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

(www.forbes.com)
400 points redbell | 1 comments | 06 Aug 23 15:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.264s | 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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1. taurath ◴[06 Aug 23 19:45 UTC] No.37025829[source]▶
> 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

CRPGs aren't a genre, but RPGs are. wRPGs like Mass Effect, Fallout, TES, The Witcher are some of the most popular franchises in all of gaming. Then you have jRPGs like Zelda, Elden Ring... The ones you listed are similar to Divinity & BG3, but the fact is the games are either on the extreme end of hardcore (Pathfinder especially), or are made without the production values or marketing. You've got examples like

The main difference that would still throw a lot of games is that BG3 is turn based combat, but I'd argue that with the dialogue, branching trees etc its more akin to Mass Effect or Fallout. Ultimately its its own thing, and it is a well crafted game, in a setting that many core fans already know and love.