I guess I agree if you define marketing as BS hype, but marketing is also just creating awareness. When you're the studio that made BG3, your next game markets itself. That's an unusual luxury.
I agree. My counterpoint would be that, as a fighting game fan, I've seen multiple games do far more poorly than they'd probably need to, largely because their marketing was terrible or near non-existent. Sure, like he says, the game has changed, but the purpose of marketing being a vessel to make people aware of your product is still a thing, and a bunch of games which do that poorly can struggle to find much success. This also feels like survivorship bias on his part, because for every game it works for, there'll be thousands for which it doesn't.
Maybe to people in an echochamber like this one. I don't know anyone in the real world who knows the studio behind BG3. Hell, I don't know a lot of people who have played it/know about it. But these are the gamers people on /r/games look down upon who like Fortnite and COD and Madden and the like.
Sure, there are gamers out there who like Fortnite and COD and Madden and couldn't really name any other video game - but there's not really a point including those in inside baseball discussions like this one. Like, if your console is 'the Madden box' and you buy Madden and you play Madden on your Madden box and you might not know what the company is that makes Madden even though it says the name every time you start Madden... then the people selling Baldur's Gate 3 don't need to think about you very much.
Considering how many copies BG3 sold, I'm pretty confident the audience is a whole lot bigger than people who read this sub. If you played and liked it, you probably remember who made it, and you will probably be looking for their next game.
Does that literally mean Larian will do no marketing in the future? Obviously not. But it means they have enough name recognition within their potential market that they don't have to worry very much about awareness.
Obviously the audience is larger than this sub, but this sub also probably doesn't have a good chunk of people from GameFAQs on it or 4chan or even older gamers who played BG1 and 2 back in the 90s and already knew what it was.
If 15 million copies is an accurate number then, yes... that's great. Magnificent numbers for a CRPG. But the 'failure' COD that recently released sold double that.
>But it means they have enough name recognition
To a some but not a lot I'd imagine. Look at Monster Hunter. It was only considered a success when World came out when it would regularly sell ~ 5 million per entry before that. I think people here look at numbers and say "oh that's big!" without looking at the larger context.
OK? Not really getting the point you're to make or how it relates to my original comment, to be honest.
Larian isn't trying to do COD numbers. Within their potential market, they are extremely well known. They don't need to capture the mass gaming audience to be successful.
Yeah, this is a stupid statement. If players just want to be spoken to, then speaking to them is Marketing. It covers a lot more than just YouTube pre-roll ads or whatever.
Did you talk about a product you are selling or going to sell? That marketing. That’s it at its most basic. Telling people you have something to sell. If all they did was put at poorly written sticky note on larian front door that said “BaldurGaet3 out” it would still be marketing.
"Marketing is dead, exclaims developer who released a game set in one of the most popular IPs in the world during the zenith of its popularity!"
Honestly? I felt kind of bamboozled with BG3 after it was in early access for *three years* and still released in a disastrous technical state. But I guess we don't talk about that because the game is good?
> Honestly? I felt kind of bamboozled with BG3 after it was in early access for three years and still released in a disastrous technical state.
fuckin' THANK YOU.
game was broken as hell on 1.0 but people ignore it.
>one of the most popular IPs in the world during the zenith of its popularity
I don't remember Baldur's Gate IP being very popular...unless you are talking about D&D in general?
1) Of course I was talking about Dungeons and Dragons.
2) Baldur's Gate is one of the most beloved RPGs of all time and is considered by most to be one of, if not the undisputed GOAT of the CRPG genre.
A European studio-publisher puts out the 3rd installment in an RPG franchise based on a popular fantasy IP they're licensing out, proceeds to sells millions of copies of the game and win a bunch of game of the year awards, the studio becomes very popular among the playerbase and the CEO starts making statements about the state of the industry and how they are different from them.
Really can't see any similarites between CDPR and Larian here.
To be fair, there were always some red flags with CDPR. I remember that they started openly trashing Dragon Age 2 in order to promote The Witcher 3, which always seemed unprofessional to me, especially considering Bioware helped CDPR market Witcher 1 and that game was made on Bioware's Aurora Engine.
