Baldur’s Gate 3 boss says gamers don’t want mass subscriptions
Baldur's Gate 3 director and Larian CEO Swen Vincke reacts to the idea that we should get used to subscriptions, saying content is king.
Always good to see someone in the industry push back on all of these shitty tactics the AAA publishers want to push.
I'm at 750 hours in this game which I spent $70 on. More games like this please. Even if they're multi years apart I'd rather play a game like BG3 that has immense replayability than some random looter shooter that is trying to mine my wallet using every dark pattern known to humanity.
I swore off buying 'new' games close to their release dates because I was sick of overpriced, unfinished games that are just trying to squeeze every cent out of me. Then BG3 came out and everyone raved how great it was, but I stuck to my principles and said I'd play it a year or so after its release. Then someone pointed out to me that the game plays well, has no charge for online play, doesn't have microtransactions, and is complete. So I bought it, figuring that this is the type of game we should be rewarding, and I've not been disappointed.
I don't even care about the replayability. I can see myself at some point going for another run at BG3, but that's a big commitment and I think I'm going to play BG1 and 2 before then, and plenty of other games.
I care if it's an interesting and enjoyable experience. I'd gladly play another Outer Wilds, even though it's hardly replayable, because it was such a good and unique experience. I don't care to play yet another Assassin's Creed or whatever other garbage that isn't interesting after you've tried it once and also purposefully wastes your time with stuff that is not designed to improve the experience, only playtime.
I bought it when the alpha was released.
Like two years of act 1 had me around 200 hours before it even released. Act 1 did seem bigger back then tho, the intro especially.
I've moved from PC to PS5 since and I'm definitely going to rebuy on PS5 eventually. It's the only game I still play on PC these days.
I'm interested. What made you switch recently? Seems like most migrate over to PC from console and not the other way around. For cozy couch play I've gotten myself a 50' hdmi cable and a wireless controller, with an apk on my phone that let's me control the pc so I don't have to go back to it to start a game or anything.
I have yet to play it, but I can't wait to get my hands on it.
I'd happily pay, say, $10 for a dlc that adds actual content when the base game is absolutely solid or excellent. What I won't pay for is excessively expensive dlc or dlc that adds very little. I am also heavily unlikely to purchase any dlc that is poorly reviewed, even for a good game.
Shame things like that are so rare. Hoping BG3's success opens the doors again.
FromSoft immediately springs to mind for DLC I'll happily throw cheddar at. They always add a hefty chunk of new weapons/armor, new areas to explore, and spicy new boss fights that fuck my shit up.
Heavily biased, they're one of my favorite developers, but definitely never regret throwing money at FromSoft crew.
people generally dont have the time to go through an rpg, hence why rpgs in general are seen as niche in terms of overall sales as a genre. this includes mmos, where mmos were a lot more plentiful 2 or even a decade ago, compared to now.
Tbh I really enjoy shorter games that are reasonably priced.
I probably only find the time to play 1-2 150+ hr game a year. The rest of my free time is spent socializing, dealing with shit like college, or playing shorter games that I can knock out in multiple 1-2 hour sessions within two weeks
I hate how so many games are demanding of your time today, or feed off that annoying FOMO feeling.
I'm happy that I know Baldurs gate will always be there and I'm really not going to miss out on anything important. Maybe I'll get to it next year lol
The campaign only takes like 40 hours maybe. 60 for your first run if you’re an explorer. I only have so much time in it because I want to see every cut scene and that takes multiple characters. You could definitely play BG3 in shorter sessions. It’s very slow paced if you want it to be.
Suprisingly human take from a Baldur's Gate 3 boss. Usually, they just wait in a chamber and want to slice you in half.
Fuck everything about them having like 3 actions while I get one at a 35% hit rate. Goddamn...
Are you effectively synergising your party? Martial characters have multiple actions, while casters typically get one.
