(gentle music) - A couple of months ago,
"Baldur's Gate 3" was released to a commercial and critical fanfare that seemed to surprise a lot of people. It seemed like the
industry had underestimated the popularity of CRPGs,
or at the very least, a desire for deep and meaningful
single player experiences. A lot of people had opinions about this. Destin Legarie of IGN claimed that "'Baldur's Gate 3' was causing
panic in game dev circles" and showed that many developers
just had low standards, while Jason Schreier said that the secret to Larian's success was that
they were privately owned. And while those arguments
definitely struck a chord with some people, I find that they're
two-dimensional answers to a three-dimensional question. If there's one thing I've
learned from over a decade of talking to people who
make successful games about why they're successful, it's that the answers are
usually not so simple. So today on "By Design,"
I'm going to pick apart the development and reception
of "Baldur's Gate 3" and try to find some answers as to what made this game successful. To do this, I'm gonna take a look at the history of Larian Studios, interview their director of publishing about their internal strategy, talk to CohhCarnage about the
changing face of CRPG fandom, and try not to get too
focused on the bear sex. But the bear sex was
definitely part of it. The bear sex is causing
panic in game dev circles. We've a lot to cover here, but we're gonna start
with three topics first. Number one, the history of Larian Studios, number two, a health
check on the CRPG genre, and number three, how
"Baldur's Gate 3" was marketed. Cool. Let's jump in. (gentle music continues) (no audio) Okay, let's get the most
obvious point out of the way. "Baldur's Gate 3" is a
fantastically well-made video game. It's wonderfully written,
it looks gorgeous, it has great voice acting,
interesting locations, has the best dice rolling
animation on the planet, and enough emergent gameplay
to cause Warren Spector to piss his pants with joy. - [Character] Ignis! (explosion booms)
(enemies screaming) - Almost nothing else about
"Baldur's Gate 3's" success is worth talking about without
first acknowledging this: It may seem obvious, but the biggest key to any game's success is its design. And "Baldur's Gate 3" is a
fantastically well-designed game. But there is still a question here, how was it well-designed? No video game is made in a vacuum, so, first, let's establish the conditions that "Baldur's Gate 3" was made under, and analyze how it appeals to
both existing fans of CRPGs and, seemingly, this
unexpectedly wider audience. I've spent the best part
of a decade visiting game studios around the
world, and, in my opinion, if there's one element that contributes to the long-term success
of any development team, an environment where
people improve their skills and each new game is
greater than the last, it's institutional knowledge. When game studios invest in
their teams long-term health, when they keep their smartest people, it has a multiplying effect
on the rest of the studio, like a paladin, or a priest doing a spell, or, you know, some D&D shit. I don't know. Cantrips! It allows decisions to be made faster, problems to be avoided earlier, and, hopefully, creates the conditions where ability is the most valuable asset. Smart teams keep getting smarter. And you can see that in a
lot of your favorite games. Think id Software from
"Wolfenstein" to "Quake," Guerilla from "Killzone" to "Horizon," CD Projekt from "Witcher
1" to "Witcher 3," Supergiant from "Bastion" to "Hades." Larian is a studio with RPG
pumping through their veins. They've been committed to this
genre since the late '90s, slowly developing these skills while occasionally staving off bankruptcy. They've also learned some
important and costly lessons. Both "Divine Divinity" and
"Divinity II" were forced to market by their publishers long before the games were finished, so they Kickstarted and self-published "Divinity: Original Sin." This game was their
moonshot, and it worked out. It sold 2.5 million units and was well-received by the CRPG world. We gave it the PC Game
of the Year at GameSpot. Here's me in 2014 talking to
reviews editor Kevin VanOrd about how great the game is. Kevin would end up moving
to Ghent to work as a writer on "Divinity: Original Sin
II," and he was needed. One of the criticisms of the
first game was its writing, understandable as the team spoke English as a second language. So to help improve that
aspect for the sequel, aside from hiring Kevin, they also opened up a new
studio in Dublin, Ireland, to focus on writing. To combat the relatively high cost of hiring game devs in Belgium, they bought and expanded upon a studio they'd worked with in St Petersburg. And to combat the crunch they'd
felt on "Original Sin 1," they opened up a studio in Canada so that work on the game
could go through the night. They made key hires in areas
they needed more knowledge in. And the studio now
employs around 400 people in locations such as
Ghent, Dublin, Quebec, Kuala Lumpur, Guildford, and Barcelona. So while "Baldur's Gate" has
