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SmoothPimp

Augur
Joined
Jan 27, 2013
Messages
145
Location
Ukraine Paradise
Some of the shilling lol...

dqQFMOe.png



....love how Final Fantasy is now the go-to example for action games too :lol:
We just got old. General gaming community is now defined by people whose first big games were TW3, Bloodborne, FFXV, Bayonetta and PUBG, hence their benchmarks for comparison. Though Bayonetta is questionable because her great booty all over the game I guess considered male gaze sexual objectification.
 

Froila

Educated
Joined
Feb 1, 2021
Messages
108
And what's interesting in this game is, if you don't romance characters, they may decide to find their own romances for themselves, whether within the team or within the world itself.
I have a cunning idea for future game designers: all party members develop relationships during the game, which culminate in a huge orgy after the final boss battle.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,726
Location
Nottingham
Some of the shilling lol...

dqQFMOe.png



....love how Final Fantasy is now the go-to example for action games too :lol:
We just got old. General gaming community is now defined by people whose first big games were TW3, Bloodborne, FFXV, Bayonetta and PUBG, hence their benchmarks for comparison. Though Bayonetta is questionable because her great booty all over the game I guess considered male gaze sexual objectification.
I mean, we did, but that's still no excuse for being ignorant of history...especially when it's only like a decade or so older.

Shows just how much ADHD is rife today when you can look back a few decades before writing an article.
 

Storyfag

Perfidious Pole
Patron
Joined
Feb 17, 2011
Messages
16,567
Location
Stealth Orbital Nuke Control Centre
I mean, we did, but that's still no excuse for being ignorant of history...especially when it's only like a decade or so older.

Shows just how much ADHD is rife today when you can look back a few decades before writing an article.
ADHD has nothing to do with it. It is the overall degeneration of cognitive capability brought about by social networks.
 

Tyrr

Liturgist
Joined
Jun 25, 2020
Messages
2,458
And what's interesting in this game is, if you don't romance characters, they may decide to find their own romances for themselves, whether within the team or within the world itself.
I have a cunning idea for future game designers: all party members develop relationships during the game, which culminate in a huge orgy after the final boss battle.
That was already done.
In Rance 2
 

Froila

Educated
Joined
Feb 1, 2021
Messages
108
And what's interesting in this game is, if you don't romance characters, they may decide to find their own romances for themselves, whether within the team or within the world itself.
I have a cunning idea for future game designers: all party members develop relationships during the game, which culminate in a huge orgy after the final boss battle.
That was already done.
In Rance 2
Once again filthy gaijins are stealing Japanese heritage. :negative:
 

Alienman

Retro-Fascist
Patron
Joined
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Messages
17,500
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Mars
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Some of the shilling lol...

dqQFMOe.png



....love how Final Fantasy is now the go-to example for action games too :lol:
We just got old. General gaming community is now defined by people whose first big games were TW3, Bloodborne, FFXV, Bayonetta and PUBG, hence their benchmarks for comparison. Though Bayonetta is questionable because her great booty all over the game I guess considered male gaze sexual objectification.
I mean, we did, but that's still no excuse for being ignorant of history...especially when it's only like a decade or so older.

Shows just how much ADHD is rife today when you can look back a few decades before writing an article.
But zoomers don't play singleplayer games.
 

Cael

Arcane
Possibly Retarded
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,993
Come to think of it, with all those woke shit going on at the moment I'm surprised we have not seen a female dwarf companion with large beard in any of the games yet.
The only female dwarf party member I can think of recently was Sagani from PoE, but she had no beard and PoE's races weren't 100% equivalent to generic fantasy.
Sigrun from DA:O-Awakening was probably the last one. Prior to that, we have that crazy dwarf from Dark Queen of Krynn.
 

Butter

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
7,998
Some of the shilling lol...

dqQFMOe.png



....love how Final Fantasy is now the go-to example for action games too :lol:
We just got old. General gaming community is now defined by people whose first big games were TW3, Bloodborne, FFXV, Bayonetta and PUBG, hence their benchmarks for comparison. Though Bayonetta is questionable because her great booty all over the game I guess considered male gaze sexual objectification.
I mean, we did, but that's still no excuse for being ignorant of history...especially when it's only like a decade or so older.

Shows just how much ADHD is rife today when you can look back a few decades before writing an article.
But zoomers don't play singleplayer games.
They'll play this one if their favorite streamer soyfaces at it.
 

Alienman

Retro-Fascist
Patron
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
17,500
Location
Mars
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
They'll play this one if their favorite streamer soyfaces at it.
Isn't that the thing though with zoomers? They watch the streamer and give him money, but does not play, aka buy games themselves. That's the impression I'm getting. Unless it's something like Destiny for some reason.
 

