D&D 5E (2014) Dragon Age lead says Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur prove publishers wrong as games can crush market trends is they’re “given time to cook”

[pukunui]

You might be thinking of Avowed? That got a patch this week that added an arachnophobia setting.

I don't know that game. I have a memory of watching a promo video about Veilguard during which the devs talked about some inclusive toggles in the game's settings. I can't remember what they were.

In terms of the arachnophobia mode, I was apparently thinking of Jedi: Survivor rather than Jedi: Fallen Order. Despite featuring lots of spiders on Kashyyyk, the latter game doesn't have an arachnophobia mode, whereas the former game does have one, and it only applies to the scorpions on Jedha. Apparently the toggle doesn't even work all that well so ...

 

[JConstantine]

Grounded also has an arachnophobia mode, that turns spiders into a cute little pair of blobs.

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

Never played it. Dragon Age 2 was excellent in spite of a few cut corners due to its rushed timeline, and Dragon Age Inquisition, while buggy, was likewise excellent, and got game of the year for good reason.

Veilguard is ok. It’s by far the most polished entry in the series, but its writing suffered a great deal from the rocky development cycle. A disappointing finale, but far from the terrible mess the reactionary gamergate redux crowd would have you believe it is.

My fundamental problem with Vielguard is that it looks like medieval fortnight, not Dragon Age. And every time a character opens their mouths to make an obnoxious marvel quip it makes me want to lobotomize myself with an ice pick. "Reactionary gamergate redux crowd" people have nothing to do with either of those two things, merely out of touch trend chasing executives.

 

[Charlaquin]

My fundamental problem with Vielguard is that it looks like medieval fortnight, not Dragon Age. And every time a character opens their mouths to make an obnoxious marvel quip it makes me want to lobotomize myself with an ice pick. "Reactionary gamergate redux crowd" people have nothing to do with either of those two things, merely out of touch trend chasing executives.

The writing is not up to the quality of the previous games, certainly. Also, the reactionary crowd wildly over exaggerated the game’s shortcomings, to the point that a lot of folks didn’t give it a chance. Both of these things are true. I know the way the internet works discourages acknowledgement of nuance, but it does in fact exist.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Dragon Age lead says Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur prove publishers wrong as games can crush market trends if they’re “given time to cook”

Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider explains that Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur prove publishers wrong if games can have "time to cook".

www.videogamer.com

"The Dragon Age lead explained that both Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur do appeal “very, very strongly to that one audience” but that appeal is so strong and so high quality that it ends up expanding the core audience."

I've been saying for years that your hardcore fans are engine of the hype machine that draws in the semicasuals who draw in the casuals, expanding your audience. You make your hardcore audience happy, that builds hype that gets others excited and wanting to try it.

On the one hand, I 110% agree with the assertion that corporate game development has an unnecessarily harsh view on perfectly meeting development timetables (and on making timetables shorter than they should be).

On the other, there are two VERY important caveats. First, if you announce a release date and then push it back three times, it's going to dampen the response, even if the final product is pure awesome. You can usually get away with one delay without suffering too much negative feedback, because folks understand that projections are imperfect and sometimes stuff just takes longer than you thought it was going to take. But if you push it back two, three, four times? That's going to make the hardcore, invested players annoyed, frustrated, even angry, feeling like you either never knew what you were doing in the first place, or that the game itself is floundering and not succeeding even before it's been released. (How many games get repeatedly delayed only to then be cancelled?)

Second, and I think somewhat more importantly, there is a push and pull here. Corporate types absolutely want amazing results faster than is actually possible. But at the same time, Kickstarter has shown us that being cut COMPLETELY free from timetable constraints or higher-ups with the authority to say "make SOMETHING, NOW or else we're pulling the plug" has its own share of problems. We need a better balance between the two extremes. Right now, we're VERY far into the "deadlines are absolute you MUST meet them no matter how much you have to hurt yourself to make it happen"/"make an amazing game in 1/3 the time you actually need to make a game that good"/etc. direction. But, as we advocate for change, we should do so recognizing that a perfect diametric opposite of where we're at right now is not necessarily a good place to be either. There is a midpoint, somewhere between, where most games that need the extra time get it, and most creators that need a kick in the butt now and then actually do get one now and then.

Edit: Finally...one last thing to keep in mind, not about time taken to polish something, but on having your focus be hardcore fans.

SOMETIMES that is a great move. We see it here with BG3, we see it with Elden Ring.

