Didn’t we also learn this from Tears of the Kingdom, or God of War, or Horizon Zero Dawn, or Dark Souls, or indeed hundreds of great selling AAA single player games?
But we also learn from the repeated success of Call of Duty, FIFA, Fortnite or any successful multiplayer games that people fucking love microtransactions.
Different players? Maybe, but I’d suggest there’s also a lot of overlap. I know lots of people that play both. People consume. Some games support the microtransaction model better than others, and those are typically the ones designed to be played in fits and starts all year, rather than completed and shelved.
I’m gonna say yes, different people, just based on my own play habits. I’ve played and enjoyed most of the big single-player franchises, but the multiplayer games don’t appeal to me much. I gave Overwatch a try because a bunch of my coworkers were raving about it, but the experience just felt shallow and hollow. They might be great if I was playing with friends in the same room (like back when I was in college), but playing with a bunch of strangers is no fun for me.
I mean I stay away from the mtx games as well. But then I was raised in an age where you paid the price on the box and that was it.
New gamers don’t know better. And kids especially have all the time and hardly any of the money, they’re happy to throw $10 pocket money at a “free” game they already enjoy for an outfit now, rather than save $70 for a new game they might not like in a few months.
I mean tears of the kingdom make $700 million + and Diablo Immortal made 525 million in it’s first year despite being almost universally rebuked online. Really seems like micro transactions have a really solid, if maybe not top tier return. Lots of companies try to make something like Horizon Zero Dawn and it totally flops instead.
There’s a lot of games that go with the free with mtx model that flop as well. eFootball comes to mind. They had decades of experience with Pro Evo Soccer, their only real competitor costs $70 and is still laden with microtransactions, and it still couldn’t get off the ground.
None of these games are cheap to make, and they’re certainly not cheap to market.
I have not heard of it yet. Sounded intriguing. But a quick search of “eFootball” took me to a mobile game, with in-app purchases - not looking good and I am staying the fuck away. If they really don’t have mtx then they are doing something very wrong.
or indeed hundreds of great selling AAA single player games?
It’s important to note that the amount of single player AAA games has greatly diminished overtime. Most of those “hundreds” you’re referring to are not in the last 10 years, and the big bucks have been in live service. So yeah BG3 did great but it was a huge, 6+ year gamble ultimately. I WANT those gambles, but businesses would rather push out cheaper games at a faster clip because they make money. People still buy them and they still pay for DLC/MTX like crazy. It’s hard to compete against that.
I don't know, you may as well say the same thing about the Switch and every port it gets. The S has its strengths and shockingly few weaknesses given those strengths.
The switch is a handheld and the ports it gets are for that reason. It wouldn't have sold enough to get basically anything third party if it was the same device without portability (see BOTW as a system seller when it literally already existed), and it still doesn't really get that many current gen demanding ports.
The fact that there's a worse Xbox you're required to support when the Xbox already lacks some of the asset loading tricks of the PS5 and has less units sold on top of it isn't something developers can just ignore. BG3 really isn't all that demanding for a next gen open world game, and compromising your vision to force it onto a worse console isn't something people want to do.
The Xbox Series S is a cheap lower-resolution Xbox, and the ports it gets are for that reason. The parity scales well for most games and reduces consumer confusion.
BG3 really isn't all that demanding for a next gen open world game
Most games these days, regrettably, don't bother with split-screen multiplayer, and definitely not with the worst-case scenarios of how far apart the two players can be in that world, which is their hurdle right now.
Parity here isn't on a scale. It's a binary trait. Either they are the same or one is worse than the other. The shitty XBOX does not have CPU parity with the real one, and it's a serious limitation that effectively means that the "good" Xbox also has that worse CPU in terms of game design. It will obviously still get some games, but it's losing games that it would otherwise get because it has nothing in common with a next gen system.
Split screen being the specific thing that BG3 is struggling to do isn't the point. It's merely a symptom. For a next gen open world game, split screen BG3 is still not that demanding. The fact that all the real action is turn based makes it far easier to make run than a similarly dense real time game with real time physics demands, and the fact that the Xbox S can't handle it is a very strong example that it's a piece of shit.
