Baldur's Gate 3

Because whenever I play those games, I'm just mindlessly hitting the attack button, and I've got my fingers hovered over the mana respawn and health respawn buttons, and I'm just like...

Clicking those three things and that's all I'm doing and I'm like this is so mindless but then I loved Baldur's Gate 3 and you know some other stuff like that so this is cool that you can kind of like choose that's weird.

Yeah, I think the turn-based option is newer, but the way I'm playing it is the way the genre traditionally does it, which is real-time with pause.

So the battles play out in real-time, but you can pause and then give commands to all your guys.

Okay.

When you play Baldur's Gate 3, like...

That's what a mind flayer looks like.

It's like a cross between mind flayer and man thing.

So they're kind of a very interesting developer as much because of what they influenced.

I think a lot of the Baldur's Gate 3 people really have cited sort of that initial, certainly the first Mass Effect, but also sort of some of the stuff in Dragon Age in terms of like, relationships with characters that develop over time, but specifically like choices made that lead to branching storylines and sort of ongoing effects from game to game.

Like that was a massive sort of thing that Bioware at least did incredibly well, if not completely invented.

But yeah, I know that, yeah, for a fact that, yeah, Baldur's Gate 3 was very heavily influenced by Bioware's work.

And so, yeah, it's a real shame.

The new Mass Effect game, which someone, some aggrieved ex-employee, I assume, leaked an early trailer, which was quite surprisingly polished.

do it.

How are we going to do the suck-off bit? But it did sound cool.

We're the biggest digital licensor in the world.

We have huge mega hits like Baldur's Gate 3 or Monopoly Go from our partners at Scopely.

So we're familiar with working with other companies to kind of propagate our brands.

What behavioral licensing does is it just does it in a different way.

And occasionally you do it with an exclamation point.

Occasionally you'll have a big movie like a Transformers movie or a D&D Honor Among Thieves.

Or like a huge video game hit like Baldur's Gate 3.

But you have to be able to have that underlying engagement with your fans so that when you get past those peaks, you still have something to talk about.

This studio, from what it was, it inspired so many people.

Like, we wouldn't have Baldur's Gate 3 without Without this studio, we wouldn't have The Witcher 3 because the developers said they were inspired by Bioware.

Without Bioware.

Like, this studio is the pinnacle of Western RPGs.

And then once the Saudis took over, once Jared Kushner took over, they looked at the books and they were just like, what is going on here? Why are we paying these developers in Edmonton six-figure salaries when they made...

Like that demo surface of Mass Effect Universe or whatever it's called, right? Like that is just a proof of concept.

Like how can you have – they're literally saying you have more choices in this game than freaking Baldur's Gate 3 and The Witcher 3.

Like how are you going to have that with a 50-team studio? You can't.

And for a long time, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were kind of the gold standard for a computer role-playing game.

To be honest, to this day, I still think of them in very high regard, even with Baldur's Gate 3, which is not Bioware related.

But yeah, so they had those two games and then Neverwinter Nights.

Man, I was so in love with Neverwinter Nights.

So far, we've brought some devastating news.

So why not bring in something fun and happy? Baldur's Gate 3 has reportedly surpassed 23 million copies sold, generating over 1.2 billion in revenue, which is a lovely balance to all these stories we've been covering about studio closures.

Projects failing to launch and not making enough money and people losing their jobs.

No, this is a good new studio.

Larian Studios who made Baldur's Gate 3 are obviously doing very, very well for themselves.

And this is new data coming out of Alinea Analytics.

saying that the game has sold 23.2 million copies across all platforms, generating more than 1.2 billion in revenue.

The game also continues to attract millions of players despite being more than three years old.

And only $40, so there you go.

Yay! Also fully on a cart, but $70, is Baldur's Gate 3 at Home.

A.K.A. Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader.

Oh, that's what you mean.