Why Games Like Baldur's Gate 3 Are So Rare | Asmongold Reacts

a couple of months ago balers 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 I think one of the reasons why balers Gate 3 popped off so hard is that the characters were very relatable and they had good personalities like I know the personalities of the characters and I didn't even really play the game I think that's [ __ ] impressive single player a lot of people had opinions about this Destin legari at IGN claimed that Boulders Gate 3 was causing panic in Game Dev circles and showed that many developers just had low standards while Jason shrier said that the secrets to Lan's success was that they were privately owned that's a big [ __ ] reason but I don't think Jason shrier is completely right you want to know why it's because lost Arc is also privately owned those arguments definitely struck a chord with some people I find that they're two-dimensional answers to a threedimensional 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 is that the answers are usually not so simple so today on By Design I'm going to pick apart the development and reception of balers Gate 3 and Tred to find some answers as to what made this game successful to do this I'm going to take a look at the history of Lan Studios interviewed their director of publishing about their internal strategy talked to co Carnage about the changing face of crpg fandom and try not to get too focused on the be sex but the be sex was definitely part of it the be sex is causing panic in Game Dev circles we've a lot to cover here but we're going to start with three topics first one the history of laran Studios number two a health check on the crpg genre and number three how Boulders Gate 3 was marketed cool let's jump in all right let's see you uh [ __ ] what's this [ __ ] that's a lot of lot of [ __ ] to read okay let's get the most obvious point out of the way I know what it is uh they had to um this is from a16z which is like an investment place and uh they can't talk about this stuff without uh qualifying that it's not like Financial advice since they give Financial advice and they make financial decisions so like they have to put that in there that's why walers 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 War inspector to piss his pants with joy damn almost nothing else about Boulders Gate 3 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 balers Gate 3 is a fantastically well-designed game but there is still a question here how is a welld designed no video game is made in a vacuum so first let's establish the conditions that balers Gate 3 was made under and analyze how it appeals to both existing fans of crpgs and seemingly this unexpectedly wider audience I think also another reason why stuff like this is popular is because it's turn-based I I know there's some people that are like oh well we don't like turn-based but I think if the game wasn't turn-based it would have been less popular because turn-based games completely remove the need for like uh player dexterity like you don't need to be able to react fast you don't need to be able to dodge the right attack or if frame and explosion or anything like that uh you just have to think about the game and also another factor with that is that you can just walk away and you know like take a phone call or look at something else or do something else at the same time and then come back and and and you're right where you left off it's not a problem so that's why turn-based content is uh is popular and I think also balers gate is uh it's aimed towards older people right what are older people they're slow and so that's what they are I know this and um the reality is that they're probably not going to be able to to beat Elden ring and just go through Elden ring super [ __ ] fast right because this shit's difficult and challenging and it requires like a level of focus 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 team's long-term Health when they keep their smartest people it has a multiplying effect on the rest of the studio and it has the opposite effect whenever you don't keep the smartest people because like for example you go and you look at what World of Warcraft and like you know [ __ ] like look at OverWatch like what the [ __ ] is that [ __ ] right that's what happens whenever you don't have those people around because they know what's going on but like I do think one of the biggest reasons why this game is successful like not biggest reason but like a very big reason is because each of the characters like the characters are hot number one and number two they look they don't look fake like you look at Starfield and you're like this is some weird fake [ __ ] like you look at these characters and these characters look really good huge reason like you go and you think of like all the anime games that people love to simp over like the the graphics for those are [ __ ] Flawless like it's it's anime right but like for what they are it's [ __ ] Flawless because people can relate to characters like a paladin or a priest doing a spell or you know some DND D [ __ ] I don't know can trips it allows decisions to be made faster problems to be avoided it earlier and hopefully creates the conditions where ability is the most valuable asset smart teams keep getting smarter you can see that in a lot of your favorite games think in software from Wolfenstein to Quake gorilla from Killzone to Horizon CD project from whicher one why don't they just go back and make Killzone again why don't they just do that I remember that that used to be so fun I played that game whicher three super giant from Bastion to Hades Laren is a studio with RPG pumping through their ve blizzard