Owlcat Games knows not to expect Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader to be as successful as Baldur’s Gate 3
No, almost no developer is independent and not beholden to some profit monger. Larian could do that because they didn’t have shareholders breathing down their neck telling them to ship the game now.
That’s an excellent and salient point.
It also cuts to the very core of my deep frustration around finance types more or less calling the shots entirely throughout the entirety of my career as a software engineer. The choice is very, very often between building good, reliable, well-thought-out systems that are genuinely helpful and barely scraping by (or in some cases, not) financially… or creating crappy, slapped-together, ad-riddled, society-destroying bullshit while taking a paycheck that’s decent enough to support your family.
When people talk about wage slavery, this is exactly what they mean.
Edit: revised awful wording
Woe be to man, struck down by his own invisible hand. As Oroborous, we consume, orchestrating our own doom.
Ok that’s a fantastic quote. Are those lyrics to a song? Where did it come from?
This isn’t exactly true as tencent has a 30% stake in Larian. I imagine it definitely helps to have an owner like Sven and his wife that are fully bought in though with 70% stake.
What resources? Actual passion, a loyal fambase, and a development cycle that prevents crunch and burnout? Yes, these are foreign concepts to most developers
It’s weird how aggressive everyone in here is being. As if attacked. Like the assumptions of knowing how things are and having the answer to everything is par the course, but the aggro is really strange. I hope ya’ll get some hugs this holiday.
Well you’re not wrong but I think you also are ignoring why people are frustrated with an industry that is largely profit focused and marketing forward leaving consumers with underwhelming experiences sold as premium product.
I feel that but there are also so many great games. It’s an old tired horse to bring out, so forgive me, but the indie world is very cool right now.
I was more commenting on why people are so aggro to this comment by the Owl peeps though. I could see why they feel they can’t accomplish as much, Larian has probably done well for themselves with good game, before better game, prior to glorious game. No doubt though that Larian also took a swing they couldn’t afford to miss and that is to be commended, if mostly so I can go without seeing more gaming-related layoffs in my feed.
My dude the game developers are even more frustrated by this. You think we take pride in releasing unpolished products too early then letting them die a slow death by not supporting them because our corporate overlords only care about their bottom line and next quarter’s results ?
Click bait title designed to cause division and working as intended it seems.
If you actually read the article, Owlcat have nothing but positive sentiment for BG3 success.
How is the title counter to that? This reads more like a “temper your expectations for our game, we cant build something that big.”
Larian is relatively small compared to lots of developers. This is BS
