D&D 5E Sword Coast Legends: After the fall.

[Corpsetaker]

Don't forget the Dark Sun one, Shattered Lands.

Oh yeah! Don't forget the Al-Qadim Genie's Curse.

 

[DEFCON 1]

That's not true at all. The D&D brand was the only reason that SCL got any attention at all, from the previews it was clear they were making a game that would be thoroughly mediocre at best. (And we all know it ended up falling way short of even that) But because of a the pent-up demand for a D&D CRPG it got plenty of attention in the media and on gaming forums.

That's not the point.

Here was [MENTION=6776548]Corpsetaker[/MENTION]'s original comment that I responded to:

You do realize this game has continued to make D&D look bad when it comes to Video games. Reputation is important in this kind of industry so just licensing it out to anyone is not a good idea.

He is claiming that the D&D brand for video games on the whole is being hurt because SCL was a bad game. And that D&D's "reputation" as a license is thus being harmed. Which is baloney. That would mean that a video game company who is making an RPG would quite possibly choose NOT to base it upon D&D because the "D&D brand" for video games has been harmed too much and thus making your RPG with any other brand (licensed or new) would lead to more success than using D&D instead.

Which is ridiculous.

If an RPG does well or doesn't do well, it'll have almost nothing to do with the branding on top of it... it'll have to do with whether or not the game actually works and is good. Maybe it'll have the D&D brand on top of it... maybe it won't. If a game is bad, is it because the branding screwed it up, or is it because the game is just lousy? 9 times out of 10 (and probably like 99 times out of 100), it's cause the GAME sucks, not the brand they used on it.

I mean, here's an interesting thought experiment: Name a video game whose gameplay was good, fun, and engaging... but because of the branding they used to fluff it, screwed the game up and made it bomb. And had they instead released it without that branding, it would've done better and gone from a failure to an out-and-out success.

I can think of hundreds of games in the reverse... where the brand used was strong but the game died because gameplay blew chunks and was poorly made... but nothing's coming to mind the other way round. I'd be very interested to see what other people come up with on that.

 

[robus]

He is claiming that the D&D brand for video games on the whole is being hurt because SCL was a bad game. And that D&D's "reputation" as a license is thus being harmed. Which is baloney. That would mean that a video game company who is making an RPG would quite possibly choose NOT to base it upon D&D because the "D&D brand" for video games has been harmed too much and thus making your RPG with any other brand (licensed or new) would lead to more success than using D&D instead.

Which is ridiculous.

I hear what you're saying, but how about this as a counterpoint. D&D is experiencing a pop-culture renaissance at the moment and yet their signature software product (and really for all intents and purposes is looks like a WotC product because it has D&D splashed all over it and they were promoting it heavily. If it doesn't count then probably half the adventures don't either because they were subcontracted out to 3rd parties too...) is roundly criticized as bad.

So one of the first impressions that new people get (myself included) is that WotC released (or allowed the release of) a shoddy video game. That hurts the brand IMO.

 

[Corpsetaker]

I hear what you're saying, but how about this as a counterpoint. D&D is experiencing a pop-culture renaissance at the moment and yet their signature software product (and really for all intents and purposes is looks like a WotC product because it has D&D splashed all over it and they were promoting it heavily. If it doesn't count then probably half the adventures don't either because they were subcontracted out to 3rd parties too...) is roundly criticized as bad.

So one of the first impressions that new people get (myself included) is that WotC released (or allowed the release of) a shoddy video game. That hurts the brand IMO.

I XP'd this so hard I think I broke my mouse.

 

[gyor]

I XP'd this so hard I think I broke my mouse.

They keep doing it, they released a bunch of crappy D&D games that had nothing to do with actual D&D, not even 4e rules, during 4th edition.

The last great D&D video was Neverwinter Nights 2. It wasn't perfect, but with the tech they had it was a reasonable approximation of the rules.

I wish somes would update NWN 2 with a 5e expansion, so badly.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

But where is Interplay now? They didn't survive a post-Baldur's Gate world.

Oh Interplay, now there's a tragic tale. The reasons for their demise were manyfold, but losing the D&D license to Atari was surely one of them.

It generally takes longer than 2 years to make a quality computer game these days, so it's not impossible that there is something D&D in development that we haven't been told of yet. We can hope at least

 

[JeffB]

Don't forget the Dark Sun one, Shattered Lands.

There was also Wake of the Ravager for DS.

My personal fave of that era was Stone Prophet which was the second Ravenloft game.

 

[Parmandur]

Ridiculous. SSI was definitely not a "small startup", they were a well established company and one of the biggest players in PC gaming at the time.

