Baldur’s Gate 3 has come out to huge acclaim from almost everyone, including us. Apart from the fact that it is a majestic game, with huge concepts well executed, a clear love of its genre and top-drawer writing, the game is also attracting attention and admiration for the way developers Larian Studios chose to make it.
Coming in at R799 on PC on Steam, Baldur’s Gate 3 is actually on the cheaper end of an industry Blockbuster, referred to as a Triple-A game. Despite this, Larian chose to do something 90s gamers considered absolutely normal, but modern gamers have not seen in an age – package the full experience, all-inclusive, at that one price from the get-go. There is no in-game store to purchase extra characters, quests or cosmetics, and Larian says there are even no plans for future expansions or DLCs. Gamers just got everything, all at once, in an almost completely bug-free package and they are deeply grateful.
In one move, Larian studios has leapt to the top of almost everyone’s lists of favourite studios and ensured that no matter what they develop next, it will become a booming megahit. But why is this one, seemingly simple thing such a big deal?
When gaming studios were first founded, they were generally run by gamers themselves. Developers who loved games, and wanted to make the things they themselves wanted to play. Games were a success or a failure based on whether they managed to reach their audience. Studios were generally not, what one would call, well-run. They sometimes made profit and more often than not eventually hit a dud and went out of business.
As the industry has matured and become the booming machine it currently is, investors started to take notice. Leadership began to be drawn from other industries and entrenched business practices began to take hold. And it only made sense, as per the report by SuperData Research, the Gaming Industry was valued at $159.3 billion in 2020; while the whole Movie Industry came in at $19.1 billion. This makes the Gaming Industry around eight times bigger than the Movie Industry and growing.
The problem here is that shareholders are now involved, and shareholders demand a constantly upward-trending line of profit. CEOs are brought in to ensure that revenue is always increasing, and this, in turn, leads to decisions being made to reap short-term profit over long-term success. The result in the gaming industry has been catastrophic.
Gamers have been increasingly expected to shell out for games, and then pay more to download content that had already been developed but never shipped with the original product. They were then coerced into downloading even more cosmetic features from online stores, battle passes that gave access to even more content they should have received from the initial purchase, and monthly registration fees.
While most companies dabble in some of these features, the worst offenders of this behaviour are Activision Blizzard, who when they aren’t fending off sexual harassment accusations, indulge in all of them. Diablo 4 is a case in point, an alleged role-playing game, that costs R1650 for the standard edition, where anything beyond the generic armours and weapons that might give characters personality is locked behind exorbitantly costed paywalls. They charge players for the headstone designs for their permanently dead characters, and you can even skip parts of the tedious levelling process (you know, playing the game) if you pay enough. Activision Blizzard has become the master of creating games to get players addicted and then paying and paying again through microtransactions and their audience is getting beyond frustrated with it.
They are not alone, however, as companies like EA (whose Star Wars Battlefront 2 Loot boxes caused governments worldwide to change gambling laws) and Ubisoft (where a game like For Honor requires $800 if you want to unlock all the content) have gladly leapt on the bandwagon. And offline entertainment companies have noticed – even Wizards of the Coast, creators of Magic the Gathering and D&D have been trying to milk increasing amounts of wealth from fans through expanded products, increased prices, a predatory online version and other profit-taking behaviour.
There is little doubt that these companies will suffer in the long run. Literally tens of thousands of people no longer play World of Warcraft, Magic the Gathering, EA Sports FC (As FIFA is now called) and others, because the price got too high – meanwhile, the companies hope they can keep fleecing the customers they call “whales” who their stats would suggest have endless money to burn on the game and their companies’ futures.
Enter Larian, sweet, breath of fresh-air Larian, to whom every gamer should be on bended knee to thank. They are already receiving backlash for choosing to give gamers what they want. One studio head Xalavier Nelson was quick to take to Twitter to say that Larian is an anomaly and a business model that can not succeed. He suggested that if the industry went the way of Larian, many studios would be forced to close.
And to that, I say good. Let them close if they must. But I don’t believe that following this model will close them at all. For the first time in decades, I and people I know, have bought a game at full price instead of on-sale. It is a deserving game of the year because it is so good, but doubly so, because of its business model. Baldur’s Gate 3 is luring in those gamers who, like me, have felt disenfranchised by gaming and the microtransaction culture, and is making sales again to the people the industry in its greed forgot – the non-whales, the ordinary gamers. That, at this stage in the industry, feels like a very profitable move indeed.