Microsoft wouldn't have nearly the install base without the Series S, and developers can either target that platform or not, just like the Switch, because people bought it for its own strengths. If they want to scale their games up to a spec such that it runs on PlayStation but not Xbox, they're welcome to, but they lose access to a large pool of customers, like those who can stomach paying $300 for a console but not $500. There are plenty of other next gen open world games that work on Xbox.
Also, your analysis on how it should perform isn't really based in reality. We can go to interviews where the Swen Vincke calls out the way their game does split-screen specifically. And besides, at this point, Xbox engineers are involved, and BG3 will run on Xbox, though likely just next year.
It has no strengths, and the install base is shit.
The switch only gets away with being a last gen console because it's a handheld. The Series S has all the performance benefits of a last gen console with the install base of one that released 5 minutes ago.
There is no "the way they do split screen". BG3 while running split screen is not a game that should make a current gen console struggle in any way. It makes the S struggle because it's not a current gen worth of hardware.
Its not the CPU that is the issue anyway. Its the memory both size and bandwidth. Microsoft addressed the size somewhat by making some more RAM available but that doesn't address the bandwidth. The issue is developers are hitting limits in shifting assets around as compared to the X. Its why you see significant texture differences and skipped RT in titles.
I don't have a crystal ball for how it will play out in the second half of the generation but you would have to think it is more likely to become a bigger issue than not. Its also imho another reason why there won't be a Pro series console. More likely they sunset the generation faster instead and just go with a whole new generation that trumps the PS5 pro. Because at least they know that the existence of a PS5 pro extends out the Sony generation enough to give them a window to do this. Or, and this would be a massive shame, this is the last Xbox hardware generation. I don't think its likely but maybe enough generations of trailing marketshare means the bean counters give up on that aspect of it.
We already saw through court documents that Pro-or-similar consoles are expected. The difference with Microsoft is if they stick to generations like they implied they wouldn't. You could get creative with you how you count Xbox consoles and say, "Here's the Xbox 6X and Xbox 6S", where 6 is a larger number than the PlayStation's 5, which we know is a strategy that works. Out of the gate, very few games would require that larger hardware, and unlike PlayStation, purchasing an Xbox game once gets you the upgraded version on new hardware. I imagined this is the direction they were headed in when this generation was designed, but 2020 sure did change the trajectory of all sorts of things even if I'm right. I also seriously doubt they're interested in leaving the console space given the acquisitions they've made in the past few years.
maybe enough generations of trailing marketshare
The 360/PS3 generation was extremely close, and they had the lead for most of it.
Well this is concerning. I’ve got a PS5 and was going to buy a XSX this week so I could pre-order Starfield, now I might wait and see how this plays out. What’s going to happen with Starfield & Elder Scrolls 6 (whenever it’s released)? The Series S is going to fuck up everything.
There’s a difference between targeting 3-4 console SKUs and targeting 2. If you know what’s going to be your baseline from day 1, you test against that and scale up rather than the other way around. With a first party studio, this is a given.
I still don’t really understand this. Local splitscreen on a game the size of baldurs gate does make sense to me as being a technical hurdle, obviously rendering the game world twice is extremely taxing.
I keep seeing complaints about other games also, lots off people seem to be blaming the Series S for Remnant 2s slow xbox patches.
The Series S is basically an X with a weaker GPU, how are games (that also release on PC) not scalable enough to run on the S at 1080p when they can run at 4k on the X? I’d love a technical answer, if I replace my 3080 with a 1060 I could run the game on my PC and a lower resolution/graphic settings. How is this different from the Series X/S? I’m not a programmer/developer and I’d really like if someone could explain too me why the Series S is a problem because from my view point it’s lazy developers with unoptimised games
did you think of the possibility that even Larian’s low settings still can’t run on series S? Given the amount of assets I saw it’s actually quite possible that vram requirement are pretty high and that’s why PS5 have delay as well so they can figure out ways to consolidate textures used etc. Like they can’t even manage to let me stack rope or water bottle properly in inventory(maybe some asset id not cleaned up during development), so having excessive vram usage is fairly easy/common for content heavy games.
