Day9 Rant - Did Baldur's Gate 3 Ruin Other Games?
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2023
- Someone asked my opinion on certain devs complaining that Baldur's Gate 3 was TOO GOOD. This is my response.
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I don't expect every game to be Baldur's Gate 3... but I will expect every game to treat me like Baldur's Gate 3 does. I mean respecting my time, providing the full experience up front, not immediately begging me to open my wallet again 5 minutes after I bought the game and every 5 minutes of gameplay thereafter, and just being made with passion and a goal of entertaining, not a goal of maximum wallets milked per hour.
That only concerns a certain category of games and that's reason enough to not be interested in it whatsoever.
I guess you did not get to act 3 yet, because this isn't true.
Big budget games have become far too safe and sterile. BG3 is a game that's bursting with passion, personality, humanity. That's what sets it apart from modern AAAs. That's what people want more of - they're not asking for every game to be a 200 hour epic RPG with five million voice lines. Anybody who thinks that is completely missing the point
@@45axelh I'm well into Act 3 along with some friends, about to finish the game, and it is simply not this "OMG THE SKY IS FALLING!" broken insanity some people are running around claiming it to be.
Hell, if I went off the takes I've seen about Act 3 I wouldn't be able to move without the very fabric of the universe collapsing. Are there problems? Absolutely, there are problems from Act 1. But is it a case of "Once you get to Act 3 the game is basically unplayable!" nonsense? Absolutely not.
In this particular situation you're effectively one of the people sending messages of disappointment that Day9 references. Problems you are experiencing aren't invalid and should still be addressed, but those problems you're having also aren't applicable to every other person playing. Half the reason a lot of bugs, glitches, etc, even remain unfixed in games is precisely because they don't effect everyone, as anything that effects every person playing the game is real damn obvious to catch and deal with.
It's not finished though, that's obvious.@@kasterixprime
"People are saying [blank] and it turns out those are four people"
Couldn't have hit the nail on the head any more, the amount of news stories I see on my news feed that are like "people are angry about X" you read the article and they show like five tweets of people being mildly miffed.
It's especially funny for the instigating IGN video because the tweet that they referenced was by an indy dev responding to someone else with the perfectly reasonable take that small indy teams can't possibly make something on this scale but the narrative was AAA DEVS RUNNING SCARED!!!!!1
@@MNewton Well tbf I don't know who is expecting indie devs to pump out a game like BG3 if they're like a 1-10 person studio 😭
@@MNewton that video was about more than that single take lol, the issue was that AAA developers took the Indie developer's point and applied it to themselves, which is ridiculous. The pushback wasn't against HIS tweet specifically, it was all the other major developers who wanted to pretend like they were indie
It's true for bigger studios too, though. They aren't going to get the time to properly make something to those standards. They'll get the same amount of time they would have otherwise, but suddenly the expectations have jumped way out of what's reasonable in that time frame. If you gave every AAA team infinite time and budget, then sure. If you're not giving them more time or more budget, expecting them to suddenly do better than they always have. Is hilariously unreasonable. Especially when we take into account how horrible crunch already is in the industry.
The takeaway isn't "devs lazy", it's that CEOs and boards and other higher ups of these companies that make decisions without having the background knowledge that any of the devs do are completely out of touch with reality, and they actually might insist that they make the game "like baldur's gate" with no understanding of what that would actually entail.
Sean, you have not covered Zerg in your Day9 Dailies enough lately.
I've been a game dev for a long time, and game devs LOVE this game. Love to play it, love that it exists, want our games to be this good. That's it.
I haven't finished watching yet but Day9's opinion better be the same as mine or I might have to give him my prime sub to change his mind
😂😂😂
100%
If he says anything that goes even close to the line I have drawn in the sand with my opinion. I will write a comment saying how disappointed I am. And that’ll teach him a lesson for having a unique mindset!
This is such a general problem that people arent nearly conscious enough of. Like I know some people in a Subset X of Group A who are scared other Group A people hate them because they can find like 5 shitty tweets on all of twitter per month about Subset X of Group A even though that's a tiny tiny fraction and is completely outnumbered by the opposite attitude.
Twitter makes it trivial to not only find shitty stuff but to have it shoved in your face due to engagement-fiending algorithms. This gives people a really warped perception of various groups and of twitter's population itself.
Obviously all groups have problems but people need to be very aware of a sense of scale when they run into problems. The structural negativity bias in "What kinds of news will get reported and will get paid attention to?" is very related too.
This is why I have never and will never have Twitter. I never saw the point of it and I still don't.
exactly, I think the best example are flat earthers. there is this idea that there are millions of flat earthers out there competing with mainstream science, but if you look it up, videos, posts, and news refuting and complaining about flat earthers VASTLY overshadows the number of content and interactions with actual flat earther contents. videos of flat earthers for example hardly breath the 1k or 10k views, while videos AGAINST flat earthers reach the millions.
so the problem isn't that there are an horde of flat earthers out there waking up from the lies of NASA and mainstream media, the problem is that there are a few flat earthers that are way WAY too vocal, and they create a LOT of engagement from the people that disagree with them, making it seem like they have way more clout than they actually have. the same can actually be said about anti-vaxxers. the real problem however is that the way social media manufacture the actual size and clout of those narratives can actually push people towards them. making flat earthers and anti-vaxxers seem to have a lot more clout than they actually have gives them validation, makes them seem more respectable than they actually are, so people more easily believe on them.
tl;dr: social media will be the death of humanity.
I think the concern was the perceived strength of the pushback which implied big studios didn’t want to learn anything… Especially when focused down to statements like “feature complete” rather than “we patch in endgame later but here is a cosmetics store” they still pushed back as if they knew better and were not interested in feedback
Sure - but as Day9 explains here, that perceived strength of the pushback has absolutely nothing to do with what the actual strength of the pushback is (ie minuscule).
except it weren't studios complaining, it was just a single dev afraid that people would expect every game with half the budget and development time to have the size and scope of BG3, forcing big publishers to put even more pressure on their devs to deliver the impossible.