Froila

Educated
Joined
Feb 1, 2021
Messages
108
Some of the shilling lol...

dqQFMOe.png



....love how Final Fantasy is now the go-to example for action games too :lol:
We just got old. General gaming community is now defined by people whose first big games were TW3, Bloodborne, FFXV, Bayonetta and PUBG, hence their benchmarks for comparison. Though Bayonetta is questionable because her great booty all over the game I guess considered male gaze sexual objectification.
Lack of erudition is a big problem in any craft, but unlike other crafts (drawing, animation, music, etc.) playing games is a very time-consuming activity.

In 40 hours you can watch and even discuss several movies, listen to several concerts, etc. How many games can one complete in this time?
 

ropetight

Savant
Joined
Dec 9, 2018
Messages
1,157
Location
Lower Wolffuckery
With a modern AAA budgets in hundreds millions, million copies is a certifiable, studio-closing flop.
Game with budget of 200 millions has to sell 4 million copies priced 70$ just to break even, if you are generous and assume stores will take only 10-15%.
And money came without interest - which it doesn't.
Realistically, in this case everything below 5 million copies is a flop.

It is the same thing with AAA games and Disney's overinflated blockbusters that need half a billion just to break even.
Most of these games and movies are destined to be flops.
Don't look like anything close to $200M. Production values more akin to Lords of the Fallen ($66M). Given higher US/Canadian salaries (I understand, that they outsourced most of tasks to companies and freelancers outside of "first world" countries, but still they have a great chunk of people, who work in USA/Canada, especially in management) I'd say $80-100M. It's EA in-house project, they have tons of games simultaneously in development, so they don't use to fund behemoths budgets. Previous installment was 10 years ago and didn't exactly made people to inpatiently wait for sequel, so I'm sure risk-limiting approach.

Steam takes 30% AFAIR, EA have their own store and as for physical sales it's up to wholesale prices of retailers, retail price could be 2-3 times higher than wholesale. And taking into account, that a big piece of expenses were already covered from another revenue streams, and loans were refinanced. No bank would expect, that his loan, taken for salaries in 2020, would be returned in late 2024 at best. And regional prices, though the difference tend to be less and less.

Long story short: there's a rough estimate of sales, that would be enough to bury exact numbers in complex financial affairs of EA and present it to shareholders like: "DAtV didn't match our optimistic expectations, but steady revenue stream allowed to support financial stability and solidified our market capitalization with further development of our most valued IP blah-blah-blah"
It could be that this is more AA title by budget and of course there is all kinds of accounting shenanigans EA could use.
And my numbers are rough estimate - i.e. I took half of Steam percent to take in account other stores.
But we are still talking about couple of millions of copies that they need to cover expenses.

Also, I don't think EA will miss oportunity to reduce taxes with expenses on the project.
One of the reasons they love outsourcing is that bills are tax deductible, and salaries are quite the opposite.
Rockstar was famous for never paying a penny of taxes in the UK after GTA V by paying bills to other Rockstar subsidiaries that were offshore.

After EA overinflates expenses of the project, they have good excuse to close BioWare - especially if sale numbers show them that DragonAge IP is not attractive anymore.
And closing a studio is not a strange occurence for them.
 

SmoothPimp

Augur
Joined
Jan 27, 2013
Messages
145
Location
Ukraine Paradise
In 40 hours you can watch and even discuss several movies, listen to several concerts, etc. How many games can one complete in this time?
It's rather oversatiation of entertainment. Back in 80s and 90s people invested hundreds of hours in games, since there were less games, they were more expensive generally (no indies for $5 on almost endless parade of sales), there were no guides, almost no internets. Now it's consume as fast as you can. Even don't play yourself for 40 hours - just watch 2 or 3 hours of walkthrough on YouTube, read wikipedia trivia and you almost as good as those who had a very hard time to force through it learning on their mistakes.
 

Bastardchops

Augur
Patron
Joined
Nov 4, 2015
Messages
2,054
And what's interesting in this game is, if you don't romance characters, they may decide to find their own romances for themselves, whether within the team or within the world itself.
I have a cunning idea for future game designers: all party members develop relationships during the game, which culminate in a huge orgy after the final boss battle.
How about the first enemy you click on in the game just opens a live web cam to the developers having a 24/7 orgy.
 

jf8350143

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 14, 2018
Messages
1,330
BG3 had one update where they claimed this and then immediately backtracked on it.

Not sure if it was a misunderstanding, a dropped feature, or if the fan backlash at the time made them reverse course.

Regardless, as predicted, it seems like the lesson that Bioware learned from Baldur's Gate 3 was that maximum degeneracy sells.
BG 3 never intended companions to establish any kind of relationship. That game has never intended for companions to interact with each other at all. The only exception is shadow heart and La'zel, they fight once in the first chapter and never speak of it again.

Bioware on the other hand always has the tradition of having companions interact with each other and sometimes hook up with each other. If anything Bioware is more superior in this regard because companions should have interaction.
 

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