Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader

[maidenhaver]

Wow, praise Odthodoxy 101/0 GORY.

[Element]

did they sell enough to make more pathfinder?

[The_Mask]

They've started posting slop on their X account, but this piece I like. I hope you guys like it, too:

Rogue Traders dynasties have long historical annals, their rivalries lasting for generations. Those who bear the mantle of a Rogue Trader, have to learn how to engage in convoluted politics, surround themselves with a trusted retinue and always watch their backs, if they want to survive.

[maidenhaver]

Stop it.

[rusty_shackleford]

started

huh?

[wndrbr]

A podcast with Owlcat's founder Oleg Spilcevski. Seems like the main theme was him discussing BG3.



on BG3 setting new expectations

BG3's success was a phenomenon because no one has pumped so much money into an isometric RPG. And let's be honest, no one but Larian could've done that. They had a huge budget that few studios can afford, especially for isometric rpgs.

I know that for Larian it was already the second time they had in a sink or swim situation: when you've invested all your money in one project, and now you're sitting there waiting to see if it's going to succeed or not. We simply won't be able to invest $200 million into creation of our own equivalent of Baldur's Gate 3.

So it's not really about achieving the new bar, no one's gonna do that because this is a one time phenomenon. However, Larian has certainly set a direction to strive towards.

on production values

Sometimes i join a project, or maybe other project managers come to me, and they say: "It's clear, these you can't release the game without cinematic cutscenes." We need to figure out how to make the presentation of content more cinematic - maybe not on the same level as BG3, but somewhat close.

We used to maee games with partial voice acting, because 1) it's bloody expensive, and 2) it wildly complicates the development process, especially since your script consists of millions of words. I already had this hunch before BG3's release, but now it became clear that this is a mandatory feature. Although it doesn't guarantee you any financial successes, it's still considered a bar that you need to clear if you want to fit in with the big boys. Therefore, the conclusion is that from now on our games will likely have to have a full voice acting.

on bloating your team by overhiring

Why stop at AA, you have to go to AAA, make a game for $50 millions and earn $300 millions. There you go, such a great business plan! However in order to make a game using that kind of budget, you need a team of 300-400 specialists. And all these specialists need to work in unison, not burn through money while hoping that things would work out by themselves in the end. This is pretty difficult.

We are going through this process ourselves. When we started making our first game, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, there were fewer than 30 of us. We are currently working on one of the games, which has a team of 150 people. And this is a fundamentally different level of communication and production, which requires adaptation.

they are drawing all the wrong lessons.

He also commented on Games Workshop IP licensing conditions, lore, dev problems and crunch, etc. I'm lazy so i'm not gonna translate that.

[Griffin]

A podcast with Owlcat's founder Oleg Spilcevski. Seems like the main theme was him discussing BG3.



on BG3 setting new expectations

BG3's success was a phenomenon because no one has pumped so much money into an isometric RPG. And let's be honest, no one but Larian could've done that. They had a huge budget that few studios can afford, especially for isometric rpgs.

I know that for Larian it was already the second time they had in a sink or swim situation: when you've invested all your money in one project, and now you're sitting there waiting to see if it's going to succeed or not. We simply won't be able to invest $200 million into creation of our own equivalent of Baldur's Gate 3.

So it's not really about achieving the new bar, no one's gonna do that because this is a one time phenomenon. However, Larian has certainly set a direction to strive towards.

on production values

Sometimes i join a project, or maybe other project managers come to me, and they say: "It's clear, these you can't release the game without cinematic cutscenes." We need to figure out how to make the presentation of content more cinematic - maybe not on the same level as BG3, but somewhat close.

We used to maee games with partial voice acting, because 1) it's bloody expensive, and 2) it wildly complicates the development process, especially since your script consists of millions of words. I already had this hunch before BG3's release, but now it became clear that this is a mandatory feature. Although it doesn't guarantee you any financial successes, it's still considered a bar that you need to clear if you want to fit in with the big boys. Therefore, the conclusion is that from now on our games will likely have to have a full voice acting.

on bloating your team by overhiring

Why stop at AA, you have to go to AAA, make a game for $50 millions and earn $300 millions. There you go, such a great business plan! However in order to make a game using that kind of budget, you need a team of 300-400 specialists. And all these specialists need to work in unison, not burn through money while hoping that things would work out by themselves in the end. This is pretty difficult.

We are going through this process ourselves. When we started making our first game, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, there were fewer than 30 of us. We are currently working on one of the games, which has a team of 150 people. And this is a fundamentally different level of communication and production, which requires adaptation.

they are drawing all the wrong lessons.

He also commented on Games Workshop IP licensing conditions, lore, dev problems and crunch, etc. I'm lazy so i'm not gonna translate that.

Has any dev/publisher ever drawn the right conclusions or lessons from their or others' failures or successes?