Yeah that does make sense, not quite a single dev, maybe 50, and when checked it was some lead developers in some of the bigger studios too, which does make it relatively different from Day9’s story since these people have power. But I agree, I shouldn’t generalise and say it was strong.
The initial point from an indie dev point of view is ofcourse agreeable, but from a Blizzard lead dev or Naughty dog, they should be taking notes of the reasons for the praise, and hopefully they are
@@AruthaSilverthorn lead developers are still subject to the whims of the company directors, publishers, and shareholders. they are the ones that feel the pressure the most because they are the ones that need to figure out how the fuck they will comply with the demands of the publishers and still deliver something playable.
also the twitter post that sparked the entire debate was just a single guy. it was later on that a bunch of different people jumped on the discussion.
@@danilooliveira6580 I don’t understand your point, yes it started with one person, even the fact that it was an indie dev, so I agree the expectation is different.
But it still continues into a powerful set of people in a lot of control that could have chosen to say “this shows that fan preference towards games as a service is slowly changing” or “focus on on demand skin stores are hurting content that could have been included diegetically.”
This makes me wonder who was actual complaining about BG3, because every other take I've heard was less about devs worrying about being over worked and more about greedy corporations trying to get away with releasing unfinished overpriced games riddled with mtx which we've seen a lot of lately. Might just be a conspiracy theory I suppose, they're still making plenty of money so why would they complain.
Because they justify their business model by claiming they need that money to support their games and company.
Larian has demonstrated how none of that is true. That it isn't necessary and that they're greedy liars.
So it's kind of like an expose that has blown the lid off the industry by opening gamers eyes.
The industry became this slowly and there are generations of gamers that grew up in this indoctrinated situation who didn't appear to know better.
Whether it will actually change for the better now is questionable. But these predatory companies certainly feel threatened by the possibility.
@MrAzrielx13 its already been proven that theyre greedy liars for ages now. Fromsoft proves it constantly by releasing full great games. Even dumbass bethesda outside of fallout76 has historically released full game experiences many times in the past so they KNOW its true. Ubisoft used to do it but went to the dark side, blizzard used to but went to the dark side. Nintendo still constantly releases full games despite everybody else doing the crap they do...
We all KNOW they do it because theyre greedy little piggies, and we know thats why because devs at those companies arent making significantly more money like they should. The higher ups make a ton more though... surprise surprise the normal problem with capitalism rears its head again
if you go through the twitter threads that the discussion originated in, as I recall there were people like OW 2, Diablo 4 & Obsidian devs in there egging on this thread that for all intents & purposes would've been aimed at expectations of indie devs, not giant corporations like Activision Blizzard lol
I think the crux of the issue is that while it's understandable some devs are worried about increased crunch, them saying "pls buyers don't have too high expectations it's just not possible" comes across as a defense of the publishers that impose these strict dev cycles in the pursuit of maximizing profit. While it might not be a large number of people having this take, some people being ppl from big studios that have a less than stellar track record does feel a bit telling. It does come across like some are just in damage control mode because they're afraid games like BG3 will ruin their ability to milk their playerbase while providing less and less.
"It does come across like some are just in damage control mode because they're afraid games like BG3 will ruin their ability to milk their playerbase while providing less and less."
Congrats, you're part of the problem.
You could have just gone "okay, devs are worried, moving on" instead you chose to go "oh look at these people being worried about being able to milk the playerbase".
@@Luthies ????? The reason why they are worried is arguably much more important than the basic fact that they're worried for making any sense out of what's going on. "Don't ask questions, just consume product and get excited for next product."
IMO a less uncharitable representation of what's going on is the devs in question recognize (even if only subconsciously) that their current AAA development/business model and its reliance on funding from and profits for big publishers isn't conducive to producing games like BG3 with any level of reliability.
@@Luthies I mean, as a customer I am aware of the practices prevalent in modern games. I'm also aware people get defensive of their shady ways to make exorbitant amounts of money sooo? 1+1=2. I'm not claiming every dev is greedy, but I am aware a lot of the higher-ups and publishers are, acting like they aren't is just being willfully ignorant.
@@karonuva and how many higher ups and publishers were commenting in that twitter thread?
let me answer that for you...zero.
hence you being part of the problem.
@@Giant-Enemy-Crab You do realize that the thread in question involved pretty much only either people from small studios or lower level devs from big ones? Yet for some reason you lot are here going "ahh look at these greedy corporate devs being afraid for their profits". Like get a fucking grip, you are actively proving their point.
I am a game dev. I work in a studio with a couple hundred game devs. I can confirm no one here is upset by BG3. It's pretty universally admired.
The ironic thing is that Larian pretty much made the Baldur's Gate 3 that Bioware could have been making by now if they didn't sell themselves to EA, which was already known at the time to be the creative death of any studio they took over.
I guess Bioware does not like this look in the mirror at their past selves. This used to be them. They where innovating the RPG genre, pushing boundaries, trying new things, finding new ways to tell stories with a true passion for it.
Heck, I still would say that the only D&D game ever made that's better than Baldur's Gate 3 is Neverwinter Nights 1. Because it has the toolset and DM client as well. If Larian made a good Neverwinter Nights 3 using 5e rules, no one would ever need Roll20 or other online D&D platforms ever again, it would be obsolete.
Divinity 2 had GM features. If they end up porting those features over eventually B3 could be that game. If they do I intend to run a virtual game in the engine :p
What's sad with Bioware's story is that EA's CEO was convinced that single-player games were dead and forced a single-player-focused developer to make online live service game(s)... and, of course, when they worked on Mass Effect:Andromeda, you can bet they didn't give them the time and budget the project needed because the funding went all into online projects... AND THEN, to make things worse, they forced them to use a shitty game engine.
