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

(www.forbes.com)
400 points redbell | 4 comments | 06 Aug 23 15:38 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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mastax ◴[06 Aug 23 16:47 UTC] No.37023856[source]▶
I am a bit shocked by how popular this game is. All the signs were there, though.

- Their previous game Divinity: Original Sin 2 was critically acclaimed, very popular for a pretty hardcore CRPG, and had long legs.

- DnD has a lot of brand power and has been strongly in the zeitgeist for years.

- There's a big cohort of millennials who have strong nostalgia for Baldur's Gate and who have plenty of money to buy games (if not time to play them).

- The Early Access release for this game was wildly popular beyond the developer's expectations, and maintained interest for years.

I definitely underestimated the brand power of DnD and Baldur's Gate because they aren't very important to me, personally. But also there have been a load of really good CRPGs in recent years and there seemed to be a pretty low ceiling to how much interest they could get. Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and a few others were amazing and beloved CRPG games but were lucky to have a tenth of the success of BG3. But those games were generally less accessible, mostly not multiplayer, and again lacked the brand power.

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lylejantzi3rd ◴[06 Aug 23 17:11 UTC] No.37024205[source]▶
> I definitely underestimated the brand power of DnD and Baldur's Gate

I think you're trying to put too much of its success on "brand power". Social proof is a thing, but it's not powerful enough to overcome a bad game. Just look at what happened to the Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises.

I think it's doing so well because they nailed the execution. The graphics are great. The game hasn't had any opening week disasters despite getting more than 7x the expected numbers. The intro hook of the game really grabs you and keeps you wanting more (which is why everyone's still so excited about it 3 years later). Also, it's FUN to play.

That last one is probably the biggest factor. When was the last time a AAA game was truly fun to play? It wasn't too long ago that online streamers were publishing videos lamenting the lack of good games to play.

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jncfhnb ◴[06 Aug 23 17:23 UTC] No.37024362[source]▶
> When was the last time a AAA game was truly fun to play?

Tears of the Kingdom, Resident evil 4, Street Fighter 6

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lylejantzi3rd ◴[06 Aug 23 17:28 UTC] No.37024440[source]▶
Interest in Tears of the Kingdom dropped off pretty quickly.

Is that all?

edit: I didn't play the other two games. One's a remake of a game I never played (I never owned playstations) and I don't really play fighting games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

edit2: this is getting ridiculous.

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jncfhnb ◴[06 Aug 23 17:47 UTC] No.37024619[source]▶
If you don’t know anything about large franchises such as street fighter and resident evil then you’re probably not well positioned to make sweeping comments about the state of AAA games.
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lylejantzi3rd ◴[06 Aug 23 17:49 UTC] No.37024641[source]▶
That's a mighty fine gate you're keeping. Well, you're trying to keep it, anyway. A for effort!
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Eldt ◴[06 Aug 23 17:59 UTC] No.37024750[source]▶
It's not a gate, it's recognition of your lack of knowledge
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1. lylejantzi3rd ◴[06 Aug 23 18:01 UTC] No.37024774[source]▶
So in order to have an opinion, you must play every game that ever comes out, regardless of whether you enjoy the genre, the franchise, or even have the console required to play it? And you think that's not gatekeeping?
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2. jncfhnb ◴[06 Aug 23 18:44 UTC] No.37025213[source]▶
In order to have a credible opinion about things you should be familiar with the things.
3. satvikpendem ◴[06 Aug 23 18:48 UTC] No.37025242[source]▶
Why are you building a strawman? No one said anything about "playing every game that ever comes out" in order to have am opinion, just that it's useful to have some knowledge of a topic before forming said opinion lest they be dismissed as yours seem to be currently.
4. squeaky-clean ◴[07 Aug 23 10:15 UTC] No.37032513[source]▶
It just kind of puts everything else you said into question when you make a statement which is easily disproved by anyone vaguely familiar with the subject.

If you're wrong about the one sentence in your comment that I have knowledge of, what other bits are wrong? Why should I assume the one sentence I can relate to is wrong but the other sentences are not?