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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.
That's why their games suck. Smaller teams and budgets make better products.
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.
Not AAA devs, they're doing what they can. The problem is with the AAA CEOs
I have no problem if games reached this via a similar model that Larian used here (lots of experienced staff, pre-built systems, 6 years of development, 3 years of expertly done early-access with a highly engaged player base) but they're not going to. They're going to implement more crunch, more abuse, more destruction of the few people who want to work in games in order to get there. And that's where I have the issue.
I want shorter games, with worse graphics, made by people who get paid more to do less. Because that's what's needed to make truly great games. People who are passionate, not burning themselves out just to barely make deadlines, make great games.
Sir... Socialism is already ruining this nation.and you are daring to propose communism?!
Sorry, I'm neurodivergent. Can't tell if this is sarcasm.
I'm not the person you're responding to, but the post looks sarcastic to me. Have a good day!
I want shorter games, with worse graphics, made by people who get paid more to do less.
Honestly that's an excellent summary.
Don't get me wrong BG3 is probably one of the best games I've ever played and I eventually want BG4 or whatever expansion/spin-off/sequel they want to make. However I waited 23 years between BG2 and BG3, I don't want to wait that long again, but I can wait.
But to your point I want good games. I don't need 100+ hour adventures. In general I don't want 100+ hour adventures. Those should be rare. I want games that I can finish (at a casual pace) in a weekend or two.
Portal 1? Braid? Both are short puzzle games that are absolutely fantastic.
Stanley Parable? Gone Home? Excellent story games. You can beat them in about as much time as it takes to watch a movie.
Why are they getting so much attention for it?
Nintendo does the same with BoTW and ToTK. Long dev cycles that releases a functional game without micro-transactions.
FromSoft does the same with most of their games. Where people actually beg them to release DLCs.
But no... it's Larion they seem to go after.
Nintendo is huge. FromSoft has their own cult. But Larion? What's can they blame there? Nothing. Most big studios that bitch about this is larger than Larion. Maybe because they are more scared that if Larion can do it. There's no excuse anymore.
Most of the Sony exclusives are the same. God of War, Spiderman, Ghost of Tsushima.
Just solid AAA single player games, no nickel and dime bullshit.
Every F2P model is predatory as fuck, and relies on taking advantage of whales over a prolonged period.
I think it's due to the little guy making a huge wave that other people don't feel they're "allowed" to make. These other devs work on "AAA" companies working on big name titles from studios everyone has heard of so. But now a small, indie studio comes along with a grand slam and they don't like it kind of makes them look bad by comparison. Showing you can release a big complex game without it being an absolute buggy mess, doesn't need microtransactions, doesn't need to sell millions of copies to be considered a success, and isn't just a copy paste of the previous game with a handful of modifications made to slap a new "FOR SALE" label on it...
I think the "problem" for those people is that the game broke out of its bubble. nintendo, from soft and also larion up until now all had their own bubble of fans. Larion broke that mold and even people who have nothing to do with the genre celebrate it.
Would it be so bad if games didn't have insane budgets? Most of my favorite games from the past decade are from small studios operating on pizza and hope.
BG3 did have a pretty huge budget though. I would totally be fine if games took notes from BG3 but reduced scope a lot. Bioware used to make games similar to BG, but they stopped and now make garbage. The idea other studios can't make similar games is wrong. They can't make games this big usually though without publishers telling them they need to include microtransactions and other bullshit.
BioWare didn’t just make games similar to Baldur’s Gate, they created Baldur’s Gate.
Lower budgets would probably be better. High budgets mean high risk, developers and publishers try to minimize that risk and you get bland games that try to cater to too many tastes. Movies suffer from the same problem. They get budgets in the hundreds of millions and you wonder what they spent it all for.
High budgets are killing the film industry. In the case of gaming, it plays a factor, but greed is probably the main issue. Most big budget AAA games in the past made large amounts of money even if they didn’t have universal appeal. Because companies realised that they could make large amounts of money off loot boxes, microtransactions, cash shops and battle passes, they started trying to funnel players into games, mainly so that players would buy things. That’s one of the main reasons the AAA industry is getting worse: games need to appeal to as many as possible, while coming out as fast as possible, all so that players will buy the overpriced in-game items endlessly shoved in players’ faces.
Imagine whining about how people prefer to play good games that work on launch.
From what I gather, there is a real fear in develper spaces that executives will take the wrong lessons from BG3. They will want the same scope, choice, narrative, & mechanics but through crunch, shutting down smaller projects, & homogenized visual & narrative focus. IE all the shiny bits without the time, work culture, & creativity that came with creating BE3. It isn't developers just being pissy this is their way of trying to stop their idiot boss from ruining their current project or making massive projects without enough time or staff.
