Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:paperji, author: Erqi

Larian never dreamed that they would attract "criticism" from their peers because of the success of Baird's Gate 3.

On August 9, a piece of news on Tkitok about the prosecution of Larian Studios attracted a lot of attention.

In this mysterious news, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA and other well-known developers jointly sued Larian because:

"Baird's Gate 3" did a great job.

He will raise players' expectations for similar products to a level that is unreasonable and harmful to the industry. So Larian should give the big guy $10 billion as compensation.

Doesn't that sound a little funny? That's right, because this is fake news.

But the news is not groundless.

In fact, many people in the industry have expressed similar views:

"Baird Gate 3" is a game that is difficult to emulate, and players should not regard "Baird Gate 3" as the passing criterion for future RPG games.

The reasons include large team size, long development cycle, rich experience in the same type of development, three years of pre-emptive experience, strong IP blessing, and attempts to ignore risks.

The topic was initiated by independent game developer Nielsen Jr., who aims to reveal many of the contingencies behind Larian's success.

Standing in his circle, these words are very correct.

Subtly, after the popularity of this topic, the employees of many major game companies in Europe and the United States also followed suit, including the director of obsidian and the senior designer of Diablo 4.

Among them, a project manager at Xbox said, "Larian's investment in this game is two to three times that of the same level of RPG, a product of the R-star model, beyond common sense." only a few teams can try to do this. "

The "R star model" in his words refers to a continuous high-cost, high-standard, long-cycle development path, which is easy to achieve results, but the ability to resist risks is extremely poor.

It is both right and wrong to put the word on Larian.

It is true that they are engaged in continuous high-cost development, and every new work will put pressure on everything of the company, which has been on the verge of bankruptcy for nearly ten times.

The fault lies in the size of the funds. In an interview, Larian management said that after 2.5 million copies were sold in the EA phase, they had already returned the cost, while the game sold for $60, which estimated the cost to be $150 million.

In 2023, this is only a high scale, because the development price of various well-known 3A games is basically set at about $100 million, such as a series of Ubisoft products. As for R Star, their development costs are often three times or more than the industry standards of the same period.

So the R star model is supposed to be two to three times the size of all + funds, and Larian is obviously not in this echelon.

After understanding this information, and then looking at the speeches of the employees of these big factories, I only find it baffling.

For example, the previous sentence "only a few teams can do this".

Actually, it's not a little bit. In terms of capital, EA, Blizzard, Microsoft and other manufacturers have invested no less than this figure in the project. in addition, they also have richer resources, more technology accumulation and strong IP blessing. As for second-tier manufacturers, their head IP can generally get 100 million-level investment. If you have to say that Larian has anything more than them, it should be more courage to gamble everything to develop.

So the sentence should be replaced by "only a few particularly courageous teams can do this."

And what is the price of lack of courage? Yes

"Diablo 4" made money, but the quality control was poor, and word of mouth turned over.

The opening highlight of Halo: infinity is now a clown.

Star Wars: survivor has mixed reviews because the optimization is too bad.

Larian can achieve results under difficult conditions, so why is it difficult for a big factory with more resources to do so?

Of course they can do it, but in the past.

If we look at the history of their families getting rich, we can see all kinds of powerful cases.

According to statistics, Blizzard's World of Warcraft cost US $40 million in four years of development, which was more than twice the industry standard in 2001.

BioWare's Star Wars: samurai of the Old Republic costs $211 million, which is a 2003 game

The halo 2 of Bang Chicken was $120 million, which was in 2004.

Activision's call of Duty: modern Warfare 2 in 2009 was worth $250 million.

This investment is quite over the specification, as mentioned earlier, today's 3A standard is also 100 million US dollars.

It can be said that the establishment, development and launch of these products are like gambling. In the end, gambling has become a generation of classics.

So what's the problem? I think it is because the traditional game development model in Europe and the United States has finally reached the bottleneck.

The most common development model in Europe and the United States is 3A, that is, games with high R & D cost, high publicity investment and long R & D cycle.

This standard is not global, at least not applicable in Japan, so I prefer to point it to the head games of big European and American companies.

(the development scale of Wang Guozhi's tears is no less than that of European and American 3A masterpieces, but more of their cost is invested in creativity.) if we have to make a distinction, the development of Japanese-style games is closer to small workshop production, and the core is creativity; Europe and the United States are more industrialized. big pipes are full, but creativity is lacking, just like Hollywood popcorn movies, as long as the industrial standards and technical skills are enough, it will not be too bad.

At the same time, he also has a certain monopoly nature, which is a track that only manufacturers with both technology and capital are qualified to compete. Just as the film industry has been dominated by Hollywood for many years, 3A games have the same meaning.

For these reasons, 3A has become the most mainstream and efficient choice for large European and American companies. And we players also ushered in a large number of good quality games, such as Halo, call of Duty, Assassin Creed. The players are happy and the manufacturers are making a lot of money.