Warcraft 3 to World of Warcraft 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 2 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 and A2 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 G to work as a writer on Divinity original sin 2 yeah that game was extremely popular I know like uh a lot of people that I know have played that right like soda played it McConnell I think played it multiple times like like there's a lot of streamers too like moon moon for example I saw I remember him playing I think he played it with soda 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 of 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' worked with in St Petersburg and to combat the crunch they had felt on original sin one 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 gent duin Quebec qual lumor and Barcelona so while Boulders 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 laran started well one way to to make a good thing is to [ __ ] up a bad thing and you do that enough time then you make a good thing most of the time whenever people do something they mess it up the first few times that's just how it Isel on Boulders 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 add crpg experience to try and make a game like Boulders Gate 3 from scratch today yeah cuz they're starting basically on like step five right not step one that's a good point okay next up is the genre and for balers Gate 3 there are actually two genres we need to talk about the first is computer role playing games or crpgs think classic games like balers gate ice windale or in more modern times disco elium and the second is the more General I've heard a lot of good things about disco elesium like I've never heard a bad thing about that game basically so maybe one day I'll have to try that out pop culture genre of tabletop roleplaying games let's get that one eded away first tabletop role playing games like D and 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 and D A go so while D and D is not quite Star Wars levels of popularity these days it's much more popular actually uh this movie popped off like I actually heard so many good things about this movie than ever or at the very least many of these 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 balers gates are celebrated as some of the best crpgs of all time alongside their cousins ice wind Dale and it's like balers gate you remember you used to see this game in Circuit City torment but it's also fair to say that they've drifted somewhat from memory when disco elesium 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 bucket loads and inspired a generation of developers to give this style of game design a swing but it's not I I like uh I like games like this even though I'm not really the target audience like to me what kind of games do I like I like games like Dark Souls like I like action combat games things where things are happening in real time and like it's fast and like you know that that's what I kind of like to to do and like I'm not really as much for like a slower paac game I I say that I'm going to go play classic later on today but like even that's faster than something like this but uh just in general I uh you know I really respect this that they do it I think that also like storytelling and uh like World building becomes so much more important in games like this rather than like you know for example you can have a [ __ ] game that like who cares about the story whenever it's just a really good game right Remnant 2 like what the [ __ ] happened in Remnant 2 like I don't know these red guys like in a first game and there's not as many of them now like why like I don't know it's like a ball that's talk what the [ __ ] can I shoot the ball like how's this work like these games didn't exist before disco games like pillars of Eternity and Pathfinder were keeping the fire lit for years all beish 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 3 I jumped on a call with a streamer who's been doing longplay streams of crpgs for years even when the audience wasn't really there and I guess it also helps that he was actually in Boulders game well I mean look here's the reason why uh crpgs don't do well on Twitch is that like I guarantee you if like let's say I announced me McConnell sand and [ __ ] Miz or Grayson or some other person Bean or anybody else right that we're doing a balers gate soda right we're doing a balers gate three playthrough I guarantee you that people would be [ __ ] there would be so many [ __ ] people that would want to watch that on the first day and then every day it would probably go down and that's okay but like that's what would happen and the reason why is that people want to follow the story and because because the story is so long form it's hard for people to stay engaged that's what happens with uh with DND d That's M fault yeah it would be M's fault if this happened but yeah isn't that all content though no not necessarily it's actually not all content so for example games that are very well known like for example Final Fantasy 14 Final Fantasy has es and uh you know it goes up and down right and uh what I mean by that is that like people have the community has an understanding of the way the game is and they know the story so they know that like oh [ __ ] like he's about to fight if for the first time or oh [ __ ] he's about to fight nit hog right like oh that cinematic is going to happen whenever uh you know like that dude gets his arm cut off no spoilers but somebody gets their [ __ ] arm cut off and so like people are there ready for it Final Fantasy doesn't do well for views the story does though think about how many people popped off watch