As for Roll20 being obsolete, I would disagree. There's plenty of people who prefer to not be constrained by software limitations. A DM client is amazing, sure, but it still doesn't let DMs to do whatever they want.
Pretty sure WOTC stopped this. They are making their own VTT (that looks quite bad) and have been trying to kill competition everywhere, they likely didn't want to create another with BG3 since Larian would likely be against extra monetization that the WOTC VTT is looking to sport for cosmetics and junk.
But all that aside, the market doesn't really need it, I recommend Foundry VTT. The only VTT that will ever be needed, and with the ability to every automate any game system, even more difficult things like Sleep from 5E, or even the Tasha Summon spells. But I tend to like the freedom of making my games in 2D (though Foundry can also do 3D these days) so to each their own of course! Neverwinter was surely a blast back in the day though.
you don't CHOOSE to not to not be sold to big publisher, they decide and you comply, specially if you are having financial problems. they will BURRY you if they want your studio enough. just look what happened with Human Head Studios and Prey.
@@danilooliveira6580 Every RPG they made before selling out to EA was game of the year it was released in pretty much, their games sold well.
They did not need EA, they could have kept making good deals with individual publishers while staying independent, or at least make a deal with a publisher that allowed them more creative freedom.
It was stupid of EA to ever meddle with Bioware, all they had to do was just let them make whatever they wanted since it always turned to gold.
EA doesn't know shit about gaming so was not in a position to tell Bioware anything.
5:30 the cat is staring directly into our souls
What do you think about the new Cyclone changes in SC2?
Where can I get that shirt!?
Thank you being so level headed. I hate the drama farming "DEVS BAD UPBOATS TO THE LEFT" people are doing and I hate how much it's working on the overall gaming population.
The reason that it’s often dev vs consumer is because recently many AAA titles feel more like a tactical business move designed to cheat gamers out of their money. That’s the feeling, anyway. The dev tweets fit that narrative.
@@nickelodeanntrue, however that should be blamed on publishers, exec & suits instead, not devs
You're part of the problem.
Since if you actually sat most people down and asked, "Why do you hate the devs so much?" they would ask what the hell you were even talking about. Because the vast majority absolutely know most of the shitty decisions are being made by people well above the heads of developers at ground level.
The 'devs bad' thing is almost always a reference to companies, not people. For example... Blizzard the company IS very much a developer, and as a company they're basically evil incarnate at this point with their tactics.
But if you think everyone is shitting on the actual human developers sitting in some room at Blizzard making something they were ordered to make, then you're absolutely the one who needs to adjust your perspective on the matter.
The reason a couple of specific human developers have been targeted is because they decided to, for some reason, effectively jump on a damn grenade for these companies. But again the majority of commentary is absolutely being aimed at companies, not people.
It's working on the gaming population because it gives the gaming population license to get angry at developers, which is the gaming population's like second most favorite thing to do anyway.
@@KillahMate The VAST majority of the 'gaming population' say nothing to or about developers. Ever.
This backlash you see online is basically a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of people who play games and wouldn't even have a clue this drama is happening.
There are millions of players that don't engage in spaces like this, and have zero clue these types of discussions even occur. Hundreds or even thousands online going back and forth is nothing compared to that.
Its exactly the reason companies can ignore a lot of backlash, protests, etc, because the majority is silent, saying absolutely nothing, but most importantly to them are still paying.
I actually think there have been a lot of absolutely stellar games lately. I just think the ratio of stellar games to the total amount of games is lesser than it used to be, simply because of how accessible game dev has become. I would also say that AAA has become kinda stagnant in the last 10 years so you see less great AAA games than we used to. A lot of the studios who would make AAA now make micro-buy crap (thanks EA, Activision/Blizzard/King, Microsoft and Ubisoft :D).
Some incredible games in the last two years off the top of my head (of all sorts of genres):
- Elden Ring
- Signalis
- Street Fighter 6
- Vampire Survivors
- Dredge
- Neon White
- Inscryption
- Hi-Fi Rush
- Tunic
- I can't believe Disco Elysium is 4 years old now but I was also going to include that.
Man... that Leonardo da Vinci did such a good job he ruined art for all time! How dare he!?
I feel like the only expectations I have for a game is for it to work and not be broken at launch. To many games trying to be Rainbow Six Siege where they sell a broken game hoping to fix it. I feel publishers need to take more time with games, ethically make games, and complete games
also so much lifted hats for the fact that they have been working at patching the miniscule issues people have like having a week long company paid trip to the salt mines. They respect their customers and that is rare today.
anyone notice how well the music timed up with the rant?
DayJ being the level-headed voice of reason, as always. Thanks my man. This discussion has been so utterly nonsensical. That IGN video poisoned the well on this discussion and many "big name" youtubers only made it worse
BG3 is a 10/10 game and my 1st playthrough was 111 hours and I loved every minute of it.
in like 4 days, Sea of Stars is going to come out. It has the tiniest fraction of ambition and production quality and was made by like 20 people.... yet I'm still going to love the hell out of it.
Once again, Day9 having sane, rational takes. How are you so consistent?
Ive always believed as long as mr.9 has that room to be that guy, he dont need the big hulky irrational guy behind himself hahahaha.
He knows a thing or three about vidya games. He's an expert, no doubt. I'm not sure he considers himself a wise man in general understanding of things, but it's not a problem. He knows what he knows and what he doesn't know. It's actually very impressive, considering how everyone seems to have an opinion, these days, on any given subject, take for example me. 🤦♂😅
This is why i have been slowly developing an automatic response to the statement "people are saying X" into "what people" by knowing the situations behind a response we are more likely to understand what is ment.
We aren't rotten or spoiled, our expectations never changed, we just enjoy games that are complete from the beginning and you can just tell Baldur's Gate 3 is made with passion.
