'We don't have shareholders, but we also don't think about them,' Larian Studios uses its stage time at the DICE Awards to speak out against a brutal industry climate
'We don't have shareholders, but we also don't think about them,' Larian Studios uses its stage time at the DICE Awards to speak out against a brutal industry climate
"Building games that are actually fun is going to make you the most money, that's it."
Building games that are actually fun is going to make you the most money, that's it.
Absolute nonsense! The old rich fucks who probably haven't played a game since the Atari 2600 told me that nonstop MTX and creating value for shareholders is the only way to have fun games!
I wish it were true but it's just not. Free mobile games with mtx make way more money than bg3 did.
People should look at mobile revenue. Its disgusting. It does not make that much money because it is fun. They use predatory practices to prey upon people's psychology to get them to spend money. Whether thats paying just to hurry up a building or dropping 400-4000 bucks to become a god. Its an unethical market built on manipulation.
Depends, building good games that establish goodwill and a strong franchise will make you more money in the end than the quick pump and dump mobile game candy crush bullshit.
The difference is that the mobile game model can exist perpetually in a state of pump and dump because the platform of mobile is essentially purpose built to be a time waster. Consoles and PC games are intended to be an activity in themselves instead of a way to take a smoke break, the ramifications of attempting to convert the standard videogame model to the pump and dump model has been successful depending on your definition.
Sure we've established that whales exist in every market and some people will buy every MTX they can even if it's CoD or whatever, but we've also seen people who used to spend a considerable amount of money on games stop doing so, because the market doesn't cater to their preferences. That's the point Larian is making, you can create a true fan base with their model, you can only create addicts with the pump and dump model.
It's probably not true as making your the most money. To do that you need to be morally bankrupt and engage in predatory practices and exploit mental illness.
But it will make you a lot of money and win you the love of fans through the ages. Which I prefer and will continue to spend money on.
To do that you need to be morally bankrupt and engage in predatory practices and exploit mental illness.
You just described 99% of all successful corporations.
If the goal is to make money and also make fun games, everybody wins. If it's just to make as much money as possible, we get how things are today.
Yeah sure that's great if you're making a game, but what if you're a useless parasite with lots of money, looking for cartoonish returns on your investments!
Hardly seems fair that the money goes to the people engaged in the production of material goods...
/s
To be fair, if you grew up playing games on the 2600, you probably remember an era without MTX at all and really liked buying carts or floppies without worrying about subscriptions or DLC or microtransactions.
/old man mode=on: I remember when "microtransactions" meant sending a certified cheque away for a copy of the hint book
Larian rocks
I honest hope, down to my core, that Larian becomes as big as Rockstar Games or Blizzard without all the 'We need to keep growing' BS for stockholders. Just make great games and the fandom will follow for years.
Publicly traded companies are the root of the issue. Quarterly earnings reports and the related short term profit motive are the worst. Most public stock prices are basically pure speculation, barely better than crypto.
Yep, this is it. If they can just maintain from here on out, without getting greedy, they will be beloved through the ages
Making money and having people love you without being a total dog shit company. What a concept.
I think their situation is somewhat akin to where Bethesda was c2012: they've just released the most talked‐about game of the year, a game that was a critical and commercial success despite not being of the general gaming zeitgeist.
I really hope they don't follow Bethesda's path.
Bethesda had multiple GOTY's before skyrim though, and was already in the throat hold of Todd. Skyrim was already the downfall.
Good point, Skyrim is definitely the biggest mainstream game, but also the biggest sign of their move to making Action RPGs instead of incredible lore and world building.
BG3 might be more comparable to Bethesda’s Morrowind (maybe Oblivion). Similar to Arena and Daggerfall, Larian has released some great games like Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2 which were hits, but BG3 really put them on everyone’s radar.
You know what? I may not have ended up enjoying BG3 at the end since they stumbled at the hurdle I was most excited to see them clear, but this is a stance deserving of respect. I'm glad that Larian is making good use of their success.
What hurdle did they not clear?
Not sure if they had the same issue as me, but maybe. I loved the game, but the last act had the typical crpg feeling of all the possible storylines condensing into a few. Not a major failure, but it really stuck out to me because of how well the rest of the game handled it. They did a phenomenal job of making me feel free to tackle each previous act however I wanted. The world reacted pretty well, and there were a few points I was actually surprised to see characters react specifically to some weird solution I came up with. At the end it felt like my choices mattered much less, and I was on this track of betray/kill one Big Bad or the other with the only difference being who goes first and what flavor of help comes along.
I think this is an issue all crpgs will have (it's just too much work to have many wildly different endings), but the amount of discussion around BG3 being the new standard for the genre makes the issue stand out. At least for me.
Well, it's set in DnD; I tried to keep expectations in check for the whole thing but they did a legitimately good job with presenting you with a varied set of options for how you can approach and resolve dungeons in Act 1 and 2. So I did tentatively allow my expectations to be raised.
In any case, I was looking forwards to seeing how they'd handle their dragon encounter. The one I'd been looking forwards to all game. And BOY did they fall flat on their face. The dungeon is one of the most frustrating and unrewarding ones in the game, and the encounter with the dragon (a highly intelligent and charismatic creature within DnD where the conversation with them is half the fun) won't even talk to you, only to a complete dickhead NPC that's a mandatory tagalong with your party. There is NO variance in how you approach or resolve the dragon, there is no way you can influence their storyline for better or worse, and you can't even kill Dickhead NPC. For high hopes to be met with by far the hardest failure to meet expectations... yeah, it just killed my enjoyment.
(For contrast, compare how they handled their dragon to how they handled their Hag, Devil, the entire Thorm family, the Gith Creche, and Grymforge. Look at how much your choices can influence those. Look at how much they will talk to you.)
Didn't Tencent invest in them or something?
Investors =/= shareholders. It all depends on the deal they cut. It's covered in the article.
Unrelated but that is a fucking AWESOME scarf shirt combo
I mean... Lke that phrase doesn't make much sense...
I don't have a child but I don't think about him ... Of course not he doesn't exist how the hell I would think about him 🤣
You can be thinking about shareholders despite not having them if your goal is to sell to them. I take it that they mean they don't really have any interest in catering to the demands of even potential shareholders.
Overall, good company. I wish they wouldn't have released BG3 in that state though, the game was very clearly still early access. All game developers should follow their philosophy though and the industry would be a better place.
There was certainly some jank on release but I don't recall the game feeling unfinished. Are you referring to its initial early access release?
No I am referring to it's second early access release. They are getting on top of it now with these huge patches, so that's good, but it's just stuff that should have existed anyway and bugs that shouldn't have existed, they could have cooked it for another year. But releasing it does allow a lot more eyes on things, plus it's getting paid for the QA instead of paying for it, but keeping it marked as early access until it's cleaned up would have been nice.
I wouldn’t say “clearly still early access”, but it does lack the polish on a lot of small things.
BG3 Act 3 Spoilers below because Iunno how to do spoilers on Kbin
Like the fact on release, if you use Speak To Dead on Gortash, you get a completely unvoiced dialogue with Bane himself.
Co-op in particular was hilariously broken, even by the PS5 launch. The 20 second hitches when swapping characters was even more maddening than the constant progress-losing crashes.