watching and playing the Final Fantasy msq like besides me right I'm talking about like in general are you scared did you wet your pants did you did you one of one of the tropes with crpgs is that they're super narrative heavy they're really really deep you have to be into reading let be blunt they were kind of associated with being a nerd you had to be a big art cuz 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 people just the more of those you add up the the less you have in terms of an audience that even wants to SL can play the product yeah the big thing with balers 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 MOA when every single aspect of the game especially in the first two axon 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 and also it didn't have a bunch of cringe weird [ __ ] in it I think this is another big factor like remember back whenever people used to talk about how America used to be full of Puritans and uh [ __ ] that used to complain about any sort of sexual reference like balers Gate 3 has like an approach on like sexuality that's very nonchalant in a way that uh I I I think it it's refreshing for a lot of people it's a way that treats people like their adults it's European yeah that's a big reason how do you know without playing because I've seen 50,000 [ __ ] cinemat I spent an entire month looking at these different clips people keep sending me of the game bro like I've seen this a lot now I don't know how everything fits together but I know there's like this fire chick that's hot and then there's like this girl with like this weird emo haircut named Shadow heart people think she's hot I I I mean she is hot and then there's the blonde guy who's an [ __ ] but he's likable named a staran yeah I I know them for sure one of the panels from hell when they mentioned that kind of almost casually which is so wild they said you know based on your feedback and Early Access we've decided to completely change the UI of our game and how it's presented to the player they had they had their vision of what they thought was best in their game and then thanks to their ACC most 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 laran did with their Early Access they utilized it it was a tool to make their game better that's a big factor because like a lot of games that have Early Access Early Access is an early access to your wallet and games don't really use Early Access in the way that they should I think it's something that um I I'm going to be kind of like maybe a little bit positive here uh I think it's happening less nowadays still 3 was in Early Access for almost 3 years and according to co Carnage 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 3 years by collecting her istics 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 first rodeo Divinity original sin 2 had an early access window also but how about the audience Co has been live streaming to crpg fans for a couple of years now so I wanted to know when this transition happened when did balers 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 laran decided that that really shining a spotlight on the bare scene whoever decided that should happen should get a marketing award yeah 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 these were these were companies that just followed internet culture and things they never wrote about games and all of a sudden balers Gate 3 is front and center and then you know sure it gets through the fact the be love if you want to but then you see at the bottom of these articles you know this is one of the first times in RPG will let you do whatever you want and go wherever you want you know all of a sudden we see all this these organic tendrils going out and then all of a sudden you see all these people that are that are talking about it that never would have normally well it's that people want to play a game that like as I said I said this whenever this game came out I said that like that bare sex scene like nobody wants to [ __ ] do that right but the fact that you can bro you can it like creates a frame of reference in a game that's so [ __ ] big that it's like if they're willing to do this they're willing to do anything and I think that also like people in general and like balers Gate 3 like it's not aimed at 15y olds it's aimed at like 30y old olds like this is that's the people that probably play this [ __ ] game like I'd say the prime audience for it the people that have Nostalgia for growing up with these games and so I think a lot of people that are around my age a lot of y'all's age in chat are [ __ ] tired of having these freaks on Twitter and these people on these media stations trying to demonize every single time when people are just trying to have a bit of a goof have a little bit of a laugh right they try to turn everything weird they're like oh my god well you can't say that [ __ ] shut the [ __ ] up I'm going to [ __ ] a bear and it's like it's so far outside of the Overton window of what's acceptable that like it's appealing because that is refreshing you see what I'm saying and I think that so many people are tired of this [ __ ] and now you see games doing all kinds of crazy [ __ ] who sh up [ __ ] Bears yeah people are trying to be in uh preach to about the message yes and it's not even about being preached to about the message it's about not being able to do fun stuff that's completely innocuous and non problematic like it's a [ __ ] video game like what the hell like this this is it's a joke we're just trying to have fun like trying to have these like weird Karens get invested and tell them what they can and can't think amount of people and the people that complain don't play the