Yeah all my gamer friends agree that they don’t need huge ambitious games, just complete ones. Also, it’s not like we’re receiving these underwhelming AAA titles for free. But we ARE able to buy complete indie passion projects for much cheaper.
When games were released on floppy disk they weren't coming out as broken as this, because there was no way you could patch them.
Except the game isn't even finished.
You expectations change with every new incredible game releasing, be it in term of graphics, gameplay or player freedom. And that is fine. That is how the industry evolved during the past decades. Did you play Pathfinder or Pillars of Eternity? Those are awesome games with sometimes better storytelling, bigger worlds, heavier decision, but why do people not play or praise it to the same digree as BG3? Because BG3 introduced a high quality, voice acted third person dialog system in an CRPG. Something, that many would say, was not even matched by Bioware with KOTOR or Jade Empire. Larian introduced physics based combat and interactions to CRPGs. And now you will subconsciously take those as a measurement sticks for all CRPGs in the future. Your expectations already changed and that is totaly fine!
"Because There Will Be Blood exists, it creates unreasonable expectations to future filmmakers."
"Because Bohemian Rhapsody exists, it creates unreasonable expectations to future songwriters."
"Because Breaking Bad exists, it creates unreasonable expectations to future television shows."
Baldur's Gate 3 creates a new high bar, that much is true. And even then, it creates a high bar in relation to the RPG genre. But it doesn't create "unrealistic expectations" at all. That's the kind of hyperbole that's easy to spout and difficult to reason with.
Hi day 9 , great analysis could you list 10/10 game that you would recommand.
The problem isn't even that some dev's points may be accurate, the problem is why are they making that argument at all after a game comes out to critical acclaim? Like, just don't say anything... people have way higher expectations now because random developers decided a successful game coming out was the perfect time to say "hey, don't expect this of us pretty pleaseeee". Just congratulate the game, and do your best to make the best game you can.
I don't think the problem is down the chain. Its the designers and corporate that are trying to figure out how to make everyone spend money in the shop instead of enjoy the game.
I think there is several things at play here, first is that big corporations seem to be more focused than ever on quarter growth, time to first dollar and recurring profits. Second as the game industry has grown as a whole a lot of game developers are now being run by or as big corporations, and that shows in their games. All companies want to make money, but when that is all they care about it really shows. Do they make games, and that’s how they make money, or do they want to make money so they make games?
Baldurs gate 3 runs opposite all the current trends in gaming. Like all of them. Not games as service. Classic isometric RPG. Developed for PC first. Massive content but no padding. I agree that the “dev outrage” is overblown but in many ways BG3 has really reminded me what new games used to be 15 years ago when it felt like studios wanted to make great games, not make great financial quarters.
3:47 cat
Also I think the difference between bg3 and other games is that larian has an executive and a development team that are very aligned on the goals of the game. This is something that a lot of studios don't have, and their games end up as a bag of compromises between the management and the developers.
why we feel the internet is full of haters is because haters shout and the rest just live our life in silence so all you hear is shouting all the time.
Hi Sean, I always love a good rant, and I hope you're having a great day!
Really good take Sean. Appreciate your thoughts on this topic 👍
Imagine being a tripple A dev who essentially admits that shareholder run business is bad business, and then has the gal to make it our problem and not their problem.
No one cares that you decided to work for a soulless mega corporation. If you dont like it, organize and create some standards.
Sean's opinion on this makes me feel so comforted that his game studio will be prosperous.
7:51 completely agree. That's the reason why 7/10 games kinda bacame the new 5/10 games for me, mechanically and gameplay wise they are good games, they just fuck it up by lacking content, that content being to repetitive and thus overstaying it's welcome or they want more of your money forr shit that feels like it was sliced out of the original game.
I think you have to separate production value and and quality of gameplay or writing. You can't do superexpensive things like fully voiced characters without money, but you can still deliver a great game.
As an example in the CRPG genre, personally i like Owlcat's "Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous" even better than i do BG3. Being a Kickstarter project it has a more spartan presentation but it shows what focusing resources to the important parts of a game can achieve.
4:52 The cat's expression says "actually it was all day9 viewers and he's just coping really hard now".
Considering the distribution cost of games is near Zero. Publishers need to to be doing more than just squeezing devs.
Sean, you can't be so reasonable... Get angry! Feed the flames, post nonsense! Logical argument? Ain't nobody got time for that.
I'm just here to see if Funday Monday is back
man is there anyone else like day9? someone who has extremely succinct and important videos like this that he just makes off the cuff while streaming? I dunno day9 is such a treasure
It started with a tweet from an indie dev, and it's fair to not expect BG3 from an indie studio... and then a few "big name devs" chimed in, but I feel they were just confirming that indies won't make a new BG3... and a misunderstanding happened thinking "look at all the AAAs saying they can't do this"...
That's my hot take at least...
Diablo 4 was in production for as long as Baldurs Gate 3...
Had a team of 9000 people... had a larger budget...
Is a full priced AAA game...
And also includes a Battlepass, Microtransactions, the devs are actively nerfing the fun out of the next patches, the story is bland, and post story there is no content...
All this after making over a billion dollars off the garbage that was Immortal
Developers are doing fine without Larian ruining their own reputations and image...
My boss calls it the silent army. People love to say something like "well, if this person doesn't like it, then how many more?" More often than not, it's maybe a handfull more, and almost never the thousands they're envisioning
I have been watching Day9 at least on and off since Chill vs. Combat-Ex and I can confidently say there's only one thing he's ever said that made me upset. It was when he said we can't be sure about dinosaurs lololol.
Manufactured drama, it is what the internet is best for.
4:20 CAT
thank you! You just summarized the social media effect.