been worked on for a few years, it's the beneficiary of over
a decade of toil and craft, of business expansion and learning, of working in a particular genre and getting to understand their audience. When Larian started development
on "Baldur's Gate 3," they were already years
further down the path than most studios are now. It would be an enormous
challenge for a new studio or existing studio without
CRPG experience to try and make a game like "Baldur's Gate
3" from scratch today. (interface chimes) (metal clanking) (spell whooshes) Okay, next up is the genre. And for "Baldur's Gate 3," there are two genres
we need to talk about. The first is computer
role-playing games, or CRPGs. Think classic games like
"Baldur's Gate," "Icewind Dale, or, in more modern times, "Disco Elysium." And the second is the more
general pop culture genre of tabletop role-playing games. Let's get that one out of the way first. Tabletop role-playing games
like D&D have gone through a popular renaissance
over the past decade. I remember back when
Critical Role were blowing up on Twitch around 2015. Since then, it seems like most content creators have given D&D a go. And so while D&D is not
quite Star Wars levels of popularity these days, it's
much more popular than ever, or at the very least, many
of the social barriers that held it back so long have loosened. The popularity of CRPGs,
on the other hand, is a lot more difficult to quantify. The original two "Baldur's
Gates" are celebrated as some of the best CRPGs of all time, alongside their cousins "Icewind Dale" and "Planescape: Torment." But it's also fair to say that they've drifted somewhat from memory. When "Disco Elysium" came out in 2019, it made a lot of people, myself included, stand up and take notice
of this genre again. It's another fantastically
well-designed game that won countless
awards, sold bucketloads, and inspired a generation of developers to give this style of game design a swing. But it's not like these games
didn't exist before "Disco." Games like "Pillars of Eternity" and "Pathfinder" were keeping
the fire lit for years, albeit to a seemingly smaller audience. It seems like a second wave of modern CRPGs is about to
break, but, truth be told, this genre is a little
bit out of my wheelhouse. So to get a better example
of the state of the market, the expectations of fans, and the success of "Baldur's Gate 3", I jumped on a call with a streamer who's been doing long-play
streams of CRPGs for years, even when the audience
wasn't really there. And I guess it also helps that he was actually in "Baldur's Gate 3." - Roar! Are you scared? Did you wet your pants? Did you? Did you? - One of the tropes with CRPGs is that they're super narrative-heavy. They're really, really deep.
You have to be into reading. And let's be blunt, they
were kind of associated with being a nerd. You had to be a big (indistinct) 'cause they had hugely deep mechanics. You had to generally take a class at a local community college to know how to play them properly and build your characters right. Then, you had, you know, millions of words of
reading on top of them. The last kind of caveat for
that is they're generally long. They're these long, giant experiences. So, you know, people just... The more of those you add up, the less you have in terms of an audience that even wants to slash
can play the product. The big thing with "Baldur's Gate 3" is it's one of the first times we've seen a level of AAA quality resources go into a genre that, frankly, normally never makes
enough money to see that. When every single character
is professionally voice acted, professionally mocapped, when every single aspect of the game, especially in the first
two acts on release, are rock solid with all avenues
explored countless times to make sure that you can
do everything you want to, when every piece of that
puzzle falls into place, that creates a veneer that
we're not used to seeing here. I'll never forget during one
of the "Panels From Hell" when they mentioned that,
kind of almost casually, which is so wild, but they said, "You know, based on your
feedback in early access, we've decided to completely
change the UI of our game and how it's presented to the player." They had their vision of what they thought
was best in their game, and then thanks to their early access, most importantly thanks to their approach of what early access is, we
saw them just keep adding, keep adding, keep adding user feedback, and then, eventually, it
completely transformed. And you look at what we got from release and compare it to what we got on the day one of early access, and that shows you exactly what Larian did with their early access. They utilized it. It was a
tool to make their game better. - "Baldur's Gate 3" was in early access for almost three years, and according to CohhCarnage and my own poking around online, there seemed to be a fairly
consistent feedback loop between the players and the design team. And by having the game in
early access for three years, by collecting heuristics,
watching streams, and listening in on Reddit threads, it gave the studio the
