“When you push too hard, it breaks.”
What he really meant is, “This is how we profit”.
And it’s true.
It’s literally true.
I mean, like a lot of us are idealists that like to entertain people.
This is why we became developers, alright - and so it’s very easy to abuse.
So you see a lot of that.
And so none of us want to be economy designers.
We don’t want our games to be milked out or concepts to be milked out.
We just want to make new things, and entertain people.
And so I think that’s something that’s shared across [the industry].
So there’s a lot of anger about that, right?
I mean, that’s just the way it is.
I’m interested in how that feeds into the approach to making games themselves.
In your talk, you talked about your “KPI” being “fun”.
I very much enjoy hearing someone say that, but also wondered how possible it was for most studios.
Vincke:No, because making games is hard.
I mean, it’s a complex business.
I mean, like it is a business.
So there’s nothing wrong with that.
So it’s not that simple.
And so you have people that really want to make something that they care about.
Because it’s such a fragile thing to make.
And that makes it much more complex.
And there’s always gonna be human consequences, when things break.
Another topic that’s come up sporadically around this is the longevity of development staff.
The impact that continuous experience has on the games they make feels obvious.
But everywhere seems to be struggling to keep hold of its veterans.
Vincke:Well, I mean - by not firing them?!
[laughs] That’s really straightforward.
But you could typically maintain a good portion of it by treating them with respect.
So that’s really the thing.
That doesn’t make any sense."
Because that person is like a beacon of knowledge within that company.
But it will cost them a lot.
I’ll give you an example: I heard of a group of technical artists being fired.
Because they define your entire pipeline, which is going to define your cost of your assets.
Anyway, we’re hiring them to come work for us.
Do you feel a consciousness of that?
And he told me: “Well, it’s actually going better than I expected.”
And so I asked him, “What do you mean?”
And he said, “Well I mean, the cycle is just repeating - they fired them all.
So now they’re all looking for co-developers.
[laughs]
He’s very fatalistic about it, because that’s his job.
But I mean, he’s very knowledgeable about the industry, and he’s right!
By not having to pursue that aggressive growth.
Related, something you talked about in your talk, was the growth of employees that you have.
I tried to scribble it down quickly.
I think it was something like just under 50 in 2014.
And now it’s around the 475 mark -
Vincke:470, yeah.
Right - so does that feel sustainable?
Because it’s a massive amount of growth.
So that’s actually also why I did it, or part of the reasons I did it.
So there’s that.
So we could see where we are.
And so we’re good for quite a number of years with where we are right now.
Vincke:It happens, for sure.
When things are starting to run late, what can you do - you’re free to outsource?
But that’s hard, because you have to onboard the outsourcers.
But that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
It really depends on what your plans for afterwards are.
So I said, “If that works, I want to be on board”.
So I don’t regret that part.
So I said, “Hey, we can do this!”
And so that put the engineers under stress.
That was the bad part about it.
Does it make you question coming to consoles at all?
So you want to achieve that.
Are we going to try out multi-platform releases?
We would like to be cross-platform on day one.
So it really depends.
But I did learn that whatever we release needs to be really good.
So we learned there that the engine’s roadmap is not necessarily your roadmap.
And so if you work on your own engine, there’s a price to pay for sure.
And sometimes a heavy price.
But you will always benefit from it.
I think that I’ve been misquoted on this.
Vincke:Yeah, no.
So either [it was] because I was heavily jetlagged, so either I said it wrongly…
So it’s not the very big RPG that will dwarf them all, that we’re making now.
They’re big and ambitious, that’s for sure.
But I mean, I think scope wise, BG3 is probably already good enough!
Vincke:Well it’s not D&D.
Still familiar enough, but different.
I mean, like: tone, style, way of doing it, are for us certainly new.
And I think very appealing.
But it’s new in that sense.
One of the things you’ve talked about a few times was this notion of listening to players.
Or veering into fanservice?
Or I’m gonna check with our designers.
And we’ll have a discussion about it.
Or is it just a very small portion of it?
So we’ll discuss it from that point of view.
And then if we think it’s big enough of an issue, then we’ll start addressing it.
So it’s a balance, really.
There’s a lot of intuition involved.
There’s some analytics involved - those are hard numbers.
And so we did a lot of experiments with that.
It was a very, very, very complicated and very fine line to walk.
Is there something that you would do differently for the next game?
Vincke:Not have such complicated rules.
[laughs]
That makes sense!
Which was very odd - not necessarily my belief of what the future looks like.
So, we certainly don’t see it as a replacement for developers.
But we do see it as something that allows us to do more stuff.
We had this thing for the one-liner NPCs.
So there’s uses for it.
And say if it’s like multiple people, they could say, “Oh my god!”
and it’s like, literally a serial killer.
And then if you arrive there as a player, that would feel good, right?
But you would still lace that into your overall web.
And we’re certainly doing experiments with that.
But as I said, it’s still far from being usable in that sense.
Okay, well, that makes sense.
Vincke:Well it’s always been tough.
I mean, this has never been an easy industry to get into.
So there’s opportunity to be had, so I think it’s about looking for those.
I think that making it is so hard, the talent is going to be needed.
Especially with the ones that have experience.
The last thing I wanted to ask you is a bit more light-hearted.
Vincke:Well, the thing is that I don’t actually remember!
[laughs] Because I was surprised myself - I’d forgotten about it.
But then he didn’t really hit it off as a tiefling.
So that’s how he became an elf.
But I don’t exactly remember the conversation around it, or how it happened.
So he just had to probably be the checkbox tiefling.
This was before we knew who he was, so it’s not abnormal that things like that change.
