BrokenFiction: Good Guy Swen Vincke, head of Larian Studios, talking at GDC yesterday after receiving awards for Baldur's Gate 3:

Good Guy Swen Vincke, head of Larian Studios, talking at GDC yesterday after receiving awards for Baldur's Gate 3:

This is so screamingly obvious in every industry I have worked in, not just gaming. Pleasing the big institutional investing algorithms with fat quarterly profits becomes the only goal. "Long term" only means "what will make our annual numbers look good".

Man, I love it when someone a) gets it and b) knows how to say it. That paragraph should be an MBA class unto itself.

That paragraph would end the practice of teaching MBA degre… oh I get it now

I'm sure this is probably related to the announcement that BG3 isn't getting any DLC, expansions or sequels. Willing to bet Wizards of the Coast is pulling some stupid BS and pushing Larian away after they put out the best RPG in a decade

Larian Studios Won't Make Baldur's Gate 3 DLC, Expansions, or Baldur's Gate 4 - IGNwww.ign.com At a Game Developers Conference (GDC) panel today, Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke dropped something of a bombshell by revealing that the developer isn't planning to release any expansions or DLC f...

Swen said last year they want to go back to their own IP and do their own thing again. Which I will buy because I am a superfan.

I'm sure DOS3 is gonna be insanely good but I at least hoped we'd get an expansion or something for BG3 first

especially with how much content was cut in act 3. i was at least hoping for some upper city content

No DLC on a hit narrative game seems like someone hates making money and I'm guessing that's Hasbro.

WotC fired all the staff Larian had been working with. No doubt any new collaboration team they spin up would end up full of corporate types looking to milk it.

Matt Colville, of all people, was the first game dev I ever saw ringing this bell. He'd go into long stories on live streams about how it was *always* the publisher fucking up the process during development. That and publisher picked managers lol

shareholder demands have been the sole cause of every gaming disaster in the past 10 years

it isn’t specific to gaming it’s every disaster in every industry

I am so cynical and damaged by the world that I always expect good things to end up going badly, but for once it looks like Larian truly are a beacon in the darkness.

That middle paragraph is applicable to so many industries right now.

If only Bioware could have followed this path but unfortunately they got swallowed up by EA.

I mean, there’s a reason companies like Nintendo and Capcom continue to find success: half the guys there have been working on these franchises for decades. You can’t just fire talent to save a buck. You need them.

This was such an amazing mic drop. All you hear from the industry right now is massive crunch and massive layoffs and like...maybe shit isn't working, yo? Too bad capitalism incentivizes the mistreatment of employees. And like...it won't change. It can't change as long as capitalism still exists.

Oh God, the milkshake duck turn is going to be painful

Also: It's not the money that's the problem. It's that capitalist systems, bosses, corporate structures, etc. exist in a fantasy world wherein people are fungible; you get rid of one, you put in another. The institutional knowledge is the whole motherfucker. That's the baby in this bathwater.

It is business schools not researching the impact of short termism and continuing to spit out managers that can't see the forest through the trees. It is possible to understand long term investments including knowledge retention, but it is easier to sell to Wall St analysts if you hit earnings

The thing is: They DO teach these things in business school. I have no clue why that knowledge always goes straight out the window once these people leave university. (I have a Master's degree in Business and Marketing, and it makes me furious.)

My Mom's an MBA and the sum total of her response to 'this is fucked, you eagerly contribute to a thing that's ridiculously broken and in the process of eating its own tail' was basically 'it is what it is'. :/ I hope to die still raging about how fucking malignant that response is.

Baldur's Gate as a franchise is so cursed. Props to Swen / Larian for sticking to what they wanna do. BG3 was amazing and whatever they do next, will be incredible.

I loved BG3 and I loved DOS and DOS2 also. Love Larian's work. They're a weird wonderful thing in their field and I love them so much. I fucking wish this praxis could have infected some crucial folks in other companies I've loved, though. Watching Bungie die slow and bad hurts a lot.

Perhaps the same could be said of ALL businesses...

Preach Mr. Swen

Short term thinking has poisoned our corporate world almost as much as Capitalism in general.

I love this studio now

Amen

I talk about this loss of institutional knowledge all the time in the government sphere, and business generally... It's funny to see it said the exact same way in a sphere that's fundamentally artistic.

Brilliant

I think teaching is this way too. So many good people have three or four first years and keep getting cut as numbers of kids fluctuate and then they get discouraged and find other professions.

People aren’t “resources”! Treat them like the human beings that they are. Everyone needs stability.

This just doesn't apply to the software industry

Probably true of damn near every for profit enterprise in the country.

People accuse government of being shortsighted because of 4 year terms, but you rarely hear about business being even more short sighted with quarterly goals.

@alttext.bsky.social

I HATE the system and the way it plays like this. Whats sickening to me is that sometimes its intentional too. Sometimes, they INTEND to lay off people, like its some scheduled event, that way they cash in and rake in mad amounts of money, while the rest are left to scavenge for jobs. Fucking EVIL!

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