebrate Baldur's Gate III and vote with their wallet, so publishers start listening to what they want. We know green is the only language they speak.
This is what Destin is pointing out in his video. Most of the devs who spoke about this are just ready to leave things the way they are. This is especially hard to take because Larian and others have shown that it is possible to improve things. Yes, they are an anomaly, but there is no reason to not want these “rare” cases to become more of a constant. The devs' attitude to this case in particular, and to Elden Ring last year, is one of “Things are like this, and they will always be like this," but that is not how things work, if they did, the industry would still be making 2D 8-bit games at the most.
Spot on.
Xavier's point is realistic tho, the standards aren't going to change not simply because BG3 is an anomaly, but because it also doesnt show any of the publishers making bad decisions anything they don't know. EA had bioware making AAA games ages ago, the whole industry was making good enough money with the cinematic and complex games back in 2000s up to 2010s, the publishers and the industry just moved towards the bad practices because it made EVEN MORE MONEY, EA makes most of their revenue through mtx qnd none of their biggest audiences care about broken games at all. Practically the same with Activision blizzard , and thats despite the PR and HR nightmare that they've gone through for the past couple of years.
Practically the only two ways the mainstream big budget part of the industry is going to change is with either regulations and laws causing problems for them, or the mass audience becoming informed, which is at the very least going to take a long time.
@@luminomancer5992 Yes, I pointed out that it is realistic, but defeatist, and doesn't offer solutions. So, it is normal for people to have the reaction they have towards it.
Yes, the devs making the original tweets don't wanna challenge the status quo themselves and are encouraging others to not either.
I feel like Xalavier's take is largely misunderstood because most people are just focusing on the words "raised standards" in his first tweet. If you dig in to what he said later in the tweet and what he said in his followup video, it feels like he is mostly pushing back against the idea that every game worth doing should be a massive and expansive game like BG3, and he's worried that since gamers and gaming press are so positive on BG3 and there will certainly be comparisons between BG3 and future games, that publishers are going to stop making smaller and more contained games because they feel like consumers only want a mega game. He cites a lot of stuff to show that this trend is already occurring on some level, and his fears for what that means for the industry in general. I think those are very valid concerns.
The conversation that followed is a worthy one to have, but it revolves solely around gamer expectations of developers and game publishers regarding quality, which is a mostly separate discussion. It's a very relevant conversation and Destin's video gained a lot of traction because he expressed the frustrations a lot of gamers have about the industry right now, and how that he hopes BG3 will help studios see the value of making sure the games they release are high quality. Nothing wrong with that; I totally agree. I don't agree with all the people trying to strawman the original argument or use agreement with the original premise as ammunition to attack "lazy developers". It's deeply ironic to call out developers for being lazy when you can't even take a few minutes to read and understand what they're agreeing with, but this is the Internet, so pretty typical.
The choices are crazy i have played it up to act3 solo and now playing it with my 3 other friends and the differnt directions have kept me super interested in the story again.
What to do with the Grove alone has so may variables
I think what a lot of studios are worried about, is a DLC lite microtransaction free game, not as a service, is raking in more money than a lot of microtransaction hell games as services, and they fear that this could be a sign of players completely rejecting such games.
if that is the case then GOOD! about freaking time!
Hmm, I don't know. I think Microtransaction games still make way more money than Larian will. Listen to the Inside Games podcast with Laurence and Bruce for another take if you haven't yet.
It's the same issue in the film industry in many ways - the creative team, under the leadership of the director, is at the whims of the people paying to make the film, the executive producers. A decent producer will respect a talented director and trust them, just like a talented director will work creatively within the constraints imposed on them. The problem is that egos get involved, creative difference rear their ugly head, and when push comes to shove the person who gets ultimate say is the person footing the bill. It also sounds a lot like the book industry. Honestly, not a lot seems to have changed since the patronage system in the late middle ages and Renaissance era.
Budget and what the publisher wants aren't the players issues. If you can't make a great game within your budget you need to reconsider your scope and what kind of game your making. Everything about this is the players have every right and should compare everything to Baldur's gate 3 it's up to the devs and the publisher to balance the other issue to make the game great regardless. It's not up to the players to lower their expectations because one game has a greedy publisher behind it and the other doesn't.....
As a programmer who doesn't work in games, having to contend with the business end and properly communicate to them the lower quality of the final product because of the above issues is part of the job. If devs can't do that correctly and well enough to make the best game that you can, that's an issue with the devs and the publisher/business. What goes into how something was made should never be a concern of the end user and if they need to do so in order to consider your game good then you/the product failed.
If thats the amount of time it takes to make really good games that should be the standard
it actually is funnily, but for some reason all these devs ignore games like Botw, totk, RDR2, GTA V, diablo 4 etc etc all games that took 6-ish years to develop. But with BG3 it's suddenly *pickachu surprise face
i think it's more they havve been outperformed by a smaller studio who doesn't actively try and mug their customers for everything they have and setup 50 in game systems to milk you of money@@stonaraptor8196
@stonaraptor8196 The issue is those are 5 games and most likely a some more compared to the thousands made each year. And they have large teams and amount of money to do so.
You say that, but how many people have been shitting on rockstar for gta 6 not being out yet saying there is no excuse it isn’t.
@@stonaraptor8196 you said devs and yet it's under a video literally telling you to separate devs from the PUBLISHERS who are making the decisions gamers hate the most, mtx etc. etc.
You can’t tell me that the developers of that Gollum game cared about their work.
They did. Publisher issue, I promise.
@@charalanahzard What about Anthem? When we have all reports about what happened behind the scenes.
Yes, Athem seemed to be a BioWare problem. Gollum was a publisher problem. They were told to make a game they couldn't.
@@charalanahzard What's Blizzard excuse then? Or hell even Bungie? Other Activision games seems to be doing just fine all things considered, yet Blizzard have a habit of always making things worse. Sure it might be the individual field leaders at Blizzard's development team who is at fault, but that's still ultimately "developers". I'd say in most cases it's the publishers fault, while in others it's the incompetence or lazyness of certain game devs.
@charalanahzard it's very difficult to see as a consumer. And sometimes it comes down to developer.
An example is monolithsoft vs Gamefreak both are published by Nintendo but i trust monolith soft way more.
I plan on buying it just because I want to support a dev that does right by gamers. Can't wait for it to hit Xbox Series X
I might get it later, because I want a physical copy. I'll try it as support for Larian and because DND is something that gets my attention.