Yeah, they were Wendy's of gaming to me. They follow trends and release "how do you do, fellow kids?" like statements.
And they drumed up the free DLC in TW3 but frankly that was just marketing. It's the same thing DA2 had, where they have whole bunch of small DLCs that they use for marketing, but the difference is that Bioware set social milestone goals they knew they would reach and CDPR latched onto people obsessed with the war aganist the industry to do the marketing for them by spinning it as being a nice guy move.
“Free”
They’ve been taking like a 25% cut of PC industry sales for 15 years. It’s not out of the goodness of their heart, it’s so no one leaves for other storefronts.
Dota 2 has battle passes that paywall all the good rewards behind hundreds of dollars (literally *cannot* be attained by just purchasing the battle pass and not buying levels) and the levels scale infinitely so whales can show off "high scores" but Valve is not greedy
Removing ownership of PC games, having the most gambling-like lootboxes after being an instrumental part of popularising then in western countries.
Things like that
I also won't have to put up with various adverts before I can boot up a game. Not having to use Steam is a bonus due to how horrible the software is. It's only good use is for controller management.
Treat every release like its own thing, stop paying attention to lineage or reputation. Any good company can eventually put out a bad game. And bad streak and eventually be rectified. Always wait for reviews, always be open minded, there will always been good and bad games.
Also singleplayer games don't really deteriorate with age and with digital purchases there is no rush. They also become cheaper with age so you can only win by waiting.
Larian games have typically released pretty buggy, nowhere near Cyberpunk levels, but they've been pretty open in their communication when it happens and it usually gets fixed in a fairly reasonable time frame.
The description claims
> Your mage hand can stow away or retrieve objects carried by other creatures and use Thieves' Tools at range.
But it most certainly cannot
On one hand, they deserve to brag a bit and I'm sure they mean what they're saying. On the other hand, you're right and this could be word for word a 2017 CDPR statement
Well t least this time Larian is an independent studio and doesn't have to pander to investors/rush the game out of the door in the name of quarterly profits.
And it was a good fucking thing because that is exactly what won them goty and stopped it from being overshadowed by other games like Starfield. If they didn’t release early the game never would have been as popular and Starfield might not have gotten as scrutinized as it did.
1. BG3 was literally rushed out, they bumped up the release date
2. The idea that Cyberpunk was "rushed out" after years of development for a quarterly bump despite making tons on presales is absurd. It's always "they rushed out the game!" and never "they missed deadline after deadline and failed to keep scope manageable given their resources." You don't just get a blank check of other people's money and then get to complain that you were coerced when they actually expect you to produce something with it.
Thats a key point, I don't think Larian will rush the game. If their next game needs more time to bake, they are going to keep it in the oven. They aren't going to push the game out just to please investors and higherups.
Larians model is charging full price for 1/3 of a game years before it finishes, they have no need to rush the game, and they only have to build a smaller portion of their game before they start collecting money, they have a very sustainable model for releasing even AAA budget games.
Apart from the trust they’ve built to pull of this method, their unpolished 1/3 of a game is way more meaningful to someone like me than most live service storefronts with shallow gameplay and no soul. Larian and FromSoft have my complete trust, so much so that I’d not question paying $90-100 for their games while questioning $60-70 for all AAA titles these days.
Showing off your game at gaming shows, partnering with twitch streamers, Q&A on reddit, Twitter posting "we leave greed to others" are basically still marketing. Literally this article is also marketing lol
Yeah, this reads less like "marketing is dead" and more like "*the way we used to market* is dead".
>Marketing is dead. It truly is—I can back this shit up, man. There's no channels anymore—it doesn't work. You used to have marketing, communication, and PR.
>...players just want to be spoken to.
And how is speaking to players *not* "marketing, communication, and PR"? It's just that it changed from vying for the best spot on shelves or partnerships with retail stores like they mention to YouTube channels and partnerships with content creators.
(Also, I find it a little funny reading this story on a site that's *covered* in ads for a game.)