[Nammu Archag]

A podcast with Owlcat's founder Oleg Spilcevski. Seems like the main theme was him discussing BG3.



on BG3 setting new expectations

BG3's success was a phenomenon because no one has pumped so much money into an isometric RPG. And let's be honest, no one but Larian could've done that. They had a huge budget that few studios can afford, especially for isometric rpgs.

I know that for Larian it was already the second time they had in a sink or swim situation: when you've invested all your money in one project, and now you're sitting there waiting to see if it's going to succeed or not. We simply won't be able to invest $200 million into creation of our own equivalent of Baldur's Gate 3.

So it's not really about achieving the new bar, no one's gonna do that because this is a one time phenomenon. However, Larian has certainly set a direction to strive towards.

on production values

Sometimes i join a project, or maybe other project managers come to me, and they say: "It's clear, these you can't release the game without cinematic cutscenes." We need to figure out how to make the presentation of content more cinematic - maybe not on the same level as BG3, but somewhat close.

We used to maee games with partial voice acting, because 1) it's bloody expensive, and 2) it wildly complicates the development process, especially since your script consists of millions of words. I already had this hunch before BG3's release, but now it became clear that this is a mandatory feature. Although it doesn't guarantee you any financial successes, it's still considered a bar that you need to clear if you want to fit in with the big boys. Therefore, the conclusion is that from now on our games will likely have to have a full voice acting.

on bloating your team by overhiring

Why stop at AA, you have to go to AAA, make a game for $50 millions and earn $300 millions. There you go, such a great business plan! However in order to make a game using that kind of budget, you need a team of 300-400 specialists. And all these specialists need to work in unison, not burn through money while hoping that things would work out by themselves in the end. This is pretty difficult.

We are going through this process ourselves. When we started making our first game, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, there were fewer than 30 of us. We are currently working on one of the games, which has a team of 150 people. And this is a fundamentally different level of communication and production, which requires adaptation.

they are drawing all the wrong lessons.

He also commented on Games Workshop IP licensing conditions, lore, dev problems and crunch, etc. I'm lazy so i'm not gonna translate that.

Welp that's a blackpill. Their best game is objectively kingmaker which only took 30 people and they think they need even more people than rogue trader (which still hasn't solved the main issues of the first game)

[Luckmann]

they are drawing all the wrong lessons.

They always do.

He also commented on Games Workshop IP licensing conditions ...

How bad was it? Or is he using "diplomatic" language? Because I know for a fact that GW is notoriously shit and often come with left-field demands on how things you might consider minute be depicted or presented. They're a group of meddlesome retards that will resist anyone doing a better job of depicting WH40k than they do, which is probably also why Rogue Trader appears to be set in nu41k instead of WH40k, despite the actual Rogue Trader TTRPG being set in WH40k both in terms of setting and timeline (714m41 if I'm not mistaken).

[wndrbr]

@Luckmann He compared Ubisoft (he worked with them on HoMM5), Paizo (Pathfinder) and Games Workshop.

Back then Ubisoft was a highly organized company, which was both good (everything is in order, projects are in good hands, nothing gets mismanaged), and bad (managers were overly controlling, and devs often argued with them over the various creative differences).

Paizo were the easiest to work with. Paizo didn't trust Owlcat at first, they were afraid that those weird eastern barbarians may do something bad to their creation. However, few months in they stopped overseeing and meddling, and just did some limited advisory work.

Games Workshop was somewhere inbetween. They indeed "resisted letting anyone doing a better job of depicting WH40k than they do", and wanted the game to be set in their current iteration of the WH40k setting. Owlcat often had situations where they wanted to pull some cool idea from a twenty years old warhammer book, only for Games Workshop to say "we don't do that anymore". However, the guy mostly complained about assets rather than plot/writing. Owlcat had to ask for approval for almost every small audio-visual facet of the game, down to the way prop models look. During the first few months of development they often had to redo a lot of work just because GW's licensing department didn't like something - "change the way this gun sounds, it doesn't sound warhammery enough", "redo this area, it's not lore-friendly enough", "this propaganda poster can't be purple-colored", etc.

[rusty_shackleford]

BG3's success was a phenomenon because no one has pumped so much money into an isometric RPG. And let's be honest, no one but Larian could've done that. They had a huge budget that few studios can afford, especially for isometric rpgs.

I know that for Larian it was already the second time they had in a sink or swim situation: when you've invested all your money in one project, and now you're sitting there waiting to see if it's going to succeed or not. We simply won't be able to invest $200 million into creation of our own equivalent of Baldur's Gate 3.

So it's not really about achieving the new bar, no one's gonna do that because this is a one time phenomenon. However, Larian has certainly set a direction to strive towards.

Most of what makes BG3 good was already present in Divinity: Original Sin. Gamedevs are just overdosing on some giga copium by saying "if only we had more money…"

[maidenhaver]

I'm just grateful to see the day an isometric, turn-based rpg ripped the guts out of a Bethesda game infront of Pete Hines.