It recently released on Xbox by the way
Completely agree with you that the publishing arrangement is the problem. I worked for a game developer quite a while back, and we literally had a publisher say, "You're releasing that game in six weeks." We thought we had six more months. We got the game out and it was received fairly well, but it could have been even better with just that little bit of time rather than the bandaids we had to employ.
Now there is something to be said for the fact that without a deadline, very few games would ever get finished ... scope creep is very real. You could continue iterating and iterating forever. In that sense, Publishers enforcing timelines can be a useful thing. It's arbitrary deadlines that are a bigger problem, like you mention, getting a game out to meet a specific fiscal quarter, irrespective of the scope of that game.
But here's the thing ... I agree with Destin that gamers literally shouldn't care about any of this. The only vote we get is with our wallets. But that vote is like a sledgehammer ... how do we push back against greedy publishers rushing out unfinished games without also punishing the developers toiling for YEARS on those games? I don't think it's fair to put that kind of onus on a consumer who is just looking for a fun, finished game to play. That's why we need people like Destin in the games media to be telling both developers and publishers, "No, this IS the new standard, and you need to collectively get your acts together and decide if you really want to release games like this or not, because this is what it takes to do it."
The only reason why gamers care at all us because it gives them license to shit developers they don't like.
Perfectly said.. publishers need to commit to giving the devs the resources they need, devs need to be realistic and clear headed about the game they can make and the deadline they can hit, and we as gamers need to understand that quality takes time, and that accepting substandard quality just encourages companies to do the minimum and engage in bad practices.
I disagree with you that gamers "shouldn't care about any of this". Just because we are consumers of videogames doesn't mean consumerism must totally define 100% of our engagement with videogames. Some gamers are interested in the gaming industry. For those who criticise aspects of the products they consume, yes, they should be interested in what causes the problems they criticise.
I also disagree with the view that our only vote is with our wallets. Yes, people like Destin have more influence than individual gamers. But that doesn't mean gamers have zero means of communication or influence outside of their purchase decisions.
Both points seem totally wrong-headed to me.
@@G_Doggy_Jr Gamers should be interested in what causes the problems? That is high level BS. For example. If I bought a FORD car and whole batch of that model is broken I don't give a d... if Ford have some issues with manufacture process or that they have some other internal problem. I bought a car and I expect that it has all parts and it works. Why the game industry should be different?
@@tiemanowoLet's see if your analogy can illuminate things. What you seem to be suggesting is that the car industry doesn't ship cars that don't work, whereas the game industry does ship games that don't work. You seem to believe that there is no good reason why the game industry can get away with it.
Okay, great.
Now, the fact is, the games industry does get away with it, despite the car industry not getting away with it. Why is that? To answer that question, you need to investigate how the games industry works and why it is the way it is. So, I don't think your analogy supports the view that gamers shouldn't care about how the industry works.
Maybe the view is that "gamers shouldn't HAVE TO care about this stuff". In other words, in an ideal world, the games industry would be different than how it is. I agree. However, I was talking about the world as it actually is.
Once I got past the rage I definitely saw where Xalavier was coming from and I will say I really enjoyed listening to his perspective on game dev. The main issue I take is how it feels like we as consumers are getting blamed? I mean just look at all the popular indie games recently such as Dave the Diver... no one is saying its bad because it's not got the same scope as BG3...??
I agree with what you say, Alanah. It's the publishers. I am glad you don't want to take away Larian achievement.
The fascination on 'don't have raised standards' is just so strange to me, is it just the devs not able to complain about their bosses? If you can't complain about the actual problem then don't say anything.
eh, i see where he is coming from. But his argument was that people shouldn't expect indie devs to make the next BG3. No one expects that, can't compare apples to watermelons. That's why i think his argument is still a bit shit.
@@stonaraptor8196 His argument also includes those AAA who are beholden to the publishers/shareholders. You can't expect that studio to also make a BG3. It's literally said in this video. The only thing he should have done is called for worker and class solidarity and a wave of union creation to rebuff the capitalists.
Exactly. Vampire Survivors......
@@stonaraptor8196 He mentions in another video how big teams have been shut down for their work not doing good enough before. I believe he is talking about these AAA studios that are effectively too big to fail in the sense that they won't take risks because one bad game and they are toast. He also spoke about how there are so few stealth games nowadays. sure you have games like Skyrim which has stealth but there is a reason most games don't specialize; to appease to a wider audience. There are so many games we aren't getting because they are classed as too niche. I just liked those points he made, they got me thinking.
Ultimately his point was Larian are in quite a unique position to do this they are an anomaly.
The thing I take issue with is the why other teams can't do this, because they absolutely should. To me this should be the main talking point, lets figure out why these companies can't take the risk and fix it.
The problem about "raised standards" is what those standards are actually alluding to, and whether it is at all doable for most teams. What Destin focuses on is to ask more of AAA devs than unfinished, skeletal MVPs slapped onto a digital storefront, and that's all well and good but it is very much *not* what Xalavier is talking about. What Xalavier worries about is that RPGs moving forward will be lambasted by not offering the same level of insane reactivity, or by not having as shiny or "complete" of a presentation (e.g. no animated dialogues), as has happened in the past when Owlcat's Pathfinder: Kingmaker was criticized by its lack of full voice-over after Divinity: Original Sin II and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire set that "standard". Even Avowed had to scale back its initial ambitions because the devs recognized they're not as big of a workforce as what can feasibly create a "Skyrim killer", and similarly saw a wave of backlash for the fact. Some of these standards are extremely costly and hard to implement, be it in time, work or money, and a lot of smaller studios out there working on RPGs are often asked to compete or to deliver against games that have very clear advantages from the getgo.
Game devs have promoted gambling, monetization, and microtransactions to children, especially these past ten years, for less content, and it's insane to me that it's legal. No other industry gets away with this stuff like the gaming industry, it's sick how complacent gaming content creators, journos, and gamers themselves have become. BG3 should be the new standard. No amount of overly-educated word salad from a guy's twitter post will change this. It's common sense people.
"People have probably attempted to make things just like Baldur's Gate 3 and failed"
Funnily enough, one of those companies is Larian themselves, who almost bankrupted themselves multiple times trying to make large RPGs. Divinity 2: Ego Draconis was also a VERY GOOD game for its time, but it didn't manage to find its audience.
Divinity: Original Sin was kind of a hail mary - 'we're all in or the studio is shuttering' and they pulled it off. But they're a survivor amongst a graveyard of indie studios that managed to pull through and take their business forward into another success with D:OS2 and grow their studio MASSIVELY.