But SOMETIMES it is, objectively, a very, very bad move--and we can see this with Amazon's New World MMO, and how it faltered because it tried to chase a hardcore fanbase that isn't going to appeal to the wider crowd, but they expected that it would and then had to scramble when it didn't. Specifically, New World advertised itself as a "hardcore" PVP MMO. Fighting against other players, taking their dropped loot, capturing their constructed infrastructure, etc., was meant to be THE core gameplay focus.

And then they did the invite-only beta and came to the conclusion that most people HATE that. There have been calls for many years for a "hardcore full-loot always-on PVP MMO" (or some variation of that phrase), where it's PVP 100% of the time, ALL your carried items get dropped on death, and the core focus of gameplay is fighting and killing other PCs. The problem is, while that type of gameplay has an extremely vocal minority that absolutely adores such an experience, that community simply is not large enough to actually support such an MMO. In order for an MMO to succeed, it needs a fairly robust base of casual players, and every single one of those above features drives casuals away, consistently. Mass appeal does not appreciate those things, and nobody has yet found a way to make something in that space which gets the hardcore fans excited without also destroying the mass market appeal of the game.

So, even the very core notion--"appeal to the hardcore fans strongly enough, and everyone will come knocking" isn't really correct. It can be correct, if the premise is sufficiently compatible with casual players that they can continue to enjoy the game casually despite never becoming hardcore fans themselves. But some hardcore fanbases are looking for experiences or mechanics that require the player to be just as hardcore as the fanbase. Anything that works like that is going to be game design suicide, even though generally speaking, making the hardcore fans happy is a good idea.

TL;DR:
I agree that we need to give games more time to polish.

BUT: (1) Don't take TOO long, and especially don't repeatedly push back launch dates, and (2) Sometimes deadlines really are useful, we need to find a balance between the current awful extreme of "flog yourself to death to make a half-baked product" and the other unfortunately plausible extreme of "it's not PERFECT yet, I need to keep FIXING it until it's PERFECT".

Also: You have to be careful to find out what your hardcore fans want. If what they want is just the core experience executed REALLY well, then you should probably focus on pleasing them. If what they want is to force ALL players to be as hardcore as they are, pleasing them will harm your game or even kill it.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

No, it used to be a pretty specific term before reactionaries co-opted it. Now it’s a dog whistle and a rhetorical tool that is vague by design, because to be specific about what it’s being used to mean would give away the game. Or, rather, it was that until like a year or so ago. The mainstream discourse cottoned onto it, so DEI is currently serving the same rhetorical purpose. I don’t expect that’s going to last much longer, but the grifters still need a little time to line up the next euphemism they’ll start using.

I don't think this is true. The word hasn't changed definitions. Not really. Some people misuse it but for the most part people mean the same thing now as they did when they first heard it. The first time I heard it was on an episode of The Daily Show somewhere around 2013-2014 where an activist was explaining it. They said that it was a state of being that meant you were always on the lookout for social injustice and ways to correct it and you weren't willing to tolerate any discrimination no matter how small. The person said that the difference between normal people and "woke" people was that normal people might see someone make a passive aggressive remark to someone and write it off as them being in a bad mood or them not liking that person in particular. They likely would let it go as not that big of a deal. A woke person would recognize it as discrimination immediately since all passive aggressive remakes made to certain types of people were never personal, they were always due to hatred of their ethnicity. A woke person wouldn't keep their mouth shut and would speak up, even if it made them unpopular or they lost friends because of it. A woke person would use any job power they had to help make the world a better place by policing the people around them on proper word choices, hiring choices, and other decisions. The main point the person on the show made was that in an effort to "be nice" most people wouldn't have the courage to speak up or would assume no offense was meant and being woke meant you had that courage and you would force change.

I don't feel like people these days are using a different definition. It is just whether they are in favor or opposed to the idea that changes how people feel about the word. Nowadays people use it to mean "Someone at the company said an idea that came up was problematic and used that fact to push to change the story, characters, or other aspect of the game to things they felt were more socially responsible." That sounds exactly like the definition of woke above. It's just a matter of what those things are and whether the individual people agree that they were problematic and needed to be changed.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't think this is true. The word hasn't changed definitions. Not really. Some people misuse it but for the most part people mean the same thing now as they did when they first heard it. The first time I heard it was on an episode of The Daily Show somewhere around 2013-2014 where an activist was explaining it.

The term is much older than that. It originated from AAVE, and originally meant being aware of systemic social issues - essentially, class conscious.