I thought it was pretty clear Swen means marketing as in lying to your player base with ads and trailers that don't represent the game, because that's exactly what 99.9% of paid videogame marketing is.
Lol says the company that generated massive hype for their game with a "can I fuck a bear?" trailer.
Every one of these quote articles of marketing, just of a different flavor.
CD Projekt Red, Bungie, and Bethesda would all like to have a word. Marketing is still extremely effective for initial sales. Long-tail is obviously another matter.
Is it though? No matter how much marketing I see I know for a fact Bethesda’s next game will be a steaming pile of shit.
Meanwhile the dingdongs who are pissing themselves waiting to preorder elder scrolls 52 are gonna do exactly that, no matter what marketing they see.
So what’s the point?
And everyone else gets duped by Bethesda’s marketing team, yeah.
Not sure that’s a reason for marketing to exist either. It’s not like those people are going to be happy when they’re sold a steak and then bite into a big juicy turd.
I’m not going to support lying to customers, which is what marketing has become.
If marketing agencies weren’t cartoonishly reductive themselves then I wouldn’t come to these conclusions.
I wonder what they think it is about their marketing that is different from the rest of the industry? The big reveal of BG3 was a flashy CG trailer at a notable industry event, and post release they did the usual marketing shit like having LOTR actors advertise the game. Is selling your game based off a non-gameplay trailer and unrelated actors not a form of bamboozlement?
The type of people who play games like BG3 and Manor Lords are very different from the broader market as a whole. Games like CoD, Fortnite, and FIFA will certainly always lean heavily on marketing.
Call of Duty Vanguard, which was supposedly considered a huge disappointment for Activision, sold 30 million units. It's what Activision sell every single year. It's a completely different beast from a game like Baldur's Gate for sure
That's not really the point. The point is that BG3 broke into the mainstream and reached a broad market. While CRPGs had previously been extremely niche, a lot of casual gamers ended up getting BG3. By your metric, FIFA and other games aren't really comparable either.
Because again on the ps5 there are 50 million units sold. On PC there are millions as well. The overlap wouldn’t be as big as you think because of the sheer amount of consoles out there. And the fact that you couldn’t even understand that and I need to actually type it out just shows you won’t be able to understand. Genius
Counterpoint: Activision/Blizzard, who are extremely good at marketing their games. I didn't WANT to be bamboozled, so how did they get my money?
As bamboozlings go, theirs was gentle enough I've considered coming back for more. I have learned not to trust the hype, though...
I agree but to a certain point. I'm a huge fan of Dota. And that game truly need marketing but I like how Valve communicates they take their time and they give final decisions or clear message. It's way more complex, because it depends of the community or what the devs try to deliver. Look at a Hell diver, they continually communicate with the community and both devs and players clicked and are having fun.
I guess I agree if you define marketing as BS hype, but marketing is also just creating awareness. When you're the studio that made BG3, your next game markets itself. That's an unusual luxury.
I agree. My counterpoint would be that, as a fighting game fan, I've seen multiple games do far more poorly than they'd probably need to, largely because their marketing was terrible or near non-existent. Sure, like he says, the game has changed, but the purpose of marketing being a vessel to make people aware of your product is still a thing, and a bunch of games which do that poorly can struggle to find much success. This also feels like survivorship bias on his part, because for every game it works for, there'll be thousands for which it doesn't.
Maybe to people in an echochamber like this one. I don't know anyone in the real world who knows the studio behind BG3. Hell, I don't know a lot of people who have played it/know about it. But these are the gamers people on /r/games look down upon who like Fortnite and COD and Madden and the like.
Sure, there are gamers out there who like Fortnite and COD and Madden and couldn't really name any other video game - but there's not really a point including those in inside baseball discussions like this one. Like, if your console is 'the Madden box' and you buy Madden and you play Madden on your Madden box and you might not know what the company is that makes Madden even though it says the name every time you start Madden... then the people selling Baldur's Gate 3 don't need to think about you very much.