The road to making a game like BG3 is a tumultuous one that many studios don't survive. So yeah it makes perfect sense why a dev (especially an indie dev) would say 'hold on, this might not be the most realistic game'
I'm just so glad people are finally giving turn-based games a chance thanks to Baldur's Gate, some games I recommend are: X-com 2 , Pillars of Eternity and Midnight Suns .
I *highly* recommend Divinity Original Sin 2, Larian's previous game.
It's the 2nd best RPG ever made, 1st being Baldur's Gate 3. :P
Edit: And Pillars of Eternity isn't turn-based, it's RTwP. PoE Deadfire has turn-based as an option though.
heroes of might and magic
@@utisti4976I'll be grabbing that next!
Yeah, and if you like the classic xcom, Xenonauts 2 is really good, in early access, so much fun.
X-Com 2 is a great game, but I would not recommend it due to the long load screens, and crashes. I wish it got an overhaul.
Tiny correction, they didn’t push back the release for ps5. They pulled the pc release to the front because they ended up finishing it earlier. They were gonna release them both is September (likely they did this to be in less direct competition with star field)😊
The original release was Aug 31.
in fact they said they will not release the game on the ps5 until they can't get it to run on 60fps so they might even delay it they said they will not compromise and release the game with 30 fps performance now that what i call a studio that care about the quality of their products
@@weak_username Thank you I keep seeing people say this (that PS5 wasn't delayed) and I have no idea why they think that. Are they confusing BG3's original date with Starfield's date? I still don't really know how a 6 day delay is gonna make that much of a difference but it was delayed on PS5 even if only slightly.
Just preordered BG3 on PS5. Looking forward to checking it out. Very glad the studio got the time to develop a solid product (potentially). Keep up the great content!
I remember when BG3 launched in early access. It had it's fair share of bugs and jank. They basically had 4 years to polish it.
My perspective as a software dev, is that while you are completely right about the higher up people pushing unrealistic dates, at the same time your team leader needs to grow a pair and stand up against them for the sake of his team. If the date is not realistic, then the scope must shrink to be able to finish on time. If you allow them to do whatever they want you are screwed.
I’ve witnessed first hand a situation where the team lead told the higher up’s that in oder to meet the deadline we would need to cut huge chunks and dumb a lot of other stuff down.
The answer he got back was that they can’t cut those features because. Make it happen somehow. And the “make it happen somehow” is the game launching in a broken state.
It’s the sad reality that I don’t think will change that quickly.
Maybe directing the anger at the publishers and hoping for more anomalies like Baldurs Gate 3 will hasten a change.
The people making decisions typically aren't the ones who worked at ground level at any point. They don't understand what the work takes they just know what they need to demand.
I feel like there's an extra challenge with shrinking scope in games because of the unique marketing situation where years in advance the publisher/devs promise much more than they should in order to hype people up, and then eventually the game launches with missing features, and people are upset. it really makes a case for delaying the announcement of a game for as long as possible.
@@aoBubs that's true. The most blatant and puzzling one I've seen is Cyberpunk 2077, excluding the bugs, they promised revolutionary game systems that were never in the game, weird stuff.
@@PasteteDoeniel Well expect more companies to be sold or shut down soon. I wouldn't mind if all AAA companies just die and have to start over.
Completely agree with your take on the publisher, Alana. It's where the idea of Nolan Sorrento from Ready Player One came from. The Devs have to consider their legacy though when the publisher forces them to release something that is going to fail. Not only from an artistic standpoint, but also a financial one. Players stop buying their games they may be finding other profession. What I'm saying is, take a stand and risk that paycheck today instead of the many more to follow in the future.
What I like about this game is that they sweat the small details. My favorite test is to see if a character can sit on things. In recent expansions of WoW, you can sit on some chairs but other obvious ones you can’t. In New World you basically can’t sit in chairs. In BG3 I have yet to find one that my character couldn’t sit on and there are a lot of chairs and benches in the game.
It because Larian went for it. Helps that the person in charge knows what they are doing.
I feel like public anger is just directed at the wrong place, you wanna get mad then I agree you should.
But get mad at the CEOs who are making major decisions.
Not the devs just trying to do their jobs.
Yea, but devs are to blame too.. lol. Some just suck at their job.
Exactly
@@OscarASevilla get lost.
The big guys at the top are usually to blame.
The anger is mostly because of HOW the message was conveyed by these devs. Most people in the gaming community know that it's the business-minded folk in companies that make the poor decisions that piss everyone off. However, the way the devs talked about BG3 and expectations rubbed the community the wrong way when we have been dealing with mounting disappointments as the years go by.
I understand that most studios cannot aim for BG3 level of detail or amount of content. But demanding that a full price, single player game has no microtransactions and that it is released decently polished is a valid demand. People don't want every game to be the game of the year. They want to not feel scammed when they buy a game.
'Those people could... unionise!' Well said comrade.
Why do people always try to give game devs a free pass? They know who they started working for. They know said company keeps releasing games that aren't that great and/or that are cut short on development time.
You can't defend these devs by saying "they wanted to create the best product", "it's not their fault". It is their fault. They started working there. If you want to make something good and you're talented, don't go work for these companies. And if you do, yes, you are part of the problem and you shouldn't start acting like some victim when people get mad at you or call you out.
So while I agree management and publishers are the primary problem, all the devs that work there shouldn't get a free pass. Those devs should be criticized as well, because they are part of the problem.
Go work somewhere were you can deliver the quality you want, start your company, or go do something else entirely.
To me it wasn't about being lazy, it was mostly the phrasing and (seeming) attitude of "we can't do that [Because of how the company we work for is structured], so better not expect anyone else to do something like that. It's not goign to happen (again)", especially with the argument of "They've built on the Lore of several games before then!" coming from an effing BLIZZARD Dev.
Blizzards former devs that got pushed out with the introduction of Activision to the company have come out and said that blizzard is nothing but a shell of it's former self being puppeteered by Activision. Practically none of the devs that started overwatch are still there, same with the rest of their games
Proof that people has to pull controversies out of their asses any chance they get. As if we all have to be miserable together.
Yep - and the thing is, both viewers and content creators reward the controversy-miners with attention. Outrage generation will continue as long as we keep lapping it up.
@@GOAT-rl2uqtrue
Finally allowing myself to read/watch media now that I've finished the game. Really disappointed to see that this crap is the major talking point. So much manufactured drama over nothing for rage clicks. I think I might just go back on media blackout for this game and do another run.
I appreciate that you spent time going through a lot of what Xalavier had to say outside of the first tweet that people took issue with because too many of the reactions are to a first of 10 tweet, and really just the "raised standards" part, but it would have been nice to see more of your take on what Destin was arguing since a lot of the stuff that I felt was really well spoken was later on in the video.
