It did and it didn't, there's two things to judge on a game whether it's successful in my view, yes there's the sale, that's the obvious one. However the amount of actual players playing is another, for me, when it comes to the long term health of a business, you've really got to make games that people will keep coming back to. Otherwise it's nothing more than a flavour of the month title.
If you're a dev, okay, that's fine if you're just using the games industry to get yourself a ridiculous nest egg for the rest of your life. However if you want a real legacy? Nah. Let's be honest as well, how many of you guys have even talked about games released in the past 5 - 6 years all that much after release? Bet you haven't have you? It's all about the classic titles because those are the ones that people keep coming back to in favour of the modern titles that get quickly forgotten.
Weirdly enough, I have at least two games in my Steam library that are over 5 years old, still being developed, both of which had major releases recently with more to come.
7 Days to Die doesn't count. That game is an absolute freak of nature.
You're always going to find exceptions to the rule, though. And it's telling that neither game are from Triple-A studios.
Ok, so going by the metrics in the graph here it seems to indicate more people were and are playing BG3, even higher than AAA studios on release. How is that not "successful"?
And as a note, BG3 has half the budget of Starfield and again by the graph above, more than 4 times the players at launch.
Not every piece of media is going to be the Mona Lisa or Original Star Wars, but in this case a relatively small studio on a small budget outperformed the AAA studios in this graph. I don't know in what universe that's a failure.
Yeah I'm technically agreeing with you, however I question where people will be even playing this game still by the end of the year which is my main point. For instance even Divinity Original Sin 2 by comparison I fancy having a playthrough of because there's still options I haven't tried out like races and such as that's a genuinely good game. Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't really have that level of replayability, that's the word I'm thinking of, replayability.
I mean I finally managed to ahem, 'acquire' a copy of the original Rome Total War, which I know is going to play so much better than the shitty enhanced version. You don't exactly see people clamouring for another playthrough of BG3 even from the people who actually liked it. Not to mention that Larian Studios are still shamelessly bug fixing.
I mean, I'd talk about my recent games more but they aren't ever relevant to the discussion.
Because when is Against the Storm, Book of Demons, or Symphony of War ever going to come up? They don't get controversy bucks or FOMO triggers going, so they just never happen because we don't have consistent video game discussion threads. Just a random one pops up every now and then and its usually buried by outrage farmers.
Shit on your own post I wrote a long screed about Triangle Strategy just a few days ago, a modern AAA game I just went back to and likely will many times over the years. Because for once there was a topic where a non-classic was relevant to the discussion.
You're right about how the falloff works, but should we expect story-driven single-player games to have a constant ongoing player base? I'm sure the devs would love that but they don't expect it. That's always been the market even before the AAA explosion. Studios have to keep making something new or die.
Absolutely agree. OP makes it sound like the game flopped though when it clearly didn't. It's the equivalent of putting your head in the sand.
It did and it didn't, there's two things to judge on a game whether it's successful in my view, yes there's the sale, that's the obvious one. However the amount of actual players playing is another, for me, when it comes to the long term health of a business, you've really got to make games that people will keep coming back to. Otherwise it's nothing more than a flavour of the month title.
If you're a dev, okay, that's fine if you're just using the games industry to get yourself a ridiculous nest egg for the rest of your life. However if you want a real legacy? Nah. Let's be honest as well, how many of you guys have even talked about games released in the past 5 - 6 years all that much after release? Bet you haven't have you? It's all about the classic titles because those are the ones that people keep coming back to in favour of the modern titles that get quickly forgotten.
Weirdly enough, I have at least two games in my Steam library that are over 5 years old, still being developed, both of which had major releases recently with more to come.
7 Days to Die doesn't count. That game is an absolute freak of nature.
You're always going to find exceptions to the rule, though. And it's telling that neither game are from Triple-A studios.
Ok, so going by the metrics in the graph here it seems to indicate more people were and are playing BG3, even higher than AAA studios on release. How is that not "successful"?
And as a note, BG3 has half the budget of Starfield and again by the graph above, more than 4 times the players at launch.
Not every piece of media is going to be the Mona Lisa or Original Star Wars, but in this case a relatively small studio on a small budget outperformed the AAA studios in this graph. I don't know in what universe that's a failure.
Yeah I'm technically agreeing with you, however I question where people will be even playing this game still by the end of the year which is my main point. For instance even Divinity Original Sin 2 by comparison I fancy having a playthrough of because there's still options I haven't tried out like races and such as that's a genuinely good game. Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't really have that level of replayability, that's the word I'm thinking of, replayability.
I mean I finally managed to ahem, 'acquire' a copy of the original Rome Total War, which I know is going to play so much better than the shitty enhanced version. You don't exactly see people clamouring for another playthrough of BG3 even from the people who actually liked it. Not to mention that Larian Studios are still shamelessly bug fixing.
I mean, I'd talk about my recent games more but they aren't ever relevant to the discussion.
Because when is Against the Storm, Book of Demons, or Symphony of War ever going to come up? They don't get controversy bucks or FOMO triggers going, so they just never happen because we don't have consistent video game discussion threads. Just a random one pops up every now and then and its usually buried by outrage farmers.
Shit on your own post I wrote a long screed about Triangle Strategy just a few days ago, a modern AAA game I just went back to and likely will many times over the years. Because for once there was a topic where a non-classic was relevant to the discussion.
You're right about how the falloff works, but should we expect story-driven single-player games to have a constant ongoing player base? I'm sure the devs would love that but they don't expect it. That's always been the market even before the AAA explosion. Studios have to keep making something new or die.
We shouldn't expect it yes, but I feel like that's something that all devs should aim for ultimately, too many games are just cash grabs these days.