To be clear, I’m not trying to attack Larian here. I think splitscreen is a much bigger technical hurdle than other games have to deal with and delaying it on the Xbox was the right idea. But, the PC versions minimum requirements is 4GB vram and recommended 8GB vram. The Series S has 10GB vram. I’m more annoyed by the anti Series S rhetoric going around about it holding all games back, because most games with a PC release scale no problem
What you forgot to consider is that the Xbox has to share the RAM with the VRAM. The game on PC has 8GB RAM and 4GB VRAM as minimum. That is 12GB of RAM. The Series S only has 10GB. Which is 2GB less than minimum.
And with PC, there is only one view point at one time. You can have characters all over the map, but it only needs to render one at a time. Worst case it loads and unloads assets as you switch back and forth. With split screen console, gotta have both loaded at the same time.
The Xbox Seried S does not have 10GB VRAM it has 10GB VRAM/RAM that can be dynamically allocated to whatever the game needs.
Baldur’s Gate 3 needs 12GB combined VRAM/RAM at minimum. While the Xbox OS peobably doesn’t eat as much RAM as Windows does the difference is apparently not 2GB which leaves the Series S with not eniugh RAM to power the game.
As others mentioned for the Steamdeck Splitscreen was disabled, however that was likely done to save GPU performance, unlike the Series S the Steamdeck has enough RAM (16GB) to meet the minimum requirements.
Today’s Digital Foundry video suggests that this is far from the issue. Even the highest texture settings fit comfortably in 6 GB. IIRC it was around 4,5 - and consoles typically go for high rather than ultra settings.
Xbox series S have 8GB for game, so while BG3 might consume around 4-5GB on PC, console with unified memory couldn’t afford this. All the other assets(model/animation/audio clips/massive amount of icons) needs to be loaded as well. With split screen, you can have one person tries to go into conversation (that streaming in high res texture/face models, etc) while the other one stay and still render the world with all the things their camera can move around with.
I don’t know what to say other than maybe you should send Larian your resume and type “I am sure series S can be ported no issue, here is my numbers.” I am sure Larian would love to have simultaneous launch like PS5 and you can cut a really good deal if you can manage to pull that. BUT, you would have to pass the [Persuasion] check though, hope you have high cha to back it up. :)
It wasn’t delayed on the PS5; that was the original release plan. They moved the release UP for PC because they didn’t want to have to compete with Starfield’s release. Since that’s not coming out on PS5, they left the release date as is.
Split screen might be difficult for Series S due to memory constraints. Keep in mind that all assets both players are seeing must be loaded in memory simultaneously. This includes textures, models and animations. These assets are normally not loaded into the memory unless they’re visible by the camera. This becomes problematic if there are two cameras facing different parts of the map at the same time. Then you potentially need to double the memory requirements, which the Series S might not have.
If it was just a GPU difference, you’d be right it should be easy to just run it less pretty. But the memory limitations are the real issue. The X has 16 GB of memory and the S has 10 GB. And worse, the memory performance is drastically different. The X has 10 GB that runs at 560 GB/s and 6 that runs at 336 GB/s, where as the S has 8 GB at 224 GB/s and 2 GB at 56GB/s. (I did not miss a zero on the last value)
Xbox owners who are not following video game news every second of the day might find themselves buying a Series S version thinking they can play co-op with their friend who owns a Series X and they…can’t.
The problem here is implied to be local co-op between X and S players?
The main difficulty with split screen is that you need to be able to fit everything you need to render the scene into RAM, twice. Let’s go through some cases:
Just rendering to a higher resolution still lets you get away with the same amount of RAM if you use low-res textures, or a moderate increase because you’re using high-res textures, but only in the foreground – all you need is enough GPU compute power to push the pixels.
