Good.
Also first post. Go team Lemmy.
Thesis seems to be that small developers are unfairly compared to successful AAA games, but that dynamic has existed forever.
Maybe it’s a good thing that Baldur’s Gate prevents the creation of a dozen bad copies. Indie devs should be looking to innovate and if you’re being compared to BG3 maybe it’s not actually innovative.
Newsflash: CEO discover their customers like quality.
Once businesses move from private to public sector, the risk tolerance takes a nosedive. You all of a sudden have shareholders that want a steady return and don’t necessarily give a shit if that comes from a F2P game with a ton of gimmicks and microtransactions or a true stellar game.
Management therefore goes with “proven” low risk strategies that may generate a smaller return but also won’t break the studio (and lose them their job) if they fail.
My personal view is that it comes down to risk analysis. Great for generic “business” or investment, but bad for innovation. They start playing “not to lose” instead of playing to win.
I can’t agree with this article because Itch.io exists and is thriving. The indie scene in the last decade has exploded with titles that easily rival the fun of a triple A game. People do tend to centralize, but why would that stop all the indie devs who make these great games with a passion? Like Rain World, Heroes of Hammerwatch, Crab Champions, Caves of Qud, Castle Crashers, and many other unmentioned titles would actually stop because a Triple A studio made a game. Turn-based RPGs have been releasing long before BG3 and they’ll be releasing long after Larian has been ship-of-thesues’d into a different studio.
I think the point is not that Itch.io doesn’t exist. The thesis is that the people with money who decide where budgets go and which games receive marketing investment are now less likely to give funding or commercial attention to alternative ventures that don’t meet the BG3 bar. See the point about asking developers to be poor martyrs for the love of the craft. That’s not how professional development works, and he is right, that people need to eat, pay for families, rent. And the fuckers with the money won’t invest on anything that doesn’t make billions of dollars. All those games you mention are creative masterpieces and receive critical acclaims and prizes. But their sales are eclipsed by the horrible MTX riddled unethical money grabs. The truth of the matter is that patient gamers, indie lovers, etc. We are a minority. The gross share of the video game audience cares not. The money goes there, mobile realized this ages ago, the average idiot will rather splurge into a microtransactions, broken unfinished releases, battle passes, dubious premium exclusive versions, day one DLC, etc. The truth of the matter is that integrity and ethics are categorically not what brings profit in this industry.
Typed out a whole thing because I didn’t really agree with you that it’s not just the people up top, but also this perpetual growth, zero sum game most C-suite level people seem to think the world operates on.
Most of my points ended up agreeing with you, but I do want to add that profit seeking isn’t a bad thing, but that the constant desire for more profit, ‘growth’ is where the real evil lies.
You seem to think that they are different problems but infinite growth and profit above all, are both faces of the same problem. A company that tries to make profit through creative endeavors is fine. After all, people do need to eat and have a roof over their heads. They should make money in exchange for the intense and hard effort that art demands. Specially video games as one of the most expensive and complex forms of art ever devised by humans. But the top AAA companies are not in it for the art, some developers who work for them still believe in the art, and executives exploit that passion because they know it makes workers willing to crunch and work too many hours for too low payment. When profit is the only reason and the art gets lost, then there’s only one way to move forward, you have to grow indefinitely. For growth quarter after quarters means that profit bigger and bigger every time, for maximization of profit is above all. In the end it is the same mindset.
That’s because instead of brainstorming new ideas, big companies just look at what is currently selling and duplicate it. Often poorly.
I mean, even BG3 itself isn’t very innovative. All they did was take ideas that had been around and stayed in the 90’s to the modern world of gaming. I kind of have my doubts if it would have been such a huge success if there were more CRPGs like those of the past that had kept up with today. It’s on par with a lot of those older RPGs, including the 2 previous Baldur’s Gate games, but by comparison with other modern games, it’s a god send.
This isn’t meant to be against the game in any way; more about the state of the industry that the discussion around this game has shown me is worse than I thought. Even the consumers don’t seem to know that games like BG3 used to be the norm, and not exceptions.
I strongly dislike the point being made by Ismail here. The quality of any art- game, movie, visual art, music, etc.- should never be intentionally handicapped for the sake of “keeping the bar lower”. We as humans should strive to create the best art possible, even if it has consequences like making it harder for other artists to one-up your work.
There is no reasonable alternative here. Does anybody expect Larian Studios to intentionally not give their project their best effort? The games industry is already an oversaturated one, and while I understand developers have to earn a living, the risks were clear prior to choosing that career path. There is always a chance indie devs won’t get the funding they need to make their idea a reality. It’s a gamble- it always has been and always will be.
I think people know when to distinguish indie games from AAA games. The ideas are fresher with indie games, and the ideas are different. Take Slay the Spire for instance. The developers may not have created the flashiest graphics, but they made a concept that’s unique and fun, and people respected the game for what it is.
In addition to Slay the Spire, many developers are able to take lower-end graphics (compared to AAA games) and do wonders with it. Undertale, while I haven’t played it, is a success despite being very basic visually.
Generally, if an indie dev tries something unique that isn’t a carbon copy of something successful, they won’t be blatantly compared to it or other AAA games.
I think it’s about time. Aside from a few standout AAA titles indie devs have been embarrassing the larger studios for some time. AAA games should be better, they should launch at a higher bar.
Man, Baldurs Gate 3 is so fucking funny to me. Like, gamers get to play, enjoy, and love a top-tier RPG, and all the other devs have to say is “it’s too good and now we’ll be judged poorly by comparison!”