game you're right they don't even play the [ __ ] game in my chat room that had said I don't normally like crpgs but I love balers Skate 3 the beautiful thing about balers Skate 3 is even with its incredible veneer beautiful presentation amazing voice acting amazing Mo capping an 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 uh 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 well they don't have that payoff because a lot of them aren't really like it's hard to make a game like this it is like think about how much effort and time goes into this like a a smaller studio just could never do this it' be impossible balers 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've played balers Gate 3 I loved it what do I play next what else is there and and I'm really hoping that this kind of this new exposure to the crpg genre as a whole will Propel the entire thing forward um we have another fantastic company alcap that has Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader coming out at the end of this month which is the first first cpg we've ever seen in the Warhammer 40K Universe just uh last week Jos 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 okay quick sidebar we're talk about the marketing in just a second but first I want to explore something that Co just mentioned there he said that Bal dis gay 3 appealed to folks who had never really play cpgs and I'm wondering if a lot of these people are starved Fireware fans from 2007 into 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 this he's right about that when was the last game sky like Skyrim when the [ __ ] did that come out right like uh 2011 2012 I think it's 2011 like that was a long time ago and like Starfield sucks it it sucks that's just how it is and like there aren't that many like what happened to Fable Like Fable had that weird [ __ ] trailer and what was the last Fable game that came out like who cares no he's right about this there aren't a lot of like those crazy big RPGs shooters from 07 BioWare the creators of Boulders Gate 1 and two were the tip of that spear with Mass Effect and Dragon Age achieving mainstream success for games that were focused on talking diplomacy an inner species butt rubbing but since the ending of Mass Effect 3 bware have dramatically lost step with their fans creating a handful of games that fall well short of expectations and multiplayer shooter anthon which really sared their relationship with the fan base yeah is the success of balers 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 have no doubt I don't I don't think that's really the reason to be honest with you I I don't I think it's like obviously you know something like this doesn't happen in a vacuum with just one reason it's probably part of part of like a small reason but I don't think it's a big reason uh I I think if there were a bunch of games coming out like this people would play all of them the the reality is there just aren't 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 borders Gate 3 is a well-made game and that it appropriately met the market and exceeded expectations of both Tri and true crpg fans and a more General RPG audience well every game that's really big and that's culturally relevant attracts a people a group of people that's not endemic to that type of game like a good example of this is World of Warcraft a lot of people didn't play computer games and they still don't play computer games they're not Gamers they're wow players that's it they don't like go and like oh a new release comes out I'm going to go play that no they just play World of Warcraft and like you know your dad yeah exactly like you know you have your parents like all the people playing the game like back in the day it was very common right and so that's that's how work Warcraft was and then look at Minecraft right there's people that they don't play games they just play like Minecraft or something like that it's like such a massive game that it attracts an audience of people that's outside of the normal audience like fortnite is like that and then recently you had Elden ring still haven't talked about how to answer some of these more nuanced questions I got in contact with Lan's director of publishing Michael D 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 Lan'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 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 well that's actually like such a such a massive like big dick move like no we expected it to be a breakout Monumental success and be the best game of the year yeah no we expected that yeah this that was the plan 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 bers Gate 3 is a game for people who like RPGs so why do you think it's sold so well is there a wider market for crpgs than we thought has the popular of D and D got anything to do with it we never use the term crpg in our campaigns for a reason it plays very well on a PlayStation 5 dos2 Plays ex that's another big factor a lot of games are [ __ ] garbage because they don't play well like it's actually such a simple thing like whenever you jump the character model moves like in a janky way or uh you know you run into a door and if you run an angle you teleport through the door or like your character gets stuck game play is yeah like the game play works well on an IP are no longer computer RPGs consider RPG 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 that the 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 going to look at to project from it's a blessing and a curse don't get me I I think that like also like balers Gate 3 doesn't have like a bunch of microtransactions so with a lot of games if the game doesn't sell well