If you’re rendering VR both camera perspectives are going to be nearly identical, looking at the same objects, so RAM use is nearly identical to a single camera. Your frame time targets are much stricter in VR, you have to have high and very regular fps or people are going to puke, but again that’s compute pressure, not memory pressure.
In the split-screen case all bets are off: When players are at opposite sides of the map there may be literally zero meshes and textures in common between those two areas and you need twice the RAM for twice the amount of camera views. Nothing in common is the worst case, yes, but it’s bound to happen, and not leave PR in a situation where they have to say “We degraded performance when players are far apart to promote an atmosphere of closeness and cooperation”.
I think people would be mad. Imagine you play a game at your friend’s home on his Series X, and then proceed to buy the game so you can play multiplayer online, only to then have a certain features or game modes missing (say you get team death match but not battle royale because it uses too much memory).
It’s not that easy to communicate feature disparity. Some people probably don’t even know which Xbox they have.
At some point, it’s on you to know what your machine can and can’t handle. They put big letters on the front of each game telling you if it’s able to play on the series X and series S. It is right there lol. 
Also, with smart delivery, it would probably be trivial for Microsoft to have a modal pop up saying “this game is not optimized for series S and will not play, do you still want to purchase?”
No, the real issue here is developers (not their fault mind you). The moment Microsoft says “you don’t have to make it playable on the S,“ they simply won’t. Because why would you? 
S is required if you want to release a game on X. This means you cannot leverage the technical maximum of X, ever, because the game and all it’s features must run on S.
Yes we know. The comment at the top of this chain is talking about whether or not Microsoft could stop allowing that requirement and the potential blowback. Scroll to the top and start from the beginning you’ll see. 
Are you really not comprehending what I said? To re-iterate: the cost-to-returns ratio to spend man hours for certain features is not feasible because of how much time would need to be spent. This, at worst means some titles will simply not have feature X, and at average means the “worst first” development method means some games will just be worse, than they could have been, if it were merely X, PS5 and PC to consider.
I think we agree that MS bungled their approach and overestimated that cloud powered gaming would take off. But the reality of it is that S has become a thing that holds down game development, and like with BG3, gives sony pseudo exclusivity on consoles. It’s also likely what caused 343 to never ship couch-coop on Halo. It worked to some extent, but simply wasn’t worth the hours to finish for S.
Sooner or later MS has to tackle the issue somehow, and if I had to guess, they’ll rather push for a 0.5 gen jump instead of just screwing with people who bought S.
It’s easier to say a game is “newest gen optimized” than to backtrack on their promise.
If you are talking about something completely different, then no worries, carry on. This was merely my 2 cents on the topic.
I guess not and frankly I just don’t feel like speaking further with you given the completely needless hostility over what is likely just our talking at cross purposes. Have a good one.
I did not mean that in a hostile way. I asked because you kept replying to my comments, but disregarding their content while telling me to stop talking.
Based on the vote ratio, other people got the point just fine and didn’t feel like they needed to tell me to be silent or scroll back up.
Yep and a lot of times, we won’t even hear about it. It’ll just be another game that happens to be on Playstation and not Xbox, a defacto exclusive of sorts.
If a game can’t run on the Series S it means it also can’t be ported to the PC. Turn down the resolution and graphics settings until you get the same fps target and continue in with your day.
I would expect any game from a developer that complains about this to be so poorly optimized that it runs like it would on the Series S on the bigger consoles, and likely have garbage gameplay as well because they spent all of their budget on graphics.
Ok, but game they’re talking about here, Baldur’s Gate 3, runs just fine on PC. But they can’t get a specific feature to run on Series S that can run on X. You might want to read the article before commenting?
Problem is that it can turn into a slippery slope. Where should MS draw the line if they start to allow Series X exclusive content? Can developers cut entire game modes from the S version if they just ask kindly enough? Or maybe ignore the S version completely? The risk is that developers are going to abuse this opportunity.
MS wants people to see the Series S as a viable purchase. Why should you buy it when you won’t be able to play the next big release in full?
