Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Switchin' It Up
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FishLion
 Posts: 28 |
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On the first point, mass media franchises go against the original fans' desires all the time. The idea isn't that every fan stays a fan, but that the hardcore fans give it enough longevity to become worth Bethesda buying so they can make a product that appeals to the broader market. Fallout 1 seems to be about as successful financially as Hi Fi Rush, being critically acclaimed but not "meeting expectations." It is almost impossible to pin down what makes an IP catch on like that until after the fact. Fanart and cosplay are just two measures of fan passion which does not always translate into profitability but a savvy executive would understand that the short term gains of cutting costs at the expense of fan passion is not great for long term growth. At the very least they could have continued with engagement and tried to earn money from it. This burned earth approach has ensured that any attempt at capitalizing on that passion will be seen as rubbing salt in the wound. Their flagship franchises and acquisitions will undoubtedly print money for a long time, but when the time comes for them to buy or create an interesting IP to blow up into the next Fallout none of the fans will want any part of it. They know that Microsoft will not see the value in their support and be unlikely to have faith so that it can grow over the course of three decades the way Fallout has, which has made Microsoft's job of trying to introduce new and profitable IPs that much harder. The fact that they said they need new interesting IPs but also won't invest in their own creative capital and also proved if the IP isn't immediately successful then it gets tossed is not a good way to grow faith in your game studios |
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2229 |
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It's also created a PR nightmare with not only gamers being angry at them, but other creatives in the industry. The industry is already in a place where people are one underperformance away from closure, but now even if you succeed you can be closed to keep a line up! Why would anyone want to work with MS after this? It's gotten so bad basically everyone is pillorying MS and bringing up how many times they've bungled deals that bit them in the ass, like passing up GTA III, Resident Evil 4, the modern Spider-Man games, Genshin Impact, and Baldur's Gate III. Just bad decision after bad decision.
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Nigel Planter
Posts: 72 Location: London, UK |
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Fallout 1 was very successful for the standards of late 1990s computer gaming market. 600,000 copies for a CRPG in the 90s is amazing. The sequel Fallout 2 only sold a fraction of that with 123,000 sales and it was still considered profitable. The problem is what passes for success now is a lot different than now. And despite Fallout 2 technically being considered a success it's massive drop off was very notable and part of the reason Interplay would eventually be shut down due to financial issues and why they decided to cancel Fallout 3 and go a new direction with Brotherhood of Steel to make it a real-time action game rather than a turn-based CRPG. This discussion is very interesting because I think what happened with Larian Studios would be an interesting thought experiment for some people. Larian stuck with the Divinity franchise for multiple years and games and never saw much success with them and only niche CRPG fans liked them. Then they do Baldur's Gate 3 and then suddenly that game blew up and becomes popular with the mainstream. So what would the savvy executive do in that situation? Completely abandon Divinity because no one cares about it like people do Baldur's Gate 3 or do they stick to their guns and keep doing Divinity for the fan passion? Which one is the longterm success and which is the short term money maker? Seems like they did everything people wanted companies to do, but in the end it was the unrelated game they did that became a hit and not their passion project they spent decades working on. |
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DKL
 Posts: 1956 Location: California, USA |
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It’s interesting that you bring this up since Hi-Fi Rush kind of addresses the question. The optimization you are talking about is too cumbersome for rich execs that are too busy making money and amassing power, so there is actually a clear answer that simplifies the decision making process for the savvy exec with the weight of the world on his shoulders: mind control. I’d like to thank popular former Chris Redfield voice actor Roger Craig Smith for shedding light on that one in the actual game. I now know what I must do to get paid. |
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That Little Rapscallion
Posts: 39 |
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I read Larian is moving on from CRPG games now that they finally found success so I guess the answer in their case is "neither".
