this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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[–] antaymonkey@lemmy.world 354 points 2 years ago (9 children)

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.

[–] DreamySweet@lemmy.sdf.org 76 points 2 years ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] csolisr@communities.azkware.net 54 points 2 years ago (4 children)

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

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[–] chuckleslord@lemmy.world 170 points 2 years ago (9 children)

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.

[–] sadreality@kbin.social 42 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sir... Socialism is already ruining this nation.and you are daring to propose communism?!

[–] chuckleslord@lemmy.world 40 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Sorry, I'm neurodivergent. Can't tell if this is sarcasm.

[–] Noblesavage@lemmy.world 41 points 2 years ago

I'm not the person you're responding to, but the post looks sarcastic to me. Have a good day!

[–] JowlesMcGee@kbin.social 23 points 2 years ago

Not the person who said it, but yes, it's sarcasm

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[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 148 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Selling a good product that people want is a hate crime against the tech industry

[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The most favorable reading I can give to the "don't expect this to be the new standard" lines is that BG3 Is special. It is an exceptional piece of art within the genre, and it will be difficult or impossible for other studios to replicate its appeal. Like, you can say that readers really enjoy The Hobbit, or The Expanse, or A Visit from the Goon Squad, but you shouldn't expect them to be the new standard. Few fantasy books since 1937 have been as good as The Hobbit, although a lot of them have imitated its characteristics.

Viewed that way, they're absolutely right. We're going to continue to get a bunch of buggy, derivative crap, and we'll keep paying for it because...what else are you going to do? Play Skyrim for the 47th time? 23rd run through Elden Ring?

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[–] frezik@midwest.social 110 points 2 years ago (5 children)

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.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 45 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] avapa@lemmy.ml 63 points 2 years ago (7 children)

BioWare didn’t just make games similar to Baldur’s Gate, they created Baldur’s Gate.

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[–] zaphod@feddit.de 30 points 2 years ago (4 children)

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.

[–] FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world 22 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] brihuang95@sopuli.xyz 103 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Imagine whining about how people prefer to play good games that work on launch.

[–] FadoraNinja@lemmy.world 52 points 2 years ago (6 children)

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.

[–] Aviandelight@mander.xyz 23 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's because these executives don't care about learning. They want examples that they can use to rationalize their shitty decisions.

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[–] TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip 94 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Complaining about it having funding.... AAA.... lol. Thats the fucking point of AAA. Big fucking budget.

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[–] whenigrowup356@lemmy.world 87 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, don't expect funding for AAA games!

Wait...

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[–] FrostKing@lemmy.world 83 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 80 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] theAndrewJeff@lemm.ee 76 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (30 children)

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.

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[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 75 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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!

[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 29 points 2 years ago (7 children)

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

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[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 73 points 2 years ago (1 children)

New expectations? Lol. These were always the expectations!

[–] Invertedouroboros@lemmy.world 31 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] GreenMario@lemm.ee 56 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz 54 points 2 years ago

Cry some more, corpos.

[–] Alterecho@midwest.social 49 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] glockenspiel@lemmy.world 43 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

These people are just coping and lying via social media. Baulder’s Gate 3, while Budget undisclosed, was surely made for less than what some of the richest companies in the industry spend on shit game products like Modern Warfare 2 or Assassins Creed games which have quarter of a billion dollars budgets or better.

Larian put this game into early access at full price and ate shit for it. I’ve been playing it for years already, first on Stadia (where it was already excellent, just clearly unfinished).

Tangent, I’m sick of these knuckleheads talking about Larian as if they aren’t a western gaming company based out of Belgium and employing Europeans and others. They know the anti-Sini sentiment is politically strong which is why they point to minority shareholdings by Tencent and label Larian an eastern company.

Epic has a bigger claim to being a non-Western gaming company since Tencent owns almost half of them by itself.

These particular devs are apparently either astroturfing messages with political undertones for their employers, chronically online and in desperate need of some Tumblr therapy, or have a conservative’s guilty conscience and are projecting their inadequacy onto everyone else.

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[–] seejur@lemmy.world 31 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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.

[–] Four_lights77@lemm.ee 31 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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”.

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[–] kn0wmad1c@programming.dev 31 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The one thing that Shawn forgot to say is "Larian's boardrooms aren't filled with people who don't play video games!!"

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[–] Koen967@feddit.nl 26 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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.

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