I get it, BG3 is a good game. But it suffers from the problems that literally every other game suffers from. It was in early access for 3-4 fuckin years. "Released in a complete state", uh, no, sorry, when you sell the product that's the release. If it was a beta, free demo, stress test, sure, but no, you bought the game 3 years ago, and now you can play it all. Future DLC not withstanding. There are countless bugs. My Shadowheart's hot bar was broken from level 4 until the end of the game. When playing with my buddy half the time one of us didn't see the cutscenes or conversations or we didn't have conversation options. We even tested some of them, I would have 6 options on my screen to choose, but he initiated the conversation and had only "1. Continue". I reloaded the conversation when I was alone, I used his character to initiate the same conversation and it had all 6 options. Same character, same convo, same party members. The conversations don't feel natural at all. Laezel hated me, but after 1 event in game she had "urges to sate." A normal conversation with gale turned out to be what I imagine a hot girl complimenting a twitch chatter feets like, bro calm down I just said you had nice shoes, I don't want to bang you. It's a game, programmed like every other game. If x = y then z. It's not even the first of it's kind. Divinity, Dragon Age, Mass Effect. People just need to calm their tits.
I like the game, but it's by no means the best game ever. I just prefer to shame the games/companies that fail to meet basic expectations, rather than to cream myself over a game/company that meets them. Remember, this is what games used to be. It's not Larions fault that gamers collectively have just accepted that games have predatory monetization with bare bones content. Those companies know you'll still buy their slop, because you're addicted. But Larion are also not the heroes for giving us what we expected from a game 5, 10, 15, years ago.
Immortals of aveum is an great example in this month, nothing special no meaning for it to be released but asks 70 euro compared to bg3 with it being 60 and having x10 the content. Also 2023 has been banger year for gaming
This is just making me more excited to finally play that game, it’s _that_ good?! I loved the first one, thought it was kinda niche, surprised this one is making such waves, I guess DnD in general is a lot more popular now as well, that helps. It’s ruffling someone’s feathers that’s for sure.
It really is that good.
Take how good other people are saying it is and then understand that it’s even better than that. I’m serious! It’s such a personal game, it’s so personal to the gamer. It’s the essence of role playing. It’s fantastic. You will like it more than me, and I will like it more than you. Because it’s our own game, yours and mine!
Looking at the discourse amongst gamers on social media, they're not saying "every game now needs to be as big & as complex as BG3". What they are doing is holding up BG3 & saying "see, this is the kind of game you get if you give your developers the space to make a game they're truly passionate about, rather than making games to satisfy some publisher mandate that is driven by trend chasing and maximizing shareholder value". More story, fewer Skinner Boxes. Not a crazy demand.
Also, most gamers I speak to are well aware that ite publishers & investors, not developers, who are the biggest source of the current malaise in AAA gaming.
I mean if every AAA release decides to spend 3 years in early access then yeah it will ruin other games lmao
I used to think it was always petty to call devs "lazy."
Ever since I started doing my own development, I've gotten comfortable and even confident in calling devs lazy.
Remember when lord of the rings came out and hollywood was like; we can never uphold to these standards, this is bad for the movie industry, now every movie has to be a 12h trilogy worthy of 30 oscars...
"That was not the end of his rant."
I don't expect games to all be BG3 level of quality. I do expect more games, however, that let me buy the game and enjoy it without forcing me to open my wallet to get the "full" experience. All games used to be this way. Larian proved that it can still be done.
6:45 There's a huge disconnect between players and devs if this is indeed the "devs" true quarrel with the state of BG3 and player expectation, because I haven't seen or heard anyone say that every game should be like BG3 in scope but it's rather the feature complete mindset from Larian and their unwavering opposition to gameplay compromises and boring loops to accommodate microtransactions on games that are releasing in blatant alpha stage as if it were "complete", I don't think players want huge scope and content out of every game, they want feature complete games at a time where it seems AAA gaming with the resources they have should be generating revolutionary games, not the half baked milking cash cows they are releasing nowadays.
no because of the following issues:
- Bugs and performance issues
- black screens
- blue screens
- Graphical issues
- T-posing, duplicate npcs, UI disappearance, loss of world collision, graphical world boxes vanishing loss of control of character , stuck in dialogue.
- music is largely the same track but repeated in different tempos.
Game play issues:
- max lvl only half way through the game so no progression if 100% play through, that's around 70 hours of game play where you literally stop any type of rpging outside of dialogue.
- often quest logic fails and choices are seemingly ignored or mismatched (especially act3)
- companion dialogue-event miss-match
-a lot of skills and effects are useless , such as bleeds and dots in general, Most combat is often over within 1-2 turns.
-Repetitive maps and game play set pieces which involve repeated versions of:
- prison breaks
- A decision to sacrifice 1 thing in order to save another thing (all companion quests are pretty much the same and have the same endings with different bits of flavour text.)
- Almost all events devolve into kill everything
This video won’t stop me because I can’t do math!
Larian has the advantage of being a privately held company that can actually take the time to put out a good game. It's not out until it's ready. Blizzard used to do this before Activision bought them out. Make money by making a quality product that sells.
Once publicly traded it's about cranking out trash annually like Call of Duty or Madden, or in your face monetization on every screen. I don't blame the workers, I blame the C-suite.
Day9 has been popping up in my feed a lot recently(probably because of BG3). I haven't heard a take from him that hasn't been 100% spot on yet.
I agree broadly with his point that it's not right to say or imply all devs feel this way about BG3 or really any issue.
I also agree it's very easy to give too much credence to what "people are saying" on twitter or otherwise.
But it does seem to me like its a greater share of devs who have this "BG3 sets the bar too high" concern than just a tiny minority. All game devs is already a smaller population than all Day9TV Viewers. But even smaller still is all game devs of at least modest notoriety (which is to say most game developers are faceless and nameless to all but their team). So within the population of known game devs who had this concern it appears to me to be an appreciable percentage of that population. Certainly enough to warrant the discussion, though probably not enough to justify the hyperbole of implying a monolithic viewpoint within the industry.
