Good.
Also first post. Go team Lemmy.
What is the alternative? For nothing to ever be successful? To let the gaming market continue to degrade into microtransaction hell?
I don’t even agree with their premise that it makes it harder for similar games in the genre to succeed. The popularity of BG3 will probably make people more interested in the genre regardless of how amazing it is. As long as it is priced accordingly. I would buy a smaller scale CRPG game if it were $20-$30.
I think that’s where his point kind of lies tho. Don’t get me wrong, I share the same sentiments, but scale doesn’t necessarily translate to production costs. Larian has been in the CRPG genre for a while, and they have engines, proprietary tools, and design philosophies based off their past successes and failures. Other companies won’t really have that edge, and will likely make many of the same mistakes that earlier titles did, which is what Rami Ismail is probably fearing.
There aren’t many other ideal solutions to deal with this tricky problem. Capital like engines and tools aren’t really built so easily, and even when they are built, there’s tons of tiny little details that CRPGs make, ranging from camera to how dialogue is handled, to control schemes, character building (I don’t think Larian got away with utilizing the 5E system without a hefty licensing fee) and plot.
Not to say all these things need to be at quality and comparable to BG3, but that due to it’s popularity and success, it will be a frame or point of reference when thinking about another CRPG, and thus when a game doesn’t do anything new or drastically different, it’ll be framed as a ‘lower quality BG3’ because it won’t have anything to help it escape that direct comparison.
As for doing something different, using a different TTRPG system, or other unique quirk that set it apart drastically enough to free itself from that looming shadow, that’s a pretty hefty risk for a TTRPG or studio to take up, with no guarantee that the game itself will come out okay. You only need to look at Shadowrunn Returns, a CRPG for Shadowrun a cyberpunk fused fantasy world. Sounds like a great time, no? Well, I wouldn’t say it did badly, but that it didn’t do well enough for the people making or funding to entertain the risk of a sequel, and thus the ‘tightening of the noose’ that he’s referring to.
With a step down in price, or for new entrants to enter a market, we’ll either need to understand that new games likely won’t have the same polish or quality of current ones, but they will still need to earn a profit from these games. This either translates into enough sales (which I doubt people would do as people generally don’t care about things unless they’re incredibly passionate, which naturally limits the quantity of people) or a high enough price to still make a profit with a lower amount of sales, which means that smaller scale 20-30$ CRPG is just not feasible if they don’t have some other way to raise funding or keep costs down. You’d basically be looking at maybe 5-10 hours of gameplay for that kind of price, and the quality still would not be the same, missing a lot of things we take for granted in a AA or AAA setting.
It’s not really about consumer interest in a genre or style of game, it’s more to do with people’s flawed perspective that games are constantly getting better, and while it’s not to say new ideas aren’t being tried, and those can be done with indie teams, they just need to be either completely distinct when compared to it’s competitors, so the flaws aren’t fixated on, and accepted as a form of the medium, or reinvent the wheel in a way to subvert the genre they’re currently in. I could go on all day, but this is already a wall of text, and you get my point.
Thesis seems to be that small developers are unfairly compared to successful AAA games, but that dynamic has existed forever.
Maybe it’s a good thing that Baldur’s Gate prevents the creation of a dozen bad copies. Indie devs should be looking to innovate and if you’re being compared to BG3 maybe it’s not actually innovative.
Newsflash: CEO discover their customers like quality.
I can’t agree with this article because Itch.io exists and is thriving. The indie scene in the last decade has exploded with titles that easily rival the fun of a triple A game. People do tend to centralize, but why would that stop all the indie devs who make these great games with a passion? Like Rain World, Heroes of Hammerwatch, Crab Champions, Caves of Qud, Castle Crashers, and many other unmentioned titles would actually stop because a Triple A studio made a game. Turn-based RPGs have been releasing long before BG3 and they’ll be releasing long after Larian has been ship-of-thesues’d into a different studio.
I think the point is not that Itch.io doesn’t exist. The thesis is that the people with money who decide where budgets go and which games receive marketing investment are now less likely to give funding or commercial attention to alternative ventures that don’t meet the BG3 bar. See the point about asking developers to be poor martyrs for the love of the craft. That’s not how professional development works, and he is right, that people need to eat, pay for families, rent. And the fuckers with the money won’t invest on anything that doesn’t make billions of dollars. All those games you mention are creative masterpieces and receive critical acclaims and prizes. But their sales are eclipsed by the horrible MTX riddled unethical money grabs. The truth of the matter is that patient gamers, indie lovers, etc. We are a minority. The gross share of the video game audience cares not. The money goes there, mobile realized this ages ago, the average idiot will rather splurge into a microtransactions, broken unfinished releases, battle passes, dubious premium exclusive versions, day one DLC, etc. The truth of the matter is that integrity and ethics are categorically not what brings profit in this industry.
This, it’s upsetting true. Too much money goes to dead end microtransaction hell. Frankly don’t know the solution since the people paying for these shit practices aren’t us.
The solution is to not buy or play those games. It’s so easy too. I don’t play bad games all the time.
Typed out a whole thing because I didn’t really agree with you that it’s not just the people up top, but also this perpetual growth, zero sum game most C-suite level people seem to think the world operates on.
Most of my points ended up agreeing with you, but I do want to add that profit seeking isn’t a bad thing, but that the constant desire for more profit, ‘growth’ is where the real evil lies.
You seem to think that they are different problems but infinite growth and profit above all, are both faces of the same problem. A company that tries to make profit through creative endeavors is fine. After all, people do need to eat and have a roof over their heads. They should make money in exchange for the intense and hard effort that art demands. Specially video games as one of the most expensive and complex forms of art ever devised by humans. But the top AAA companies are not in it for the art, some developers who work for them still believe in the art, and executives exploit that passion because they know it makes workers willing to crunch and work too many hours for too low payment. When profit is the only reason and the art gets lost, then there’s only one way to move forward, you have to grow indefinitely. For growth quarter after quarters means that profit gets bigger and bigger every time, for maximization of profit is above all. In the end it is the same mindset.
Once businesses move from private to public sector, the risk tolerance takes a nosedive. You all of a sudden have shareholders that want a steady return and don’t necessarily give a shit if that comes from a F2P game with a ton of gimmicks and microtransactions or a true stellar game.
Management therefore goes with “proven” low risk strategies that may generate a smaller return but also won’t break the studio (and lose them their job) if they fail.
My personal view is that it comes down to risk analysis. Great for generic “business” or investment, but bad for innovation. They start playing “not to lose” instead of playing to win.
