New D&D Video Game Announced

Reynard said:

I would be curious to see some numbers.

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Sadly there are none available that I'm aware of (and Google concurs), but I can absolutely point to AAA project after AAA project that's failed or stalled, virtually all of which were headed by industry veterans, some with many decades of success.

And ones from new studios? Those are particularly likely to quietly shut down. But AAA in general is hugely risky these days - even for established studios with established publishers.

Best I can give you is Bellular, who I love his Irish ass but like, let's be real, he's a clickbait kinda YouTuber (most games-related ones are) - but he does at least collect some examples of this specifically:

Nikosandros said:

Baldur's Gate II used AD&D 2e rules, despite coming out in 2000 and, AFAIK, it was very well received.

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Well, it was based on BG1 just 2 years earlier, so it kinda had to in order to be a seamless sequel. But my original comment was meant to be a bit tongue in cheek, so I'm not going to argue the point

Henadic Theologian said:

Actually I would have more faith in a CRPG then an ARPG, CRPG is at least compatible with D&D rules. Even a RTwP could work, but a ARPG? Wrong setting and system for that.

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Sure, I agree on a certain level, but AAA CRPGs are really, really hard to make. First off, not many people make them, and that combines with second off, those who do use very different standards and approaches, so hiring talent for them is hard. Third off, they require a staggering amount of content, which just pure effort, and fourthly, they need to be kind of well-written, and usually that's hard to achieve. Larian didn't do it "out of the game" - they had slowly improving mediocre writing for decades, realized that just trying to iterate on that wasn't going to get them where they needed to be, writing-wise, so hired two people who'd never written videogames (or films or books for that matter) before, one of whom had barely even written fiction before, but who were both very smart and talented, and put them in charge, whilst effectively demoting their previous lead writer (who has been seemingly very nice about it)!

That was a very bold and it absolutely paid off. But it was a big risk, and one most companies wouldn't take, and I don't think most leaders would have selected two talented people like that as well either.

I mean, at the very least that's some fairly strong pedigree, at least from the Star Wars Jedi games, which were great from both a gameplay and story perspective

Gradine said:

I mean, at the very least that's some fairly strong pedigree, at least from the Star Wars Jedi games, which were great from both a gameplay and story perspective

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What that means, in practice, is that if the game does get finished and released, it's less likely to be bad at the specific thing the game is about, but even then, it's a not a certainty. Especially not with a new studio.

Almost every bad AAA game has an on-paper very experienced and talented person at the lead. Just look at the credits on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League - https://www.mobygames.com/game/2168...ague/credits/playstation-5/?autoplatform=true

Incredible experience, terrible game. 60 Metacritic - it's hard for a bad indie game to get 60 Metacritic, let alone an AAA!

This whole discussion illustrates a trait I really don't like about WotC as a publisher, which is that they announce games extremely early in the development cycle, and try to get people hyped about them. That's not smart or helpful, imho. If this game was three+ years into development and going well, and then they announced it and started telling us this stuff, we'd already know the game was far enough along it might be worth caring about. But at this stage? It's actively unhelpful to even tell us, because the odds of it making it to release are sliiiiiiim.

Ruin Explorer said:

Sadly there are none available that I'm aware of (and Google concurs), but I can absolutely point to AAA project after AAA project that's failed or stalled, virtually all of which were headed by industry veterans, some with many decades of success.

And ones from new studios? Those are particularly likely to quietly shut down. But AAA in general is hugely risky these days - even for established studios with established publishers.

Best I can give you is Bellular, who I love his Irish ass but like, let's be real, he's a clickbait kinda YouTuber (most games-related ones are) - but he does at least collect some examples of this specifically:

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Yeah, the information looks to be sparse at best. The most I could glean was that a verteran developer at a new AAA studio was likely to bring in more investment, but that itself did not correlate to success.

Making video games is really hard, I suppose.

Ruin Explorer said:

This whole discussion illustrates a trait I really don't like about WotC as a publisher, which is that they announce games extremely early in the development cycle, and try to get people hyped about them. That's not smart or helpful, imho.

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That much is true, at least. They went full Duke Nukem Forever. Everybody knows you never go full Duke Nukem Forever

Sacrosanct said:

Sure, but this isn't an MMO, and it would be weird to release a game that used old mechanics. You'd want it to support the new mechanics and have that more seamless link.

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You assume they will ever overhaul the rules again.

Henadic Theologian said:

Actually I would have more faith in a CRPG then an ARPG, CRPG is at least compatible with D&D rules. Even a RTwP could work, but a ARPG? Wrong setting and system for that.

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not going to argue system, but wrong setting? What makes it the wrong setting? Do we even know the setting or are you assuming FR (not that this makes it any less suitable)

Parmandur said:

You assume they will ever overhaul the rules again.

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To be fair, that does seem like a fair assumption to make, though it honestly seems very unlikely to occur any time soon.