I wonder why companies do this? does it actually make it get done faster? Last I knew most workers were only efficient at their job for like the first 5 or 6 hours if that, spending an extra 8 ontop of it sounds like a waste of salary.
Ex Activision QA employee here - It does not get anything done faster, and it burns out the devs and QA alike so more mistakes are made. It’s always about hitting dates on time for shareholder profits, the C-suite people in charge do not give a shit about releasing a quality game.
Naughty Dog made its name by working ludicrous hours. One of the founders worked 16 hour days for a year, only taking off for Christmas, in order to make Crash Bandicoot.
For short periods, like a few days, you can get a small boost in productivity. But if it goes on too long, you actually see a decrease in productivity overall.
And most companies aren’t paying for this, as lobbyists managed to get “computer workers” onto the list of allowed overtime exempt employees.
With the money they made from BG3 they have the means to make Divinity the best it can possibly be and I couldn’t be happier for them. The first two Divinity games were great, don’t get me wrong, but they were basically low budget when compared to the money they got from Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast to make BG3. I imagine they basically have “fuck you” money now and can do whatever the hell they want. They definitely deserve it and I can’t wait.
Edit: Turns out Larian is going to use gen AI for concept art. I guess fuck all those concept artists trying to get entry level jobs. Very disappointed.
Their concept artists are allowed to use some generative AI tools to explore ideas and speed up their workflow. They’re currently hiring a bunch more concept artists (both juniors and a senior character artist) so if you’re trying to get a job: https://larian.com/careers/4fd694b3-ece7-4307-9949-15cac512a815
Great place to go if you’re looking for a concept artist job.
Edit: Turns out Larian is going to use gen AI for concept art. I guess fuck all those concept artists trying to get entry level jobs. Very disappointed.
It’s misinformation. They have almost 30 concept artists employed. They use GenAI for quick ideation, not for concept art.
Also, corpos are alllowed and in some cases are required to lie, even the “good ones” like Larian. And now, when they have more money then ever, they become less trustworthy than ever. This slope is very slippery. Nothing stops them from overextending their ideas, and when a lot of money involved, I can forsee “well, we need to finish quickly, and we’re already use llm anyway, let it help with the script, and since it’s already in the script no reason not to let it generate some art, and well, since it’s already everywhere, why don’t we generate the code with it”
My point is pretty simple: they said they only use LLM “for good”, but the more they get, the more insensitive they get to lie, so your “but they said [bla bla]” argument can’t hold. If they started using it for something, the only thing stopping them from using it for everything is their reputation and the desire to make a good game, and the more money is on the line, the less value that desire holds in the face of immediate profits.
I love everything Larian did before, I’m a huge fan of the Divinity series, BG3 is still my top 5 favourite games of all time, but this doesn’t mean all that can’t go to shit, wouldn’t be the first.
I don’t agree on a fundamental level, though. Anything and everything could go to shit at any time. You could get killed on a bus stop, your favourite grocery brand might be outed to be using slave labour, Larian could start using AI instead of human work for everything…
With that approach, might as well hide in the woods, disconnect from civilisation and wait for the world to end.
I personally reject that attitude. I think we should support what’s good while it’s good and stop supporting it when it goes bad. And, to me, the way Larian uses AI is not “it went bad already”. Like it or not, the tools exist. They’re everywhere. A single (small-ish) company rejecting its use out of principle is not going to make a dent on that, it won’t even be registered within the margin of error among the billions, if not trillions, of monthly impressions AI companies get from teenagers talking to chat-bots.
And even if it did, it doesn’t matter - AI companies are not making profit anyway. Actually, fewer users is better for them, because they’re actively losing money every time someone uses their product. The whole AI bubble is propped up on the largest circlejerk in history and users are the least important, if not flat out insignificant, aspect of it.
And don’t get me wrong, the fact that it’s originally trained on stolen data is important, but… Kind of irrelevant in this case - and that’s for two reasons:
Companies like Corridor Crew mostly use AI that they self-train, which means that no stealing happens. We don’t know what Larian does.
Even if Larian uses publicly available models that are trained on stolen data… fuck me, we should be going after the people who stole the data, not the end users!
Would I prefer if they didn’t use AI at all? Sure! But am I going to start shitting on the entire company just because they do? Hell no! Their products are still made with care and love and humanity at their core. Just listen to interviews from Jennifer English or Neil Newbon - they praise both the VO company and Larian for their amazing approach.