and it doesn't do well the developer can basically just like okay well we'll just put a bunch of microtransactions in it make our money back and then try again but with a game like this it doesn't have any it has zero yeah well that's what I mean like it doesn't have any like I I said it doesn't have a lot of but yeah it doesn't have any you're right um what I mean is that like the way you can monetize a game like this is very limited and because of that it makes developers and Publishers scared because they need to make money 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 balers Gate 3 gaining momentum 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 probably know that there are many many moments in the game that make you go what the [ __ ] 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've got a mind flare in my run while my entire enti party stared at me in disgust I don't know if that would have got us banned on Tik Tok but it would have had the same effect bg3 gained momentum in truth when all of 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 weekl long meme at best that's a good and how important do you think the time and Early Access was for marketing the game blessing and a curse not a lot of what we did was convention 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 Grim Forge 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 [ __ ] operation we talk to them they talk to us we all work it out together I think that's another big factor that I think a lot of people appreciate especially from like Eastern developers like whenever uh the like the throne in Liberty guys were like yeah so uh you know the first question we want to answer in the Q&A is is the game pay to win and are we going to make it pay to win the second answer is how are we going to monetize the game and they actually just are like okay this is directly what the problem is the Eastern yeah no but like like they're talking about the thing that you care about not like what's the first question why is the game so fun well we've got a great team shout out to the team guys next question you know it's not [ __ ] question so I think that a lot of people appreciate being being talked to like that even though it's not something that uh you know conventional PR wisdom allows which I think is because it's not good wisdom but at the same time this is what a lot of companies take seriously 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 is kind of decided by the player so no success or failure is really buy this is what I think a lot of a lot of developers don't understand is that like they try to uh like you know they have like an idea of like what their game is supposed to be but like the players don't like it well if the players don't like it then change it it's actually that simple like figure out why they don't like it and fix that problem it's not like oh you should never have to eat [ __ ] to get to the chocolate nine 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 borders Gate 3 first it's really wellmade 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 elesium that expose new players to this style of game or due to Modern conveniences like voice acting that helped to soften the market and thirdly I think also um the fact that like a lot of the scenes and like the funny things in the game can happen pretty quickly and the characters look good enough to where it's compelling even to person that doesn't play it it made sharing those moments and sharing that stuff on like social media really easy to do so like I would see clips from balers gate all the time just because people are like hey look at this funny scene the game was smart in publishing and marketing strategy it never felt like a game you needed to have played the original two Boulders 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 balers Gate 3 launched in as finished State as possible yeah so what can other developers learn from the success of borders 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 at Early Access for 3 years to make sure every character is voiced to ensure every player choice is mirrored by the game this is what developers have to understand is that the player doesn't care about how hard development is this is not a relevant bit of information the developer doesn't care about the uh publishing deadline that you have the player doesn't care about how often you're working this doesn't matter so you can't expect the player the customer to care about these problems and I think that you have these developers that are like well we can't do any better than this well if you can't do any better than this then you should have planned better because you can't just release garbage and be like well you know we couldn't do any better because people are like well okay then we're not going to buy it and I think that's what happens a lot 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 a AAA level and this is where things got a little bit more complex but it it's again it's it's the thing the customer is always right if the game is problematic or there's something that's not enjoyable about the game and people don't like it or it's unfinished like Diablo I or sorry Diablo both of them um the player doesn't really care about like oh well the public well we had to get it out and like none of these things matter to the player like these are all like these are things that matter to the people that work there nobody gives a [ __ ] about how hard you worked nobody gives a [ __ ] about how oh how long it took or you know the publisher any of this it's just it's irrelevant yes shut up and make the game yes the game doesn't work it's a bad game if the game does work