They said that it was a state of being that meant you were always on the lookout for social injustice and ways to correct it and you weren't willing to tolerate any discrimination no matter how small. The person said that the difference between normal people and "woke" people was that normal people might see someone make a passive aggressive remark to someone and write it off as them being in a bad mood or them not liking that person in particular. They likely would let it go as not that big of a deal. A woke person would recognize it as discrimination immediately since all passive aggressive remakes made to certain types of people were never personal, they were always due to hatred of their ethnicity. A woke person wouldn't keep their mouth shut and would speak up, even if it made them unpopular or they lost friends because of it. A woke person would use any job power they had to help make the world a better place by policing the people around them on proper word choices, hiring choices, and other decisions. The main point the person on the show made was that in an effort to "be nice" most people wouldn't have the courage to speak up or would assume no offense was meant and being woke meant you had that courage and you would force change.

That is a pretty overbought explanation, but it is at least closer to the original meaning than how it eventually came to be used by the reactionary crowd.

I don't feel like people these days are using a different definition. It is just whether they are in favor or opposed to the idea that changes how people feel about the word. Nowadays people use it to mean "Someone at the company said an idea that came up was problematic and used that fact to push to change the story, characters, or other aspect of the game to things they felt were more socially responsible." That sounds exactly like the definition of woke above. It's just a matter of what those things are and whether the individual people agree that they were problematic and needed to be changed.

Ask any three reactionaries what it means, you’ll get four different answers. That’s because for them it doesn’t have one specific definition, it’s a rhetorical tool they use to refer to whatever left-wing ideas or talking points they want to discredit. The lack of clear, consistent definition was a noticeable enough trend that left and center-leaning media figures started regularly calling this out, and not long after that, the reactionary thought leaders started shifting to using DEI in its place. A similar pattern happened with CRT before woke, SJW before that, and “politically correct” before that. It’s all the same dog whistle, they just co-opt a new term whenever mainstream media catches on that they’re doing it with the most recent one.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Ask any three reactionaries what it means, you’ll get four different answers. That’s because for them it doesn’t have one specific definition, it’s a rhetorical tool they use to refer to whatever left-wing ideas or talking points they want to discredit. The lack of clear, consistent definition was a noticeable enough trend that left and center-leaning media figures started regularly calling this out, and not long after that, the reactionary thought leaders started shifting to using DEI in its place. A similar pattern happened with CRT before woke, SJW before that, and “politically correct” before that. It’s all the same dog whistle, they just co-opt a new term whenever mainstream media catches on that they’re doing it with the most recent one.

This is the part I disagree with. My experience so far is that it is always used the same: "We don't like the fact that X was put into a game, TV, RPG, movie, song, etc. It was likely put there because someone at the company bought into the idea that they had to keep their eyes open for social injustice and decided to put that thing in there because they felt its addition would increase social justice and therefore be for the betterment of the world. We don't think that is true."

But almost any time someone says "I don't like this woke thing!" someone always replies with "Define woke! Bet you can't!" Then it is normally defined almost exactly like I said above and the person who asked to define it either stops responding or starts arguing whether or not the original definition was slightly different than that and therefore they were unable to define it correctly. I haven't seen a different definition really.

 

[Charlaquin]

This is the part I disagree with. My experience so far is that it is always used the same: "We don't like the fact that X was put into a game, TV, RPG, movie, song, etc. It was likely put there because someone at the company bought into the idea that they had to keep their eyes open for social injustice and decided to put that thing in there because they felt its addition would increase social justice and therefore be for the betterment of the world. We don't think that is true."

That’s one way the term is used. It’s consistent within that context because they’re consistently complaining about the same thing in that context. But the term gets used differently in different contexts. Ben Shapiro famously defines it as “a belief that our nation is founded on racism, sexism, and homophobia, and therefore anything built on that foundation is irredeemably hateful.” I’m paraphrasing, but that’s pretty close to his definition. That definition at once manages to be too broad to apply to any specific situation, and also wildly off-base from what it actually means.

But almost any time someone says "I don't like this woke thing!" someone always replies with "Define woke! Bet you can't!" Then it is normally defined almost exactly like I said above and the person who asked to define it either stops responding or starts arguing whether or not the original definition was slightly different than that and therefore they were unable to define it correctly. I haven't seen a different definition really.

Where I’ll agree with you is that trying to “gotcha” people on the definition of woke is rhetorically useless. Reactionary thinkers have no actual dedication to logic or truth, they merely feign such dedication because they know their opponents do care about those things, which makes them useful tools of distraction. All that pointing out the inconsistency is really good for is that when it starts happening in mainstream channels the reactionaries usually need to move on to a new dogwhistle.