Most of what resonated with people in Destin's video is the feeling that a lot of AAA studios are releasing highly anticipated games in really bad states, updating their games in unpopular ways, and generally making it clear to gamers that they are willing to compromise the quality of their games in order to maximize their profits. I don't know how much money that makes you in the short term, but killing a studio's good name isn't worth it in the long term.
Not every game can be Baldur's Gate 3, but I hope that their successes show that letting talented developers have the time they need to finish their game can be very profitable and will positively influence sales well into the future.
I'm sure 400 developers is a lot, but there are other teams that size or larger. Diablo 4 had 9000 people working on it. Maybe that number includes things like marketing, HR, and VO, but at least 400 people worked on coding and designing that game. Rockstar employs a few thousand, not counting outsourcing. 343i is almost twice the size of Larian (maybe not counting turnaround for contractors). SMS has about 400 employees. CDPR was about the same, and looking to expand. FromSoftware has 300 developers. 400 devs is a lot for a AA/indie-ish studio like Larian, but it doesn't seem to be that much of an anomaly in the AAA space. It seems like Larian had a clearer sense of direction for the game early on (compared to eg Halo and Cyberpunk) and was better able to leverage the size of its studio. Am I wrong? Am I cherrypicking?
7:20 "built by a specialized group of people using mature tech specially built to make this specific game" How is that not true of...every game? Do developers hire unspecialized groups of people to do modelling and engineering??? Do studios like Bioware, Playground, Infinity Ward, FromSoftware, etc. not use mature tech for their games, not to mention all the teams that use UE4/5? I'm at a loss for what this guy's point is here. Sure Larian was somewhat uniquely positioned for this game given their background with DOS, but the point isn't about making good turn-based games; it's about making good games, whatever kind they are. Nor is mature tech always a benefit. Arguably it held back games like Halo: Infinite and Fallout 4/76.
How do you know that "at least 400 people worked on coding"?
@@Avoca91 "at least 400 people worked on coding and designing" is what I actually said. How do I know? Because I read a Kotaku article which says that says the credits include "902 people in art- and graphics-related roles [and] 394 programmers and engineers." Thanks for stopping by!
It's kind of funny to invoke Bioware here when they are the absolute *poster child* for the kinds of development disasters that can happen as a result of studios being forced by their publisher to use engines that aren't suitable for the game they're making. Bioware being forced to use Frostbite engine against their will caused the failure of Dragon Age 2 and Anthem at the very least, and resulted in Andromeda being thoroughly undercooked as well.
@@johnmhuizar Which is why, as I was trying to say, it's silly to pin Larian's success on team size, funding, dev cycle, big IPs or whatever, because AAA studios have access to those things too. However, Larian's ability to self-publish and self-direct really sets it apart. It also seems like they had better direction compared to studios like 343i, RSI, or Bioware, where conflicting or bloated visions muddled development. I invoked Bioware only with regard to their team size.
When it comes to video games media, this is why Alanah is one of my favorites. Actually talking about a subject matter with nuance. No shameless gotcha arguments for clicks. Actually talking on the matter in a professional and serious manner.
Keep up the great work! ❤💪🏼
Which is why she only listened to a minute of the counterargument, before shutting down completely and engaging in whataboutism? Literally becoming the "just be quiet" thing she said didn't exist, only instead of "videogames are hard," hers was "publishers suck."
I'm glad this video exist. Seems like social media has created an atmosphere that immediately forces people to make up their mind on the spot and refuse to listen all sides of a situation
The publishers are definitely the bad guys here no doubt about it. Gives me more and more respect every day for the industry vets that take risk and leave the giant mega studios to make their own "passion projects". Seems like that's the only way to avoid the corporate greed that is plagueing AAA games. Larian used to be one of those small "passion project" studios. It's in their DNA. They built a name for themselves with Divinity over almost 2 decades, and were eventually given the opportunity to make something bigger. They started with quality, and worked their way up to quantity. Other devs should use Larian's story as a whole as inspiration to make the kind of games that they love.
Can someone make a list of all the publishers/developers who came out saying we shouldn't expect their games to be good, so I know which ones to avoid?
Seemingly nobody said that.
The danger that the dev was pointing out made me think of the history of Duke Nukem Forever. Former employees spoke of how Broussard, the co-founder of 3D Realms, would see new achievements from competing games and became obsessed with incorporating them into the game. That was a major part of what led to the many delays because the team was constantly needing to change things to try to compete with whatever was the latest and greatest. It also led to people leaving the studio because of lack of direction. That's an unsustainable practice and mindset that's harmful to the team as a whole.
It’s a watershed game and a rare cultural moment. So awesome.
My problem is Devs acting as if players think in this objective 1:1 ratio.
Many studios can't logistically match baldurs gate's scale, so instead focus on the things you can excel at and do them incredibly well.
But instead, they make games that are so broad and need every other mechanic in them, only to deliver those mechanics in a mediocre way and wonder why their game doesn't grasp a dedicated audience the way, Zelda, Elden Ring or BG3 has.
The problem is that the original tweet was completely normal and shouldn't have been made into such controversy. It's an incredibly basic and normal opinion, but the big brained "gamers" of course had to make it into something it wasn't - an excuse to be lazy. Devs want to make good games, publishers want to make money. The problem is that making a game of such scale is incredibly difficult for many many reasons. That's like some dev saying elden ring can't be expected to be the norm - of course it can't.
@@dannypavlov913 It’s like you didn’t read a word I said.
The problem with the tweet was it was redundant. No shit people don’t expect every RPG to be of the scale of BG3.
Nobody thinks like that. Nobody is asking for a 1:1 copy of BG3. Players want their niches met. & they want them done well. You do not need large scale to do that.
My dude the vast majority of indie studios do exactly that focus that you're talking about, but you're complaining that 1% of the time one tries to go broad and fails? Are you trying to get a job at IGN or something?
@@udonengineering This conversation is literally about AAA studios…
The devs who spoke about it work for AAA studios. Maybe know what’s going on before talking.
@@YourBlackLocal you are completely ignoring a vast amount of ignorant gamers who not only EXACTLY think like that, but are confident enough in their opinion to go to devs twitter and angrily saying those exact opinions.
not every gamer is as informed , if anything alot of controversies have shown that alot of gamer's as with any gigantic group arent informed at all.
Thanks as usual Alanah for providing a calm voice in the madness. I agree that the fault likely lies with publishers, as a wise man once said “in the end it all comes down to money”.