It would be a pleasure if such a mutually beneficial situation could continue. Unfortunately, the negative effects of 3A development are now even more deadly.

Ubisoft has released some information about the development cost of a "territory-wide blockade".

In the game, a player will not pay attention to the building, and the overall production cost is $3900; the American Star-Spangled Banner, which flutters in the wind and will be torn apart, costs $2250; and the garbage bag that will be blown up and garbage will fly out and spread will cost $14400.

In other words, the picture we witnessed in the game is estimated to cost $200000. This is just an ordinary scene where the material can be reused, in addition to that, there will be a variety of dedicated environments, which is not to mention.

This is the price of 3A-level picture performance.

In addition to art, marketing costs are getting higher, with promotional costs such as "Dead Space 2" as high as $60 million, the same amount as production costs.

Before that, third-party companies collected game research and development funds and publicity funds from some North American publishers in 2019.

Research and development: Activision $492 million, EA $779 million, T2 $125 million.

Xuan Fa: Activision 397 million US dollars, EA 339 million US dollars, T2 169 million US dollars.

We can find that the funding for publicity and development is basically 50-50.

Maybe a friend will ask the classic question, "wouldn't it be better to have so much money to polish the game?"

How to say, if there is no overwhelming media publicity, so many people will go to Zibo to eat the barbecue that can be seen all over the country? We are now living in an era in which the smell of wine is also afraid of the depth of the alley. after all, "wine" is too dazzling.

As for the development cost of the game, compared with art and publicity, it has the lowest growth rate, but it has also doubled compared with a decade ago.

Compared with the rising cost, the proportion of buyout games in the consumption of players is still declining, and the audience scale of 3A has not exploded.

As for the price of the game, we have just entered the era of $70, which is the biggest increase in nearly a decade.

In addition, in order to ensure 3A output, manufacturers continue to expand the size of the company, which brings higher operating costs.

In this way, manufacturers are gradually a little difficult to resist, 3A from the way of making money, into the current revenue barrier.

Can't it shrink the picture, reduce the content, and be more elaborate?

In other words, do not pursue the rigid 3A? It's hard.

Because 3A is like an arms race, we can only constantly pursue more and stronger than our competitors.

These are the magic weapons of large European and American companies. They have been selling a larger world, more content, and better art, and players are willing to pay for it.

Stopping means giving up the advantage and the lifeline of making money, so these listed companies will not make such a choice because they cannot be accountable to their shareholders.

And this is not the manufacturer can decide unilaterally, the player's opinion is equally important. With the generalization of 3A mode, players' appetite is actually increasing, and we look forward to better picture quality, better play, and more content.

To take a simple example, can you accept an European and American 3A sequel that you like, with fewer contents, fewer ways of playing, and a smaller open world?

I don't know what you think, but I believe that most players will always want the sequel to surpass the previous one. This is the anchor that attracts us to buy, but it is also the evil consequence that developers have to swallow now.

So they began to study new development ideas, such as the "call of Duty" troika parallel New year goods model. In other words, the three development groups take turns to fight, although the quality is difficult to guarantee, but focus on the consumer psychology, and then create great benefits.

Ubisoft, on the other hand, is the loser of the New year route, and they choose to reduce costs through distributed development, but eventually lead to a lack of creativity in the game, become as stereotyped as cans, and eventually have to abolish the division, reduce the size and cancel the New year model.

While trying to change the development model, vendors also transfer costs to the player side.

So we began to see in the game unboxed, complete content split into DLC, pass payment, poor optimization, poor quality control, homogenization of play, and peeling. This is to recover the cost by sacrificing the player's game experience, and the entertainment value of these games in Europe and the United States has also been reduced.

We often do the same thing in a world of different backgrounds.

Shooting, chopping people, brushing equipment, cleaning question marks.

It's not boring.

Therefore, European and American games such as "Baird Gate 3" are commendable.

I really hope that big European and American companies can learn some lessons from Larian's success and figure out what players want, instead of emphasizing that this is an exception and narrowing along the 3A road.

Just like pockmarked Wang changed Goose City.

It should be added that the content of the article actually focuses on the well-known manufacturers that we are familiar with. If we don't focus on these heads, there will be a lot of excellent works in Europe and America in recent years, such as the recent "relic 2" (general optimization), last year's "the son of the Dark Night", and the "Miracle Age 4" that fascinated me. So in my eyes, Baird Gate 3 is a boutique game polished by second-tier manufacturers in Europe and the United States, far from affecting industry standards.

So it's hard for me to understand what these "industry insiders" think, because the game is no exception, it's just that developers have more courage than their peers.

In response to these words on the Internet, Larian replied:

"Bliss Disco temporarily changed the standard with the efforts of a small team, right?"

"and now the standards are completely different, many games have broken the old standards, so that there are no fixed standards, this is my point of view. Innovation always exists, but at the same time, doing something crazy, cool and different does not require large-scale technological innovation to support it."

I want to say:

"players like it. If you don't like it, who are you?"

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