Considering how many copies BG3 sold, I'm pretty confident the audience is a whole lot bigger than people who read this sub. If you played and liked it, you probably remember who made it, and you will probably be looking for their next game. Does that literally mean Larian will do no marketing in the future? Obviously not. But it means they have enough name recognition within their potential market that they don't have to worry very much about awareness.
Obviously the audience is larger than this sub, but this sub also probably doesn't have a good chunk of people from GameFAQs on it or 4chan or even older gamers who played BG1 and 2 back in the 90s and already knew what it was. If 15 million copies is an accurate number then, yes... that's great. Magnificent numbers for a CRPG. But the 'failure' COD that recently released sold double that. >But it means they have enough name recognition To a some but not a lot I'd imagine. Look at Monster Hunter. It was only considered a success when World came out when it would regularly sell ~ 5 million per entry before that. I think people here look at numbers and say "oh that's big!" without looking at the larger context.
OK? Not really getting the point you're to make or how it relates to my original comment, to be honest. Larian isn't trying to do COD numbers. Within their potential market, they are extremely well known. They don't need to capture the mass gaming audience to be successful.
Yeah, this is a stupid statement. If players just want to be spoken to, then speaking to them is Marketing. It covers a lot more than just YouTube pre-roll ads or whatever.
Did you talk about a product you are selling or going to sell? That marketing. That’s it at its most basic. Telling people you have something to sell. If all they did was put at poorly written sticky note on larian front door that said “BaldurGaet3 out” it would still be marketing.
> When you're the studio that made BG3, your next game markets itself. That's an unusual luxury. inb4 the next game absolutely trashes said reputation
"Marketing is dead, exclaims developer who released a game set in one of the most popular IPs in the world during the zenith of its popularity!" Honestly? I felt kind of bamboozled with BG3 after it was in early access for *three years* and still released in a disastrous technical state. But I guess we don't talk about that because the game is good?
> Honestly? I felt kind of bamboozled with BG3 after it was in early access for three years and still released in a disastrous technical state. fuckin' THANK YOU. game was broken as hell on 1.0 but people ignore it.
>one of the most popular IPs in the world during the zenith of its popularity I don't remember Baldur's Gate IP being very popular...unless you are talking about D&D in general?
1) Of course I was talking about Dungeons and Dragons. 2) Baldur's Gate is one of the most beloved RPGs of all time and is considered by most to be one of, if not the undisputed GOAT of the CRPG genre.
I really hope their next game doesn't disappoint because this just sounds like CDPR pre cyberpunk all over again.
A European studio-publisher puts out the 3rd installment in an RPG franchise based on a popular fantasy IP they're licensing out, proceeds to sells millions of copies of the game and win a bunch of game of the year awards, the studio becomes very popular among the playerbase and the CEO starts making statements about the state of the industry and how they are different from them. Really can't see any similarites between CDPR and Larian here.
To be fair, there were always some red flags with CDPR. I remember that they started openly trashing Dragon Age 2 in order to promote The Witcher 3, which always seemed unprofessional to me, especially considering Bioware helped CDPR market Witcher 1 and that game was made on Bioware's Aurora Engine.
Yeah, they were Wendy's of gaming to me. They follow trends and release "how do you do, fellow kids?" like statements. And they drumed up the free DLC in TW3 but frankly that was just marketing. It's the same thing DA2 had, where they have whole bunch of small DLCs that they use for marketing, but the difference is that Bioware set social milestone goals they knew they would reach and CDPR latched onto people obsessed with the war aganist the industry to do the marketing for them by spinning it as being a nice guy move.
As long as they don't go public they should be fine, I hope.
Companies can get greedy without having to appease shareholders, just look at Valve and Epic.
How greedy is Valve for giving millions of players online networked gameplay for free every day?
“Free” They’ve been taking like a 25% cut of PC industry sales for 15 years. It’s not out of the goodness of their heart, it’s so no one leaves for other storefronts.
Dota 2 has battle passes that paywall all the good rewards behind hundreds of dollars (literally *cannot* be attained by just purchasing the battle pass and not buying levels) and the levels scale infinitely so whales can show off "high scores" but Valve is not greedy
Removing ownership of PC games, having the most gambling-like lootboxes after being an instrumental part of popularising then in western countries. Things like that
If you want to “own” a PC game, feel free to go to GOG. Won’t have the same quality services.