Should other RPG Publishers look to emulate BG3 - yes absolutely, but not in size and complexity. It’s not that the games should all have the same massive breadth and depth, that’s unrealistic for most. What I would say is look at what you’d like to do, look at your resources and abilities and scale scope and timeframe accordingly. What I’m seeing a lot of players asking for is a near-completed product at launch and an absence of manipulative BS like microtransactions. In short, release something everyone can be proud of and enjoy, and respect your audience.
It's really about doing what you set out to do as well as possible. That may be a massive game like BG3, It may be The FF1 Pixel Remaster, a much smaller game polished within an inch of its life or it may sit somewhere between like the forthcoming Sea of Stars which I have high hopes for after the really excellent demo. All of these can be 10/10, it’s not about size it’s about doing it properly, same goes for videogames.
When games come out half-baked or wrong in some way, I don't look at it in terms of laziness or passion, but rather competence and project management. It doesn't matter what limitations you pose on someone like Kojima, he's gonna make sure he has a banger that's very polished on day 1. Competence and knowing what you're doing is the most important aspect to development, having a lenient publisher should be the icing and not an essential the devs need to put out a good product. Many studios don't have the best project managers, especially as games grow and become more complex.
The publisher's role is definitely the missing actor in the conversation. The tweet thread seemed to be targeted at the consumers. The consumers got defensive and pushed back at the devs. All the while it was the publishers in the library with the candlestick. So now I just wonder why devs seem to never put the blame where it belongs. If they can't publicly do that, they should get the gaming journo's to say it for them. Why blame players when it's publishers looking at BG3 with dollar signs in their eyes? Well, at least Alanah is saying it.
3 or 2 people in a thread with bad takes is not the whole industry. Devs are people too and they use social media, and not all of them have media training and probably didn’t think their takes would reach beyond their usual following. But people also assume dump things about them when they stay silent so it’s a lose lose situation.
And it's the journalist's duty to go after these devs. IGN on the other hand didn’t do that and got rewarded by repeating outrage bait channel talking points. I think the author of the video apologized recently but he probably burned some bridges after that.
If you see a video with the title “They Hate Them” or “They End of Triple AAA??” and the whole thing is based on a single twitter thread, or some elusive “triple A developers” then it’s outrage bait. it doesn’t matter if you dislike the genuinely bad business practices of other companies, the moment you blame the janitor for the pipeline oil spill because he clarified that he had nothing to do with it, you have no high ground to stand on. This controversy is stupid.
If I’m honest I think people want there to be more reactions from studios, because as gamers we want to feel validation that it’s AAA gaming that’s at fault. Not our expectations.
I do think that studios learned from the pushback on Elden Ring. There was so many more tweets and articles after Elden Ring, and the fan backlash was so extreme, I don’t doubt that publishers told employees to not say anything this time.
Larian absolutely had the wind in its sails, but I think the lesson is that giving studios time, money and projects they are passionate about, they will deliver.
No one should expect an indie studio with serious resource limitations to produce a game like BG3. As an engineer, I can appreciate the difficulty of hitting a firm deadline when developing something. Unexpected problems will always emerge, and these take time to deal with. I do think publishers need to give developers (engineers) a little more leeway in scheduling.
Great, I was looking forward to your opinion on this. I really enjoy this more conversational videos like this, more please!
I'm a little over halfway through the video, and I just wanted to say that something many people don't realize is that Larian Studios is the Developer AND Publisher of Baldur's Gate 3. They don't have to worry as much about publisher pressure because they''re their own bosses. That and their track record gives stockholders trust and confidence in Larian Studios to deliver great products and healthy returns on their investment.
Ideally that's how it should be, but devs don't normally have the funds to publish a game on their own.
Why ultimately indie games will always have a place, Even if they're rarely as large and groundbreaking as bigger budget games. Freedom to make the exact game you want, and take the time you need is a huge plus.
The current score is based on a much smaller review pool compared to other big releases so I'm curious to see where it'll land once other versions launch.
And Open Critic is relatively new too, so to say it's the best game on there isn't fair either.
I'm currently waiting with bated breath to play on PS5
We really need more people looking at both sides of an argument as opposed to immediately taking a hard stance. loved this.
Funny thing is, when TOTK came out the exact convos came out -- a dev Tweeted one of TOTK's physics shrine puzzles bemoaning that publishers will start demanding that level of polish and interactivity when it probably took a huge chunk of Nintendo's development cycle to get that right enough for release.
Which also brings up a point: BG3 did not erupt from the ether fully-formed. It had been on Early Access since 2020, and is essentially a very polished version of Larian's previous releases, Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel. So it's a game that was already being sold in its more "buggy" state for about 3 years now, getting relatively frequent updates, before this Aug 2023 release. Being Early Access probably also took the sting out of playing an under-baked game.
fantastic game, i got to the end ish area and my game is bugged... but im still gonna play another adventure, and playing in my friends game and watching him make his choices too. that were different than mine. holy shit this game is amazing
we don't have much faith in AAA developers when they stream their staff failing at playing their own game
Need BG3 DLC in 6 months and I need BG4 in 4 years (2027)
A lot of AAA games more than 400 devs working on a game.
Some random top games.
Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games): Estimated to have involved over 1000 developers across various Rockstar studios.
Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red): At its peak, the development team was reported to be around 500-600 developers.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt Red): The team size during development was reportedly around 240 developers.
Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games): Involved a team of around 1000 people at its peak.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019, Infinity Ward): The development team size for this game was estimated to be around 200-300 developers.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla (Ubisoft): The development team for this game was likely in the range of 1000 or more developers.
The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog): The development team size for this game was reportedly around 200-300 developers.
Halo Infinite (343 Industries): While specific team sizes can vary across different Halo games, a significant number of developers were likely involved in the development of Halo Infinite.
A lot of AAA games have more than 400 people working on their games, but most AAA studios are not 400 people.
@@charalanahzard
Not sure I agree. Smaller AAA studios might have development teams of around 200 to 300 developers, while larger and more established studios working on ambitious projects could have teams of 500, 800, or even more than 1000 developers. If the studio has less than 200 developers, they're probably not making what we call AAA games.
I think a big part of the problem, is that over the years (probably not helped by the number of companies that used to just be developers also becoming publishers.) the public has eroded the line between "devs" and "the publisher" in their minds. They no longer want to devote the effort to figuring out who was the problem, it's just "game bad, anyone involved in it bad."
If the publisher has the power/influence to make the game bad I see no reason to differentiate .
It's extremely reductionist to attribute every single problem with a game to one person. I don't blame the core of a rotten apple for it being rotten. I blame the apple for being rotten. Some problems lie on the publishers/shareholders/etc. Some problems lie with the devs.