Yes, they should be able to say "this game doesn't run on series S" because it's significantly worse than the other options and it doesn't deserve the work it takes. It doesn't even have CPU parity, which is a much bigger deal than less GPU cores.
That will just betray all the customers who bought Series S. Will they upgrade to a Series X to play the next big thing? No, they will probably just buy a PS5 instead. Why should they continue to stay loyal with MS?
How is it any different than the number of games coming out that betray all the things they promised?
As a series S owner, I never expected this thing to be able to play modern AAA games for 7-10 years like previous gens. It’s delusional. It was $300 with a controller ffs lol
 I have a series S and even I think it’s unreasonable to expect full parity with a PS5/XSX after three or four years. It’s a $300 piece of hardware - it is remarkable what it does at its price point. It will be useful for a good 10 years, but it will not be able to keep up with new games after 5 at most in my opinion. It’ll be great for Indies or back catalogs.
They need to stop trying to make it functionally a series X and focus more on making it a gamepass/xcloud machine. As it is, it’s just an albatross around their neck.
Edit: Everything signaled that they were going to make it into a xcloud machine essentially. I’m not sure why they haven’t really pushed that harder.
I feel like their planning for it was really shortsighted - like they were hoping to get a as many people to buy the console as possible so they could “win” the console war early by having more people adopt it by putting out a cheap console people who didn’t want to spend so much would be drawn to, and weren’t really thinking beyond the first few years of the generation. Maybe they figured once they had the lead, they cold get people up upgrade or something. By they didn’t get the early lead and now the cheaper console means devs can’t really fully develop for Xbox. This will only get worse as more games start getting developed.
Microsoft is terrible at Gaming. I fear how everyone seems to be ok with them buying companies up and putting games on GamePass. It’s not going to end well. It’s not even going well if you really take notice.
It’s going great for me as the consumer with Game Pass. I have had over two years of essentially free games, because Microsoft rewards is too generous and easy to exploit. But I have no illusions about whether or not this consolidation is good for the industry. It simply isn’t. Yeah I guess y’all can call me out or whatever for using it anyway, but the series S with nearly free GamePass has just been too good for me as a dad with a full-time job and children. I’m still against the merger lol
I vote with my dollar where I can, but sorry, sometimes I make compromises just like anybody else. That being said, if I have to start actually paying for it, even at the current price, I’m out. So basically it depends on when they decide they don’t want rewards to stay around.
Some people can be pretty dogmatic about this stuff but yeah, I feel like it’s better than cash. Especially because the stuff I do for rewards gives them pretty useless data and I have all kinds of privacy stuff running in the background protecting my data
Its going great now. The monopoly they want is to increase charges on you and you have to pay forever to keep access. This is specifically the point of gamepass.
It may workout for you in the short rub, but you are still losing choice and value (you only rent access) in the process.
As many people already boycott sony consoles due to them paying extra to game studios to never release certain games on xbox, there’s literally no alternative currently.
And Game Pass is great, if they pump the price too much, it will just seize to be relevant and life goes on. AAA games are pretty dirt cheap considering prices have increased way slower than inflation and average game complexity.
But Microsoft is doing exactly the same thing, only instead of paying for exclusivity of one title, they’re buying developers so not just their next title, but all future releases will be exclusive, up until MS decides they’re not worth it and dumps them.
Sony absolutely participates in anti-consumer practices, but let’s not pretend that MS is any better.
What games have Sony bought exclusively too? I’ve seen them pay for development of several. Microsoft has taken away sequels from PlayStation in the past. That’s worse imo.
I think the problem they’ve given themselves is that they pushed it as a cheaper alternative to the X whilst also maintaining that it’ll be able to play the same games.
How do they go about messaging that can’t be the case going forward without pissing off those that spent the money on the S in the first place.
As I said in another comment, I own a series S, and I think it’s pretty ridiculous of me to expect a $300 piece of hardware to be able to play the latest games past five years. Even with what they have said, I just kind of assumed it can’t be true. 