type of access to feedback that RPG developers don't often get. And, of course, this
wasn't their fist rodeo, "Divinity: Original Sin II" had
an early access window also. But how about the audience? Cohh has been livestreaming to CRPG fans for a couple of years now, so I wanted to know when
this transition happened. When did audience "Baldur's
Gate 3" stop being just popular with hardcore CRPG fans and break out into this
wider mainstream audience? - I feel like this has to be mentioned. Whoever at Larian decided that really shining a spotlight
on the bear (beep) scene- (Danny laughs) Whoever decided that should happen should get a marketing award. And let me tell you why. Of course, you know, we can
laugh about it, it's hilarious, but I'll never forget the next
day when I saw publications and stories coming out of companies that didn't even play games. I mean, these were companies that just followed internet
culture and things, they never wrote about
games, and all of a sudden, "Baldur's Gate 3" is front and center. And then, you know, sure,
it gets through the fact of the bear love, if you want to, but then you see at the bottom
of these articles, you know, "This is one of the first
times an RPG will let you do whatever you want and
go wherever you want." And, you know, all of a sudden, we see all these organic
tendrils going out. And then, all of a sudden,
you see all these people that are talking about it
that never would've normally. The amount of people in
my chatroom that had said, "I don't normally like CRPGs,
but I love 'Baldur's Gate 3.'" The beautiful thing about
"Baldur's Gate 3" is, even with its incredible
veneer, beautiful presentation, amazing voice acting, amazing mocapping, and incredible cast of characters, at its heart, it's still a deep, rich, story-based, mechanically deep RPG game. And a lot of times, these
games are seen as pretty risky. As somebody who invests in games myself, especially more recently, these are games that
take a long time to make, they take a lot of effort,
and to put it bluntly, a lot of times, they
don't have that payoff, so my big hope with "Baldur's Gate 3," and I've already seen it happening, is that it brings in new players that may have not normally been exposed to just how special these games can be. I have already talked
to thousands of people at this point that have asked me, "Hey, I played 'Baldur's
Gate 3,' I loved it. What do I play next? What else is there?" And I'm really hoping
that this new exposure to the CRPG genre as a whole will propel the entire thing forward. We have another fantastic company, Owlcat, that has "Warhammer 40,000:
Rogue Trader" coming out at the end of this month, which is the first CRPG we've ever seen in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Just last week, Josh Sawyer of
Obsidian was jokingly saying that if Phil gave him $120 million, he'd make "Pillars of Eternity 3," so, of course, I was
like, "Do it!" (laughs) - Okay, quick sidebar. We're gonna talk about the
marketing in just a second, but, first, I wanna explore something that Cohh just mentioned there. He said that "Baldur's
Gate 3" appealed to folks who'd never really play games CRPGs, and I'm wondering if a lot of these people are starved BioWare fans. From 2007 to 2013, we had a massive surge in popularity for role-playing games. The breakthrough success
stories of "World of Warcraft" and "Oblivion" had a big part in this, and even "Call of Duty"
was adding progression to their shooters from '07. BioWare, the creators of
"Baldur's Gate 1 and II," were the tip of that spear, with "Mass Effect" and
"Dragon Age" achieving mainstream success for games
that were focused on talking, diplomacy, and inter-species butt-rubbing. But since the ending of "Mass Effect 3," BioWare have dramatically
lost step with their fans, creating a handful of games that fall well-short of expectations, and multiplayer shooter "Anthem" which really soured their
relationship with the fanbase. Is the success of "Baldur's Gate 3" somewhat due to a BioWare-shaped
hole in the market? Have fans of those games been encouraged to try something outside
of their comfort zone out of sheer depression? I've no data to back any of this up, but it just kind of feels right. What do you think? Let
us know in the comments. So we've established that "Baldur's Gate 3" is a well-made game, and that it appropriately met the market and exceeded expectations of
both tried and true CRPG fans and a more general RPG audience. But we still haven't talked about how. To answer some of these
more nuanced questions, I got in contact with Larian's director of publishing, Michael Douse. I couldn't interview Michael remotely, but he very kindly
responded to an email I sent the night before he was going
on a well-earned vacation. Michael works out of
Larian's Dublin office, but he himself is English. So to get a character-appropriate
voice for his email, I stuck 20 of my best
English friends' names on a list and rolled for it. First, I asked Michael: What were the commercial
expectations going into launch? - [Seb] "The sales for 'BG3' are within my expected projections, but it's very important to understand that these projections
