Wait, you mean if it is good and worth the money it sells and if it is a cheap worthless cash grab it does not????? Someone call Corporate!
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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All things BG3!
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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Let's not forget it has no DRM either. AAA studios told us that no game can do well without DRM
The funny thing is I (and probably many others) didn’t even consider pirating it. It had great reviews and was readily available pretty much everywhere without any obvious drawbacks. So I spent full price for it.
My point; DRM doesn’t matter if you produce and sell your game in a consumer friendly way.
Not to mention that full price was up to 20 bucks cheaper than other new releases.
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Corporate isn't going to take away the lessons we might hope. Folks at corporate at going to ask things like, "how much money was left on the table?" They can only fuck things up through paying attention.
The takeaways that will make it to the steering group PowerPoint:
- VideoGames based on our IP sell better than expected.
- Sales of our other digital products follow suit
- Larian Studios did this with minimal oversight
- No reason to assume any and all VideoGame products based on other IPs would not follow similar pattern
- Call to action: Fund additional Hasbro IP based VideoGames.
You know corporate will assume the opposite on all points though
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Kill the p2w whales and you kill shit games
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I didn't realise Hasbro were the publisher, now I feel a little dirty. Those bastards ruined Super Soaker.
Hasbro owns wizards of the coast, which is the owner of the D&D trademark.
wizards of the coast
Of the "sent the literal Pinkertons after a streamer" fame.
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They didn't publish it, but they licensed the DnD brand to Larian
Wait, Hasbro owns DnD? It feels weird to me that a company can own DnD rights.
Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) was originally incorporated by Gary Gygax in 1973. It went bankrupt and got bought out by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) in 1997. That purchase gave us D&D 3.0 and the original OGL, which was intended to encourage third-party publications of a game set WotC wasn't overly confident in. This, after a decade of aggressive litigation by TSR's VP Lorraine Williams who'd engineered Gygax's ouster from the firm.
Hasbro acquired WotC two years later, in 1999, but was generally apathetic towards its administration outside of it being another revenue source. So WotC ran more-or-less independently until 2020 when the CEO noted on an earnings call that WotC was something like 40% of the company's overall revenue. This triggered a sizable realignment of focus onto the various WotC brands (Magic: the Gathering and Pokemon card games being two other big players).
Now we're seeing a much more traditional corporate refocusing on the WotC product line (movies and cross-promotions), a return to aggressive litigation against competitors, and a sharp increase in the price of WotC products to justify the increased expenses.
That is a great attitude towards everything DnD stands for, don't lose it. Theres been a great deal of controversy this year, because the executives at wotc/hasbro believe that owning a popular brand like DnD means they're entitled to shitloads of money, so they're attempting to turn it into a cash cow, completely alienating the long standing community
Technically, Wizard of the Coast owns D&D, but they are a subsidiary of Hasbro (and have been since like ‘99).
I hope the lesson they take is "selling complete games with no online bull or micro transactions is popular and profitable"
The lesson they'll actually take is "money? MONEY!! MONEEEEEYYYYYYY!!!"
"this game is a gold mine! It's being underutilised at the moment, let's improve the profitability with some in-game purchasable items and a subscription for bonus content"
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I'm curious to see if other CRPGs also had big revenue increases from BG3's success. After beating it I've bought Divinity Original Sin 2, Disco Elysium, Pathfinder WotR, and Pillars of Eternity II so far. I had never paid attention to the genre before and now I am deep into it.
Larian are really the only ones that play nice with a controller.
I understand that a lot of people play at literal desktops and prefer mouse/keyboard, but a lot more (regardless of PC split, it's also almost all console owners) would rather play with a controller. Having an official control scheme for one is meaningful to broad adoption.
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Maybe Dragon Age Origins, too.
I bought that on the GOG Anniversary Sale pretty much because I finished BG3 and was in the mood for something new but similar. Hadn't paid any attention to the Dragon Age franchise before.
I'm amazed at not only how well it holds up, but how much inspiration BG3 seems to have taken from it.
DA:O was made because the company that made Baldurs Gate 1&2 lost the rights to make 3
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Now you mention it, yes probably. I already owned BG3 in EA, and bought 2 similar games : Pathfinder & Solasta.
When i was a kid i player BG1 a lot. Later DOS.
And the other game above, i already finished them long ago. I think it would be an interesting data to see what kind of player play BG3 and compare our games. :)
Watch them milk it to death, thereby ruining the franchise
I don't think they really can. Larian has creative control over the project itself, Hasbro can't do much beyond input regarding DnD-specific things. Hasbro can try to milk DnD (as they have been doing), but this won't affect BG3.
Who has merchandising rights though? Who's going to be pumping out Astarian FunkoPop knockoffs for the next several years?
This is an interesting question actually. From what I read, larian has been screwed by producers many times in its past, so they should be aware of these kind of problems. It all depends 9n the contract hasbro and larian have. And if hasbro is as stupid as Microsoft, larian probably has a favorable deal.
Sometimes good things are just good things my man.
"We own something popular and profitable with a large userbase that hasn't had every penny milked from it? Hold my beer."
- Hasbro
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It still pains me that Hasbro owns WotC now.
I've switched to Pathfinder. They lost me on 4th edition and will never get me back.
Daragon Age Origins is awesome. It was fun playing the game where your choices affected the outcome of the game. And you got to play different characters--poor, rich, royalty, slave.
Baldur's Gate 3 is like this game and updated.
DOS2 working so well is a big part of why I bought BG3. I mostly play handheld (steamdeck, with a little bit of switch), so controller support is a huge factor for me.
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