I imagine in two or three years I will switch to dev mode and boot retro arch on it. 
Right but you’re probably a little more clued up to this sort of stuff than the average consumer who’s seen the marketing and thought ‘oh lovely, I don’t need a disk drive’ in this thing.
Both my brothers own the S. It’s an incredible little machine, but imo they screwed the proverbial pooch when they pushed this as a 1080p alternative to the more powerful Series X.
Only takes one though. As soon as someone looking at buying a console sees there’s a chance they’ll miss out, they’ll potentially make the decision to go with the Sony machine instead.
Microsoft already has an exclusive issue, this isn’t doing anything but compounding that issue.
I think hogwarts sold so well because of the JK backlash. Brought a lot of attention to the game. It was a good game though. Baldurs is getting attention because of how good it is. And treating your customers with respect goes a long way. I just bought DOS 1 & 2 because of how much I’m enjoying BG3 and wanted to vote with my wallet. Plus I hear they’re also really good.
I think Hogwarts sold well because it was a genuinely good game which captured the spirit of the franchise, a decent story line, an explorable world and had some decent combat mechanics.
I think the JKR boycott did help in an underhanded way because most of the protesting was shrill straw man character assassination. People tuned it out and bought the game anyway based on word of mouth. The real losers in this nonsense were gaming websites who undermined their own credibility by boycotting the game or scoring it badly just and turning the review into a diatribe about gender politics.
How could you learn anything about what people think of microtransactions from the success of a game that doesn’t have them? If a beloved franchise added a sequel with microtransactions in it and that sequel tanked, then maybe you’d have a case. From the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 the most you could conclude is “people will still buy a game that doesn’t have microtransactions,” which is not particularly revelatory.
A bunch of AAA games that heavily feature microtransactions are smash hits and made millions of dollars. Sure, people complain about it, but they also purchase tons of them (may not be the same people, mind you). I’m pretty sure we can conclude that not all people hate microtransactions. Hell, publishers will look at Baldur’s Gate 3 and probably go “man, this game is good but if they put some paid cosmetics in there they could have made even more money.”
All 100% correct unfortunately. These companies put in micro transactions because they make a boatload of money off of them. End of story. Til that changes, they will continue to shoehorn them into games to sustain the unsustainable infinite growth/profit model. Until pissing us off costs them more than they gain from it, it ain’t gonna change.
Then fuck it. All the people who want microtransactions, or don’t care about the quality of the medium enough to stop engaging with shitty practices, can have them. There are plenty of developers making games that care enough about the things they make that I’ll be happy to buy from. We’ve reached a point where the big studios will spend three years and a quarter of a billion dollars putting out 7/10 games that look great in trailers and don’t function on PC that exist alongside solo devs who make the games that look at home on PS1 and offer a better experience than anything Blizzard has made in the last decade. Even if my wallet’s vote doesn’t matter to the big guys, it doesn’t have to as long as it’s enough to support people whose passion isn’t exploited to make a just barely par product.
Don’t get hyped, don’t preorder, don’t buy games until they’re fixed. You can’t change the industry but you don’t have to support it.
Yeah, that statement is so dumb. Even if it’s hugely successful, a game of this type is made for a niche audience. That niche audience does hate microtransactions but they’re in no way representative of the mainstream.
I think, with 700k concurrent players, we need to recognize cRPGs may not be as niche as we previously thought. However, your point stands: this isn’t going to hurt anyone’s revenue from MTX.
I feel like microtransactions are “ok” for people on general as long as the game is good. If the game is well made, has a soul, and not a cash grab, people tend to not care about microtransactions. Except the occasional “fuck, this is 10e?”. Like path of exile for instance.
But if the game is half baked, released waaaay too early because of higher ups said that the need money now and not 6 months from now, THEN they become an issue. Games belong to this category soooo of then these days that it’s just what happens. But the microtransactions are not the reason, they just exasperate the issue.