are foundationally defined by support from our core audience, and what we learn about who they are. There's no retail release. We didn't sim-ship across platforms. A number of commercially
questionable decisions were made confidentially thanks in no small part to what we understand
about our core community, as a sort of microcosm of
a much broader community. 'BG3' appeals to people
who thought they'd like it, and people who thought
they'd never like it. Why that is is probably the
subject for a talk sometime. 'Baldur's Gate 3' is a game
for people who like RPGs." - Why do you think it sold so well? Is there a wider market
for CRPGs than we thought? Has the popularity of D&D
got anything to do with it? - [Seb] "We never used the term 'CRPG' in our campaigns for a reason: it plays very well on a PlayStation 5. 'DOS2' plays extremely
well on an iPad Pro. These are no longer 'computer' RPGs. If you consider CRPG
to mean 'classic' RPG, I promise you that 'BG3'
is not a classic RPG but a modern RPG. It has a lot of depth, but it's doing things most
RPGs aren't able to do. The latter is a big reason
for its perceived success. Every time we release a 'CRPG,' we know that the 'CRPG' audience grows. The only reason, at least
on the industry side, that people think this
audience is 'small' is because there isn't a big enough
pool of data to pull from. How well should 'BG3' do? Well, what other 'CRPG' with
AAA production values are you gonna look at to project from? It's a blessing, and a curse. Don't get me wrong, it's
very much 99.99% a blessing, but, academically, the
lack of substantiation, even internally, can
create complex problems that require complex solutions. Colorful mathematics." - Was there a single
point in the marketing where you noticed "Baldur's
Gate 3" gaining momentum? - [Seb] "As with any game, the
distance between announcement and release generally
defines the momentum. You probably want me to say 'the bear,' but if you've played 'BG3,' you'll probably know there
are many, many moments in the game that make
you go 'what the fuck,' it could have been any one of those. This one in particular was chosen because it worked in the presentation flow of the press-preview event, which happened to be at the right moment for marketing to get a little broader. The truth is, it's the core
audience who help present and propel the game to
the broader audience. They are the custodians of
our content, to a degree. We do our thing as well, but
the world decided together that it was time to start looking at what 'BG3' is in its final form. Probably helps that we
did a press-preview event, but this is the boring part of the answer. I fucked a Mind Flayer in my run, while my entire party
stared at me in disgust. I don't know if that would
have got us banned on TikTok, but it would have had the same effect. 'BG3' gained momentum, in truth, when all its systems came into play, and we were able to show
the game in its final form. If we had isolated the bear, without the rest of what
was shown, which was a lot, it would have just been a
week-long meme, at best." - And how important do you think the time in early access
was for marketing the game? - [Seb] "Blessing and a curse. Not a lot of what we did was
conventional commercial wisdom. We didn't sim-ship. We
announced as part of Stadia. We're a narrative game in early access. We didn't release much story
content, other than Grymforge. We were late. There was a
war, which made us late again. In spite of all of that, what early access does
do is it lets you hone in on the people that stick around. We really got to know our community, and through that, we got a
microcosm of a broader audience. We got to understand our
language with this game, and to understand what resonates. In spite of all the downsides, early access helped us to understand that, look, this is going to be
a no-bullshit operation. We talk to them, they talk to us, we all work it out together. I wouldn't have had it any other way." - The name of this show is "By Design" and it's meant to be somewhat self-aware. Over the years from talking to developers, I've learned that all decisions,
be it design decisions, gameplay decisions, product
or marketing decisions, you can make the most
well-informed choice you want, but whether or not that
decision was a good idea or not, it's kind of decided by the player. So no success or failure
is really by design. It's the culmination of
dozens of informed decisions that push and nudge a game in
lots of different directions. But I believe there are some absolutes we can take away from the
success of "Baldur's Gate 3." First, it's really well-made, crafted by a team of
developers who were dedicated to this genre for years
when it was out of fashion. Secondly, the market came to meet them, either because of the general popularity of tabletop role-playing, because of games like "Disco Elysium" that exposed new players
to this style of game, or due to modern conveniences
like voice acting that helped to soften the market. And thirdly, the game was smart in its publishing and marketing strategy. It never felt like a game
