🤘🤘 What Can You Learn from Baldur's Gate 3's Phenomenal Success and its Approach

Howdy!

In this week’s newsletter, I am looking into:

• Best PC Game that wins with Content (and respect to their customers)

• Objection Handling Tracker V2

Lezzgo!

Dejan - @dgajsek

What sets Baldur’s Gate 3 apart in a world brimming with high-end role-playing games?

Modern gaming has gotten a bad rep in the last few years.

You wouldn’t know it because the sales numbers look great. The gaming market (which is the bigger than the movie and music industry combined) reached its peak during the “Covid Years” but even when the world realized we are not going to go extinct and returned back to work and real lives, the market stabilized.

No, it’s not the money issue.

The problem in modern gaming lies in two things:

• Creative fatigue

• Disrespecting the client

With the promise of bringing more and more money into the company, big publishers aren’t taking risks anymore.

We have 10 years of stale franchises who release the same game every year with a different make-up. Sequels are a great strategy since companies can build something after they found a winning formula with the players (a product/market fit!).

But re-releasing the same thing with incremental improvements just won’t do it after a certain time.

The other big sin is gamer exploitation.

Focused on revenue, modern publishers don’t mind turning something fun and interactive into a money-squeezing machine that milks gamers for slight iterations for each franchise title.

Everyone knew the truth, but the latest game release of Baldur’s Gate 3 uncovered and silence wide-open.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Controversy

What used to be a domain of nerds who played Dungeon and Dragons in cellars has become a massive business.

Compared to Movie industry, gaming is at least 5x bigger making it the largest entertainment industry in the world.

“Today, gaming is the largest category in the entertainment industry, with revenues that far exceed those of both the film and music industries. This year, the gaming industry is expected to be worth more than $170 billion in global revenues, five times greater than global movie box office revenues.” — FTC complaint against Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision

Global gaming publishers like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and (since the acquisition by Activision) Blizzard are the most known “exploiters” for shrewd monetization tactics.

It’s fine… businesses need to make money. And if you’d listen to the famous copywriter Gary Halbert, he’d tell you that the best way of getting paid is getting paid multiple times.

But what if this just goes too far. Gamers are not struggling for content - the market supply is endless.

What gamers do starve for is fun without the cost of exploitation.

Without feeling that they are being pinched for whatever they have.

But when these publishers all go for these tactics, the market creates a need for a title that does it differently.

The new massive triple AAA title by Larian Studios - the role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 has hit the market a couple of weeks ago.

The title is a massive tier AAA game with 6-years in the production.

There are thousands of ways to start with character selection and according to the game developer, 17,000 possible endings.

Gamers love this game, not just because of the quality, but because of unrestricted access to content without exploitative tactics.

In the last 24 hours, more than 600,000 gamers are playing the game making it second most popular game right after Counter-Strike: GO which is a eSports-dedicated game.

Last week, Baldur’s Gate took the reins as the most played game.

But instead of pushing it for as much money they could earn, the studio decided for simple pricing of one-time purchase of $59,99.

And why is that? The quality of the game, the story, and the sheer amount of content is one piece of the medal. The other one is, the utmost respect to their customers - the gamers.

Larian are gamers themselves, and in order to keep the company alive they have to make money through the game.

But that doesn’t mean they need to subtract themselves with the common issues of modern gaming:

• Microtransactions

• In-game purchases

• Paywalls

• Game passes

• Preorder exploitative content

• Internet connection needed to play

Compared to Diablo 4 - the other RPG Giant released Earlier This Year

Diablo 4 was released on 6th of June this year with much anticipation. The Diablo franchise has a cult-like status and the gaming community anticipated it as one of the biggest game releases of this year.

Heck, even I was looking forward to its release even though I haven’t played video games in more than 10 years. (One of my most fond childhood memories were playing Diablo 2 with a barbarian class and blasting Black Sabbath as an alternative soundtrack. 🤘🤘)

Freaking awesome.

But they moved from focusing on gameplay to monetization tactics that sacrifice gameplay.

• Want shiny new cosmetic armor? Pay money.

• Want to buy a weapon? Pay real money.

• Want to expand your inventory to make the game more accessible? Pay money.

• Want to access additional content? Pay money?

It reminds me of this crazy idea about car manufacturers, where the they wanted to charge you a monthly subscription for features your car that you just bought already has built-in.

Want to use heated seats in your BMW for $18/month? Save two months if you opt-in for annual sub!

This add-on comeson top of a full-priced triple AAA game that cost $70 at launch).

While the game isn’t so-called “pay-to-win”, meaning you can’t realistically finish the game without buying in-game content, it does offer free players a massive disadvantage.

In modern gaming, this mechanism is sometimes called “wallet gamers” - players who spend a lot of money (in Diablo 4, some gamers spent more than $10k on a game in in-house purchase).

But Blizzard changed their ways ever since it was acquired by Activision.

• Diablo 1 in 1999 was revolutionized action-style RPG games

• Diablo 2 built on the predecessor and improved graphics and mechanics, introduced a solid story and became an essential and one of the most popular games in history (think of it like Pulp Fiction or Lord of the Rings in movie world)

• Diablo 3., moved away from the gothic dark style that influenced the first two games and introduced micro-transactions

• Diablo Immortal - a mobile game, became a meme since it was completely the opposite what gamers demanded

• Diablo 4, had an amazing launch and definitely earned their money but… they have to sell a piece of their soul.

