Baldur's Gate as a franchise is so cursed. Props to Swen / Larian for sticking to what they wanna do. BG3 was amazing and whatever they do next, will be incredible.
Matt Colville, of all people, was the first game dev I ever saw ringing this bell. He'd go into long stories on live streams about how it was *always* the publisher fucking up the process during development. That and publisher picked managers lol
It's not the money that's the problem. It's that capitalist systems, bosses, corporate structures, etc. exist in a fantasy world wherein people are fungible; you get rid of one, you put in another.
The institutional knowledge is the whole motherfucker. That's the baby in this bathwater.
It is business schools not researching the impact of short termism and continuing to spit out managers that can't see the forest through the trees. It is possible to understand long term investments including knowledge retention, but it is easier to sell to Wall St analysts if you hit earnings
The thing is: They DO teach these things in business school.
I have no clue why that knowledge always goes straight out the window once these people leave university.
(I have a Master's degree in Business and Marketing, and it makes me furious.)
My Mom's an MBA and the sum total of her response to 'this is fucked, you eagerly contribute to a thing that's ridiculously broken and in the process of eating its own tail' was basically 'it is what it is'. :/
I hope to die still raging about how fucking malignant that response is.
I mean, there’s a reason companies like Nintendo and Capcom continue to find success: half the guys there have been working on these franchises for decades. You can’t just fire talent to save a buck. You need them.
I talk about this loss of institutional knowledge all the time in the government sphere, and business generally... It's funny to see it said the exact same way in a sphere that's fundamentally artistic.
I HATE the system and the way it plays like this. Whats sickening to me is that sometimes its intentional too. Sometimes, they INTEND to lay off people, like its some scheduled event, that way they cash in and rake in mad amounts of money, while the rest are left to scavenge for jobs.
This is so screamingly obvious in every industry I have worked in, not just gaming. Pleasing the big institutional investing algorithms with fat quarterly profits becomes the only goal. "Long term" only means "what will make our annual numbers look good".
This was such an amazing mic drop. All you hear from the industry right now is massive crunch and massive layoffs and like...maybe shit isn't working, yo? Too bad capitalism incentivizes the mistreatment of employees. And like...it won't change. It can't change as long as capitalism still exists.
I think teaching is this way too. So many good people have three or four first years and keep getting cut as numbers of kids fluctuate and then they get discouraged and find other professions.
People accuse government of being shortsighted because of 4 year terms, but you rarely hear about business being even more short sighted with quarterly goals.
I am so cynical and damaged by the world that I always expect good things to end up going badly, but for once it looks like Larian truly are a beacon in the darkness.
I'm sure this is probably related to the announcement that BG3 isn't getting any DLC, expansions or sequels. Willing to bet Wizards of the Coast is pulling some stupid BS and pushing Larian away after they put out the best RPG in a decade
WotC fired all the staff Larian had been working with. No doubt any new collaboration team they spin up would end up full of corporate types looking to milk it.
Comments
It's not the money that's the problem. It's that capitalist systems, bosses, corporate structures, etc. exist in a fantasy world wherein people are fungible; you get rid of one, you put in another.
The institutional knowledge is the whole motherfucker. That's the baby in this bathwater.
I have no clue why that knowledge always goes straight out the window once these people leave university.
(I have a Master's degree in Business and Marketing, and it makes me furious.)
I hope to die still raging about how fucking malignant that response is.
I fucking wish this praxis could have infected some crucial folks in other companies I've loved, though. Watching Bungie die slow and bad hurts a lot.
Fucking EVIL!
it’s every disaster in every industry