Despite Baldur’s Gate 3’s huge success, a peculiar new controversy revolves around it, which is at the epicenter of the debate.
This past weekend, Baldur’s Gate 3 reached an even more impressive Milestone. The game’s Steam player count recently broke the previous record, which is truly historic. Most games’ peak number of players is established during their opening weekend. The second weekend is where most of Baldur’s Gate 3’s story takes place, indicating that the game’s sales were boosted by strong word of mouth.
This is a truly historic moment, helped along, no doubt, by the communities’ concentrated efforts to have as many people as possible participate in the event throughout this weekend. It’s very wild that this just happened. To top it all off, Baldur’s Gate 3 has received even more glowing reviews than its predecessor, making it the highest-rated PC game in history—another remarkable success for these developers, who were willing to take a break for an entire year.
Is the recent backlash against Baldur’s Gate 3 justified, or are AAA developers merely frightened at the game’s commercial success when they should celebrate it? The main points of this debate were first raised in July. For some reason, this has been a source of contention for over a month since the game’s developer started a Twitter thread discussing the ambiguous expectations placed on other games due to Baldur’s Gate 3’s promising development. The actual meat of this piece was the idea that Larian Studios’ development method for Baldur’s Gate 3 is inextricable from the game itself. The dev cycle was lengthy, and many programmers from many countries participated.
The developers’ dedication to Early Access and their extensive familiarity with the genre and engine allowed them to successfully crowdfund the game’s lengthy development cycle and iron out numerous issues with the help of user feedback. For those who may not be aware, Baldur’s Gate 3 spent around three years in Early Access, allowing them to make money on the First Act when they sold the game and glean reams of data from players. This appears to have significantly influenced Baldur’s Gate 3’s initial popularity. It’s clear from this Twitter conversation that Larian Studios is on to something special with Baldur’s Gate 3.
This individual thinks it’s a bit of a stretch to say that Baldur’s Gate 3 raises the bar for role-playing games because many other RPGs don’t have the same advantages as Baldur’s Gate 3. As a result, it’s unlikely that similar work could ever be done again. They continued by claiming that a game can still be wrong even if a dedicated team spends a lot of money and effort developing it. Not all games can be as unique as Baldur’s Gate 3, even in ideal or nearly ideal conditions. Because of the massive financial investment required to produce this scale, any missteps can have far-reaching consequences, even threatening the existence of numerous Studios simultaneously.
Consequently, we felt compelled to inform this Dev, because she called it huh, of his arguments against maintaining such high standards. This individual predicted the critical and commercial success of Baldur’s Gate 3 approximately a month before the game’s release. But in the months since that thread was written, we have seen a flood of replies from other developers online, most appreciating and agreeing with the attitude, with many developers from other large Studios reaffirming that using a single game to increase expectations is harmful.
However, this is relatively old news. About a month has passed since the event we’re discussing. Nonetheless, this debate was revived understandably after Baldur’s Gate 3 was finally released and received widespread acclaim. This leads us to a video we received lately from IGN titled Baldur State 3 is causing some developers stress, in which the publisher responds to this narrative. Here, IGN explains why the developers’ initial reaction was to dampen players’ hopes rather than draw lessons from Baldur’s Gate 3. or maybe just enhance their production and game creation methods. After Baldur’s Gate 3, the video asks why buyers shouldn’t have raid criteria.
According to IGN, people have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the gaming industry over the past few years because of the avarice of huge studios, which has resulted in poor remaster Scully micro-transactions and just problematic releases. And if you haven’t seen the IGN video, I should warn you that even though IGN produced it, it’s just a bunch of people talking as they read you some quotations, and one person from IGN gives you their take on things. They didn’t go out of their way to gather extra interviews or research materials for this film.
It’s the standard fare of YouTube vlogs: an individual expressing their opinions. This is how we arrived at the present day. The latest video from IGN has revived interest in the topic. Some gamers’ reactions were more passionate than usual after watching this video. Although there were some dissenters, most fans and gamers enjoyed the film and felt it accurately depicted their experiences. However, many developers and industry experts disagreed, calling the panicked developers narrative poisonous and ultimately fruitless.
This post contains one of the best-written replies to the video. This sparked an article later supported and complimented by many other developers; it explained how the IGN video hadn’t tried to understand why developers face challenges like flawed releases and other issues. It merely draws attention to them and notes that they are occurring without providing any context or explanation.
It continues by saying that the journalist in the video was poorly informed and failing at his job because of his ranting and that this behavior has no place in journalism. It explains how developers have little to say over no when games are released because of factors such as lack of funding or shareholder pressure. The article alludes to IGN’s appreciation of Baldur’s Gate 3’s polished release during Early Access but notes that such praise is ironic.
The whole basis of the IGN video is false because Baldur’s Gate 3 was not initially released in a finished State, although it was on sale for three years for sixty dollars. Because it was Early Access, you could only play Act One. However, I think this post almost missed the purpose of the video or was fighting about something else entirely. The article states that the primary objective of the IGN video was to show how AAA games aren’t always ready to go on release day, but Baldur’s Gate 3 was prepared to go as soon as it was released.
Possibly, they saw something else, but the IGN video struck me as more of a critique of developer answers and pushback, including examples of flawed releases and user anger with them. However, in my opinion, that wasn’t the video’s central argument. While the games will not have a money-making Early Access like Baldur’s Gate 3, the article clarifies that the game did not launch as a whole $60 release and that Early Access is now an important aspect.