If a great game like Elden ring would’ve had cosmetic sets you could buy, would it have undermined the “greatness” of the game? I really don’t see it happening. Unless they’re like super aggressive or meant to trivialise the game, like, continue fighting the boss only for 2e! Here’s a popup mentioning this each time you die.
If a great game like Elden ring would’ve had cosmetic sets you could buy, would it have undermined the “greatness” of the game? I really don’t see it happening.
I agree with you that people mainly care about the game being good. However a game’s budget is more or less fixed. If From had made a bunch of cosmetic sets it would be taking away resources from making the “main” game, and it may not have been as great and polished as it is.
Also, once you have microtransactions in a game, there’s going to be a temptation to maximize the revenue gained from them, which can lead to the aggressive strategies you mention.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to do mtx without ruining the game, but it’s difficult. Without mtx, the only thing you have to maximize your revenue is to make the game as good as possible, and so everyone involved in the game’s development is aligned towards that goal.
Once you add mtx, there will be people involved whose main goal is to maximize revenue from the mtx (and I’m not saying those people are evil or want the game to be bad; they’re just doing their job). And so a sort of tug of war starts to happen between devoting resources and design decisions to make the game better, or getting people to buy your cosmetics. Finding the right balance through that mess is difficult.
The reason cosmetic microtransactions are so prolific is that their fixed costs are low and the return on investment is high. It wouldn't have affected Elden Ring's development much.
Hot take: mtx are a good thing as long as they don’t cause a significant imbalance in gameplay. There’s a reason the price of a AAA game has remained roughly $60 for nearly two decades in spite of increasing development costs and inflation.
People who purchase in game add-ons subsidize those who don’t.
The industry can’t learn this lesson from their customers, because they didn’t get the bad idea from their market. It’s a society-wide trend, a symptom of a whole economy under the control of a narrow coproate elite that knows little to nothing about the industries they control or the products they produce. They contribute nothing to the productive process. They only work to streamline the parasitism that infests our society.
I have experienced this on the production end, as well. I used to work in pest control. For a brief period of my career, I was lucky enough to work for a midsized regional company, grown from a small family business, that was focused on solving actual customer problems. We did tons of one shot work. We did do quarterly and bimonthly service, but there was no particular pressure to subscribe, or to cajole customers who wanted to cancel service (because we’d successfully dealt with the problem) into continuing service.
Then the elderly couple that owned the company sold us to a global megaconglomerate (one of the “Big Three”). Over the course of a year, our focus changed. “Recurring revenue” was now the watchword, which is a tough fit in an inherently seasonal industry. And the reason they do this, in pest control, in game development, in every industry that can potentially produce any kind of surplus wealth, is because the owners (“investors”) neither know nor care about any of the details of the industries they control. All they want is regular and ever-increasing revenues, in exchange for nothing at all. You can’t even say it’s in exchange for access to their savings, because though there is a little actual savings in the system, that’s chump change compared to the ever growing wealthy elite that controls our society and devours our productivity.
Beautifully written and entirely spot on. The question is whether we will do anything about it. We probably have 10-30 years before this elite will entrench themselves forever with some kind of robot police that truly can’t be overthrown. (And it’s not like anyone is rising up now, even though the power is clearly with the workers)
And then this elite will Habsburg-jaw themselves into oblivion and all that remains of humanity are machines built in the name of shareholder profits. What a sad way for things to end.
Or, alternatively, they’ll ruin the earth’s climate in their selfishness and greed and either find a way to leave the planet and abandon the plebs to die, or more likely, die right alongside us as the climate collapses and ecological disaster wipes out the human race.
I see a different future. The tendency of wealth to be drawn upwards as position comes to replace labor as the primary means of gaining wealth ultimately puts a cap on progress. It’s a soft cap, meaning it might happen sooner or happen later, but it will happen sooner or later. Eventually, the imbalance reaches a tipping point, where the slightest jolt to the system sends the entire thing crashing down. Maybe people get pissed enough that general rebellion breaks out. Maybe the population becomes sufficiently stressed and undernourished and, therefore, immunocompromised that a global pandemic goes well beyond COVID into Bubonic Plague territory. Maybe peoples faith in the system becomes so thoroughly damaged that law breaks down generally, forcing those ultra rich to devote so many resources to security the people providing the security become the new elite. Allowing “position” (in Classical Economic parlance, “Land”) to be in itself a source of private revenue sows the seeds of destruction for a progressing society.