You tangent about majority versus vocal minority is very good and something people should be aware of for their own mental health!
Ever since the internet allowed games to be "patches", quality of games at release has been declining. Back when you needed to blow in an NES cartrige to make it work, the game was "feature complete", polished and awesome. Now, games come out half complete, full of big patches to fix bugs and they sell us expansions that only feel like they are finishing the actual end game that should have been sold with the game.
Genuinly play some NES games that aren't like, Mario Bros 3 and you will realize this just....isn't true.
Like we remember the good stuff but early consoles had a lot of crap
As a more outside observer, I find the whole discussion around BG3 kinda strange. We finally have a game that is surpassing everyone's (already high) expectations, delivering on a franchise that was already popular and doing it with enough polish and detail that is unheard of in the current videogame climate.
For its succes, it is getting attacked by various media outlets and haters. It is criticized for it's PG nature, it is criticized for being too good (I mean ... what?) or the worst of all: It is being criticized for not screwing over the players by actually having a normal buy to play method. How strange are the times that people even bring up this kind of nonsense. The game does exactly what it's supposed to do and apart from (what I have heard, but not experienced myself) a bit weaker endgame in act 3, does not have many flaws.
Gamers are fed up with all the 'games as live-service' ridiculousness, the 'always-online' and the 'microtransactions' and 'in-game store' that try to milk us for as much money as possible. We are fed up with being fed half finished games that we have to pay full price for, to do a beta test with numerous fixes and patches coming later. (sometimes even as DLC)
It would greatly help if players would stop throwing away their money at those garbage projects, time wasters and lootbox filled crazyness and only buy stuff that is actually worth something. At some point, the only things that would be made is good games like BG3 and the industry will be all the better for it.
Sean, I did an interview with roughly 30 developers, who play BG3, and not a single one is upset or how IGN would put it "in panic". All of them love the game, all of them started analysing why it works so well, all of them encountered bugs and inconsistencies, all of them encountered parts, they think could be done better. That's our daily job, we do that for a living. Just another Tuesday.
Just had a sudden realisation. Take how good other people are saying it is and then understand that it’s even better than that. I’m serious! It’s such a personal game, it’s so personal to the gamer. It’s the essence of role playing. It’s fantastic. You will like it more than me, and I will like it more than you. Because it’s our own game, yours and mine. Everyone plays and gets their own totally unique game, every time.
Good games with essentially full experiences are what they are even with bugs. Skyrim, The Souls games, and many more popular titles have been giving us that for years, and they were all actually MORE complete than BG3.
BG3 didnt do anything other than be yet another good example of what good games used to look like in an era where bar for big titles is very very low.
Publishers know that high-quality, single player focused games are successful. Elden Ring, Zelda, Witcher 3 and many more examples of this exist. However, publishers also know that one can have just as financially successful games with way less effort - Call of Duty, FIFA, to an extent the latest Pokemon games...
Nobody is "afraid" of Baldurs Gate 3. Developers applaud its success and wish they'd be working for a company that allowed them to make a project like this. Publishers will ignore it since a huge project like this is way too much of an investment.
What I really like though is, that we as players got the chance to make ourselves heard what we want in games by supporting BG3. However, as long as ppl spend money on Diablo 4 Horse Armor and Battlepass, I fear the industry is not going to change.
Well. The original review where this was said was taken out of context.
Really cute cat you got!
I think there's a conflation between saying "game devs" when you're talking about "game dev companies". I think people hear these complaints, and think of them coming from triple A game studios who are shoving out unfun games with terrible monetization, and they are now freaking out because Larian just pushed out one of the best games ever made with not a micro transaction in sight.
Looking forward to Rogue Trader
I don't think developers are 'worried' anymore after the thousands of bugs it has. It is nothing special and had a terrible launch.
Accurate. Also, cool shirt.
Indie dev says yeah there no way we can have this level of quality and then the tripple stooge chime in like they on the same level as the indie dev.
I don't have a bad memory so i remember a lot of amazing games from the past, my expectations have always been high for what i consider a good game and balder's gate didn't effect that one little bit.
Honestly the inciting incident felt like a shot from the wrong side of the ship. most of those things that dev said are valid, but also frankly, it's none of our concern. In an alternate timeline the dev could've gone "I really hope execs aren't going start demanding this from all their studios" and the general public would've went "yeah that wouldn't end well I can see where that goes wrong". But the shot went towards the fanbase who rightfully called it a bruh moment.
While in general you are on the money here Sean, the Baldur's Gate 3 case is a little different. Sure there have been some devs saying this, the biggest culprits have been the major players in the gaming industry. The companies that release a lot of games and they are whining because their games can't touch what BG3 is offering and are upset because this will likely hit their sales numbers... And this is why this has become a thing. Major publishers are drumming it up. They all want their own BG3, but done with a 2 man team and 50$ budget in 6 months...
Sean, in reflecting on the potential influence of a high-quality game like Baldur's Gate 3 on the industry and gamers' expectations, wouldn't you agree that the artistic pursuits often set new benchmarks and thereby push the boundaries of what is considered the norm?
And if so, doesn't developers have a responsibility to recognize these shifts and innovate accordingly, while also acknowledging the varied and sometimes impossible expectations of their audience?
How can one balance the pursuit of artistic excellence with the reality of business demands and audience expectations in such a dynamic industry?
I'd also point out that buying the rights to make a Baldurs Gate game was no guarantee of success for Larian. In the 6 years the game was in development, the interest in D&D might have waned (& boy did WotC seem determined to create that loss of support this year). Not that having a strong IP is a guarantee of success. The recent Dark Alliance game bombed hard, despite havjng the Baldur's Gate name...because it was trash. Honour Amongst Thieves, despite being a great film carrying the D&D title, barely broke even due to the behaviour of WotC & the film being wedged in between two other blockbuster films. Gollum also had the LotR brand behind it & it died off in less than a month and caused the death of the studio.