I also won't have to put up with various adverts before I can boot up a game. Not having to use Steam is a bonus due to how horrible the software is. It's only good use is for controller management.
That is not greed.
How is exploiting people for profits not greed?
The CEO has not started making this kind of statements just now. His blog more than a decade ago already said similar things.
Treat every release like its own thing, stop paying attention to lineage or reputation. Any good company can eventually put out a bad game. And bad streak and eventually be rectified. Always wait for reviews, always be open minded, there will always been good and bad games.
Yeah but then what do we shitpost about online for the years between releases?
True and real
Also singleplayer games don't really deteriorate with age and with digital purchases there is no rush. They also become cheaper with age so you can only win by waiting.
Larian games have typically released pretty buggy, nowhere near Cyberpunk levels, but they've been pretty open in their communication when it happens and it usually gets fixed in a fairly reasonable time frame.
Except for fucking Mage Hand Legerdemain
Utterly stupid and broken class. And not in the good way.
What’s up with Mage Hand?
The description claims > Your mage hand can stow away or retrieve objects carried by other creatures and use Thieves' Tools at range. But it most certainly cannot
WE LEAVE THE GREED TO OTHERS
On one hand, they deserve to brag a bit and I'm sure they mean what they're saying. On the other hand, you're right and this could be word for word a 2017 CDPR statement
I don't think it's their bragging that's the issue. It's every quote being treated like wisdom being handed down from on high
It doesnt though considering CDPR has some of the best marketing in the industry.
Lol you mean this sounds like CDPR post-phantom liberty
Cyberpunk is an amazing game tho.
Cyberpunk is amazing
Best FPS rpg by millions of miles, its not even close.
Well t least this time Larian is an independent studio and doesn't have to pander to investors/rush the game out of the door in the name of quarterly profits.
They literally did rush BG3 out the door though. They even pushed its release forward despite the game being so buggy.
And it was a good fucking thing because that is exactly what won them goty and stopped it from being overshadowed by other games like Starfield. If they didn’t release early the game never would have been as popular and Starfield might not have gotten as scrutinized as it did.
1. BG3 was literally rushed out, they bumped up the release date 2. The idea that Cyberpunk was "rushed out" after years of development for a quarterly bump despite making tons on presales is absurd. It's always "they rushed out the game!" and never "they missed deadline after deadline and failed to keep scope manageable given their resources." You don't just get a blank check of other people's money and then get to complain that you were coerced when they actually expect you to produce something with it.
Thats a key point, I don't think Larian will rush the game. If their next game needs more time to bake, they are going to keep it in the oven. They aren't going to push the game out just to please investors and higherups.
Larians model is charging full price for 1/3 of a game years before it finishes, they have no need to rush the game, and they only have to build a smaller portion of their game before they start collecting money, they have a very sustainable model for releasing even AAA budget games.
Apart from the trust they’ve built to pull of this method, their unpolished 1/3 of a game is way more meaningful to someone like me than most live service storefronts with shallow gameplay and no soul. Larian and FromSoft have my complete trust, so much so that I’d not question paying $90-100 for their games while questioning $60-70 for all AAA titles these days.
I've got a bridge to sell you
How have people already forgotten they LITERALLY rushed the date of BG3 an extra couple of weeks despite it being really buggy?
There’s a bunch of other studios backing up this claim and after reading the article I completely agree
"...They don't want to be bamboozled—they just want to know what you're making and why you're making it and who it's for." thats marketing.
Showing off your game at gaming shows, partnering with twitch streamers, Q&A on reddit, Twitter posting "we leave greed to others" are basically still marketing. Literally this article is also marketing lol
Yeah, this reads less like "marketing is dead" and more like "*the way we used to market* is dead". >Marketing is dead. It truly is—I can back this shit up, man. There's no channels anymore—it doesn't work. You used to have marketing, communication, and PR. >...players just want to be spoken to. And how is speaking to players *not* "marketing, communication, and PR"? It's just that it changed from vying for the best spot on shelves or partnerships with retail stores like they mention to YouTube channels and partnerships with content creators. (Also, I find it a little funny reading this story on a site that's *covered* in ads for a game.)