It sounds a lot like "It's unfair to give consumers a good game when we're trying to get them used to overpaying to beta test our never-finished gambling app disguised as a generic, crap game. Don't you understand doing what's best for gamers is only good for shareholders in the long run, and they have cocaine fueled ADHD?"
It doesn’t sound anything like that lol
@@charalanahzardSorry, not your vid. I mean the general complaints I seem to hear about daring to make a game _too_ good
Appreciate your take on this. Both the people you covered have very valid points and are possibly a little focused on specific parts of the problem due to their own experiences and so come off very strongly - when they are mostly not disagreeing with each other, just have a different focus. You have had your feet in all the sides, games media, consumer, player, game dev so your wider perspective gives a balance of pragmatism (it's an anomaly) and push for change (but we should expect better and it not to be the outlier) and practicality of where the change would need to happen - if it's even possible to change. It does lie with the publisher but tbh I have empathy for the people that work for them too. There will be many employees who are also trying to do the best job they can and wanting good things to happen, but having to be the ones to pass down the message to the developer. It does lie with the publisher as a company, but we should never take it out on individual employees.
I feel like they are mostly disagreeing with each other. Just different perspectives. Alana does well to point out what each side gets right, but in my opinion Destin is hitting the nail more consistently.
The real missed point is focusing on the pedantry of "developer" vs "publisher" as if that really makes an impact to the overall point. The specific group isn't what's under fire here, it's the entire structure and overall practice.
I feel like developers could learn from the writers strike.
Thanks for this video, finally someone actually getting to the real issue behind all of this.
The discourse around this is driving me crazy. The thing that no one mentions is that Larian is a private company, run by a passionate ceo who actually cares about gaming and rpg's. They have no responsibilities to external shareholders and as such their main drive is to make a good game (which in turn makes enough money for the studio to continue).
Most AAA devs aren't in the business of making good games, they are in the business of maximising shareholder value, sometimes the venn diagram of making good games an maximising profits overlap but more often than not, they don't, its about milking the customer for all they are worth and cutting costs everywhere else. Hence microtransactions and unfinished, buggy releases.
Thank god for you. Very important context indeed but the discourse has kind of become a Dev vs Gamer thing.
Exactly this! Though, because most consumers and gamers have been burned by subpar or downright horrible releases in the last few years, the moment any dev studio chimes in and even gives the appearance of being defensive, everyone loses their sh*t.
Personally, I would have loved it more if these same studios went ahead and called out the main issue in the industry (aka. publishers) instead of seaming like they're trying to defend the current state of games (unfinished and/or unpolished)... but we all know that's never going to happen. These studios, for as much as they are passionate about their craft, are still beholden to these publishers and execs up top. Publicly burning bridges would not be a good idea for them.
all this drama has been the best advertisement for BG3, got me to buy it way earlier than i was planning to
I also feel like on top of stockholder expectations and deadlines we see a lot of studios struggling with bad management, which can really screw up a ton of things down the pipeline. *cough* *cough* 343....
You spent like 15 min on that dudes tweets and 3 min on the ign dude🤣 video.
Tbh. Easier to infer what someone means when they say it versus type it.
I absolutely died laughing when i simply shoved Dror Ragzlin out of his throne and into the nearby chasm first try. Classic outcome of allowing the player to choose how they approach a situation.
It was not my first try..
The greatest lesson in fallout 2's tutorial "The Temple of Trials" was to teach the player how to save-scum :)
Though that way you don't get his stuff. Better way to take some of the fire barrels from the other room, place them at his feet and then ... boom!
Love the t-shirt! Where did you get it from?
the thing that’s so confusing to me is how this conversation became almost entirely focused around mtx and buggy launches and such when none of that is referenced in the original thread/tweets at all. the game wasn’t even out yet!
honestly i dont get people blaming the dev
from what ive seen,like 95% of the time its the business people who dont understand how game dev work and just rushing shit
Because it is ultimately a defeatist attitude that will only ensure that the circumstances of their development process continue forever; you can't expect change to happen if you don't fight for it. Which is fine, i understand that it's unreasonable to expect them to put their careers on the line without a solid backing, however that does not mean it's okay to deflate the critical acclaim of a company who was able to break through the mold.
@@nrbism9614yeah the only realistic thing to do is just vote with money,and i already did that part
but unfortunately,seeing their profit year by year,seems like people who want the industry to change and doing at least something about it is in the minority
I think SOME corporations are panicking, while many devs are "worried" that BG3 will be weaponized against them. I think people are conflating the two, and are painting all AAA devs as being lazy or being jealous of Baldurs Gate 3. Funny enough, most of the devs that are worried are smaller Indie teams, who are terrified gamers are gonna harass them for not having a product on the same level as BG3.
The worry is toxic fandoms will shun smaller or mid-size studios for not having a game as big as BG3, or of the same quality. When in most cases, most studios can't afford to spend 6 years of dev on a single game. There is nothing wrong with consumers telling the industry they want these kind of games. Or that they would prefer a longer-developed game that is released as free-to-play with the final launch coming years later.
But I do think its a bit concerning if a $30 Indie Game with a team of 50 devs starts getting harrassed for not being BG3. I'm not saying that is going to happen. But gamers have done that sort of thing in the past. When someone else sets a standard, they demand that for ALL things across the board. Which is just ridiculous, as not all games are equal (in terms of budget, team size, or talent).
Meant to say early access, I know BG3 wasn't free to play. Typo my apologies.
I definitely have seen a few publishers panicking for the record. But I do worry articles from Forbes or IGN are painting a broad picture of developers overall.
Because most of the discussion ive seen from developers are teams worried they will be harassed. It's not them panicking out of jealousy of a game that is too good.
And i feel like IGN and Forbes has kind of stoked that skewer rhetoric and made it seem like that's the sentiment from most developers when it's not. If you read most of the comments on this video you will see what I mean as that's already become the accepted narrative.
I mean presupposing your going to be harassed and compared to a product is just asking for it to happen and incredibly insulting to the people in the group you are saying would do that. It's also a terrible way to look at things, if it does happen that likely means there was a failure on your end somewhere just because the feedback isn't coming in the form you want doesn't mean it's because of another product. If it wasn't Baldur's gate 3 they would just be using another game. Yes not games are equal and not all games are or should be sold for the same price, but also not all features and decisions have the same weight and value to everyone.
Also news flash there are going to be a small group of idiots for everything that just want everything to be their favorite thing again, life is better when you learn to ignore them.