And finally - the “war on Larian” would make much more sense if we also learned that they’re firing concept artists - but they’re doing the opposite - they have open positions for concept artists, character artists, environment artists, etc., etc. They’re currently hiring these people!
So, yeah, it’s just a lot of noise over practically nothing, in my opinion.
For me, this specific issue is more of a personal level, it’s not about me waging a war against slopgenerators, it’s about trust. Trust is gradually built item by item. My trust in a company consists of their actions over time. They make a good game - trust goes up. They commit to provide good working conditions to the workers and actually do that - trust goes up again. Them starting using slopgen reduces that trust. It reduces it enough so I don’t trust what they are saying anymore. It’s not that I’m starting war on them or whatever, but they lost enough of my trust so when they just say something, I don’t believe it outright, the way I do with any other company, because for a company the line going up is way more important that anything else, and honouring words demonstrably doesn’t put the line up. Before this shit, my trust in Larian was high enough so I might believe them publicly declaring something, but as it stands right now, I don’t anymore, and that’s kind of the extend of my approach to it.
All the previous games of theirs I preordered, early accessed, bought the second the buying option was available. This one I wouldn’t.
Obsidian as a studio is super underrated. Both pillars of eternity has amazing worldbuilding and narrative. They aren’t unknown or anything, but gotdang they are some of the most creative devs out there!
They’re also one of the few studios out there that can manage California salaries, remain a multi-project studio, and not scale up so fast that they’re trying to build games they can’t afford to make.
Are they really underrated? Not throwing any shade, but every time I see them mentioned it’s because people are praising the hell out of them. I also agree that there’s very few games they’ve had their hands on that has been less than stellar, so I have a hard time saying they’re actually underrated. They’ve been pretty steadily a mark of excellence.
People see Avowed and wish it was Elder Scrolls, or they see Outer Worlds 2 and wish it was bigger or something. I’m not really sure why these people come away with the criticisms they do, but in my opinion, Obsidian made two of the best games this year, and those games were rated in the low 80s on average on Open Critic.
Yup, you’re entirely correct, Obsidian is often and loudly praised, they deserve it. But also…
… they deserve a lil more… always a lil’ more!
(I’m just being silly and dum. I have just recently started their games and just wanted to sing their praises myself. Don’t mind me, just a lil fan girling out about great world building. 🥹)
Lol fair. Trust me, I know enough about being a fanboy myself for games I felt deserved better ratings. Again, no problem with them at all, I’ve loved a handful of their games, like Grounded. Haven’t played 2 yet, but my previous friend group had some fallout last year so I’ll have to see who I’m playing that with.
I had no idea who this Jason fellow was prior to this, but that list is essentially made up of games i either have either played, are planning to play, or were unsure about giving a shot. Much more confident in bumping the uncertain ones onto my wishlist now, seems we have similar tastes in games.
The one surprising bit about this is the lack of E33. I know it’s not Jason’s fault but it irks me that every game news outlet repeatedly highlights the same dozen games or so. I’m following four of them and 80% of coverage and reviews is for the same games over and over again. Only digitalfoundry strays off on occasion, and that’s because they aim towards a more technical discussion. There were literally 19000 games released on steam alone last year, and everyone seems to only cover E33, BG3, Blue Prince, Hollow Knight, Elden Ring, Avowed, CoD etc. I have to subscribe to obscure subs or youtube channels just to get coverage of the occasional forgotten indie.
That all makes sense though. By definition, popular games are liked by many people. Popular games are talked about more. People expect popular games to be listed. Many people will doubt these publications if they fail to list several of the most popular games.
I’m sure there is some money changing hands too, but that can only do so much (maybe move a game a little higher on these lists).
Popular and good (for you) are not the same thing. Games can either, both, or neither of those things. It is only when we think about large numbers of people that popular and “good” become correlated.
I agree but these are usually supposed to be the first line when games/news hit the web, and sometimes it appears that the only decent journalist left is Schreier, with everyone else seemingly following him and his direction. Paid coverage definitely accounts for some of the overlap, but like you said it’s probably just reviewers aiming for a greater audience.
There’s always steam curated lists for the rest, I suppose.
The first Divinity was called Divine Divinity, and it was closer to Diablo than Baldur’s Gate. As per this interview, this game is going to be the same style as BG3 and the Original Sin games.
Learned about this for the first time earlier today watching Mortismal’s Divinity recap videos lol
I did know about Divine Divinity (which, fun fact, canonically features Lucian the Divine as your player character) but Dragon Commander completely missed my radar.