You see, Diablo 4 looks to get as much revenue as possible (at least that’s how it feels like) and use the brand name capital to get it.

Instead of respecting the gamers who have been waiting for decades to enjoy a stylistic and fun action game, they intentionally include all the sins of the modern gaming to add frictions to their gameplay - just so they can squeeze an extra buck from a player.

This hurts their brand, and in the long run just creates a barrier between a game publisher and the player. There’s only so many times that you can pull the trust factor before the community brands you as one of the exploitative companies.

Sales Numbers

Diablo 4 $666M (can’t be a coincidence as it’s a number of the beast 🤘🤘)
As of yesterday Baldur’s Gate 3 reportedly sold 5.7 million copies of the game.

Here’s the difference.

Diablo 4 is a $70 game with micro transactions that you’ll have to buy utility for (for example upgrading your inventory to hold more items.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is $59,99 (as of Aug 3, on Steam). One time purchase, in full capabilities.

That said, greed and cynicism have diminished many franchises. Quality should be the priority, not minimum viable products. Microtransactions often undermine fun for profits.

A similar game, at least in breadth and hype, Elden Ring showed what's possible with passion and care. Few games excel on all fronts, but more could focus on experience over exploitation.

Consumers rewarding quality sends a message.

If you look at the sales, Diablo and other titles are doing amazing. Great revenue numbers, perhaps past their KPIs.

But every time you pull this lever of short-term revenue boost microtransactions the publishers sacrifice a piece of their brand reputation.

All just to appease the investors who demand revenue at all costs.

For more info - check out this Diablo 4 breakdown.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Under Scrutiny of Being “Too Good”

The most hilarious controversy about the release of Baldur’s Gate is an objection of being too good.

It’s so good that other studios are worried that this triple AAA game will become a baseline for games coming after it.

This bodes well for Baldur’s Gate 3 is different and why it’s winning:

Respect for the gamer: Baldur's Gate 3's success does highlight how gamers appreciate quality, depth and value over monetization schemes. Developers pushing back likely reflect concerns over unrealistic expectations, as well as business/funding models.

The gaming industry, like any business, must balance art, commerce and sustainability. But quality should never take a back seat to empty monetization schemes or minimal viable products at the cost of fun and consumer goodwill. A balanced, consumer-first approach seems most likely to thrive in the long run.

What we do today, echoes in the eternity

The fact of being “too good” - so good that everything else feels boring (well now you know how 80% of the people on dating apps feel like 🙃) is such a ridiculous statement.

• You don’t have to make stupendous amazing game - indie category is lucrative niche, and even solo-developer made millions of money from smaller titles

• If there’s no groundbreaking titles, aren’t you curbing the line of progress?

  
  
  And while GTA builds up their franchise by significantly leveling up their next game with each sequel, Diablo 4 rather looks at it through the short-term revenue goals.

The rating and viewership of Diablo 4 is plummeting and it will be hard to revive it unless they decide to overhaul the player experience.

What’s the point of this lesson?

Every company in the world is or it should work to optimize for the world-of-mouth channel. Marketing and sales have changed and every good or bad deed, product, service gets amplified by the creator community.

Once you start using YouTube as the primary search tool, you’ll realize how important good practices are. It’s the way to build your brand and social capital when you build something of amazing quality AND respect your user.

And that doesn’t need to be at a cost of lost revenue. On the contrary.

1- It's ok to charge a premium, if your value is also premium. What users don’t like are the hidden costs for features that are more mandatory than optional. Respect your user!

2- Product release when it’s done. Why Baldur’s Gate 3 launch succeeded was the quality of their game at full release. No huge bugs, stellar content, tons of optionality.

This worked way better than the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 - a mega-hyped game by the studio that made the Witcher franchise. The game’s content looked amazing, trailers were jaw-dropping, and John Wick’s appearance (Keanu Reeves played an in-game character) only added to the anticipation.

But the game wasn’t ready. Publisher’s pushed the deadline and released it unfinished. The game wasn’t up to expectations because of the bugs and glitches which hurt their reputation and affected sales numbers.

3- Respect your customer above everything.

If you have so much value compared to everyone else, you’re automatically deemed a winner… and your competitors are going to be jealous AF.

Looking at both game releases we can see how one company is building a legacy (Larian Studios with BG3) and the other destroying it (Activision’s Blizzard with Diablo 4).

[Notion Template] Objection Handling Tracker++

Earlier this month, Stefanos Karakasis and I, launched a Objection Tracker Notion Template - the template will let you note down which objections appear the most often in your sales deals.

More than 91 people have downloaded it since then.

And 10 of them gave it 5-star ratings (well 9, because one of them was me 🙃)

Since then we’ve updated an Team version which has:

• 40 most common objections

• … with talk tracks

• … and assigned objections for the team

Check it out here

Individual version is free, while Team version is priced at 15 EUR.

Spicy Memes & Giggles

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Check it out by yourself 

A bit nerdy this time but a fascinating study. Hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Have a wonderful week!

🤘🤘

d.

Lay it On Me

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