He has a lot of good points that apply generally. I agree with him about how easy it is to overgeneralize a small sample that may or may not be representative. On the other hand, I think I disagree with him and believe there is a problem of developers either becoming out of touch or, at worst, contemptuous of their audience.
Experiential, I see this in my position in the tech industry. It is super easy to fall into the terrible mindset of thinking your users are stupid. That mindset ultimately ends up manifesting in not meeting the needs of the people that pay your bills over the long term.
It's probably true that most other devs wouldn't be able to accomplish something on the scale of BG3, but it isn't because other game devs are lazy or whatever. If you're a publicly traded company, you gotta make shareholders happy, and that usually means a bias towards short term thinking and pushing to get things done as quickly as possible. Larian isn't publicly traded, is a pretty big studio, and the owner is invested in the success of their games as works of art and not exclusively as a way to make money (though you do still have to make money). Much more oppurtunity to slow down, add polish, and avoid crunch.
I'm not sure it's that accurate. Larian still does try to make money, but they believe that they can make money AND retain their creative freedom. When they kickstarted Divinity Original Sin 1, they had 40 people working in the studio, and they were selling the premise of their game at just the right time, when Kickstarter was young and nobody was making this kind of game.
Since then, they most went from success to success, and they were able to make a D&D game with the full support of WotC, which doubled down as a sequel to a massive classic of the genre. They decided to make a long early access at a time when it's almost a sure way to slow burn all the hype for your game... and once again, it was still a tremendous success.
Larian is proving time and time again that they, in fact, can absolutely make money, know success, while retaining creative freedom. It's the reminder that making games is still a creative work. For me that's quite similar to the cinema industry. Big studios often think that they have the perfect formula to make money - but it often fails, and everytime it's a reminder that you don't make a good movie that people want to see if you don't respect creators to some extent.
And the truth is that Larian isn't the only studio to make great, ambitious games that also happen to make money. But people like to focus on the others, on the formulaic yearly games that people play more by habit than because they are great games that challenge their views. I think it's ok that those games exist too, tbh. I think it's ok that we don't expect every game to be ambitious. Some games are for comfort, some are intense experiences. Day9 plays BG3, but also Magic Arena.
What you said could be boiled down to publicly traded business is bad business.
When devs concede that they're limited by shareholders, they're essentially admitting to bad business practices.
Which to me should garner no sympathy. Instead of calling it bad business, you play the victim and make excuses for being accessory to said bad practices.
@@Edandar Recognizing there are systemic reasons for a problem is not the same thing as excusing a problem.
@@apirateoftheair Miss me with that lame double think. There is no callout. It's excuse making that avoids upsetting their employers.
If you omit something that is foundational to the claim you are making I view that as deliberate and meaningful.
All these devs do when they make these statements is tell me that they follow the company line. Which is the devs condoning their situation as far as I'm concerned.
"It's not fair that I maintain the situation that I'm complaining about."
How about just own it instead of trying to pretend at any kind of impartiality. You want me to treat them in good faith at the same time that they round aboutly describe why megacorp incorporated is bad for business.
@@Edandar Being "limited by shareholders" depends entirely on the shareholders, in pretty much the same way that private companies are limited by their owners.
It isn't an automatic incentive system problem like everyone makes it out to be.
Not only was it probably only a handful of actual developers, but people are probably misrepresenting what they are saying.
It would be like me saying the Lord of the Rings trilogy ruined all other movies and expectations of movies for the next 20 years after.
I also think that when people say 'expectations' for games. You also have to realize, valerian literally makes there bread and butter with turn by turn rpgs, they are very specialized in what they do. And thats good. Great even. A valerian studios RPG is significantly different in play and feel to a Bethesda one. And further more there is all the other games out there that arent RPGs at all, or its a side part of the main game which is primarily a shooter for example. So 'Developers' (which is incredibly broad) being upset about the bar being set high are a little overblown about their concern I think. If you arent making RPGs I dont think you have a whole lot to worry about. But if you are say EA management that chocks your game full up with micro transactions and side stores and other additional paid content, and use that to make your money and you are concerned about Valarian, you should be, because they made a better product then you could, and didnt have to play dirty to make their money. Get good EA.
I disagree. I absolutely will be, and have for years now, expect quality from devs of all genres, even before BG3 came around. I refuse to buy games that are buggy messes when they launch, like an all to high number of games in recent years. I will especially be critical of AAA companies that churn out crap every year that doesn't even meet the base expectations of a complete game with minimal bugs and good performance, let alone having a rich gaming experience. I think people have been far to complacent and accepting of bad business practices from game devs for a long time now. I get that devs are under pressure from producers and publishers to crunch games out, but that's a problem that people should be critical of as well. I think the solution starts with not accepting bad games at launch. If we stopped buying games that are broken, we stop rewarding them for giving a bad experience, which puts pressure on the devs to be sure, but it also puts pressure on the publisher to give more time to the devs to finish a game before launching it. BG3 SHOULD raise the bar for all devs, not just RPG devs.
@@Hirome_Satou I did specifically mention EA having a good reason to be worried, because they do make worse products now then they did before 2012. I was more so talking about indie developers or more mid tier ones like from software.
Experimentation also is hit and miss, for example 'Stray' was effectively a puzzle platformer with a story as a Cat, I definitely think a lot potential publishers, would of been like 'no that sounds weird and not a sound investment' But turned out to be a huge hit, there are other games like 'power wash simulator' that has a weird niche appeal. Or goose game or goat simulator, these games have niches, and I think deserved to be made, but I also think they are not the quality of NG3 and thats fine. For each of these niche successes, there is probably 10 that dont succeed that were genuinely made with care.