You know. I have never once heard a single company admit that they are just gonna release some mediocre pos product. They all say the next thing will be the best thing since sliced bread. Not saying I doubt them. But a company will never be like “we gonna phone it in and release an at best 36% complete product.”
They do say it sometimes, like Microsoft admitting defeat on this year’s Call of Duty. It’s not, “We’re going to release a mediocre product,” but when they say, “We hear you, and we’re making changes” or “we’ve made the difficult decision to…” or “we’re trying to stay agile”, that’s usually what it means. Beyond just hyping up their next product, there’s substantive information in here, like engine upgrades, expansion of the studio, reduction in production timelines, the damn genre of the video game (because that wasn’t a foregone conclusion given this series), etc.
Larian is very ambitious in their aims. Divinity: OS, DOS2, and Baldur’s Gate 3 were all huge games with incredible interactions and stories, and the games hold together even if you intentionally make an effort to break them by being a murder hobo or just not playing “correctly.” Their games are pretty awesome, because there is no “correct” way to play them, they’re very wide open and flexible.
I don’t always like everything they do (in fact, I kinda hate BG3), but I respect their efforts. They don’t half-ass anything.
It’s like Apple every year who proudly boasts on stage that they just made the best iPhone ever. Yeah no shit, that’s what they are supposed to do each year.
Fuck Neil Druckman, Naughty Dog, and Sony, in that order. Amy Hennig carried the whole PlayStation brand identity and got couped over some good ol industry sexism so that N.D. could opine about how hard it is to be a white man
What’s the matter? I thought they were super confident this was going to do really well. Are they getting cold feet and deciding to make changes for fear of bad reception when they don’t quite have enough time, leading to forced overtime?
EDIT: Wait. All of this was for a DEMO? How bad was the game that they needed to work 60 hours a week mandatory overtime just to finish a demo of the game??
Demo in this context isn’t a consumer-playable ‘demo’ in the sense that most people understand; it means a playable internal build with specific targets for what must be included. Internal demo milestones are often linked to project funding and approval to move forwards, so there is a tangible risk if they fail to deliver.
Presumably the current state of the game is behind where it needed to be to deliver that demo, so they’re now crunching to finish it on time.
IMO, any time a game repeatedly fails to meet deadlines, especially so early on in its development, that usually indicates the game isn’t likely to launch in a healthy state. Either the scope is way too big, or the narrative is receiving major changes and reworks, or the people working on the game just wish they weren’t working on that project and taking longer as a result. This kind of situation is rarely good, and even more rarely ends up with a good launched product.
Cyberpunk 2077, Anthem, Mass Effect Andromeda, Halo Infinite, Duke Nukem Forever, John Romero’s Daikatana (although I personally am a bit charmed by this one despite it being undoubtedly bad), and other games are examples of this. Repeated failure to meet production deadlines, lots of crunch forced on the developers, and all for what? The launch product for all of these games was horrendously bad. Some for technical reasons, some for narrative reasons, and some for both.
When I first saw the trailer for Intergalactic, I had mixed feelings. I liked the intended graphics/art style and retro styled tech, the Porsche was a little weird product placement but fine I guess, but the characters and dialogue I personally found both unappealing. The obvious Snake Plissken rip-off woman the main character talked to (blonde with an eyepatch, I can only assume she is some sort of merc job handler) seemed maybe interesting but then she spoke and the writing lost my interest. Upon learning the game is likely to follow some sort of religious theming, I lost all interest in the game. Its not what I want from a video game. So this was pretty disappointing to learn. But now seeing the game is in such a state doesn’t give me great confidence that the final product will be even decent when it launches.
I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad take, but it’s worth pointing out that lots of games miss internal deadlines and waste time ‘spinning their wheels’ but still turn out good or even great. The difference is that you don’t usually hear about it, whereas here some of the team are obviously pissed enough about the crunch that they went to the press.
Crunch is always bad and is an indication of poor project management and/or unrealistic expectations, but issues with scope or major reworks aren’t always a death knell either. I’ve seen plenty of games go through that and come out the other side better than before.
Of course there are always exceptions, but I don’t count on news like this to mean that this project will be the exception.
Metroid Prime and Halo 2 both had excessive crunch and both turned out great, obviously. In Metroid Prime’s case, a management change seemed to fix it in the long term. In Halo’s case, Bungie just embraced the suck I guess, since they still wanted to make Halo 3.
Regardless, these were exceptions to the rule, and I would never expect a project to be an exception, personally.
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Aktywne