Complaining about it having funding.... AAA.... lol. Thats the fucking point of AAA. Big fucking budget.
AAA companies: Makes bad game and releases apology promising to make good games now
Also AAA companies: We are not capable of making good games, stop expecting to much.
Remember fellow gamers, you hold the power of the purse, you get the final vote with your wallet.
If some studio head or developer manager tries to tell you that you have to accept micro transactions and such, just say no thank you, and move on.
There are plenty of other games from other good studios out there for you to give your hard-earned money to.
New expectations? Lol. These were always the expectations!
That's what I don't get. These are expectations that I've had for years. The indie space has kinda proven that creativity will take a game a hell of a lot farther than cash ever will. With few exceptions I simply don't buy AAA games anymore because honestly I just don't expect the same level of effort will be put into making them.
Here’s my thing: I don’t necessarily care what sort of game you make, I just want it to be feature-complete and technically solid (I.e. mostly bug-free). Whether that’s a small indie game or a massive AAA game, those two things should be true.
I think what most people find frustrating is that the in-game store is the most well developed part of most AAA releases nowadays, which often ship riddled with bugs.
How does it go?
I want smaller games, with lower quality graphics. Made by happier developers who are paid more to work less. And I'm not kidding!
I mean we can have large games with detailed graphics and have employees treated well. We just need to accept 10+ year timelines for releases on big games which I'm ok with as long as we get quality results and the team is treated well.
I follow star citizen though so I could be the weird one here lol
Meanwhile:
Jan 2022: "Heres xenoblade 3, an absolutely gigantic single player game, no microtransactions, pushes the console to it's absolute limit, Monolithsoft at the top of their fucking game. Announced today, out in september."
April 2022: "Lol, it's now out in july. Enjoy.".
Baldurs gate is fucking sweet, but let's not act like it's a unique occurance in AAA gaming.
This isn't a pissing contest and no one is acting like this is unique. We saw the same excitement for the last 2 Zelda games, God of War, Spiderman, Elden Ring etc. (post more examples, I don't pay as much attention to the industry anymore so I'm sure I've missed a bunch). Let's celebrate them if that's what you'd like to see more of. They're all awesome and they all add to the evidence that there is a large population that still want to experience games this way.
no one is acting like this is unique.
Yes actually, they are. That's the entire reason this debate began; some developers claimed that Baldur's Gate 3 is a unique occurrence and should be treated as such, rather than an example of a AAA video game meeting the expectations of consumers.
I think that was the point the person you replied to was getting at: not only is it completely fine for consumers to have these expectations, but it's actually not even as rare as these developers are making out. There are other examples of AAA development studios and publishers who aren't engaging in blatantly anti-consumer practices, so the ones that do really have no excuse.
Xenoblade 3 is a Nintendo exclusive. Baldur's Gate is unique to me because a game like this hasn't clicked with me since Dragon Age Origins.
Cry some more, corpos.
Wizards of the coast paid $0 to fund this game, that's why it says Larian in the publisher field on Steam and not WoTC or Hasbro.
I think that one (HUGE) part of BG3's success is that it was in Early Access for, what, 2-3 years? During which it grew a dedicated modding scene, received a metric fuck-ton of feedback, and regularly dropped large content patches. This wasn't an average dev cycle, and I think it shows. In some ways, the Dev. Feedback and interactivity reminded me a lot of the way Warframe does dev interactions.
Honestly, this kind of pleading from the other AAA developers is just making them look pathetic. Yes, it's reasonable not to expect BG3 for every AAA games, but it's not because of time and money, but simply because developers are just not always going to make lightning strike twice. But these devs have plenty of time and money and they look terrible in comparison to a dev that took it's time to make sure it was well polished before release.
The one thing that Shawn forgot to say is "Larian's boardrooms aren't filled with people who don't play video games!!"
It is exactly what I except going forward because, as that moron mentioned this is a fucking AAA game, not a Indy game.
AAA games developers absolutely have those resources and even more, so yes, they should have all of that.
Maybe we need to update the nomenclature. Software with loot boxes, pay to win mechanics, predatory gameplay loops, and storefront-first design should now be called “casinos”. They should have disclaimers about gambling and addiction in their load screen, have age restrictions, and should be forced to institute limits on what can be spent in a certain time frame. Feature-complete software with zero storefronts of any kind would be allowed to brand themselves as “games”.
Well Shawn. How about this is the new standard for AAA games and if you can't reach it than you are a AA studio at most.