It was a lot to take in, but maybe you now have a better sense of the various storylines and motivations for the replies. Frankly, I think everyone here is partially correct and partially wrong. That may be a convenient excuse, but it describes how I felt while putting up this film. Consider the initial tweet chain where Baldur’s Gate 3 was cited as an example of how to improve quality. I can see how you could feel that Baldur’s Gate 3 took an unexpected turn, yet Early Access was a big hit in this market. It’s unlikely that any other game could replicate this level of success. Not on this scale, even if they could.
Therefore, it is extremely risky for players to start anticipating all games launching this way. Nonetheless, I must admit that the way everything is laid out is convenient. During this time, Baldur’s Gate 3 entered Early Access, making the 20-30-hour campaign available to players. All that content creation came first, and entering Early Access is a bold move with significant consequences.
While Baldur’s Gate 3 was a successful example of Early Access, it might have easily backfired and significantly dampened anticipation for the game. And that’s not to say that Baldur’s Gate 3 didn’t face other significant challenges. We essentially stole their release date because, like many other games, it was made during a global epidemic, and one of the Studio’s locations was in Ukraine. I believe portraying Baldur’s Gate 3 as having a flawless development cycle is quite dishonest.
They encountered formidable challenges and made some bold choices that may or may not have paid off, for example, shifting the release date to a point closer to the actual release date and entering Early Access. In my opinion, this debate is severely skewed by hindsight bias. The oddest aspect of this to me is the context in which it is presented. Back when Baldur’s Gate 3 was still just a promising forthcoming game, it would have been weird to tweet about how it shouldn’t affect expectations for other games. I find that peculiar. So, on the one hand, most players know next to nothing about creating games.
Some of your assumptions and speculations about video game development will likely be entirely off the mark. As a result, having your beliefs challenged as a fan is not shocking and is expected to be a positive thing that should happen more frequently. On the other hand, many mediocre games have recently been submitted to bad games. Feature films or TV Shows that ship with lots of flaws or microtransactions. Therefore, it’s no surprise that gamers feel exploited. And I don’t see why it’s a problem that they’re praising a studio that isn’t using them and hoping that other studios follow suit.
However, I also found the IGN video odd because it sensationalized a story that has been out for a month by claiming that developers are freaking out. I’d like to call any tweets I read while researching this film, including those shown in the IGN video, “panicked.” Usually, it was just developers setting realistic expectations or setting others straight. The term “panic” seems totally out of place in this context. And I agree with the criticisms in this follow-up piece; I think there is an even better version of this film.
If we do have a discussion, it incorporates more of the developer’s point of view and addresses their concerns in greater depth. There must be something to this. If so, many developers are on the same page; a more informative video and the consumer’s point of view would have explored this. Still, I believe that the IGN video accurately captured the sentiments of many customers and continues to do so.
People are angry that these games have been released in such poor states as of late, and it’s unacceptable that they should make people feel like that. However, as the video shows, not all developers shared that opinion in the first place. Many other developers are looking to Larian Studios for guidance on improving their work, and they seem to be taking the company’s efforts in stride.
As I said before, I think this follow-up post misses the point of the IGN video while also adding to the toxicity it criticizes. I find that the attacks on journalists’ integrity, in particular, may get rather personal. I don’t think that was productive or constructive; instead, it was just pictures taken because it’s fun to do that occasionally. It makes a whole case for launch polish without mentioning that Baldur’s Gate 3 lacked it.
It’s no secret that Baldur’s Gate 3 has many game-breaking flaws, especially after you get through Act 1. These errors can prevent you from progressing in the game or cause you to lose your progress on an entire quest line. I’m giving the developers a break because their release date was stolen, and we’ve seen them provide a roadmap for what’s to come. However, I find it baffling that nobody has mentioned how wrong it is to use Baldur’s Gate 3 as an example of a flawless release with Polish.
Also, I think this post makes some excellent points about what the IGN video should have done to advance the discussion. For many participants, this is an issue they feel strongly about; for others, it is their means of subsistence, and therefore, the conversation has taken on an emotional tone. Discussions have become increasingly heated since this subject directly affects many people’s lives. The CEO’s willingness to let the Studio produce games like this and take enormous chances is, in my opinion, a significant factor in Baldur’s Gate 3’s success.
In a recent interview, the CEO of Larian Studios added his voice to the discussion. He mentioned that when he first began out, Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed, and everyone said that everything would be like Assassin’s Creed and that everyone would be out of business because of it. After all this time and a plethora of games, Assassin’s Creed is still going strong. You’ll need a sizable crew to replicate what we’ve done at Larian Studios, but it doesn’t mean you must.
You can do a lot of different things. I don’t think people should be concerned about it with Baldur’s Gate 3 games because standards constantly shift. Such as ours, are highly specialized. Since this is what we’re most interested in producing and at which we excel, it stands to reason that we’ve already established a solid track record. We’ve been making games like this for almost two decades.
There doesn’t seem to be any game where everyone is expected to adhere to the same rules. Since tomorrow, someone else will think up something even better. Since standards are constantly evolving, I’ve found that the most convincing argument is that there are no standards. From my perspective, this is the brains behind Baldur’s Gate 3, and the fact that other studios won’t be ready to take the same risks or spend the same amount of dev time on a project like this is why it will be challenging to recreate. They invested their own money into making this a reality, and they stand to gain financially as a result.