it's a good game okay You released the game that doesn't work all right bad game but but but no there is no butts bad game according to Jason in Wikipedia laran is a private company but after some digging around on Irish business Registries and paying a few quid to get access to old documents I found that laran group Holdings Limited based in Dublin is in fact 30% owned by 10 cent now I can't get much more detailed on their financials than that but while the Divinity original sin game 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 202 23 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 I don't like this idea where people get mad about 10 cent because it's 10cent 10cent owns like percentages in almost like every gaming company like I would say they probably own percentages in most big gaming companies because they want to make money making games like it's not like every game that 10cent makes is like just this [ __ ] like pay to win garbage or like Chinese spy wear or something stupid like that yeah they complete they completely own Riot and Riot is great so I I just think it's a very one-dimensional way to look at things and also like you look at it from 10 cents perspective why do they want to invest millions of dollars into a studio and then tell the studio to do something totally different why would they want to do that that's a that's a bad idea then why would you invest in a studio in the in the first place if you want them to do something totally different than what they were doing privately owned companies can have debtors and publicly traded companies can have majority ownership for says they can add censorship and and they do it uh I mean clearly they don't uh number one uh number two censorship is usually Regional it's either Regional or it's a decision made by the Developers for some like social or political reason like that's Reas that's really what what it is example the similar European success story of CD project when they became public through a share takeover of a Polish Tech firm it allowed them to access new forms of capital to invest in their studio in the 2008 words of Adam kachinsky the immediate financing we obtained through the deal will allow us to pursue our operational goals in troubl times the troubled times he's talking about were the financial crash of 2008 and the operational goals was funding their breakthrough H 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 much 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 it's not the problem like the funding with the games is never really the problem in most in most circumstances I think it's usually that like the development team doesn't know what they're doing or they're not experienced in what they're doing I think that's by far what the main issue is because I'll see them do doing things like with World of Warcraft for example like what do you mean you have nothing to do just just just add a vendor with the gear and then the game is fixed oh this took a year no it didn't you just weren't doing anything that's what happens yeah it's it's a crutch and like you see other games that have this problem too like new world is is like this it was was like this in a huge way like how did you like every player was asking for like these very simple Solutions and then the simple solu Solutions took a year in order to be applied that's what the issues were that was the main problem everything else like yeah obviously you have like meta level problems with like content and like systems but a lot of times I think the issue is just simply no communication straight up that simple no communication pars don't make any money until they're finished and released this creates a massive financial burden on the a 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 a 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 Boulders 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 Lan'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 highquality game that we get to enjoy in Bal dis Gate 3 making well that's the thing is at the end of the day like yeah a lot of you know Blood Sweat and Tears went into making the game but the game that you get out of it is a good game like there are a lot of games that like there's massive amounts of crunch time and people are overworked and the game comes out and it's a piece of [ __ ] 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 balers gay 3 down to these personal values or platitudes especially when the reality is a much greater story over decades I think if balers Gate 3 had elements of microtransactions and pay to win stuff in it it probably still would have been massively successful the game plays very well it's a complete game if you look at a lot of these games like and here's the thing I've seen these games these like pay to win like phone games you you want to know why they're bad it's because the game play sucks that it's just G [ __ ] garbage that's why it's not because it's like a oh well you know it's because it's pay to win no the game play is like it's the worst thing like you don't even like you're happy to spend money because at least the shop menu Works nothing else in the game even works it's horrible so that's the way I feel like that's the real reason like look at ginin impact that game's massively popular it's pay to win so it's like yes pay to win is a big factor for a lot of people for sure but the game being good that's a bit bigger it's a byproduct of a lot of Toil and 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 could also poke the bear poke the bear yeah that's about right that's a good video gen good game get bored easily well I'm just saying like I think the big reason uh the big reason why