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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6942052" data-attributes="member: 37579">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. 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. 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.</blockquote>

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