And Bioware may have been a small studio when they started work on Baldur's Gate, but the game was fully funded by the publisher Interplay (another industry giant) so they had plenty of resources to develop the game. Interplay was actually the licence holder, they had an exclusive license for D&D video games at the time.

The situation of the last decade where D&D video game development has been left to small, self-funded studios is the fluke. And the results are hardly surprising, only bad to mediocre games compared to the good and great games of the past, when D&D video games were made by major game developers.

In the 1980's, all PC game companies were small start-UPS. These games were made by a handfull of dudes on no budget.

The game industry has changed.

 

[Azzy]

Damn! Now I'm feeling nostalgic for those old SSI games. I think I still have a few of them packed away.

 

[Jester David]

Ridiculous. SSI was definitely not a "small startup", they were a well established company and one of the biggest players in PC gaming at the time.

Emphasis on "at the time". Comparing video games in the mid-1980s to now is almost comparing different industries. A Model-T to a 2016 F150
(Pong, which was still the biggest video game of the era, sold around 150,000 copies at its peak holiday. Modern video games can sell a couple million on release.)


Still, even looking back, SSI had only been making fantasy games for two or three years when they acquired the D&D licence in 1987. They were fairly new.


As mentioned, visibility of the two industries was vastly different in the '80s. Video games were small platforms that were still getting attention, and PCs in particular. (SSI's efforts were huge for PC games at the time, selling 50,000 copies, which many indie Steam games can surpass now.) While D&D was still a phenomena, if a dwindling one. Getting the D&D brand was a huge boost for the visibility of the company.


Now, the situation is reversed. D&D is so much smaller than potential video games.


However, even looking back, even in that era it wasn't always SSI making the games. SSI farmed out D&D to a bunch of smaller companies (most untested) while acting as publisher.

And Bioware may have been a small studio when they started work on Baldur's Gate, but the game was fully funded by the publisher Interplay (another industry giant) so they had plenty of resources to develop the game. Interplay was actually the licence holder, they had an exclusive license for D&D video games at the time.

In 1997, Interplay had mostly done a bunch of Star Trek games and co-developed Descent. Fallout was still in the future. They were hardly an "industry giant", even by the standards of the mid-90s (and were more successful as a publisher than developer).


Regardless, after their own cheaply thrown together D&D game (unlikely to have been done by their a-talent) Interplay immediately farmed the license to a rookie studio (NONE of the 60 man team of Baldur's Gate had ever made a video game before).
And then did it again with Black Isle.


Really, they got lucky and hired teams that made some good games. Iconic games. But they could have just as easily been terrible games.

The situation of the last decade where D&D video game development has been left to small, self-funded studios is the fluke. And the results are hardly surprising, only bad to mediocre games compared to the good and great games of the past, when D&D video games were made by major game developers.

Again, I cannot think of a time in the last twenty years where a D&D video game was actually made by "major game developers". It's arguably been published by one and made by people who *became* major developers, but that's different.
Twenty years. Or rather 2/3rds of the time there's been D&D video games.
And prior to that you're still stretching usage of the term as it's arguable there were no "major game developers" for personal computers: they were all working on consoles.


Because of the above, it's not a "fluke", it's a sign of the changing industry. Of a changed industry.


Video games are huge now compared to D&D, with budgets that rival Hollywood movies. Development times are measured in years rather than months and standards of quality are much higher. And the ability to spin off a successful IP into toys, movies, shirts and the like means no major developer is going to think about spending that money on a licensed game.
There's too much money for even moderately skilled people to be wasted on licensed properties that aren't established franchises. And most big video game studios have their own IP they can also farm out to smaller companies as a test rather than always having to rely on licensed properties.


Much bigger names that D&D have terrible games. Movie tie ins are almost universally bad. Comic book/ superhero games are more terrible than good. Star Trek is mostly terrible games. (Coincidentally, the most recent was the 2013 game based on the then new Kelvin timeline and published by Digital Extremes, who were also related to Sword Coast Legends.)
There could still be a good D&D video game. But it's probably going to be another fluke. And it will likely come out as a passion project by an indie team, like Beamdog releasing Baldur's Gate III. (Even odds that will be for the 2nd Edition ruleset though.) And if BG3 is a huge success and Beamdog is firmly on the map, you'd better believe they'll hire new people, dump future BG content onto the newbies, and begin working on their own properties.


But even then, because our standards for what makes a good video game have changed so much. Minimum expectations of quality in terms of graphics, bugs, UI, gameplay and the like are so very different. Because we, as gamers, will be comparing any modern D&D game with AAA video games and hazy recollections of old D&D games, we'll always be extra critical. Any D&D game - which will be made by a small studio - will never meet our impossible standards of quality.