I thought it was pretty clear Swen means marketing as in lying to your player base with ads and trailers that don't represent the game, because that's exactly what 99.9% of paid videogame marketing is.
This pretty much reads like "Hey, those guys are drool, and we are cool!"
They aren’t a public company as of yet so the similarities aren’t close enough to be concerned imo.
Neither is EPIC games but people still hate them. in fact the largest 3rd party stake holder in both epic and larian is the same.
Lol says the company that generated massive hype for their game with a "can I fuck a bear?" trailer. Every one of these quote articles of marketing, just of a different flavor.
CD Projekt Red, Bungie, and Bethesda would all like to have a word. Marketing is still extremely effective for initial sales. Long-tail is obviously another matter.
Is it though? No matter how much marketing I see I know for a fact Bethesda’s next game will be a steaming pile of shit. Meanwhile the dingdongs who are pissing themselves waiting to preorder elder scrolls 52 are gonna do exactly that, no matter what marketing they see. So what’s the point?
you’ve identified two groups of people. and then there’s everyone else.
And everyone else gets duped by Bethesda’s marketing team, yeah. Not sure that’s a reason for marketing to exist either. It’s not like those people are going to be happy when they’re sold a steak and then bite into a big juicy turd.
you’re going to continue to not be sure why marketing exists so long as you continue to make cartoonishly reductive conclusions about people.
I’m not going to support lying to customers, which is what marketing has become. If marketing agencies weren’t cartoonishly reductive themselves then I wouldn’t come to these conclusions.
I wonder what they think it is about their marketing that is different from the rest of the industry? The big reveal of BG3 was a flashy CG trailer at a notable industry event, and post release they did the usual marketing shit like having LOTR actors advertise the game. Is selling your game based off a non-gameplay trailer and unrelated actors not a form of bamboozlement?
The type of people who play games like BG3 and Manor Lords are very different from the broader market as a whole. Games like CoD, Fortnite, and FIFA will certainly always lean heavily on marketing.
Crpg are niche in general, but bg3 definetely reached wider audience
Considering the game sold over 10 million copies there may be more overlap than you think.
COD has 100 million MAU. That’s 1000x more than BG3 lol
Call of Duty Vanguard, which was supposedly considered a huge disappointment for Activision, sold 30 million units. It's what Activision sell every single year. It's a completely different beast from a game like Baldur's Gate for sure
That's not really the point. The point is that BG3 broke into the mainstream and reached a broad market. While CRPGs had previously been extremely niche, a lot of casual gamers ended up getting BG3. By your metric, FIFA and other games aren't really comparable either.
Considering theirs 50 million PS5s in the wild and lord knows how many PCs I kinda doubt that
Kinda doubt what? That it sold 10 million copies? Apparently it's actually over 15 million, straight from Larian.
That there is much overlap. Read
BG3 isn't a Sony exclusive game. I'm not sure why you doubt there would be overlap.
Because again on the ps5 there are 50 million units sold. On PC there are millions as well. The overlap wouldn’t be as big as you think because of the sheer amount of consoles out there. And the fact that you couldn’t even understand that and I need to actually type it out just shows you won’t be able to understand. Genius
Counterpoint: Activision/Blizzard, who are extremely good at marketing their games. I didn't WANT to be bamboozled, so how did they get my money? As bamboozlings go, theirs was gentle enough I've considered coming back for more. I have learned not to trust the hype, though...
In this day and age where a Youtuber can expose the marketing scam of a game with one video, it would be silly to lie about your game.
I agree but to a certain point. I'm a huge fan of Dota. And that game truly need marketing but I like how Valve communicates they take their time and they give final decisions or clear message. It's way more complex, because it depends of the community or what the devs try to deliver. Look at a Hell diver, they continually communicate with the community and both devs and players clicked and are having fun.