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I don't want to attack you personally but I think your post illustrates an common error in thinking that caused gaming to stagnate for the past decade. I can ju

I don't want to attack you personally but I think your post illustrates an common error in thinking that caused gaming to stagnate for the past decade. I can just hear the army of MBAs making spreadsheets and checklist reflecting exactly this "paint by the numbers" style of thinking. This in turn means that the next ten AAA titles starting production are going to check all these boxes and then ... will still fail. In reality there is no formular for making a hit game. You need people who care and know what they are doing and let them do what they love.

jncfhnb 3y ago
Seems like a pointless retort given their first point was that they had just made a great game previously.
appplication 3y ago
I think you’re right but also making a good or beloved game is not really the same endeavor as making a massively profitable one. Stardew Valley is beloved. If you described the vision to a 10k employee game studio, they could probably make something that is stardew-like, widely played, and absolutely rakes in cash through micro transactions, $49.99 variegated eggplant DLC, etc. and has the charm and soul of a cold baked potato. Beloved games have heart, vision, and they don’t establish a predatory relationship with their customers. There will always be a place for them to gamers, because these attributes can’t be faked. There will also always be a place for soulless AAA because, as you said, the MBAs can bake these on paper, reliably, and procedurally.
- spacemadness 3y ago
  The idea of Stardew Valley with microtransactions just ruined my day.
  - mysterydip 3y ago
    havest carrot (10 hrs) [harvest instantly for 5 gems!]
  - kevinmchugh 3y ago
    It's just Farmville.
    - urthor 3y ago
      Or, Stardew Valley is FarmVille+ love. Maybe that's the secret.
  - Groxx 3y ago
    It's just Dreamlight Valley.
- thefringthing 3y ago
  This comment undervalues cold baked potatoes. They are a great snack.
elefanten 3y ago
Fair observations broadly, but gp’s points are fair too. It’s hard to predict hits but the points listed are all factors that helped the title out. Larian got the contract precisely because they proved themselves to be what you describe in your last sentence through the Divinity releases gp mentions. And even that was no guarantee here.
TillE 3y ago
Sure there's no general formula, but it's really not a surprise that the first big D&D videogame in a long time would be a huge success, after several years of tabletop D&D skyrocketing in popularity.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  This game also has the meta that most recent D&D games missed. If you know the tabletop game, you can build an optimized character in the bg series, because the game system is close wherever it can be. Some spells are just too freeform to work without a human DM, but they seem to have done very well, perhaps a bit too much focus on environmental damage like the divinity series, but they toned that down right? I haven't looked at it in over a year.
  - jon-wood 3y ago
    Even the ones I would never have expected to work do, I had a couple of potions of speaking to animals, which led to a lovely (fully voice acted) conversation with some oxen.
    - ethbr0 3y ago
      And I think this is one of the things modern games have missed for a lot of BG-era players -- discovery and delight. AAA production costs make it difficult: you can't just spread the game's budget equally into niche content most will never see. But if you do it smartly, it seems like there's still financial and development space for "Wouldn't players find it cool if...?" things. One of the major turn-offs of post-TES3 Bethesda style games has been just how soul-less the tracks through their content have been. It's obvious anything "weird" had to get approved through a committee and was watered down in the process. Games were the better when there was a path for a development team member to have 10% time to implement some kooky feature. And maybe now that needs to flow through approval... but don't soften it into pablum in the process.
    - thebooktocome 3y ago
      My first attempt with Speak with Animals led to a somewhat awkward conversation with a boar, whom an absent druid had recently promised a mate. His "haunches" clenched and quivered with anticipation. I laughed heartily.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mastax 3y ago
> You need people who care and know what they are doing and let them do what they love. That includes Pillars of Eternity, and the other games I mentioned. They made great games but they just weren't that popular. I agree in general about checkbox thinking.
- alexchantavy 3y ago
  Nit: POE _is_ a success story (bootstrapped by a Kickstarter, proved that people still buy isometric CRPGs) but I get your point. Personally I grew up playing games and DnD campaigns in the Forgotten Realms setting and am thrilled to see it with modern graphics
Waterluvian 3y ago
There must be at least some partial formula if some companies can consistently make critically acclaimed commercial successes.
- Novosell 3y ago