you needed to have played the original two "Baldur's
Gates" to understand, or even to have experience
in the genre to enjoy. It was approachable, it was personal, and the marketing was honest. And a smartly executed early
access strategy ensured that "Baldur's Gate 3" launched in as finished a state as possible. So what can other developers learn from the success of "Baldur's Gate 3"? Simply have as much money as it takes to make the best possible
version of the game you want? Well, the thing about games development is that creative decisions
that teams are allowed to make, to put the game into early
access for three years, to make sure every character is voiced, to ensure every player choice is mirrored by the game in some way, all of these decisions that
seemingly "raise the standards" of the game to a level that gamers expect are ultimately informed by the budget, especially at the AAA level. And this is where things get
a little bit more complex. According to Jason
Schreier, and Wikipedia, Larian is a private company. But after some digging around
on Irish business registries and paying and a few quid to
get access to old documents, I found that Larian Group
Holdings Limited, based in Dublin, is, in fact, 30% owned by Tencent. Now, I can't get much more detailed on their financials than that, but while the "Divinity:
Original Sin" games sold well, I suspect much more
capital would be required to keep a 400-person
studio operating for years. It makes sense that the
company would leverage their position to bring in extra capital to help fund all this growth. Now don't get me wrong, this
isn't like a smoking gun. This is just the reality of what it takes to make games of this quality in 2023. And it has a lot to do
with how games are sold. The truth is, you cannot
reduce the business operation of a company down to whether or not they are publicly traded
or privately owned. Privately owned companies
can have debtors, and publicly traded companies
can have majority ownership. For example, the similar European success story of CD Projekt. When they became public
through a share takeover of a Polish tech firm, it allowed them access
to new forms of capital to invest in their studio. In the 2008 words of Adam Kicinski, "The immediate financing we obtained through the deal will allow us to pursue our operational goals in troubled times." The troubled times he's talking about were the financial crash of 2008. And the operation goals was funding their breakthrough hit, "The Witcher 3." Good financial planning
can lead to good games, but bad financial planning rarely does. As the worlds of big tech
and games have converged over the past few years, we've seen more investment
from private equity or venture capital firms
into the world of gaming. I mean, I'm literally being paid by a venture capital firm
to produce this series. And part of the reason for
this is that successful games can come from both small
teams and large teams. But both of these are usually
in need of some funding. Games, for the most part,
don't make any money until they're finished and released. This creates a massive financial burden on the part of the creator
to fund the entire production of the product until they
can make any money back. And given the time it takes to make AAA games in this modern era, something that is exponentially longer than what they had to
deal with back in the day, just the level of capital
investment required is simply out of reach for most. Making games at this scale and level of quality requires
smart business planning. And while "Baldur's Gate
3" was likely not financed from the CEO's savings account, it is the CEO's vision that
made this game possible. Sven, and the many
others who have been part of Larian's journey
throughout the many layers of CRPG hell they've scrambled through, have done what they've done with a clear artistic goal in mind, to make the AAA CRPG of their dreams. Along that path, they've
learned valuable lessons in business about the type of creative and financial independence they value. They learned how to expand
their business in ways that benefited the development
of the game, reducing crunch, and expanding the
knowledge base of the team. And more importantly,
they learned how to make the type of complex, high-quality game that we get to enjoy in "Baldur's Gate 3." Making games is incredibly difficult. Some publishers love to nickel
and dime gamers. Absolutely. Are some developers less interested in innovation than others? Of course. But we shouldn't reduce the success of games like "Baldur's Gate 3" down to these personal
values or platitudes, especially when the reality is a much greater story over decades. It's a by-product of a
lot of toil and craft, a studio with a laser sharp focus, working within their core competency, using early access to
refine that experience, and then marketing that game
to a much wider audience, an audience of gamers who were starving for an RPG experience with
more meat on its bones. And hey, sure, you can also fuck a bear. (gentle music)
