| the-pi-guy said: Part of me kind of appreciates that there's more focus on smaller dev teams. The industry has an unhealthy obsession with these $200 million games that are made by 300 people over 6+ years, and I'm glad to see some pushback on that. But it is far more frustrating that it's now being used to weaponize game politics by people who are extremely clueless.  |
Even then there are some games which are exactly that, such as Baldur's Gate 3, well, not $200m but around $100m with a core development team of 300+ and thousands in total in the credits, which is also used as a weapon against other developers, Lol. I think my issue is the dishonesty surrounding a lot of these conversations and the attempts of weaponizing developers against each other.
I don't like this new trend of trying to invent some war between "AA" vs "AAA" or "Independent" vs "Major Publisher", especially when misinformation is spread and examples are exaggerated. There's also this dangerous trend of pretending like AA and Indie are doing perfectly fine and it's only AAA and major publishers having issues, but for every successful independent or AA, there are literally dozens of failing AA videogames or independent studios. I've saw dozens of indie developers and industry folk saying that the industry isn't good for independent or AA studios either and there's a lot of struggle to get funding lately for anyone.
The way people spoke about Baldur's Gate 3, like it was some Tony Stark thing, it was often "Yeah! Suck it AAA/Major Publishers! (BG3 is AAA, Lol) Look at Larian! They made Baldur's Gate 3 with a box of scraps in a cave! If they can do it then anyone can do it!" when it couldn't possibly be further from the truth and Larian themselves will say this, Lol. Larian has 7 studios across the globe, BG3 was developed by a core team of 300+ in Larian and thousands in total, across 6-7 years of development. There was nothing small about BG3 and not everyone could do it, it was an expensive and huge project in every scale.
Then we have Expedition 33 now, another amazing title which is being used to attack other developers with, Lol. It is spoken about like it was a bunch of homeless people plucked off the streets who decided to stick it to the AAA industry. It was not developed by 30 people, it has 400+ professionals listed in the credits, the game had a whole ass orchestra as well, Lol.
I've legit seen people say it succeeded because it doesn't have extra baggage other studios have like marketing teams (it does, Lol) and it was featured heavily at multiple major Xbox showcases, including the Developer Direct and received a bag of cash to launch into Game Pass where it was heavily marketed alongside. I've seen people say they don't have HR (they do, Lol). They also had a publisher (Kepler) who in the past has received $120m+ from major publisher NetEase who are a minority shareholder, Lol.
I'm not diminishing anyone's achievements because these games are absolutely amazing and yes they did punch above their weight and do better than most but it's not as simple as many are making out, all so they can attack other developers they dislike, it's not as simple as any random ass dude deciding they want to make a videogame and giving a middle finger to the entire industry, Lol. And now we're at the point of outright lies about solo developers, Lmao. The CEO of Sandfall even said in a podcast that he hates people weaponizing him and his studio.
Also almost all developers are trying their best and want to make the best thing possible, it's almost always executives who fuck that up.
Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 07 June 2025