The initial tweet thread was correct that BG3 was made under 'abnormal conditions' but most of them are only abnormal because bad conditions are habitually imposed by corporate ownership, be it inhumane conditions for the workers, unrealistic expectations, development interference, or otherwise compromising the entire project to squeeze out a few extra drops of profit. Josh Sawyer was dead on when he said one of the reasons BG3 can be great is because they are self-owned, and it's very difficult for great things to happen without creative autonomy.
This is why it's so important for developers to unionize and hopefully establish full workers' democracy - private dictatorships over the workplace by owners who don't contribute anything and don't understand anything yet siphon most of the profit to themselves is not a situation that is beneficial to human outcomes, whether on the consumer or creator side.
You're awesome! Thanks for shedding light on all this.
I really like Destin's channel. It's good stuff. Not sure what he'll talk about once the Activision Microsoft is done or dead, but I'm sure he'll figure something out.
😂 Destin will never run out of content. He is a legit gaming journalist. Just go back to before the ABK deal and you will see.
As a customer I don’t care what goes on in the background. If I pay 60$ for Baldur’s Gate 3, you can be absolutely sure next time I’ll not settle easily for a mediocre game. Is like paying 10$ for the best pizza in the world and the paying 10$ again for a mediocre pizza.
It's necessary to recognize that Xalavier Nelson Jr. wrote regarding a raised standard for *RPGs* and not for AAA games. RPGs, especially the CRPG type that BG3 is, is a kind of game that is made by studios of a widely varying size, some of the size of BioWare or Larian but most of the size of Owlcat, inXile, Airship Syndicate or even GrapeOcean. Even Obsidian, a company that is currently working on three "AAA" RPGs and finalized two smaller games last year, has a smaller studio than the entirety of the dev team behind BG3, not including outsourcing. But as Josh Sawyer pointed out in the post-mortem of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, the raised standard can be a very true factor and also be unfairly held against other studios, or enforced in the production at inopportune moments - he mentions how the writing department to Deadfire was forced to crunch after studio imposition to make Deadfire "fully voiced" following the success of the feature in Divinity: Original Sin II, and how Owlcat's Pathfinder: Kingmaker was criticized by several outlets for *not* including full VO in spite of being a comparatively smaller studio working on their first game. Destin making Xalavier's point all about predatory monetization and shifting the focus to AAA instead of the niche genre he's actually speaking about is straight up disingenuous, and bound to bring a lot of hate onto devs who are talking about something completely different than what the community seems to have in mind.
Destin is on point with his criticism. I have a little bit of gaming dev background... I still have friends in the field do keep me updated on the stuff. How do I see it? It's mix of a "we don't want to be crunched to death with the same scale of BG 3" and "Compromise enough of our dev time with the same scale and if it fails, we risk the bonus at the end of the year, or even gets fired over it". That's only a few of the comments I've seen in my twitter circle, some right with how dangerous for crunching is, others? Pure and utter jealousy tweets.
In reality, the reason BG3 is being acclaimed is for the outrageous thing called "it's a good day-1 experience","it's not a microtransaction hell". No microtransactions is just the cherry on top of it. Few games can pull that off these days, Bauldur's Gate 3 is just the tip of the iceberg on how entitled some gaming devs are. This game, just like Elden Ring last year, humbled them.
The only Devs who need to panic. Are those where the shareholder is more important than the creative.
I think everyone knows that every dev plays these games and is excited about it. The issue here is their public comments is "don't expect this from me" which sends a message to the publishers that they don't need to pay attention to gamer demands because even though devs might privately ask to make something like this, they'll never fight for it cause they're openly telling gamers to "calm down, you won't ever get this from me". You mentioned dev and player unity being the key and I think this is exactly what the player backlash is about. Players are trying to show support for the devs who want to dream big and are being told by industry devs to calm down and that they're dreaming if they think games like this will every be common place again. It feels like a betrayal in one of the few moments players feel like they have power to exert over a publisher to have devs be the ones to try to shut down that push for higher standards in video games.
It's cause a lot of the devs know that most studios/publishers that attempt to do something like this will end up abusing the hell out of the devs to achieve it with unrealistic schedules, crunch time, underpaying devs, poor planning, not giving the game enough time to release and properly test, etc
Dreaming big is fine if you got the budget and are willing to take 10 years to do it, but too many execs and publishers will expect 10 years of work in 2 years and they're still out of touch with how game development works.
The last Dragon Age came out in 2014. If Ea had their shit together from the beginning and didn't reboot the game every two years they'd easily have enough time and resources to make two games of BG3s quality. It's the leadership that simply isn't up to the task. They have no real desire to make a serious roleplay focused rpg( imagine an rpg that doesn't ignore the rp part lol) They're still stuck in the more generic equals more money money mind set. It's the direction that video games were already headed but then Skyrim came along and broke their brains with dollar signs and ruined a few generations of RPGs in the process.
I think this blew up so hard is because us consumers are just tired of being told that we should put ourselves at the shoes of a developers, but no one is putting thenselves in a consumer’s shoes for a change.
We work hard in our lives, use our hard earned money to buy a game, use our limited free time to play it, only to find it either a buggy mess, uninspired but grindy gameplay, or a micro transaction hell. Complaining about it gets us being told we are entitled. It’s been this way for at least a decade now and finally a great game comes out and we’re all happy for it, only to be told no we don’t deserve this.
While Destin’s video might be considered clickbaity by some, he absolutely voiced out the frustrations we’ve had for years in the status quo.
He didn’t ask anyone to put themselves in the shoes of developers tho.
He did not say it, but the whole thread is about the point of view of the developer.
@@zavi3rz Your suggestion is that developers shouldn't share their point of view?
Not at all, all I did was explaining my thought process on why this blew up so hard. Everyone deserves to be heard, both devs and consumers.
I have not even any game in Larian, so to speak. But as someone whose early adult live at the age of 21 was defined by Baldur's Gate back in the day, this makes me so happy. To see someone make a worthy successor that brings back everything that was great about it, back from the days when Bioware was still awesome, and now a completely different generation of gamers turning it into the biggest thing ever, just like it was back in 1998, makes me want to jump around with glee.
Yea, as someone who grew up playing BG2 (played bg1, but definitely prefer 2), it's sad that the younger generation will never get to experience how great BG2 was. Like people were trying to compare BG3 to DA:O, without even realizing that BG2 heavily inspired DA:O. Hopefully, one day we get a remake (not just a remaster) of BG2 so the younger gamers can experience it as well, but it's great that BG3 is opening up gamer's eyes to how great the Baldur's Gate series is/was.