Of course, once enough people die and enough capital is destroyed, society starts over again, going once again through an age where labor is in the drivers seat, until population and capital base recovers.
Earning revenue by caring for your customers and the industry takes strategic direction, time, money and effort, and the kind of effort needed is different between industries.
Earning revenue by sucking the living shit out of a company works (at least temporarily) for any industry and a multinational C-suite executive can employ it to any industry to give themselves the guise of success.
It’s like instead of cooking and following a recipe, just take all the ingredients and stick it into a blender and call the smoothie a meal. You’ll get sustenance but you ruined what made food interesting.
Isn’t the whole point of pest control to kill ‘em [the pests] dead? Like, to have recurring business from the same customer one would have to not actually solve their problem. Barring any reintroduction of pests with seasonality as you suggested, or otherwise.
That article completely misses the forrest for the trees.
It’s a complete game. It was created with vision, passion, love, and complete creative freedom. It has a great story and interesting characters. It provides lots of player agency. It is unflinchingly candid, mature, and uncensored. Your choices, actions, and inaction ACTUALLY MATTERS. There is no DRM. There are no live service strings. You can play alone and/or with friends. There are no strangers or PvP to ruin your game. And yes, there are also no micro-transactions.
The lesson that BG3 offers isn’t just one thing… it’s a LOT of things. But the best way to sum it up is: it’s a great game and it treats players/customers with respect.
I have avoided reading much about the game. I am loving it, but I have no idea at what point in the game that I currently am. It could end in the next ten minutes and I’ll be satisfied with my purchase, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another 10+ hours. This is what I was waiting for Bethesda to release as the next Skyrim successor if they hadn’t decided to milk that cow until troll cheese came out. It’s everything I want in a game. Story, gameplay, length, affordability, fun, and no microtransactions making my efforts feel worthless.
I legitimately have no idea how much more game I have. I finally got to the edge of Baldurs Gate and have been chilling here for like 10 hours, haven’t even gotten inside the city proper yet.
I think the most important part is that it launched without DRM on GOG and was able to be pirated from day 1 and it STILL was a huge success because people knew that the game isn’t trying anything shady to get even more money from you
It’s just something people actually want to support and not like people feel like even if they buy the game they only have half an experience if they don’t spend more money later
I really hope the next financial report from Larian is making people think differently about the necessity of putting aggressive DRM in their games
People don’t pirate because they don’t want to pay - they pirate because they don’t trust the game to bit pull more shady shit later and not be worth it in the end
So far, every article I’ve seen about Baldur’s Gate 3’s effect on the gaming industry has been horse shit. Other studios and publishers are not “panicking,” they’re not going to rethink microtransactions, and they’re not going to be daunted by this release; some devs have said as much already along the lines of “Yeah don’t expect this breadth and scope from us going forward, because it doesn’t work for our games.”
This game is not the industry-spanning “gotcha” these writers have been trying to make it out to be. AAA devs or publishers are going to continue their nonsense because people will continue to buy their shit anyway, and they know it.
All that said, BG3 is the best game I’ve played in a number of years and hands-down the best cRPG I’ve ever played. It smokes Divinity, Icewind Dale, the previous BG games, NWN, etc. So if any studios do happen to have a positive takeaway from this, maybe we’ll see at least some of that polish in games down the line.
It’s also a rare example of where a massive budget without restrictions (relatively speaking) can lead to amazing results.
Usually one of two things happens: the publisher is tired of dumping money into a project then force it to market too early, or scope creep happens and the developers bite off way more than they can chew and there’s nothing they can do past a certain point.
Larian managed to dodge both of these bullets. Not by luck, of course. But they dodged them nonetheless.
forbes.com
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