this happens and like why it's so popular uh is because the game plays well and I think that too many people don't take that seriously like do you want to know why honai star rail went down massively in terms of sales it's because there's nothing to do in the game that's the problem it's that simple there's nothing to do in the game you can't do anything in the game like the events are transparent uh there's not a lot of content to them that's it now if you had a game that's like very expansive there's a lot of things to do like there was at the beginning of the game it was very popular and so just like genin he has Tower of fantasy 2 I'm not sure exactly about that but yes you're probably right uh every game should be Elden ring from now on well what I'm saying is that there's a video right there make sure to give it a sub give it a like this is a very good one I'm going to look at a few comments here too take a look at it let's see here tuness down intelligent from laran is in interviews and Snippets yeah because are normal people exactly like I think that's a big reason uh beyond the obvious paying for the staff themselves huge numbers layoff gaming industry is really going to uh damage that in institutional knowledge uh yeah I think you're definitely right about that most important part of success is it's a labor of love yeah people are doing it because they love doing it uh spent $200 in the game so far and I haven't finished it holy [ __ ] man yeah there's a lot to do man there's a lot a lot a lot to do yeah I think this is the case for a lot of games and uh I just think that game developers need to stop expecting players to play a bad game because the game developer had a problem like there will never be a point where game developers and like players play a game and give a [ __ ] about this kind of stuff more than uh like you know like oh okay that's sad like if the game is problematic then that's it and that's how I feel when people uh like ball Gate 3 yeah uh let's see game developers are so good at making bad games well the reason why I'm going to be honest I think the reason why a lot of developers are bad at making games is because they don't understand games I I I think that they just don't know what they're doing straight up they don't know what they're doing and and like I think a really good example of like how systemic this is is the fact that you load every item and in somebody's stash in Diablo 4 how is this possible how is it possible that you know we'll look at some Poe like just for a second right uh I'm not even going to look at the new stuff I'm just going to look at one thing right here how is it possible that that you can have a boss fight like this in path of xil 2 Beta this boss fight already has more mechanics that are better telegraphed and better designed than every single boss in Diablo 4 and the game isn't even in a playable demo yet this is a joke and there's 90 of these bosses in the game what the [ __ ] are you talking about like how is this a problem from anything other than just pure [ __ ] incompetence like I want to see the developers actually play some of the bosses in Diablo 4 like how do you feel that like this boss is infinitely more better designed and it's just so much better in every single way like what's going on here how does this happen this is this is guys keep in mind this is made by a studio in New Zealand this is not a AAA Studio at all like the guy that made this [ __ ] game the main guy the way he got this game off the ground one of the ways was talking to karion on his stream 10 years ago and this is just blows blizzard away like watching this makes me mad it's a big studio now CH yeah right [ __ ] is uh Bas though yeah he is absolutely how many hours in PE have you got to Diablo 4 I've probably put how many hours in a Poe 3 to 4,000 if I had to say probably 3 to 4,000 hours into Poe and uh I'm trying to think like uh let's see what else is there let's see if there's any more bosses here you guys can see here yeah here's another one right watch this and uh yeah I've played a lot and um check on Steam no I've always used the launcher uh I've never like I remember whenever it went on to steam what I'm saying is like the fact that it's like a budget or whatever I think that there is no excuse you can tell me that would make me think that it's Justified that Diablo's bosses are so horrible when po2's bosses completely blow them out of the water and it's not even an alpha yet like I cannot think of a single excuse of why that's okay Hol cure is a perfect example yes look at Hollow cure there you go Diablo 4 is a massive let down to me I think Diablo 4 is a great game in a lot of ways but what makes me mad about Diablo 4 is that it can it should be Diablo 4 this should look like the this should look like Diablo 4 at home you understand this should be like um what's a good example ah Jesus I'm I'm trying to think of like a very good example of like what what two games are like you know this big of a difference uh yeah like Poe versus torch light yeah this this this should be great value Diablo 4 this should be Diablo 4 that you play Whenever you can't afford Diablo 4 this should be Diablo uh you know like yeah this is like instead of like playing Minecraft you're playing Roblox right no man's Sky versus Starfield something like that Digimon yeah this should be Digimon Diablo for should be Pokemon it's so disappointing and it's like you know that was the expectations because you know if this game if Diablo 4 had came out in the year 2001 this game would have completely blown every other game out of the water it would have been [ __ ] insane that's just disappointing man and I don't think that there