Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Larian General Discussion Thread

Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
BG3 already sold millions of units and it isn't even released
2bd.png
 

lycanwarrior

Scholar
Joined
Jan 1, 2021
Messages
1,488
Glassdoor review from last month. :M

"Good for beginners, bad for pros, awful for dreamers"
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
Doesn't Recommend

I worked at Larian Studios full-time for more than a year

Pros

Working on large projects can boost your resume.

Cons

Don't fall into that hype made by Metacritic scores. The everyday reality is different.


If you are a beginner it is a good place to start. You can learn a lot working on complex projects. Though be prepared. Larian is not a cool indie family but rather a corporation with several studios around the world. Most of your time you will be working and communicating online with people you never met in person.

If you are a grown up professional this place is not for you. The custom engine is a headache and the development process is chaotic. Be prepared to be shocked by a level of professional incompetence of your superior, the company is filled with people who are in charge of things, because they are here from the beginning. Salaries are low compared to other studios. Benefits and bonuses for overtimes and crunches from successful releases are laughable and rather insulting. Working on large scale open world games is boring and exhausting.

And for those who are passionate enthusiasts who dreamed about groundbreaking open world games. Your expectations will be crushed here. Most of your time you will be doing the same routine job, over and over again, trying to fill another open world with countless assets, quests and bugs. You'll be doing it with hundreds of other coworkers whose names you don't even know. You will have to do that because the game has to be big to be praised by players and journalists. To earn more money.

No matter your experience and position in the company you are just a machine inside a big factory. But unlike a traditional factory where employees have fixed work hours, clear goals and established pipelines, you will be working in a chaos, often surrounded by unprofessional colleagues, crunching without deserved benefits.

Don't fall into that trap. AAA gamedev is dying and needs significant changes. But if you are curious and want to experience what it's like to work in a sick industry, Larian or CD Projekt are great places for that.

:butthurt: but I don't doubt that part about Larian having less-than-suitable leads because they happened to be the best of a bad bunch back when they made Divinity 2 and well, what can you do? "The custom engine is a headache" is also funny considering how better-feeling it is than Unity, though given how unpopular the mod tools are, I can believe it.

Interesting comment about open world games and why they tend to up being buggy and yet popular at the same time.

Otherwise, it sounds like another gaming fanboy with starry eyes about working in the industry and seeing the reality.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Patron
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
99,628
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Larian Barcelona are apparently the development team of Blitworks, who did the Divinity: Original Sin 2 Switch port.
 

Shrimp

Liturgist
Joined
Jun 7, 2019
Messages
1,065
They're probably already working on a PS5 port for the eventual enhanced/definitive/GOTY/younameit edition that'll be released a year or two after the main game's launch.
 

Shrimp

Liturgist
Joined
Jun 7, 2019
Messages
1,065
Larian Barcelona are apparently the development team of Blitworks, who did the Divinity: Original Sin 2 Switch port.
they also did the BG3 stadia port
Clearly a smart investment. Can't wait for all the games that larian will export to stadion.
I'm sure they were paid a lucrative amount of money for it, so it probably was a profit for them even if the Stadia turned out to be a disaster.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,556
Location
Bulgaria
Larian Barcelona are apparently the development team of Blitworks, who did the Divinity: Original Sin 2 Switch port.
they also did the BG3 stadia port
Clearly a smart investment. Can't wait for all the games that larian will export to stadion.
I'm sure they were paid a lucrative amount of money for it, so it probably was a profit for them even if the Stadia turned out to be a disaster.
Hmm doesn't make sense to buy a whole studio that specialize in porting shit when don't have a lot of games to port. It is better to just hire them when you have a game to port,when you make one game in 5 years.
 

Shrimp

Liturgist
Joined
Jun 7, 2019
Messages
1,065
Larian Barcelona are apparently the development team of Blitworks, who did the Divinity: Original Sin 2 Switch port.
they also did the BG3 stadia port
Clearly a smart investment. Can't wait for all the games that larian will export to stadion.
I'm sure they were paid a lucrative amount of money for it, so it probably was a profit for them even if the Stadia turned out to be a disaster.
Hmm doesn't make sense to buy a whole studio that specialize in porting shit when don't have a lot of games to port. It is better to just hire them when you have a game to port,when you make one game in 5 years.
Oh no, I meant that I assume Larian was paid money 2 or 3 (if not more) years ago to bring the game to Stadia, not that it was a recent transaction. If they actually make another office in some random city then it's probably either because they need to burn profit money to avoid taxes or some shit OR because they genuinely feel like it's a worthwhile investment. I don't know if the team that's been given an office in Barcelona is the same one that also has been responsible for all the different Original Sin 2 ports, because that game is starting to reach Skyrim levels of ports.
For all we know they could already be planning/working on porting games like DOS2/BG3 to more random platforms
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
36,716
Yup,you must be really retarded to have 7 international studios when you are producing mediocre games for niche genre. One flop and he will be selling his grandma's furniture.

Swen's business strategy has been YOLO ever since Divinity: Original Sin. It'll work fine until it doesn't. BG3 won't be the end.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Most of the studios are tiny and specialized on a few tasks, it's not like they have 7 full studios with equal number of employees as their main studio.
 

:Flash:

Arcane
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
6,762
Whatever you think of the current direction of Larian, Swen is the living proof that perseverance pays off.

