Baldur's Gate 3 director and Larian CEO Swen Vincke reacts to the idea that we should get used to subscriptions, saying content is king.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10828130

Always good to see someone in the industry push back on all of these shitty tactics the AAA publishers want to push.

  • @[email protected]English
    3•11 months ago

    I commented elsewhere recently that Im of an age when Fast and Furious was awesome and wasnt cringe yet, Im a massive car guy so NFS games are my “happy place” I wouldnt pay for a subscription shooter or RPG, I dont like MMOs… but you give me a massive open world online mmo racer with a city that changes on the regular (roadworks, bridges closed, flooded roads, etc) new storylines that change by the month (theres a new police cheif who is tough on racers, a crime boss who steals cars, blizards drastically changing the driving dynamics… you get the idea) and so on and on. I would pay for what would make ME happy. I dont care if you dont want that, I dont see why people buy the new FIFA every year but they do.

    I dont think people hate subscriptions, we hate having to subscribe to mediocrity. We hate cash grab bullshit instead of paying for quality, and we REALLY hate this sense that we are being milked for every dollar they can get instead of being asked to pay a fair price for a great experience.

    • @[email protected]English
      3•11 months ago

      I tend to wonder if subscriptions force a FOMO cycle. To keep you playing and paying, they have to bullet-train players to max level and keep you in a carousel of the latest content at all times. That leaves the rest of the game a hollow shell.

      I’ve been getting back into Guild Wars 2 recently, and one of the draws is the tolerable monetization: a new expansion every few years, that you can buy on your own schedule (i. e. when they go on sale), and the level cap is effectively frozen, so you can go idle between releases without a meaningful loss of place. The game has to service even the non-expansion users, and the game design explicitly benefits this: the difficulty and rewards scale so that almost all areas of the game are still worth exploring once you’ve hit level cap, and they can put activities across the map rather than cramming it all in the latest zone.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•11 months ago

        Yeah its a tightrope walk for sure, no progression and people will leave because its boring, too much progression and a month off will put you so far behind the curve you’re fucked and wont keep playing.