‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

So, the whole middle management caste, that pushed for simplified, broader appeal consumer friendly games while naying any attempt to revive old games, is currently packing its cardboard boxes and lining up for the exit?

Seems like both are making $$$

So, its okay if you leave money on the table when it comes to business decisions?

It's called "opportunity cost". Companies don't have infinite budgets, so they have to make such decisions.

I dunno, go look at the top selling games of 2022. Largely old games/franchises, many over 20 years old. I'd argue video gaming is pretty stale because game companies play it safe and mostly recycle old games. Bless Elden Ring, one of the only big new games that wasn't a sequel last year.

Madden - 34 years old

Pokemon - 26 years old

FIFA - 29 years old

Mario Kart - 30 years old

Call of Duty 20 years old this year! (23 if you count back to Medal of Honor)

God of War - 17 years old

Gran Turismo - 26 years old

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1285658/top-ranked-video...

Middle management usually doesn't set corporate strategy like innovate, franchise development, revive old titles.

>Bless Elden Ring, one of the only big new games that wasn't a sequel last year.

Elden Ring may not be a narrative sequel, but it is definitely a mechanical sequel in the line of From Software games stretching back to Demon Souls in 2009, which makes the series 14 years old. It's innovative in its series, but I wouldn't praise it for a wealth of conceptual originality.

There's also an inherent bias with looking at the Top Sellers - for a game to be bought by lots of people, it has to be known about by lots of people. Brand recognition makes that easier, so even if studios are innovating all the time, you would still expect existing series to show up much more than new IPs. It would take an exceptionally strong game, with good marketing, to break into that list.

How is middle management controlling this? I would think this is a director level decision.

I think it’s unrealistic to expect a non-franchise game to be a top seller. Every franchise has years of player base, nostalgia, marketing, lore, etc that lead to sales, not just the merits of the game. Additionally, most franchise games are data driven refinements on past recipes that work. Listen to feedback, make changes. And often times players buy franchise games with the expectation that it’s mostly the same but a little different, and in some cases that’s desirable.

It doesn’t mean franchises make the best games, it’s just unsurprising they’re top sellers.

Does Cyberpunk 2077 count as 0 years or 32 years old when it released in 2020?

FWIW I don't think it's necessarily bad that a old game franchises continue to get made.

I don't have experience with every franchise here but at lest with God of War and Call of Duty, there are lots of gameplay and graphical innovations that get made despite the game being largely the same at the 10,000 foot level.

On top of that a lot of people enjoy these games and are willing to pay for a version that works on modern platforms with higher res textures/models and quality of life improvements.

Mission Impossible and Fast and the Furious franchises are approaching 20 movie sequels between them, but people are willing to pay to see them because its fun and each movie brings something new to the table. Some Anime franchises have hundreds of episodes.

It's like ordering a burger or Mac & Cheese. You like it and you know what you're going to get, and sometimes that's what you want.

Yes because they are fun and it works.

They have also changed a lot, compare God of War 1 to the recent one. They are completely different, and I would say newer is worse. I miss the rage.

Compare something like CoD1 and MW2... totally different. They both have you shoot military guns, I guess.

Eh, BattleBit Remastered? 3 guys indy devs, doing a rollback to the good times?

Elden Ring is peak Demon Souls which was peak Kings Field (FromSoftware 1994). The lack of gameplay and qol enhancements makes Kings Field a weird boring game, but after having playing the serie (I-IV) during the pandemic I can say that the scope and purpose of these games are the same.

While there are some very difficult arcade games, Kings Field, SoulsBorne and Elden Ring build a landscape around difficulty in such a way that it becomes an inherent property of the world in which the games are set. The embodiment of difficulty is where these games shine;

- the landscape is a maze, and every new place you encounter needs you to overcome a sort of soft anxiety (Souls games were weird in this sense, every new place you encountered was a relief because it meant you were done with the previous place; but at the same time it was a chore because you became so accustomed to the previous place (LITERALLY HELL) that it felt like you were leaving your house for the unknown wilderness)

- the choreographic patterns of the enemies were exactly the same. You beat a boss forever, on NG+ every boss you encounter is a joke because you feel at home. The way enemies move makes you run backwards, and you feel like you're trapped in a no-match boxing contest where you're a salmon swimming around white sharks; until you realize that all of the mess happening is nothing else than scripted patterns and animated 3d meshes. The bosses seem strong because they seem random or 'human". Pontiff and Malenia seemed to me so spontaneous and virtuosos that it felt impossible to beat them on the first encounters, and it didn't felt "arcade" difficult, but organic-mozart-michelangelo difficult, everything in the fights was there to participate closely to the dramaturgic aspect of the game approach of difficulty.

