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Swen Vincke on how Larian ended up Self-Publishing

Haba

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Another blog post by Larian's Swen Vincke:

Looking at Larian I always thought we were ok on the checkboxes – my team is solid, we’re in the business for 15 years with several games having a metacritic above 80% and we’re self-sufficient. Our games also have the habbit of selling for a long time.The only thing that could stop us from making it to the walhalla of the green-light committee therefore would be that committee members just don’t like our games (or me/my studio).

We actually did make it to several green-light committees of top 10 publishers, I even sat in on a few of them to present my games, but we never managed to sign with any of them, so obviously something went wrong. Other than occasionally having to deal with idiots, the biggest common hurdle I found has always been the marketing department. I’ve learnt that in general these people don’t like RPGs. They just don’t get it.


http://www.lar.net/2012/01/09/how-larian-ended-up-self-publishing/

Somewhat interesting read, though much of this was already known to me. According to statistics, RPGs are one of them most popular genre of gaming. Taking that to account, it is quite odd that publishers apply the same thinking to every genre.

Then again, it has always been like this:

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Cool-Cam.aspx
 

Wise Emperor

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Correct me if I'm wrong but I always thought that Divinity series games were selling better in Europe than in US. Good sells in US = quick purchase by EA or other evil corp. Therefore I assume that its easier for them to function as independent company being based in Europe than in US, which is more dominated by "big dogs".
 

CorpseZeb

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Another blog post by Larian's Swen Vincke:

http://www.lar.net/2012/01/09/how-larian-ended-up-self-publishing/

Somewhat interesting read, though much of this was already known to me. According to statistics, RPGs are one of them most popular genre of gaming. Taking that to account, it is quite odd that publishers apply the same thinking to every genre.

RPG popular? Rather RPG'is/RPG'sque than anything else. Look at the Skyrim threads with their "meme" (better overall game, worse "RPG" elements of the game). So, I'm not sure what is in the core of modern publisher love of RPG.
Some would say that's larping thingy, some maybe it's openword'ish graphics festival, some would bet on the ME main character as a model role of dominant alpha male in the real social games (so handy in the these chaotic times where men are women and women are... not the same nice, sexual thingies as they were in the XIX century, etc.). But I dunno really.

Oh, and, of course - RPG=MMO=WoW.

Anyway, that's good thing for Larian, without burden of Publisher, they can fly further and harder on the back of their dragons.

Ps. And they removed DRM protection from their games after a some time (e.g: D2 DKS newest patch). So, pint of fine porter for you - Larian gals!
 

Haba

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RPG popular? Rather RPG'is/RPG'sque than anything else. Look at the Skyrim threads with their "meme" (better overall game, worse "RPG" elements of the game). So, I'm not sure what is in the core of modern publisher love of RPG.

Too lazy to find the survey, but it was 2nd or 3rd most popular genre. Of course wholly different question altogether if you ask what actually goes underneath the label. But it was surprisingly popular.

Lazy fuckers on EU side just lumped everything together :(

http://www.isfe.eu/about-isfe/news/isfe-publishes-2010-european-consumer-survey
 

Harold

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Correct me if I'm wrong but I always thought that Divinity series games were selling better in Europe than in US. Good sells in US = quick purchase by EA or other evil corp. Therefore I assume that its easier for them to function as independent company being based in Europe than in US, which is more dominated by "big dogs".
Pretty much. It was the same case with the first two Gothics which proved to be too difficult for most 'kwans to get into.
 

CorpseZeb

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Duh. I'm actually reading the whole .pdf document. And, yup - "easy access rules" - "the core motivations for playing games are fun 61%, relaxation (wtf...) 53%, and the positive way to pass time (wtf x 10^19...), 53%". Yup. No more porter.

... and "for the challenge of the game" - 32%. No so bad. Small pint of porter then.

Ps. But overall, that document contains some interesting, statistical data. Nice find!
 

Phelot

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I have to wonder why we can't get another Gathering of Developers like group going. I know the last one didn't last so long, but surely it's still a good idea. We got some great games out of them and I always thought they sold reasonably well (AoW)

As for RPG's being popular, of course everyone knows romance and hardcore dialogue choices are integral parts of RPGs and thus why they're so popular.
 

Murk

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Sometimes I feel like a total sap for believing this shit hook, line, and sinker, but I always feel a great deal of admiration for the things SV says in these blogs and in many interviews. It seems that Larian and PB are the companies that really get what's going on in the world of high production games.
 

Phelot

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Sometimes I feel like a total sap for believing this shit hook, line, and sinker, but I always feel a great deal of admiration for the things SV says in these blogs and in many interviews. It seems that Larian and PB are the companies that really get what's going on in the world of high production games.

Frictional Games has a pretty cool development blog that is pretty fun to read. Thomas, the author, often times criticizes what he sees as bad ideas in mainstream and indie games without coming off as pretentious and is pretty good at being the first to point out where they made mistakes. Sadly, since Amnesia they don't seem to be working on anything other than some vague "Under Development" deal. There's some interesting insight on just how difficult it is to put out a AA or even AAA and hope to make money. Actually, it all seems pretty hopeless.

For example, here is a post about their analysis of the 1 year anniversary of Amnesias release.

Of note:

The major example of this would be the the Amnesia WTF video that reached 4 million views before YouTube, because of mysterious reasons, removed it (here is a copy). Others include this pug picture that managed to spread quite virally, images like this one, and much more.
:lol: that was a pretty funny video even though the guy was losing it more than should be normal.
 

BLOBERT

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BROS EUROPEANS ARE JUST AS STUPID AND POPAMOLE LOOK AT SKYWAYS
 

Haba

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Some rather interesting points in the latest post as well:
http://www.lar.net/2012/01/16/the-route-to-the-very-big-rpg-that-will-dwarf-them-all/


[--]Since it turned out that financing topped the obstacle list, I ended up focussing a lot of time on the cash aspect of the business. But to be honest, I hate this part of the job, it’s not the reason I founded this studio. There really are days when I say, the hell with it, I want to program again, I’m not dealing with this stuff any longer (today is one of those days
icon_smile.gif
)

But then I remember the ultimate goal, the making of “the very big RPG that will dwarf them all”, and I get on with it, realizing that the side-quest of finding of what Hollywood calls “Fuck-you money” is realy becoming urgent.


Here’s a break-down of what it cost us to make the Dragon Knight Saga
  • 4M € employees
  • 900K€ freelancers
  • 270K€ outsourcing of artwork
  • 200K€ hardware
  • 700K€ software licenses
  • 400K€ localisation
for a total of 6,5M€. That’s a lot of money and as the Dragon Knight Saga was released via co-publishing deals , it also meant that we needed to take care of the majority of this investment ourselves, since the publishers only contributed partially to the funding.

And...

That’s why in addition to Dragon Commander, we’re also working on an unannounced RPG (which btw is closer on the release horizon than most people think J )
 

Cowboy Moment

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I watched the Gamescom presentation, and, as it turns out, you can enslave nations with Necromancy in Dragon Commander.:incline:

Come to think of it, they might be trolling Bioware intentionally, what with the tagline of their game being "Become the Dragon".
 

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