Larian is the last remaining independent RPG studio from the 90s. I was a member of their forum back before the release of Divine Divinity, which was almost exclusively German, due to LMK being a Dark Eye license game. I even have a L.E.D. Wars CD with Swen and Kirill acting in FMV sequences, because every strategy game had to have FMV back then.
Anyway, they were basically bankrupt after the LMK debacle. They were basically bankrupt after the release of Divine Divinity (everyone was fired). They probably were almost bankrupt a few times after that. And Swen always struggled on and found a way to continue. They had to do work for hire more than once. The reason Beyond Divinity is so crappy is that they were earning money with work for hire while scraping that game together from the remains of Divine Divinity during the night.
Compare that to Troika, who just folded the company (which wasn't bankrupt) because "publishers just weren't interested in RPGs any more, so we couldn't get a new publishing deal".

And Swen always managed to retain the rights to all of their games. This was pretty forward thinking by Swen and something no other studio in their position managed to achieve. It came in quite handy when Steam and GoG got off the ground and old games suddenly become worth something again.
So I say, if anyone deserves the success he currently has, it's Swen. :salute:
 

Grotesque

±¼ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 16, 2012
Messages
9,386
Divinity: Original Sin Divinity: Original Sin 2
Compare that to Troika, who just folded the company (which wasn't bankrupt) because "publishers just weren't interested in RPGs any more, so we couldn't get a new publishing deal".

And thank god they folded.
They died as heroes and didn't live enough for us to see them nowadays as villains.


And all this "perseverance" shit for what!? Money? More money to make more and more money to make the perfect RPG of their dreams while bathing in more money for that sports car, that 1 billion m^2 mansion, private jet, 7 other local studios on every continent?

Money will never bring artistic resonance and lost prime days.

Larian is the last remaining independent RPG studio from the 90s.

The name of a company means jack shit, as does how old it is.
People make a studio great, not the letters on a plaque at the entrance.

That's why is futile to be enthusiast and have high expectations for a game/any game, just because a "legacy" dev studio will make it, as if the letters forming its name is a guarantee for the game's ethos and quality.

A beloved classic game that will be forever etched in the minds of gamers, is like a perfect storm, where different beautiful mishaps coalesce into something beautiful and irrevocably unique.
Where even the janitor that swept the floor after hours had a part in it.
 

vortex

Fabulous Optimist
Joined
Mar 25, 2016
Messages
4,221
Location
Temple of Alvilmelkedic
That dog named Pilar is black hound 'cause Swen always wanted to make BG3: The Black Hound but couldn't, only later Sawyer's The Black Hound was cancelled and he made Pilars of Eternity named after Swen's dog and now Swen is making BG3. I guess everything came in full circle.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Have any other major studio heads kept a blog like Swen Vincke did? I don't mean a whitewashed one, but one that was their actual thoughts.
http://www.lar.net/2012/03/02/thoughts-on-game-journalism/
Games journalism obviously is a sensitive topic for a game developer because it’s like a girlfriend asking – do you think there’s something wrong with how I cook? If you’re honest you’re doomed, if not, you can look forward to things like oversalted steak for the rest of your life

here’s a RPG that was released not that long ago and which I haven’t played yet, but the claims that were made about that game in certain reviews are so unbelievable, that I don’t believe a word of what the early day reviewers have been writing. There were even previews of the review, with some of the wording completely inconsistent with previous reviews from the same magazine when it came to RPGs.

As I said I still need to play it, so I’ll find out for myself – but despite having a high meta critic ratings, it has a 6 as a user rating, so that’s probably an indication I won’t like it. If this were booking.com actually, I wouldn’t book it, based on the user reviews.
Going to guess Dragon Age 2?

Big studios, big publishers: As a reviewer, do you dare go against big publisher X who might happen to be the company indirectly paying a large part of your paycheck through ads? A lot of reviewers say they do, but when you look at their scoring behavior, you can see that in a lot of cases – they don’t. There’s often a little scoring bonus I think.
:M
 

Heinrich

Scholar
Joined
Apr 5, 2017
Messages
128
Have any other major studio heads kept a blog like Swen Vincke did? I don't mean a whitewashed one, but one that was their actual thoughts.
http://www.lar.net/2012/03/02/thoughts-on-game-journalism/
Games journalism obviously is a sensitive topic for a game developer because it’s like a girlfriend asking – do you think there’s something wrong with how I cook? If you’re honest you’re doomed, if not, you can look forward to things like oversalted steak for the rest of your life

here’s a RPG that was released not that long ago and which I haven’t played yet, but the claims that were made about that game in certain reviews are so unbelievable, that I don’t believe a word of what the early day reviewers have been writing. There were even previews of the review, with some of the wording completely inconsistent with previous reviews from the same magazine when it came to RPGs.

As I said I still need to play it, so I’ll find out for myself – but despite having a high meta critic ratings, it has a 6 as a user rating, so that’s probably an indication I won’t like it. If this were booking.com actually, I wouldn’t book it, based on the user reviews.
Going to guess Dragon Age 2?

Big studios, big publishers: As a reviewer, do you dare go against big publisher X who might happen to be the company indirectly paying a large part of your paycheck through ads? A lot of reviewers say they do, but when you look at their scoring behavior, you can see that in a lot of cases – they don’t. There’s often a little scoring bonus I think.
:M
Swen's blog dying is obviously a great shame. If I remember correctly a couple of years ago in an interview he said that he would stop doing regular blogs and and talks and update videos because it was time not spent developing and he thought that was irresponsible.
 

Alienman

Retro-Fascist
Patron
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
18,220
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.
Probably old hat for most, but I didn't know about it before casually reading stuff on the Steam forum... and that is that apparently Tencent own 30% of Larian Studios. Not sure how legit it is because I can't find much on it, but it seems real I guess?

One of the few sites that mention it: https://www.archyde.com/baldurs-gat...ported-to-be-owned-by-tencent-baldurs-gate-3/



If true, I do wonder if it has any effect on the game, going by censors and stuff. But not too fun regardless, another company semi-owned by CCP.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom