Larian Studios secured another GOTY award win at the DICE Awards for Baldur's Gate 3, and unlike at The Game Awards, the developers were given an opportunity to make an acceptance speech. They used it to call out the shocking state of the industry in an emotional address.
Director of publishing Michael Douse took to the stage, encouraging developers to persevere through the darkness: "I want you all to know that you are talented and that you matter, and that you are the future of this industry. Don't let that flame be extinguished by our collective mistakes; I know everyone here is scared because s***’s really f***ed up."
Douse continued, underlining the issue: "All of your projections are wrong, and it's scary. But we persevere as an industry, we will persevere as an industry, and you will all find your place, and you will all be welcomed back with open arms."
Larian's head of production, David Walgrave, took the mic, spilling the "secret" to the success of Baldur's Gate 3, which is simply finding answers to the questions players ask: "Last year, I started thinking the secret to our success comes from [asking] 'what does the player want?'. What do I think is best for the game? What is the most fun, the most crazy?".
Walgrave went on to say, "We don't have shareholders, but we also don't think about them", a pronouncement which was met with applause. As Eurogamer points out, while that is technically true, Chinese megacorp Tencent does own a 30% stake in the Belgian Baldur's Gate 3 developer, which goes to show how hard true independence is to achieve.
Walgrave concludes that in "the long run, building a community, building a player base, building games that are actually fun is going to make you the most money. That's it."
It's great to see, and we hope Larian's words reverberate and effect meaningful change. What do you think of the statements from Baldur's Gate 3 devs from the DICE Awards stage? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source twitter.com, via eurogamer.net]
Comments 18
These "news" are almost a week old.
You think it would be common sense, what does your consumer want. But its moved to how can we nickel and dime the consumer. Games like baldurs gate and Helldivers should be the norm not the exception.
@Vorflynn Unfortunately most studios are owned by publishers and they don't care quality. They set release date and care ONLY sales. They've been given too much power and they turned fun into mass production. And unfortunately customers accepted it and buy (even blindly preorder) like a crazy everything and than complain about quality ...but buy.
It is like Netflix, daily new movies, zero artistic value.
Everything was great until "building games that are actually fun ..." once again someone from the industry thinking they know the concept of universal fun when the concept of fun depends directly of who is playing the game.
@djlard thinking that devs don't care about quality just because they are owned by big companies is an insult against people who are actually outstanding in what they do, not "anyone" can work on those places.
You are talking about the entertainment industry, don't forget that. The reason why videogames exist is because they make money but at the end of the day all of them, included the games people use to express problems or life experiences are still that, entertainment. They don't need to be "art" to be great.
@gymratAmarillo or you could interpret it as what provides their fanbase with the most fun while hopefully getting other people on the bandwagon. I don't think he is naive enough to think BG3 is universally loved by everyone but Larian clearly had a vision which they stuck with and did a great job. I wouldn't say their game was goty for me but they made the sales and the awards.
It should also be noted that they didn’t have to take on a big publishing deal or deal with shareholders because they got private investment from the Chinese Comunist Party(Tencent). So if you’re not getting an offer from the CCP or Saudi’s you’re probably just screwed. Good luck.
The AAA industry is just too bloated, there's just too many people in it, its too focused on story and graphics now rather than gameplay and innovation. That's why some games company like nintendo keep having multi millions evergreen sellers despite having worse graphics and less story than other 3rd party developers, they "gameplay first" concept is the right way to develop games.
Oh and stop making (catering) games for "everyone". Elden ring, game that clearly not for everyone, sells more than ff16, game that have "easy (equipment) mode", that theoretically make it available for "everyone".
@gymratAmarillo You didn't get it right. I was trying to say devs care, but they are under presure of publishers who don't care.
If the industry keeps going the way it is, it will eventually implode in on itself. It’s gotten out of control.
Sony are at the point where they will soon be haemorrhaging money if they don’t act. Xbox is clearly going multi platform despite its recent announcements. Only Nintendo has manageable profit margins and they are still flogging the Switch with little interest in updating it anytime soon it seems.
Mergers, takeovers, lack of willingness to collaborate have all led to the industry becoming more and more toxic ever day.
Jobs being cut in favour of AI is disgraceful and not ethical.
We have a multi billion pound industry that has been badly managed and badly run and now it stands facing into a fire.
We should be under no illusions that gaming is on a precipice of disaster. It’s so close to hitting the red button.
People need to stop worrying about what consoles have what games and actually consider just what an absolute mess the industry finds itself in.
Warnings need to be heeded.
@GeminiReign I hope not but if things don’t change soon, that’s where we are headed.
@gymratAmarillo “…once again someone from the industry thinking they know the concept of universal fun when the concept of fun depends directly of who is playing the game”
This is an oft misunderstood concept. As someone in the industry has said (it wasn’t Neil Druckmann but he alluded to something similar) — “fun” is too diluted of a concept. It doesn’t distinguish the unique psychological experience of gameplay that leads to sustained engagement. And to be fair, I think that’s what Walgrave is trying to say here, that they try to anticipate the specific wants of their diverse player base.
“Fun” is difficult to define, but I like the breakdown by Marc LaBlanc who said there is eight different kinds of fun: sensory pleasure, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression, submission. And if you think about it, Baldur’s Gate 3 probably taps into every one of those. Compared to a lot of other games that are less widely appealing because they assume people enjoy the same kind of “fun” that they do.
They also got banned from the afterparty, probably because talking ***** about investors/shareholders.
There's a pattern to Game of the year and it's not live services with egregious microtransactions Ubisoft games.
2018 God of War
2019 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
2020 The Last of Us Part II
2021 It Takes Two
2022 Elden Ring
2023 Baldurs Gate 3
Glad that the award helped give them a voice, not to mention rewarding thier innovation and the fact that it shows what can still be accomplished by relatively smaller studios. As opposed to, say, awarding a safe yet fun game with minimal new and exciting innovations (other than glidermode yawn) made by Sony Mega corporation GOTY instead. But hey, someone's gotta bow down to the corporate overlords.
I’m pretty much sick of AAA games at this point (I still play them but I’m buying a lot less, BG3 was a definite exception, loved it), I’d rather play a great indie and not watch hours of cut scenes. I’m hoping if anything comes out of all these lay offs it will be some really awesome indie teams/collectives
Must play this game. Bit nervous to dive in as I'm a bit intimidated by all the systems and menus and whatnot-im typically a story game player-naughty dog games,god of war and such but I can't keep hearing how great this is and not at least give it a go.
@Th3solution agree used to have a friend,dead now as it happens,who loved all nintendo games cause they were 'fun'. Mario,Mario cart and all them. Couldn't get into any of them myself so they weren't fun to me. An engaging adult narrative is what tends to draw me into games and is what I enjoy in them.
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