Owlcat founder breaks down RPG budgets and Larian’s impact on genre: “We can’t invest $200 million to make BG3” | Game World Observer
Owlcat founder breaks down RPG budgets and Larian’s impact on genre: “We can’t invest $200 million to make BG3” | Game World Observer
RPGs have always been one of the most difficult and risky genres in terms of production. Here is what Owlcat Games founder and CEO Oleg Shpilchevskiy has to say about the challenges posed by rising costs, as well as the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 and its impact on the industry.
I hope some smaller games can take the lessons of content density and meaningful decision making from BG3 more than anything else. The incredible conversation cutscenes are super cool, but definitely where a lot of budget went, and I think you could make a really great rpg with a similar feeling of depth without that costly element.
Personally I'd love to see more of a living world like Ultima VII, Oblivion and Dwarf Fortress Adventurer mode.
Well good thing Larian already made BG3, now Owlcat doesn't need to!
II know things doesn't scale but I would love a AA cRPG at BG3 standard but a fifth of the length. Then I may actually finish it. 20-30h experience would be just great.
Divinity: Original Sin 2. You want Divinity: Original Sin 2.
That game is in no way 20-30h...unless you speedrun the main quest and even that's questionable.
Working on it... Cleared tutorial island for the second time, took a breather and now its been a couple of weeks. Sigh. Soon I will have lost the feel for the run and start over.
That will be $199 million, please!
I have like 300 hours in BG3 and have not even finished the main quest yet
As I barely have managed to squeeze in 5-10 hours of gaming per week this winter season the thought of spending 300+ hours in a single game is overwhelmingly daunting. A year with a single game. Ugh...
My best gaming experience this last year was with a short game that I knocked out in a weekend. Got a good satisfying experience and a conclusion to it. Git me rethinking things.
I think BG3s success bodes well for Owlcat, since it brings more fans to the niche genre, that just went mainstream.
Also - Owlcat makes fantastic games. Kingmaker and its sequel, wrath of the righteous are some of the best CRPGs ever made. Pathfinder rules are a little crazy, there are redundant classes, but the character building and customization are a blast. In wrath of the righteous, you get a hero class that you can make completely broken, which is just a ton of fun. Especially considering the lower budget, they accomplished a ton and I've sunk hundreds of hours into their CRPGs.
Overall it greatly expands the number of players though, even for niche games.
Like I found out about Shadow Empire after playing Stellaris a lot and then finding Dominions 6 as another 4X game, and eventually Shadow Empire.
Shadow Empire (and Dominions for that matter) have a much smaller budget than Stellaris, but they are excellent games that I only found out about after enjoying the genre.
He's not talking to us. He's talking to investors and board members.hes talking to the MBA bro VP that brags he's never even played a videogame.
A more apt comparison might be how much Divinity Original Sin, either 1 or 2, cost to make, and use that as a baseline instead of BG3, which is a significantly bigger project. From a quick search, DOS1 cost 4.5 million euros, make some adjustments like inflation, special interests, asshole marketers, and you're probably looking at a very well received CRPG nowadays costing around 8-10 million euros, which falls into his listed AA budget.
One thing Oleg noted that can balloon the cost is voice acting. For a CRPG with fuckloads of text, that's true. While I personally don't mind a game with too much text and no voice, I might be in the minority. I guess the expectation on having a voice over really depends more on the game and who's behind it.
owlcat is a russian company. does it need to have even a second of the world's attention?