The problem with the initial thread wasn’t what they said, but who they said it to.
If they had called out the publishers and managers that are responsible for the sad state of games, pointing to Larian as an example of how games should be made, everyone would be in absolute agreement.
Instead they seemed to suggest that this is just the way it is and customers need to accept it.
this is so interesting to me, because everyone saying this is simply assuming the worst case intentions. none of these people said change was impossible or things weren't going to get better. simply that *right now* this is not a standard that you can hold teams to, and if audiences try to it could lead to catastrophic failures as publishers push to meet that standard. The rest of the "sit there and take what you get" that all these people keep feeling like was suggested isn't present anywhere in the statement, it was made up and pushed by IGN and others trying to get a rise out of the situation.
It is something customers need to hear, because it's customers that give devs the most active grief and harassment about their products and games when things don't turn the way they want. Xalavier was hoping he could explain away some of that irrational gamer rage, but instead it turned on him because people got defensive instead of listening and understanding that he's right.
The "experiencing another piece of media while creating a piece of media and being influenced by that" isn't just limited to video games. Happens with books, movies, comics, tv shows, and plays too.
I write and sketch for fun, and I constantly catch myself subconciously making chsnges to be more in line with a movie I just saw or a game I just played.
Stuff like Duke Nukem Forever got numerous builds because the lead devs wanted the most cutting edge engine, but it was during a time when new more powerful engines were coming out pretty frequently.
Sometimes cross media examples can even happen. Apparently, while Final Fantasy 15 was being developed, Nomura saw Les Miserables and wanted the game to become a musical.
FF15 being a musical would have been an improvement.
Developers themselves don't want to make a subpar game. It's the publishers and studios that employ those developers that have come to demand the minimum product for the maximum profit. The games industry has cancer.
I thought that Xalavier's post (tweet, x, whatever) was... laughable. First off, he isn't in a position to dictate what the market should expect. The customer is. People in the gamedev space are the reason why so many feel threatened by a successful game that isn't chained to a shareholder tumor.
Exactly zero people expected the next indie project to be a Baldur's Gate 3 level offering. When a top end steakhouse opens in my town, the McDonalds managers don't run screaming through the streets demanding that I not expect restaurant quality out of the McDoubles. Because they know the expectation does not exist, nor would it. Neither of these eateries ends up closing up shop because of the other.
Personally, if I worked on BG3, I would have been pretty insulted as well. 6 years of hard work, dedication, sleepless nights, and a focus on player experience first is not an anomaly. To call it that is... offensive at best. You think Hasbro's dying D&D brand was a boost to this? No. People have said it's because of some sort of a long standing franchise. The last one came out 23 years ago.
It's the result of skill, dedication, and a lot of hard work. The top end steakhouse in the example above doesn't turn out the perfect black truffle burger on brioche that makes me want to come back the next day as an anomaly. They do it because they know what they're doing, they know how to pick and assemble ingredients, and they took the time to do it right.
If previous titles, successful franchises, money, and large development teams are the only reason a successful game gets made, explain Diablo 4, every Battlefield over the last decade, or 90% of every game turned out over the last few years.
This was a super nuanced video - thank you for having us and involving us in your discussion. We don't know what the future holds for RPGs, but we do know how we plan to experience them! 🕶
Now back to exploring Baldur's Gate in XR. 😎
You used to work for IGN. You've worked and collaborated with countless gaming channels,been featured in games as NPCs and voice overs. You've covered games,let's plays and generally had your feet firmly planted in the industry, in one way or another, for well over a decade. Now you work for one of the most successful studios on the planet.
If ever I had interest in someone's take on the BG3 drama,it's yours.
*Edit*
Now that I've watched the video, I can honestly say I was right. Your takes and insights are why I continue to appreciate your opinions.
I do have a question though. In regards to what a studio is offered by their Publisher, as far as time and resources goes. If this is the argument for why players shouldn't expect BD3 level games as a standard, can't a studio that wants to create a project in similar scope,just not sign a contract that limits that ability?
Of course, I understand that devs need to feed families and pay employees. With that said though, if studios can't afford to take that risk,then why air any opinions on why WE shouldn't expect more when a different studio did accomplish what theirs couldn't in the first place?
It seems petty for devs from studios that don't (for whatever reason) have the advantage of great dev cycles and resources to tell us not to expect greatness because they can't achieve those levels in their own situations.
I see and understand both arguments. I just don't agree with any that expects us to expect less because of their less than stellar Publishing deals.
At the end of the day, any dev that can't achieve BG3 levels of game, shouldn't chime in at all if it's not to praise the accomplishment or offer constructive criticism. Because,at the end of the day,as players we'll still play their games too. We understand that every game is different. Lecturing us on why we shouldn't expect something great just doesn't look good and doesn't sit well with the people who spend their hard earned money on the games.
I think the biggest thing is at the end of the day the fact Larian is self published, has a CEO that loves games, has an experienced team, has mature tech, and a long development cycle and others studios not having that... isn't the players problem. Developers need to make due with what they have. It takes a lot to make a masterpiece like BG3 (or like their previous game DOS2) but on the other hand you could put out something like Vampire Survivors and still be regarded as producing a phenomenal game. If you develop a game and keep the game in scope for your limited resources and price the game according to that scope then people will generally be accepting.
I mean look at Diablo 4. This is a game that's been a long time coming, has experienced team, has mature tech and they came out with the most bland game the ARPG has seen in a long time. Other than visuals it's quality and amount of content is below that of all it's competitors who are made from smaller studios. They charge a full box price, have MTX on top of it and seasonal battlepasses. For the amount of money Blizzard is asking for D4 and the resources that went into the game should be even better than BG3 is. It should be a stunning masterpiece and yet I can't see it even being in the running for GOTY.
I don't know exactly where the issue is because apparently giving a AAA studio the time, money and resources still doesn't produce the results gamers want. My best guess is that the problem is in poor leadership in those that make decisions on the games design and direction. Potentially because the people in those positions have been promoted to incompetence or maybe they just don't play/enjoy the games they are working on with the necessary level of interest.
Yep." We can't make baulders gate 3." Yes we dont expect you to we expect you to make quality.
It comes down to leadership as you said.
Alanah I totally agree with your hope re: extended development times. I think though that part of what let BG3 devs do that was the fact that they were making a CRPG for the largest tabletop RPG in history…and just coming off COVID where lots of people started playing tabletop games (physically or virtually). They had a LOT more certainty of a mass market than other CRPG devs probably do. I don’t think we can ignore that possibility when we think about what the publishers can afford to pay the devs and for how long.