If you’re frustrated with 35% hit chances then you could focus on using some members of your party to debuff the enemy and buff the hard hitters; this has much better damage output than all 4 party members just slinging attacks with hit chances below 65%. If you want to just blast with all 4 characters then that’s a valid play but it isn’t guaranteed to be viable.
Reevaluate your party and where you're attacking from(height, darkness, etc). I have a couple level 8 or 9 fighters that have multi-attack, so it evens out a bit soon enough. Under some circumstances, with a high initiative, multi-attack, then action surge, my fighters can debilitate an enemy before they even know they're in a fight.
I do like the gamepass model, but just like Netflix, it only works because it's the most diverse, as soon as more publishers make their own it will suck again. No I will not pay 10x the price of a subscription for a new AAA game, indies are the only ones still having fair prices in Brazil.
Even now Gamepass is only worth it for one or two months to play some indie games, maybe Yakuza if you're into that. It just doesn't make sense to have a long time subscription there like it used to be with Netflix a while ago. Most of the good stuff is older and most people already own that, I suppose.
gamepass has decent value if you have a group of friends who like to jump around playing random coop titles, as you have a low risk value critea to try a game to see if youd like it as a group.
I disagree since I love indies too, so it also saves me a lot of money that they have new ones every month, I can also try early access titles without getting scammed.
Movie industry right now: oof, a hundred competing services was a bad idea, now what do we do?
Games industry right now: let's do what the movie industry did
And just like netflix, the goal is to get people hooked on the service and up prices/squeeze out money in other ways once they hit a good amount of market share.
GamePass right now is unsustainable. That's why Microsoft never talks about it making profit, and they obscure GamePass in their financials by rolling it in to another business grouping. On top of that, there's also Phil Spencer in the FTC leaks saying not as many people have signed up as he'd have liked.
The industry is already squeezing us by charging literally 10 times the sub price for a new AAA game.
Love the immediate contrast between this and the dude from Ubisoft where he claimed that people just need to get used to not owning games. Larian is definitely the way to run a company.
It's already been normalized for music and videos for people to subscribe instead of owning. It may just be a matter of time for video games, or it may be that there are real lasting differences between video games and other types of media.
Of course, there are several sorts of games you can't own already, and many games that are all but inaccessible as abandonware type things, so that process is at least somewhat started.
The indie scene in Video Gaming is FAR stronger than the Indie Scene for at least movies, which I think will cement the ownership vs subscription in a stronger way than music and videos had. Digital ownership does have its worrying traits, but I still think Video Game ownership will stay strong at least as long as Gaben is alive, past that, if Valve DOES nosedive, well the internet'll still internet
It's more or less the case that all the music streaming services have all the music, so you can pick the one that offers the best balance of price, features, and other things like amount of money they pay out to artists, and then listen to whatever you want. That works pretty well for consumers, and streaming services don't get to dictate what music gets made.
TV and movie streaming services have basically ended up in a situation where everything's on exactly one service, and you need to pick which ones you pay for based on which have the things you most want to watch, even when that means tolerating an interface that barely works or annoys you with ads or trailers for things you'd never watch. This works fairly crappily for consumers, and streaming services pick everything.
Video game subscriptions seem to be going for the latter approach, and so overall, things are probably going to suck. Hopefully, nothing important ends up solely available via subscription, though, and experiencing the sucking remains opt-in.
Not that I want to defend Ubisoft, but I interpreted that statement similarly to this one, just from a different perspective.
Ubisoft wants to do the subscription model but the exec said it's just not viable until gamers are willing to accept it. I didn't get an implication that they would make gamers accept it, I think that's what he was ultimately saying, it won't happen until they do. Though tbf, I didn't read that article, maybe he said more that made the statement less ambiguous. The quote in the title just seemed like a statement of fact rather than a statement of agenda. Ubisoft doesn't have the power to make gamers accept that and acting like they do will hurt their bottom line rather than help it (is how I interpreted that statement).
