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380 points

Uhh… today’s AAA studios have THOUSANDS of employees, hundreds of millions of dollars in budgets, and huge IPs on which to draw. Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Diablo, Warcraft, Mass Effect, Dragon Age… these studios have VASTLY larger resources than Larian. Like, an order of magnitude larger. This is gaslighting and whining. I’m not having it. Do better, AAA devs. Do a lot better.

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80 points

That’s why their games suck. Smaller teams and budgets make better products.

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54 points

It’s really not the team size, but rather the management that comes with it.

The devs aren’t the problem 99% of the time.

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-3 points

Well I wouldn’t say that exactly. GTA 5 had a huge budget and a huge team and it’s objectively a better product if you compare the two (which is only to say they’re both great games but the bigger budget game has and does more).

It’s a matter of the motivations of the developers and their financial backers. If your goal is to make an ok game that maximizes profit focused mechanics, most of these AAA developers are hitting the mark perfectly. If your focus is to make a good game like it seemed to be with the BG devs, they absolutely hit the mark and are being rewarded for it.

This is just a reminder to an industry that is trying to tell us that pay to win mechanics are the standard that they do not in fact get to dictate what those standards are. We do. If a game is shit people will abandon it even if you poured millions into that product. The recent battlefield game is a prime example of this. Even something as guaranteed as a new battlefield game isn’t enough to overcome a shitty leadership team emphasizing the wrong things. The community bailed on their product and they’ll never get them back. All those millions in guaranteed revenue are gone forever.

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20 points

GTA 5 does not look like a better product to me.

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1 point

This is just a reminder to an industry that is trying to tell us that pay to win mechanics are the standard that they do not in fact get to dictate what those standards are. We do.

Quoting for emphasis. We control the purse, we have the voting power of the wallet.

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Not AAA devs, they’re doing what they can. The problem is with the AAA CEOs

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2 points

💯

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1 point

When I read ‘AAA devs’ in this context I see it as ‘AAA game development companies’ not programers and artists working in them.

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-1 points

Not AAA devs, they’re doing what they can.

Blaming consumers, in this instance. You could well be right that the problem is internal but in that case that’s where it needs to solved. Or if they want to get the support of consumers, be honest with their reasoning. Crying that the expectations of consumers are too high doesn’t help at all. It just makes them seem out of touch with reality.

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3 points

Blaming consumers

No, blaming CEOs and the c-suites

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16 points

The Divinity games are some of my favorites ever made. It makes me giddy that BG3 is doing so well to embarrass big companies 😂

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3 points

This is partly why I ponied up full price.

I want more games from Larian.

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1 point

I bought the game 4 times.

Twice for me, and a copy for 2 of my friends.

Pretty cool seeing one of them log a ton of hours in it after working. Like, I gave them that happiness :')

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7 points

They’re scared. There’s no excuse anymore. And people have become aware of it.

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5 points

Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Diablo, Warcraft, Mass Effect, Dragon Age… these studios have VASTLY larger resources than Larian.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the team that worked on Skyrim was significantly smaller than the Larian team that worked on BG3.

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6 points

Perhaps? But Skyrim is also 12 years old. Whatever team is working in Elder Scrolls 6 is certainly not smaller than Larian’s.

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5 points

Skyrim had under 100 employees.

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3 points

IMO the most important distinction is a game that puts play experience first vs profit.

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