A few weeks prior to its launch, Baldur’s Gate 3 looks like one of the most promising RPGs in recent memory. However, some devs are urging players not to rate all other games in the genre by such a high standard, appealing to Larian Studios’ unique combination of vast experience and resources.
I don’t think I understand why it even needed to be mentioned. The type of person who is going to dismiss a game purely because it doesn’t live up to another game isn’t the kind of person who is going to take this advice to heart.
And no matter the costs to make a game, it’s not going to stop people from trying to make a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 anyways. Just look at any game that tried to copy Skyrim. It’s a very highly specialized game in a very well known franchise and takes several years to make, often longer than most development periods for other studios.
I think I agree with you - I don’t understand why it needed to be said.
It’s kind of condescending to both their own customers and those of Baldur’s Gate 3 that they feel they need to explain that different games are different 🙄
Also, whilst I may be in a minority on this, I’m primarily rating a game on its story and gameplay (obviously I’d also like it not to be as buggy as hell). Since all games should be starting on an even footing with that (you need at least 1 creative human brain), you can’t blame studio size. There are plenty of great games with small budgets. And plenty of crap games with big budgets.
I like that you’ve mentioned Skyrim - part of its success (and longevity) has been the ecosystem of mods that built up around it. But I think we all understand that not every game develops this same ecosystem, and we don’t need that explained to us in Twitter threads, just like we didn’t need it explaining to us how budgets work.
part of its success (and longevity) has been the ecosystem of mods that built up around it.
I think you need to temper your enthusiasm with this, which is a PC oriented viewpoint. All the Bethesda games going back to Morrowind on the xbox have been big successes on console, where modding either doesn’t exist or is minimal. If anything I’d say the PC versions have been secondary since Oblivion given the UI they use, and leave it to mods to adapt it better to mouse input.
Mods are definitely a part of the success, but yeah, it’s likely not the biggest reason it’s so popular. Their games are popular and console mods didn’t even exist until 2016 and I don’t doubt you’d fine people who loved the games regardless on consoles prior to that.
Bethesda, back in 2015, during the Steam Paid Mods fiasco, released a quote stating that “Only 8% of the Skyrim audience has ever used a mod.” And some time before either Legendary Edition or Special Edition released, I had done the maths on the number of copies sold of Skyrim and how many unique downloads the Unofficial Skyrim Patch had. Seeing as Nexus is the only official way to get the patch, I figured the number is decent enough and I got around 10-12%. If you’re going to use mods, there is no reason not to use it. If people really think that mods, at the time, were so widespread, then you’d have to believe that nearly 90% of users who modded didn’t use the Unofficial Patch.
I don’t think I understand why it even needed to be mentioned. The type of person who is going to dismiss a game purely because it doesn’t live up to another game isn’t the kind of person who is going to take this advice to heart.
And no matter the costs to make a game, it’s not going to stop people from trying to make a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 anyways. Just look at any game that tried to copy Skyrim. It’s a very highly specialized game in a very well known franchise and takes several years to make, often longer than most development periods for other studios.
I think I agree with you - I don’t understand why it needed to be said.
It’s kind of condescending to both their own customers and those of Baldur’s Gate 3 that they feel they need to explain that different games are different 🙄
Also, whilst I may be in a minority on this, I’m primarily rating a game on its story and gameplay (obviously I’d also like it not to be as buggy as hell). Since all games should be starting on an even footing with that (you need at least 1 creative human brain), you can’t blame studio size. There are plenty of great games with small budgets. And plenty of crap games with big budgets.
I like that you’ve mentioned Skyrim - part of its success (and longevity) has been the ecosystem of mods that built up around it. But I think we all understand that not every game develops this same ecosystem, and we don’t need that explained to us in Twitter threads, just like we didn’t need it explaining to us how budgets work.
I think you need to temper your enthusiasm with this, which is a PC oriented viewpoint. All the Bethesda games going back to Morrowind on the xbox have been big successes on console, where modding either doesn’t exist or is minimal. If anything I’d say the PC versions have been secondary since Oblivion given the UI they use, and leave it to mods to adapt it better to mouse input.
Mods are definitely a part of the success, but yeah, it’s likely not the biggest reason it’s so popular. Their games are popular and console mods didn’t even exist until 2016 and I don’t doubt you’d fine people who loved the games regardless on consoles prior to that.
Bethesda, back in 2015, during the Steam Paid Mods fiasco, released a quote stating that “Only 8% of the Skyrim audience has ever used a mod.” And some time before either Legendary Edition or Special Edition released, I had done the maths on the number of copies sold of Skyrim and how many unique downloads the Unofficial Skyrim Patch had. Seeing as Nexus is the only official way to get the patch, I figured the number is decent enough and I got around 10-12%. If you’re going to use mods, there is no reason not to use it. If people really think that mods, at the time, were so widespread, then you’d have to believe that nearly 90% of users who modded didn’t use the Unofficial Patch.