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 519 |
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Larian left D&D, last I checked, not the CRPG stuff. CRPG is their passion, it's where they made their fame. They might not do it in the Forgotten Realms, but they'll do it elsewhere. And they'll do it without Hasbro's meddling. ... Man, that next Baldur's Gate is gonna suuuuuuck 
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FishLion
Posts: 28 |
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I was going off of a line from the Wikipedia article that states "Fallout was commercially successful, although it was not as popular as other role-playing video games such as Baldur's Gate and Diablo. It did not meet sales expectations, but developed a fan following." The IGN article used as one of the sources specifically describes it as "Fallout didn't lose money, but it didn't come close to expectations... or to other titles in Interplay's stable. On the other hand, it had fans. Fanatical fans." In other words, it did well for it's market but still performed far below "expectations" but fan passion kept it alive and grew the IP until it was seen as a potential money maker. This doesn't happen to every series with a passionate following, but there is palpable irony to throwing away that potential while continuing to juice a different IP that started in the same position as the one they just squandered and then call for more unique and original game ideas as if the majority of their money printers didn't take more than a decade to reach the point they could be that profitable. It's funny you mention Divinity, because so much of the bones of Divinity are what make up Baldur's Gate 3. The RPG mechanics are different but if you play Divinity and then BG3 the similarities are striking. Larian stayed dedicated to it's passionate but less successful series, grew a core following and perfected it's way of doing things, then they had an opportunity to mix their slowly simmering passion series with the renown of an extremely popular TTRPG franchise. Whatever Larian does going forward, they earned the opportunity to do that by making an extremely unique game system and proving it was a great choice for adapting D&D and then capitalizing on that opportunity by making a game that lived up to the possibilities. At the end of the day there is no exact formula to be found for who doing what leads to success, but we can be sure that snubbing the fans lowers the potential for future growth and value by reducing the number of viable income streams to the cost of production versus and not other forms of merchandising that could be used to extend profitability. It's a surefire way to be known as the studio that sells already good things and never trust a new product that isn't from established IPs. |
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That Little Rapscallion
Posts: 39 |
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I just looked and yeah I guess they did say "D&D" not "CRPG so my bad. Not sure how exact that means though. Just the brand itself or the gameplay style? I guess we'll see. I don't think BG4 will suck because it's not like 1 or 2 are bad just because they weren't made by Larian Studios. Although I know a lot of people who first started with 3 didn't care for the original games much but I imagine any future game would probably copy the 3 style more. I know a lot of old fans did not like the Siege of Dragonspear they released a decade later because it was way too modern and felt out of place so I guess there's 'old bg fans' and ''new bg fans' now like Fallout. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 519 |
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Yeah, it's just brand stuff. A lot of stuff in BG3 is canon D&D lore, from things like deities to certain figures (Gale is the descendant of an important D&D wizard, Shadowheart's goddess is an actual D&D figure, etc). The upside is that a lot of those fantasy conventions don't exclusively belong to Hasbro, so all it matters to us is that Larian won't make another game in the setting or series of Baldur's Gate, and they won't use the characters. CRPG is just a genre, it's how people refer to those top-down RPGs that heavily simulate tabletop games. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14795 |
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Dunno why the FTC would get involved, since these don't involve the 2 issues they've been fighting about, which are (if people don't remember): 1.) Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Call of Duty (Because Jim Ryan cried to anyone who would listen that it's all about COD.) If anything, what's happening lately further cements that COD would remain multiplatform, and the possibility that COD would become exclusive is now pretty much nil 2.) Game subscription monopoly - with subscriptions stagnating across the board, that possibility is also pretty much nil now as well. So why would the FTC get involved when the 2 issues they're most afraid about is pretty much nil. Tango Studio, being in Japan, is not the US FTC's responsibility Furthermore, PS gamers didn't buy Hi-Fi Rush neither. They bought Sea of Thieves and even Grounded, but not Hi-Fi Rush. So even they don't like the game, it seems. Here's the PS5 rankings: 
BTW, did ya guys know Microsoft is employing more people due to opening a new studio? (And it's not a COD support studio, but for a new story-based IP) 
Did ya guys also know that MachineGames not too long ago opened up a new studio in Sweden because they're working on the new Indiana Jones game? Because these things don't seem to get reported |
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