is any excuse other than a lack of talent I don't think money has anything to do with it I really genuinely don't I think they don't know what the [ __ ] they're doing and it is actually that simple yep well lacko Direction no experience devs well they don't need experience just listen to what people say and then do it look at what other people do and then do that like every single almost every attack that you see here so like I'll give you an example every single effect here watch watch again now that that's how many games have something like that where it puts a line on the ground and it goes out what's it doing it's frozen it's frozen nothing's happening right a lot of games okay you have an attack like that many games have that it's actually kind of unique this one right here um what do you call it uh lost AR uh gate four BR shaza has a mechanic exactly like this except for it's with like a uh uh a square and not a triangle exact yeah face rebell yeah exactly same mechanic basically another variation of the same mechanic a flurry attack wow you guys ever seen that before oh yes you have that's the exact attack pattern of the Hydra in Dark Souls 1 think about it oh look at this this is the same exact mechanic that AR Hol has in act four or sorry act seven act seven of poe1 it's just more random randomized oh there it is again the BR shaza one so my point that I'm making with this is that if you play a lot of games most of these things are not brand new why are you hating on it I'm not that's my point is that this boss is [ __ ] incredible and it's amazing but almost every ability that it has grinding gear games didn't invent this they didn't invent these mechanics and that's what I'm saying is that like you don't need to be like massively like Innovative with everything like I bet a lot of the things with balers Gate 3 aren't really new a lot of them are just really good versions of things that already existed another example of that is Elden ring a lot of things with Elden ring are not new but they're just really [ __ ] good so that's my point right is like it just makes me so Furious to see stuff like this happen with like poe2 this game is just so far ahead of the competition it's insane's always question and there's no excuse for it what you're you KY I don't know how many people Jesus man look at the amount of look at the amount of mechanics that are even happening and look at the telegraph here like you can clearly see what the boss is doing like he's doing a slam right and then look look look let's watch frame by frame a completely full animation you see that perfect animation the damage isn't happening halfway through the slam there's no like weird like first his hands are like this and then there's like frames like this like in lies of PE or something like that uh it it's Flawless there's no frame skipping yes compare that to a turd that's Uber l yeah or durial durial is decent but it's not that this boss is more mechanics than durial it's more interesting than durial look at the blood Bishop yeah wiip hater I thought Li liip is the best Souls light game that's ever been made okay but yes I have a lot of complaints about the game by the way developer agreed with me with most of those complaints that's why they they made changes based off of them oh good anyway you yep there it is and so uh don't forget would you like P the weapon customization it was by far better than anything it's even better than the from soft or games to be honest it was really incredible so all I'm saying is that like bro I I could go I could ma about this so hard but like the point that I want to make with all of this is the fact that all of these problems are problems because the developers don't understand what they're doing but take diaa 4 is made especially for casuals and it accomplishes that oh so you say like there are no mechanics because it's made for casuals and casuals don't want to play a hard boss I disagree with that entirely because the existing mechanics aren't telegraphed well and aren't designed well I'll give you some examples okay because usually like whenever I make statements like you do I actually have examples so um the blood Bishop's grab is not frame perfect and it's not even remotely close to frame perfect you can be totally out of it and you'll still get grabbed can I confirm this with chat everybody knows this is the case we all know this yes okay this is a well-known fact um second uh the tomb W whenever he puts the ability on you that puts Darkness around your character have you ever moved out of that ability and then had the darkness effect still apply okay all right number three um Uber Lilith on the second phase every single um every single effect in that entire encounter is on the same color wavelength it is all different shades of red sometimes overlapping shades of red it's so bad it is also another little bonus effect whenever durial comes out of the ground the fissure area underneath the circle the hit box of it is larger than the circle so if you're next to it it will still kill you because you're you're too close to it even though it's visually indicated that you're not um [ __ ] let me think uh is that enough yeah is is that enough like I mean I feel like that's pretty good right so you're just wrong like I would agree with you if the mechanics worked but they don't even work

Channel: Asmongold TV

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Keywords: asmongold, asmongold reacts, asmongold wow, asmongold highlights, asmongold youtube, world of warcraft, asmongold funny, asmongold tv, asmongold channel, zackrawrr

Id: Tqb-ox--aJY

Length: 59min 41sec (3581 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 04 2023