You expect power wash simulator to have a 'riveting' RPG story to it? Like really? Or say sins of a solar empire? A niche space RTS?
Further more, ill mention another EA problem, how they did Deadspace 3 originally, they forced in multiplayer stuff into it, when the studio behind it never did multiplayer before, they did very good linear shooter games with a story, or the mess that was anthem, BIoware never did MMOs before, then suddenly got shunted into it. These are examples of why you shouldn't expect just any studio to just do any type of game, now EA went and EAed to these developers, we can say that is bad absolutely. But those developers made bad products because it wasnt their specialty. Compared to EA also had the Titanfall developers, respawn make what they were good at, fast paced shooters. Titanfall and apex legends. And they were excellent games for what they were.
So no expecting 'any' developer to just churn out a BG3 quality game, is insane. Expecting developers, to churn out complete, non-micro transaction lootbox laden games on the other hand, is fair and I agree with.
Thank you
I enjoyed Pathfinder Kingmaker more tbh. So no, it didn't ruin other games. However... if BG3 being a really nice and polished game is something that one should not expect from other games I don't know what they want us to expect. 60$ for a buggy mess and labeling it AAA? I don't think so. I get that the industry is different, and that their priorities aren't the same, but a finished game is not too much to ask for, nor is fixing that same buggy mess instead of powerpushing close to a hundred cosmetics for 9,99$ in the time that it could have been fixed. I remember an Apex Legends pro conveying a dev saying: "Fixing servers doesn't make money". I guess letting your game die does?
After thinking about it a bit I guess I'd have to agree with your take. "The quality of games is going up, but the avg quality is getting lower". When you think about the fact that: Warcraft 3, GTA 3, Neverwinter Nights, HOMM4, THPS 3, Star Wars: Jedi Outcast II, Morrowind, Age of Mythology, Medieval TW, Mafia, UT 2003, and at least 10 more titles most gamers who were gaming then heard of were ALL released in the same year, and every single one of them I would replay to death, and look at what's out now, what more do you need?
IMO you can just feel if developers put not only work but love into a game. I don't care how big or complex a game is. A "little" game can be a lot of fun too. The Problem is that most games in the same "league" as BG3 don't seem to put in as much effort.
I'm sure you can see how that line of thought leads to people judging games _literally_ purely on vibes. You're not saying the developers haven't put in the effort, you're saying they haven't put in enough 'love'. What's 'love' in a game? Well it's something that can't be quantified in any way, you just feel it.
So basically 'I like this game because I like it, which means the devs are good devs. I don't like this other game because I don't like it, so the developers are bad and should have done better and added more love.'
When you know the obvious answer the whole rant is about.
Most excellent take.
I feel like the only ones who are truly upset are big corp executives whose leverage to output bullshit content got reduced. I feel like this sort of thing should give hope to all indie devs, at least it does for me.
I think that twitter is a pretty terrible platform for pepper detailed discussion in general. And if the intended audience for a tweet is the management team of your own company then that is double true
i hate that people keeping on leaving out that the bg devs had 3 years of early access feedback which is not normal for any game thats why i dont believe these people who defend the game
IMO this is the problem with trying to mix creativity with capitalism; after enough time, all the decision-making will be based on monetary gain. A common practice to being a successful businessman is to separate yourself emotionally from the customer base and the process; this allows you to look at things purely from a logical perspective.
But logic can't really create something with substance. When you have a businessman and a baker debate on what the best cupcake is; you'll quickly realize they are going in circles because they have different definitions of what makes the cupcake great.
The chef will be entirely focused on the consumer experience, will spend more labor hours and use more expensive ingredients; but they will have to increase the price so only people who REALLY want a good cupcake will buy.
The businessman will find the most cost-effective way to quickly make cupcakes; this can lower the overall price for the consumer, or at minimum decrease the time it takes to make the cupcake. And because they will be able to produce more cupcakes faster than the baker can the business will make more profit... despite the cupcakes being objectively worse quality.
In the gaming industry using cheaper ingredients would be akin to simply copying what the best games of the previous year did. Let's take a game that had a cult following but didn't sell well. Businessmen won't view it as a good idea needing refinement; they will view it as a dead end or a trap they need to avoid.
But the follwoing year when other smaller and more passionate developers are able to refine it into a successful product; the savvy businessman will shamelessly redact their initial assesment and decide that this idea is now a common mechanic and will become an industry standard. Look at auto-battlers and battle-royal game modes evolving from mods to standalone titles, or RPG elements/skill trees being in virtually every single game now. The businessman's logic isn't flawed; it is a reliable method to determine if you should have the mechanic or not in your game. But they will rarely understand the subjective context on WHY it's a popular mechanic. This creates that frustrating situation where you ask yourself "Why does every game have to have a battlepass?"
Older games still had this problem. "Why does every game have a static turret mission?" "Why does every game have at least one puzzle you have to solve?" "Why do all the good guns have this annoying overheat mechanic? Or active reload?"
They have them because the executive producer looked at articles talking about the previous game of the year titles, saw some merketing blurb highlighting one of these features, and it gets pigeonholed into the game haphazardly with no vision on if the game actually benefits from it.
On the other end, a developer can see one of these features and immediately start picturing how it could fit and be implemented in their title. Maybe find a creative spin to make it stand out from other games that will do the same.
I thought the contention was AAA developers, meaning heads of big development studios, were upset. The developers thing is just a strawman, though I think the argument is a bit specious.
Not all games are held to the same expectations.
But there are games being made with bigger teams, time spans and budgets than Baldur's Gate 3, that have no excuses for not making good games, yet they shill out crap every year.
Why the hell wasn't diablo 4 a good game, it had the legacy, over 20x the developers and blizzard can front a budget as big as the 100mil of larion, so why was that game crap in comparison?