As reported by Eurogamer at GDC (Game Developer's Conference), during the Game Developers Choice Awards where Baldur’s Gate 3 won Game of the Year, Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke had some strong words to say about the games industry.
Here's what Vincke said:
"Greed has been fucking this whole thing up for so long, since I started," Vincke said, while collecting the GDCA Best Narrative award for Baldur's Gate 3. "I've been fighting publishers my entire life and I keep on seeing the same, same, same mistakes over, and over and over.
"It's always the quarterly profits," he continued, "the only thing that matters are the numbers, and then you fire everybody and then next year you say 'shit I'm out of developers' and then you start hiring people again, and then you do acquisitions, and then you put them in the same loop again, and it's just broken...
"You don't have to," Vincke went on. "You can make reserves. Just slow down a bit. Slow down on the greed. Be resilient, take care of the people, don't lose the institutional knowledge that's been built up in the people you lose every single time, so you have to go through the same cycle over and over and over. It really pisses me off."
Vincke continued on X to also add:
"For the avoidance of doubt - there are plenty of people in publishing I met who have their hearts in the right place. This message was for those who try to double their revenue year after year. You don't have to do that. Build more slowly and make your aim improving the state of the art, not squeezing out the last drop. And respect the people making the games. You'll find it brings you more joy."
It's clear that Larian Studios are a great game developer worth supporting. Larian also confirmed that no DLC expansion is coming for Baldur's Gate 3, it's a complete game and they will be moving onto their next game although Baldur's Gate 3 will still get patches to fix issues.
With the amount of layoffs this year, which have been ridiculous, it's nice to see some speak out like this at events. Just look at the chart PC Gamer put up showing the layoffs in early February (and there's been more since)…
You can buy Baldur's Gate 3 from:
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: whizseI'm trying to think of a country where one might reasonably expect devs not to be horny and I'm drawing a blank. Even in Japan, with the population decline and all, the devs are very likely horny--just for 2d things or robots rather than stuff that will result in having a proper Japanese dysfunctional family life . . .Quoting: nenoroBG3 aka Horny game made by horny polish devs.Belgian actually.
No idea about the state of arousal in that country.
Arehandoro Mar 22
Quoting: whizseQuoting: nenoroBG3 aka Horny game made by horny polish devs.Belgian actually.
No idea about the state of arousal in that country.
Belgian company, with offices in the UK and Barcelona (at least that I know off). Devs nationatilities will be even more varied :P
Arehandoro Mar 22
is it to hunt just under the amount of newly bred whales each year so their population (and your business) doesn't get gradually over-hunted into oblivion?
nope... it's to hunt all of them at once, get the money and invest in something completely different
it's the fallacy of self-regulating markets, based on the wrong assumption that money must stay on the same business, while capital investment rules make it all too easy to scorch the earth and move on to a new business
this and the fact that even when a market does self-regulate it does so *after* bad things have already happened in a big way to most people involved (clients, workers and often even some of the investors)
i think this neatly summarizes what's happening with open capital gaming studios/publishers nowadays
hm... how's that triple "i" story unfolding? time to check on them again
slaapliedje Mar 22
Good use is the original intention (at least the first game I saw use it, before it was called DLC) was Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. Pay 5-10 dollars for a module using the same engine. Perfect! This gives you an entirely new adventure using the same game engine. If Doom had done something similar, where you buy the engine and then people could sell their total conversions for pretty cheap... well that sort of happened, but they were sold as full games, that would have been great!
If BG3 did that, where they just had the D&D engine out there and sold 'new' games that were basically just using all the engine work they've already done, they could crank out some great adventures.
Solasta seems to have done similar.
Where it went wrong was with Oblivion and the Horse Armor...
the oldest expansion i'm aware of... probably "Hellfire", for "Diablo 1"
It's an expecially interesting case because Diablo was done by Blizzard and Hellfire was done by Sierra Games, so it was pretty bold!
More so if you realize it wasn't an independent adventure but added in-game extra content (a new story arch, a new cave, new high-level spells, etc) to the original game
Quoting: Marlockthose "good uses" were called "Expansions" and the wider catch-all name "DLC" was coined to put "bad uses" under the same umbrella and slap extra DRM-control on them
the oldest expansion i'm aware of... probably "Hellfire", for "Diablo 1"
Much, much earlier there were "data disks" that gave you a set of new levels for the game. ;-)
Quoting: Marlockthose "good uses" were called "Expansions" and the wider catch-all name "DLC" was coined to put "bad uses" under the same umbrella and slap extra DRM-control on them
Quoting: pbMuch, much earlier there were "data disks" that gave you a set of new levels for the game. ;-)Oh No! More Lemmings, anyone?
Quoting: whizseQuoting: nenoroBG3 aka Horny game made by horny polish devs.Belgian actually.
No idea about the state of arousal in that country.
*flips the table* i got fooled
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: whizseI'm trying to think of a country where one might reasonably expect devs not to be horny and I'm drawing a blank. Even in Japan, with the population decline and all, the devs are very likely horny--just for 2d things or robots rather than stuff that will result in having a proper Japanese dysfunctional family life . . .Quoting: nenoroBG3 aka Horny game made by horny polish devs.Belgian actually.
No idea about the state of arousal in that country.
i would say australia maybe.
The issue with japanese people is i don't know i guess both parts have different passions
Quoting: PenglingQuoting: Marlockthose "good uses" were called "Expansions" and the wider catch-all name "DLC" was coined to put "bad uses" under the same umbrella and slap extra DRM-control on themQuoting: pbMuch, much earlier there were "data disks" that gave you a set of new levels for the game. ;-)Oh No! More Lemmings, anyone?
I thought this one was standalone (that's the one I had), but wiki says there were actually two versions and one required the original disk to load. I was thinking about level packs for Timekeepers or Benefactor (unreleased, but later made by the community, just a few levels sadly) where you loaded the 'data disk' in place of Disk 2 or 3 to play another set of levels.
Now that I think of it, the first time I bought a game expansion was for Talisman (the board game). ;-)
Last edited by pb on 22 March 2024 at 8:13 pm UTC
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