- Kings Field save spots (and therefore, the lack of save spots) probably lead the way to the bonfire approach featured in souls games. It feels like a "galvanisation" of the concept of obstacle made possible only by the fact that you don't know in advance the location of possible "safe places" (it goes with point number 1). You have to RISK your runes/souls/money in order to progress through the unknown. Kings Field felt sometimes like a collection of safe place connected by some dev jokes that would insta-kill your character, and you knew that to reach hypothetical safe place B you had to go through real trap 1,2,3 and 4.

- Playing the game is a chore and a pleasure at the same time. The gameplay is incredible, the feel is rewarding, succeeding is satisfying and etc, but sometimes in my younger years when playing Souls I really could question my own desire to play the game: a lot of things in the game is made to impress/intimidate/bully you, I never identified what gave me the motivation to continue, all that I can say is that other games felt bland after playing my first fromsoftware game, and that since then I only open steam for one month everytime fromsoftware release something.

Given rising expectations, is it any surprise that AAA games are mostly working within pre-established paths? Signing $50MM+ checks on a new IP/gameplay mechanic has to be a hard swallow that only a really established entity (Nintendo first party, Hideo Kojima, etc) can justify.

Any true novelty is likely to come from a mid/indie developer.

> the landscape is a maze, and every new place you encounter needs you to overcome a sort of soft anxiety (Souls games were weird in this sense, every new place you encountered was a relief because it meant you were done with the previous place; but at the same time it was a chore because you became so accustomed to the previous place (LITERALLY HELL) that it felt like you were leaving your house for the unknown wilderness)

Still puzzled about why Souls games difficulty is so overhyped on the Internet. Souls game have a gameplay which takes some time to get used to, don't shy from encounters with a bit of complexity and don't mind trolling the player a bit on their first go around a new level. It means you have to play for a bit before you are good.

They remain modern games however and are not overtly punishing. You always have a respawn point close to the boss room. Hardest challenges are optional. They give you ample space to get better if you want to grind. They try to avoid difficulty spikes. It's pretty far removed from hell, certainly a lot easier and fair that most NES games. There is a reason they are that successful.

I think I'm starting to get old.

Well, you have to remember the first time you played a souls game. Dark souls 1 didn't give you clear instructions on where to go in the first place, you had a whole world to explore and you weren't sure you would find a bonfire in x direction. There aren't any bonfires in new londo ruins, but due to the fact that it's probable to miss some and never find it, you're never quite sure about that. I find it very clever in that sense, because it makes exploration feel like exploration; the absence of map is one of the nicest features and I honestly felt that Elden Ring would have been a better game without one.

To me the game is not about high difficulty, but rather it tries to put you in front of an obstacle while asking you to jump over it constantly : alleviation is so much rare, it's literally obstacle after obstacle until the whole game is explored and you feel at home and master the different aspects of the game.

I agree with the fact that NES games were a lot more difficult; but that's what I meant by "arcade" difficulty, where the difficulty comes from speed or rhythm, where you have lifepoints that need you to restart the game since the beginning if you reach 0. Embodied difficulty would be different because while you can experience arcade type of difficulty in dark souls if you want to, you can also find a solution to make a situation easier, you can try to aggro mobs one by one, you can run past them, find some consumable items, raise your SL, enhance your weapon and etc... I call it embodied difficulty because it takes the form of a situation, an obstacle, a mob, a boss or something present in the game world, that you will sometime try to beat without using consumables, like if there was a sense of honor in respecting the situation and like if there were legit ways to win and less legit cheeses. This are the moments I find I'm "playing" a game for real. The embodiment makes the difficulty localized, skip-able, and sometimes you may want to reserve it for later. When I think about difficulty in Mario games, it is not so clear whether we are dealing with arcade or embodied difficulty types; a level in itself is a sequence, and some parts of the sequence can be considered as obstacles which you will identify as "embodied difficulties". What I am saying is that dark souls really makes me feel that concept in an evident manner.

I am using the term to explain my experience, but I don't think it has to be taken that seriously, and it is just an endeavor to express some stuff I felt different in comparison to other games.