Stop defending the trash or giving them the benefit of the doubt. Ubisoft is about profit, not making games good, or better or for your enjoyment. They 100% want to push subscription models.
When's the last time a good honest company pulled this kinda horse shit.. https://streamable.com/5np9o5
Companies need to earn trust, and that trust should be removed the minute the try to pull shit like what's in the video link, or other bullshit.
He is our man in shining armor........literally.
The problem is it gets polluted by greed and the publishers want it both ways: they want £60 front, for half a game. The second half of the game is sliced into 3 - for an extra £20 a pop.
Sony with Spiderman 3 be like: 50$ part 1, 50$ part 2, 50$ multiplayer, for those out of the loop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UubAtaGfqHE
Forcing subscription would probably be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I have no desire to pay for a gaming subscription. I play one or two games at a time, tops. The excuse that it gives me access to an entire library of games I DGAF about is the same bullshit cable companies did. Give you one or two channels (games) you want and a bunch of shit you don’t want so you have to subscribe to the next service to get the one or two things you want from them.
I want freedom. Offer both so everyone can pick the model that best matches their usage pattern. A GamePass+GeForceNow combo is nice if you want to play a diverse library of games without having to install terrabytes of game data. Also if you only want to play stuff a short while (hello ADHD), a subscription might be better than full price.
But again: freedom. I don't want to be forced into subscriptions but neither would I want someone to forbid me from subscribing.
Totally agree. However, I think the word you're describing is choice rather than freedom. You're always free to purchase what you want, nobody forcing you. It's just good to have choices.
Not sure what happened but it looks like your comment got tripled posted.
Subscriptions need to go down, down, down, down the river.
I won't subscribe or buy micros, I only want to play fun games
Subscription games to me are only good when there's nothing good. Something to do in between.
They're never on the same level of quality as a finished product. Even for the high points that are really high, the low points are disappointingly low
Because games are made subscription-based for profit, so the incentive isn't making a good game or giving the players more content or whatever.
The games that want to give the players more actual content have no subscription, like Terraria, Deep Rock Galactic, Stardew Valley or other fantastic games that keep getting free updates.
Maybe you could exclude early WoW from that statement but current WoW definitely fits in the greedy bag too.
At this point I'm thinking about buying BG3 even though it's not the typicla game for me, just to support the devs and their good mentality towards gamers 🙏
I think I need to buy a certain game juat to support a certain point of view...
I'll only ever sub to one game at a time personally.
Basically this... Like, I'm okay with games wanting subscribers if they're online multiplayer things that have regular expenses and need to push out content. However, most of that stuff has figured out ways to avoid using subscriptions.
So, I really don't want normal ... I supply all the electricity and hardware games ... to be on a subscription, that's just silly.
Spoke to my adult offspring who said yes, he has whatever iteration of PS, but plays single player games, because with work and familial responsibilities, who has money to waste on subscriptions when time is limited?
You also can't step away from a multi-player game whenever you want, which is a huge problem when you have kids and a spouse. Your attention will almost always be needed the moment things heat up in your game.
Forced subscriptions are the new cancer.
Honest question, outside of MMOs, do we have any forced subscriptions? I suppose battle pass is a sub of sorts.
Aah, you meant that boss.. makes sense.
Woah newsflash to me.
He gets me, although oddly enough I have paid for subscriptions in the past for a short while and didn't hate it, but for some reason the idea of paying for a gaming subscription feels like such a rip-off compared to other things like Disney+ and Netflix. Those provide very bite-sized bits of content, just an hour or two of my day to fully take in an individual show or movie. Whereas with a game, it can take me weeks or months to complete something like that with the limited time I have available in a day.
So paying a monthly subscription to only play an hour or two of gaming per day vs only watching an hour or two on a tv just feels so much different. In the space of a month, I might watch dozens of different shows on a streaming service, but if I were paying for a subscription gaming service, I might still be on the same damn game that whole time. It just doesn't feel like it's a good use of my funds.
