An Appeal to Reason
Ulysiss
Member Posts: 18
With little under a week to go until the BG:EE release I have been thinking about the possibility of Overhaul (or OH for the remainder of the post) continuing to work on Infinity Engine games.
When the Baldurs Gate website first came up, I could not believe what I was seeing – What is going on? BG3? Finally? I hoped that this was the case, after a decade of playing and re-playing the Bhaal saga and IWD with increasing difficulty (due to advances in computers) I was ecstatic at the possibility of a BG game I could play for years to come. At 21 I have been playing these games for over half my life - this was an opportunity to relive one of the greatest experiences OF my life.
What I found after the count down was something even better.
In a games market dominated by day one DLC and the need to constantly push up shareholder prices here was a group of developers that were willing to bring back a game simply because it deserves to endure.
This brings me to the point of the post, we have been given the opportunity to get what we want, from a dev team that obviously is on our side (I mean they practice transparency in business and post on there own forums – its unthinkable) By showing our support for the work OH are doing on BG:EE we will provide the ammunition they need to have a better chance of being able to do the same great work on IWD, PS:T etc.
Part of this support is obviously financial – Atari, WOTC, Interplay and all the other suits that Overhaul need to appeal to are motivated by greed and greed only. We have a much higher chance of getting the additional titles under OH’s belt by talking with our wallets.
To a point
The minute that the above companies feel that there is enough money involved and they themselves should invest the time and effort it takes to reinvent these classic titles the opportunity will be whisked away from OH faster than Chicktika Fastpaws. We all know what the outcome this action would bring, I don’t even need to elaborate. It needs to stay with OH.
Which brings me to the next point; on top of buying OH’s end product, we as the community need to make sure that this forum is used as a tool for us to leverage what we want. It’s obvious already that the attitude around this forum is amazing: relaxed, mature and informative (due I expect to the average age of posters) and the support for OH has been mostly positive, this needs to continue after the release. Of course we should speak up against features or aesthetics that displease us – we are the consumers, but there is nothing stopping us doing this in a constructive, polite way. The main point is that we need to assure anyone reading this board that we are pleased with the way OH has handled each aspect of this operation and more importantly. We. Wont. More.
I know the IE games are just that – computer games, but to myself and many others they represent the ultimate achievement in videogame entertainment, storytelling, immersion and character development. The all round package. It would be an unbelievable shame for this collection of games to (continue to) fade into obscurity, a relic of another time when the word “quality” was synonymous with “game release” and a single development team took months and months of your life away from you, months you were desperate to give them.
IE games are the Radiohead of Rpg entertainment - a small part of a large industry, but without a doubt the part to which the rest of the industry holds itself up to and inevitably, finds itself wanting.
It should remain that way.
When the Baldurs Gate website first came up, I could not believe what I was seeing – What is going on? BG3? Finally? I hoped that this was the case, after a decade of playing and re-playing the Bhaal saga and IWD with increasing difficulty (due to advances in computers) I was ecstatic at the possibility of a BG game I could play for years to come. At 21 I have been playing these games for over half my life - this was an opportunity to relive one of the greatest experiences OF my life.
What I found after the count down was something even better.
In a games market dominated by day one DLC and the need to constantly push up shareholder prices here was a group of developers that were willing to bring back a game simply because it deserves to endure.
This brings me to the point of the post, we have been given the opportunity to get what we want, from a dev team that obviously is on our side (I mean they practice transparency in business and post on there own forums – its unthinkable) By showing our support for the work OH are doing on BG:EE we will provide the ammunition they need to have a better chance of being able to do the same great work on IWD, PS:T etc.
Part of this support is obviously financial – Atari, WOTC, Interplay and all the other suits that Overhaul need to appeal to are motivated by greed and greed only. We have a much higher chance of getting the additional titles under OH’s belt by talking with our wallets.
To a point
The minute that the above companies feel that there is enough money involved and they themselves should invest the time and effort it takes to reinvent these classic titles the opportunity will be whisked away from OH faster than Chicktika Fastpaws. We all know what the outcome this action would bring, I don’t even need to elaborate. It needs to stay with OH.
Which brings me to the next point; on top of buying OH’s end product, we as the community need to make sure that this forum is used as a tool for us to leverage what we want. It’s obvious already that the attitude around this forum is amazing: relaxed, mature and informative (due I expect to the average age of posters) and the support for OH has been mostly positive, this needs to continue after the release. Of course we should speak up against features or aesthetics that displease us – we are the consumers, but there is nothing stopping us doing this in a constructive, polite way. The main point is that we need to assure anyone reading this board that we are pleased with the way OH has handled each aspect of this operation and more importantly. We. Wont. More.
I know the IE games are just that – computer games, but to myself and many others they represent the ultimate achievement in videogame entertainment, storytelling, immersion and character development. The all round package. It would be an unbelievable shame for this collection of games to (continue to) fade into obscurity, a relic of another time when the word “quality” was synonymous with “game release” and a single development team took months and months of your life away from you, months you were desperate to give them.
IE games are the Radiohead of Rpg entertainment - a small part of a large industry, but without a doubt the part to which the rest of the industry holds itself up to and inevitably, finds itself wanting.
It should remain that way.
10
Comments
I have yet to see a group of indie devs who don't post on their games' forums. Big publishers tend to block out devs and use "community managers" for this which isn't quite the same I would say but, in the end, a more direct dev-customer rapport has become pretty much the norm except for the more strictly corporate/formal game making entities.
Apologies for the confusion.
I still agree we should be an example to those companies though. It's not just about the team, it's about the community being strong enough and informed enough to influence the development in the right way.
If anyone tries to ruin BG, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, WATCH OUT, I'm huge!
The most likely step is BG3 after BG:EE. I would recommend they get a good stock of EE games FIRST because then they have selling points. No reason to jump into BG3 now.
If the EEs and BG3 are a success, then that will open the door for remakes of other IE games. But there I think there they need to exercise caution, as those games were never as financially successful as the BG series to begin with. And it still ultimately boils down to sales.