Baldur's Gate 3 is a 'long-term goal' of Beamdog
It's still a ways from reality, but Beamdog's team of ex-BioWare devs have a goal to make Baldur's Gate 3 and may use Kickstarter to do it.
Some gamers were disappointed that last week's Baldur's Gate announcement was not a third installment of the fantasy RPG series, but instead an enhanced version of the original games. But that doesn't mean that the developers haven't already thought about it.
Cameron Tofer, co-founder of Beamdog with fellow ex-BioWare dev Trent Oster, told GameSpy that "Baldur's Gate 3 has been our long term goal. We have a lot of things to put in place before such a project can be launched."
Oster, who has been active on Twitter trying to answer fan questions, tweeted much the same thing: "We are working towards a #BG3 #bgee is our first step in our larger plan."
Tofer added that developer Overhaul Games, a division of Beamdog, wants to do the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Editions properly first by creating more side quests and finishing certain story lines, among other things. He said they will have plenty more announcements to answer gamers' questions in coming weeks.
As for who would publish a BG3 when the time came, Tofer was point blank: "We're totally thinking Kickstarter. It just makes so much sense and solves so many problems. I think what Brian [Fargo] is doing with Wasteland is very interesting."
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replyJohn Keefer posted a new article, Baldur's Gate 3 is a 'long-term goal' of Beamdog.
It's still a ways from reality, but Beamdog's team of ex-BioWare devs have a goal to make Baldur's Gate 3 and may use Kickstarter to do it.-
Are publishers starting to get worried with this recent Kickstarter push?
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For developers that own or have access to valuable IP outside publisher control, I'd say yes.
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Because then they more options. As much as publishers bitch about development costs and how much they have to put in they also love the leash that it gives them to control the developer with. Being able to say "no" to a publisher's bad idea is not something all devs can do.
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... then they have more options...
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They're probably excited about it right now, takes a lot of risky ventures off the table while keeping developers afloat so if they do need AAA funding on a game that makes sense to the publisher they're in a better position to do it in, while at the same time generating IPs that, if successful, they can make money off the larger sequel. It's a win win until kickstarter's hit closer to $50 million, should they ever.
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Nope. Around 80,000 people funded the DoubleFine Kickstarter. If a game from a major publisher sold those numbers it would be a failure.
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even 10 times that number isn't enough to justify AAA budgets though
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source? let's say kickstarter funds the next CoD competitor instead of a traditional publisher with an assumption of no drop in quality or marketing. What's the difference in budget?
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I imagine that once the game is made it will also be sold by various outlets, so I think 80,000 is hardly a final number in terms of sales.
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Ugh, I always forget to refresh.
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LOL, me too. :D
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Given what the company needed from a publisher for funding, if it sold 250k units it would make back more than what the kickstarter brought in, that's not exactly difficult to do nowadays from an established dev.
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But that's just for the initial startup. The game will go on to sell more. Now, they don't need that initial capital to begin building a game.
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You're all missing my point. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, by any means. It's just different levels of scale. 80,000 copies for a small developer is awesome. For a monolithic company (like any major publisher) its not even worth looking at.
And yes, I'm sure these projects will sell more when finished. But will they sell the kind of numbers publishers care about? Almost certainly not.
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I'd support it if it doesn't appear exclusively on their digital distribution service like their MDK2 remake did and BG remakes probably will
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Yeah, give me steam or GOG please. Though if they do a kickstarter it'll be much smaller/old school than I would've liked.
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I'd actually prefer it if it stays old school. A new BG in the infinity engine would be awesome. I'd trade good graphics/voice acting for depth any day.
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Well, the BG remakes sound like they're going to be done in an updated infinity engine, and I could live with them using that for BG3.
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Back when the Infinity Engine games came out I was working at Babbage's (now GameStop). We would have people coming in more Infinity Engine games.
THEM: "I played Baldur's Gate and I want another game like it."
ME: "Did you get the Baldur's Gate expansion pack?"
THEM: "Yup."
ME: "Did you get Baldur's Gate 2?"
THEM: "Yup, played it and beat it."
ME: "What about the exp-"
THEM: "Expansion pack? Yup, played it and beat it."
ME: "Well there's another game called Icewind Dale that-"
THEM: "Bought it, beat it, and the expansion. And the sequel."
ME: "Well, I hate to say it but that's pretty much it."
Since, at the time Infinity Engine games were pretty much the only ones like that (that I knew of anyway).
And yes, it kills me that I had no idea that Planescape: Torment was an Infinity Engine game at the time. Would have been a perfect answer for people like the one above, but it was so poorly marketed and packaged that fucking nobody knew it was an Infinity Engine game.
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Why would it be on GOG? The only new games on GOG are CD Projekt. Also, I assume it would be a timed exclusive on Beamdog as a promotion for their service.
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1) Because a lot of BG fans use GOG
2) Because CD Projekt has stated in the past that they'd like to expand to new games as well
3) Because it's one of the two services I use to get games digitally and DRM free i FTW!-
I can see it on Steam at some point, not so sure about GOG.
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Agreed, I would be happy with either.
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Didn't CDP say a while back that Witcher 2's success on the service had made them consider hosting other new games? I don't think it will become a go-to resource for new products like Steam, but I bet any game they release on GOG will do well if for no other reason than DRM-free access.
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I think it's made they consider doing games that are maybe around 2 years old and charging $15 for them. I don't know if they've said they want to do brand new games but it's possible.
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GOG has new remakes of old games like the Broken Sword director's cut or the PC version of Stranger's Wrath
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It's not. BioWare doesn't own the BG IP. Hasbro/WotC own D&D and Atari has the right for interactive products with that IP. So, Beamdog would have had to broker a 3 way deal.
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Usually everything just goes through Atari, which kicks stuff up the chain to Hasbro. It makes things amazingly fun when developing a game, as you often have a 10-business-day approval process for basically anything you do regarding D&D content (an eternity in the game business), plus you have to get up at 8 AM to talk to a bunch of people in France whenever you have publisher calls.
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Been there, done that.
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Haha "Beamdog." I remember them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDXbBKEpFMg -
No, mainly because most of the games being made are not even in the same genre or class of games publishers are putting out. Most are now remakes of old game and don't compete with the COD's, Mario, Halo, etc. However what I think most publishers will try and do now with smaller games they choose to publish either from taking on an indie developer or some smaller game from a developer, is to be much more aggressive in acquiring the rights to those games. That way they prevent future installments of the game being made without them getting some of the profit. After gaining a large following through a publishing deal these studios could then take these smaller scale games and with Kickstarter programs fund future sequels. I know currently that publishers already try and lock up rights and future sequels for digital games or smaller scale games they choose to publish but I think the success of Kickstarter will make publishing these smaller ventures and indie games through the normal publishers create difficulty in the original creators maintaining control over their IP.
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Highjacking a little bit, but the Wasteland 2 kickstarter is up to $1,384,296 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2
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I find it a bit ironic that Fargo pokes fun at big publishers when he was one at one point with all the baggage that includes.
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The dance was a little less ridiculous back then than it is now.
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Fair enough, but he was guilty of many of the things he's complaining about now.
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That's a good goal for sure, but let's see bgee be done correctly first
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