  Are there any companies continuously making widely different critically acclaimed games? or do they typically have a hit and then make games in the same vein? Bioware had a certain take on RPGs, same with Bethesda's modern Fallout/Elder Scrolls, FromSoft make DS derivatives, etc. If I'm missing some studio which has a diverse catalogue of consistently successful games, then please tell me which. But I feel they usually find a niche and then work that.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    Nintendo? but that's more "publisher who curates external- or internal-studios who largely stay in the same genre each"
    - Novosell 3y ago
      Yeah, Nintendo is the publisher in most of those scenarios. The individual studios, including Nintedo, tend to just iterate from what I can see.
      - majormajor 3y ago
        I wonder what the "new game onboarding" process at Nintendo looks like. Thinking of something relatively more left-field and recent like the Mario Rabbids tactical thing for Switch. Was that pitched to them? Solicited to studios by them? In the latter case that would be a fascinating process to observe.
        zyx321 3y ago
        Rabbids are a spinoff from Rayman. I would assume Ubisoft was the driving creative force behind it. And it's somewhat damning that the "relatively recent" innovation is currently two expansion packs into its second installment.
b59831 3y ago
[dead]
hfhdjdks 3y ago
The GP is analyzing some dimensions to figure out if the success of Baldur's Gate is surprising or not. He/she finds that, given the limited dimensions we can consider, the success is surprising. I read your reply as saying "no, it's not possible to analyze why games fails / succeed, because they're all different". I feel that's usually unhelpful: assuming we can't explain things because they're all idiosyncratic is usually not productive. It's more productive if you, for example, point to something extra that is missing.
- handmadeta 3y ago
  I think OP is putting too much emphasis on brand and reputation. Blizzard had the best of both and they still manage to produce failure after failure (at least as far as critical acclaim goes). BattleBit had none is also a massive success. What makes a game fail or succeed? I don't think anyone knows. But I am fairly sure that whatever AAA mainstream is doing isn't really working. The biggest games are almost all either old franchises that usually have their roots in mods or some kind of simulator that just packages up and polishes something from the real world. So where has the innovation, the joy of video games gone? I think it's being smothered by spreashsheets and processes. If that's true then the solution is quite simple: Let people who actually like games and who can make games, make the games that people want.
  - vvanders 3y ago
    I've not been in that industry but was for a while, the closest input metric I ever saw that correlated to success was how fast your tools let you iterate on ideas to find the core of what was "fun" and the polish it until it shined. Same applied to the art side of the pipeline, the more headache importing/iterating in-engine the more things diverged from render -> in-game. Oh and how much publishers meddled in games and/or set constraints. At one point one of the big 3 wasn't approving games that didn't have multiplayer regardless of genre, got to spend ~5mo working on multiplayer that was totally broken until we got sign-off that we could pull it from the title.
thereisnojesus 3y ago
This game is huge. It's 4 modern games in one. I am curious how one keeps a budget for a game like this. I agree love and passion are the reason this game is doing well, but honestly how do you convince the money to invest in something like, besides the trend of copying BG3 simply due to success?
- chii 3y ago
  > honestly how do you convince the money to invest in something like, besides the trend of copying BG3 simply due to success? you cannot. The money is interested in making more money. Good art may, or may not make money - and that's because the goal of the artist(s) aren't aligned with making money. It just so happens that it _could_ make money, and thus that became the pitch to investors. If given the chance (imagine an unlimited UBI for example), the same artists would make such a game without investors (and might make an even better one...).
captainbland 3y ago
Depends what you mean by "fail". The MBA is going to be perfectly happy with a profit margin even if the metacritic score is well within the yellow range. Plenty of rehashed sports games and even beloved but ultimately fairly lazy franchises like Pokémon and Sonic (most recently ticking that open world.. er, excuse me, zone box) seem to do fairly well from that point of view.
cyanydeez 3y ago
I'd hazard diablo4 wasn't as award winning as nostalgia dictated, leading to baldurs gate gaining that.
rozab 3y ago
That's all well and good, but all of this success is happening before reviews are in or anyone has even had time to play and recommend the game. People are buying it solely based on criteria like the parent described.
- squeaky-clean 3y ago
  It's been in Early Access for about 4 years now. I bought it because of word-of-mouth and reviews from the Early Access players.
iancmceachern 3y ago
Indeed. This is true for most creative pursuits. It reminds me of the montage scene in Matrix 4 where all these business types are telling Neo how to make a new hit game, when he already had made one, so he should be telling them. This difference, is the key difference I've seen in my career between successful startups and ones that fail.

jncfhnb 3y ago

Seems like a pointless retort given their first point was that they had just made a great game previously.

appplication 3y ago

I think you’re right but also making a good or beloved game is not really the same endeavor as making a massively profitable one. Stardew Valley is beloved. If you described the vision to a 10k employee game studio, they could probably make something that is stardew-like, widely played, and absolutely rakes in cash through micro transactions, $49.99 variegated eggplant DLC, etc. and has the charm and soul of a cold baked potato. Beloved games have heart, vision, and they don’t establish a predatory relationship with their customers. There will always be a place for them to gamers, because these attributes can’t be faked. There will also always be a place for soulless AAA because, as you said, the MBAs can bake these on paper, reliably, and procedurally.

spacemadness 3y ago
The idea of Stardew Valley with microtransactions just ruined my day.
- mysterydip 3y ago
  havest carrot (10 hrs) [harvest instantly for 5 gems!]
- kevinmchugh 3y ago
  It's just Farmville.
  - urthor 3y ago
    Or, Stardew Valley is FarmVille+ love. Maybe that's the secret.
- Groxx 3y ago
  It's just Dreamlight Valley.
thefringthing 3y ago
This comment undervalues cold baked potatoes. They are a great snack.

elefanten 3y ago

Fair observations broadly, but gp’s points are fair too. It’s hard to predict hits but the points listed are all factors that helped the title out. Larian got the contract precisely because they proved themselves to be what you describe in your last sentence through the Divinity releases gp mentions. And even that was no guarantee here.

TillE 3y ago

Sure there's no general formula, but it's really not a surprise that the first big D&D videogame in a long time would be a huge success, after several years of tabletop D&D skyrocketing in popularity.

galangalalgol 3y ago
This game also has the meta that most recent D&D games missed. If you know the tabletop game, you can build an optimized character in the bg series, because the game system is close wherever it can be. Some spells are just too freeform to work without a human DM, but they seem to have done very well, perhaps a bit too much focus on environmental damage like the divinity series, but they toned that down right? I haven't looked at it in over a year.
- jon-wood 3y ago
  Even the ones I would never have expected to work do, I had a couple of potions of speaking to animals, which led to a lovely (fully voice acted) conversation with some oxen.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    And I think this is one of the things modern games have missed for a lot of BG-era players -- discovery and delight. AAA production costs make it difficult: you can't just spread the game's budget equally into niche content most will never see. But if you do it smartly, it seems like there's still financial and development space for "Wouldn't players find it cool if...?" things. One of the major turn-offs of post-TES3 Bethesda style games has been just how soul-less the tracks through their content have been. It's obvious anything "weird" had to get approved through a committee and was watered down in the process. Games were the better when there was a path for a development team member to have 10% time to implement some kooky feature. And maybe now that needs to flow through approval... but don't soften it into pablum in the process.
  - thebooktocome 3y ago
    My first attempt with Speak with Animals led to a somewhat awkward conversation with a boar, whom an absent druid had recently promised a mate. His "haunches" clenched and quivered with anticipation. I laughed heartily.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mastax 3y ago

> You need people who care and know what they are doing and let them do what they love. That includes Pillars of Eternity, and the other games I mentioned. They made great games but they just weren't that popular. I agree in general about checkbox thinking.

alexchantavy 3y ago
Nit: POE _is_ a success story (bootstrapped by a Kickstarter, proved that people still buy isometric CRPGs) but I get your point. Personally I grew up playing games and DnD campaigns in the Forgotten Realms setting and am thrilled to see it with modern graphics

Waterluvian 3y ago

There must be at least some partial formula if some companies can consistently make critically acclaimed commercial successes.

Novosell 3y ago
Are there any companies continuously making widely different critically acclaimed games? or do they typically have a hit and then make games in the same vein? Bioware had a certain take on RPGs, same with Bethesda's modern Fallout/Elder Scrolls, FromSoft make DS derivatives, etc. If I'm missing some studio which has a diverse catalogue of consistently successful games, then please tell me which. But I feel they usually find a niche and then work that.
- majormajor 3y ago
  Nintendo? but that's more "publisher who curates external- or internal-studios who largely stay in the same genre each"
  - Novosell 3y ago
    Yeah, Nintendo is the publisher in most of those scenarios. The individual studios, including Nintedo, tend to just iterate from what I can see.
    - majormajor 3y ago
      I wonder what the "new game onboarding" process at Nintendo looks like. Thinking of something relatively more left-field and recent like the Mario Rabbids tactical thing for Switch. Was that pitched to them? Solicited to studios by them? In the latter case that would be a fascinating process to observe.
      - zyx321 3y ago
        Rabbids are a spinoff from Rayman. I would assume Ubisoft was the driving creative force behind it. And it's somewhat damning that the "relatively recent" innovation is currently two expansion packs into its second installment.

b59831 3y ago

[dead]

hfhdjdks 3y ago

The GP is analyzing some dimensions to figure out if the success of Baldur's Gate is surprising or not. He/she finds that, given the limited dimensions we can consider, the success is surprising. I read your reply as saying "no, it's not possible to analyze why games fails / succeed, because they're all different". I feel that's usually unhelpful: assuming we can't explain things because they're all idiosyncratic is usually not productive. It's more productive if you, for example, point to something extra that is missing.

handmadeta 3y ago
I think OP is putting too much emphasis on brand and reputation. Blizzard had the best of both and they still manage to produce failure after failure (at least as far as critical acclaim goes). BattleBit had none is also a massive success. What makes a game fail or succeed? I don't think anyone knows. But I am fairly sure that whatever AAA mainstream is doing isn't really working. The biggest games are almost all either old franchises that usually have their roots in mods or some kind of simulator that just packages up and polishes something from the real world. So where has the innovation, the joy of video games gone? I think it's being smothered by spreashsheets and processes. If that's true then the solution is quite simple: Let people who actually like games and who can make games, make the games that people want.
- vvanders 3y ago
  I've not been in that industry but was for a while, the closest input metric I ever saw that correlated to success was how fast your tools let you iterate on ideas to find the core of what was "fun" and the polish it until it shined. Same applied to the art side of the pipeline, the more headache importing/iterating in-engine the more things diverged from render -> in-game. Oh and how much publishers meddled in games and/or set constraints. At one point one of the big 3 wasn't approving games that didn't have multiplayer regardless of genre, got to spend ~5mo working on multiplayer that was totally broken until we got sign-off that we could pull it from the title.

thereisnojesus 3y ago

This game is huge. It's 4 modern games in one. I am curious how one keeps a budget for a game like this. I agree love and passion are the reason this game is doing well, but honestly how do you convince the money to invest in something like, besides the trend of copying BG3 simply due to success?

chii 3y ago
> honestly how do you convince the money to invest in something like, besides the trend of copying BG3 simply due to success? you cannot. The money is interested in making more money. Good art may, or may not make money - and that's because the goal of the artist(s) aren't aligned with making money. It just so happens that it _could_ make money, and thus that became the pitch to investors. If given the chance (imagine an unlimited UBI for example), the same artists would make such a game without investors (and might make an even better one...).

captainbland 3y ago

Depends what you mean by "fail". The MBA is going to be perfectly happy with a profit margin even if the metacritic score is well within the yellow range. Plenty of rehashed sports games and even beloved but ultimately fairly lazy franchises like Pokémon and Sonic (most recently ticking that open world.. er, excuse me, zone box) seem to do fairly well from that point of view.

cyanydeez 3y ago

I'd hazard diablo4 wasn't as award winning as nostalgia dictated, leading to baldurs gate gaining that.

rozab 3y ago

That's all well and good, but all of this success is happening before reviews are in or anyone has even had time to play and recommend the game. People are buying it solely based on criteria like the parent described.

squeaky-clean 3y ago
It's been in Early Access for about 4 years now. I bought it because of word-of-mouth and reviews from the Early Access players.

iancmceachern 3y ago

Indeed. This is true for most creative pursuits. It reminds me of the montage scene in Matrix 4 where all these business types are telling Neo how to make a new hit game, when he already had made one, so he should be telling them. This difference, is the key difference I've seen in my career between successful startups and ones that fail.