Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The Cost of Early Access

Annyliese,

For starters for my part, please allow me to respond with a resounding 'on the contrary' here - I actually had intended to make a reply to your original response myself (and doing so below), but wanted to wait until I got back home instead of via mobile to try and do so. But the thing above all else I wanted to say before bringing my thoughts to the table, was to just give you a huge thanks for making such a demonstrative constructive and reasoned approach to presenting possible differing perspective or opinion on a subject like this. Your post/response IMO should be the poster child example of the right way to attempt to interject a different viewpoint, and I just wanted to say I for one appreciated it very much.




I would agree with this point, if Larian (or any company in similar shoes) had not or were not also doing their due diligence to temper and manage expectations for the potential customer/consumer base going in. Any ethical company selling a product should bear a responsibility to properly convey in truth and transparency the nature of their product and what they're selling, and I and most feel Larian not only has demonstrated that sort of character, but has publicly stated (as Raze has already interected already before I got around to responding) numerous times that EA isn't. Swen himself has actually answered the question of EA more than once by immediately leading in with something along the lines of (paraphrasing), 'Well, I'll tell you what EA is not' or 'I'll tell you who we *don't* want participating in EA', etc.

So, that leads to the other side of the equation, and something that's equally important to bear out: the responsibility in the mix of all this is not solely/100% on the company alone - the consumer also bears some measure of responsibility themselves as well to read/study and educate themselves about what they're buying, or not...and if the consumer doesn't do their due diligence in that regard and purchase blindly, its totally unfair to blame the company at that point. I say that because, its entirely possible there's some poor soul that buys early before release thinking its just a true 'demo' of the first part of the game when its in unfinished state, or worse, thinking they're getting the full game at that point....but with all of the interviews and material out there to be clearly read and understood on the matter, at that point the fault lies squarely at their feet, and certainly not Larian's. And this same premise ^ is true for any product, gaming or otherwise - there's responsibility involved on both sides of the fence.




None of us can scientifically prove the ratio breakdown of perspectives for those of us who will likely be pre-ordering and being actively involved in the EA process, so that should be understood going in before I say this...but I'd feel very confident in making an strongly educated guess that the majority of those who have no qualms about Larian's BG3 EA at all are going to be those who are already emotionally invested, who already trust the quality of both Larian's work and the company's character/actions to date, and thus would already be buying the full release game anyway. And, as has already been shown as fact, purchasing now vs. purchasing after release has no differential involved, save the ability (should one choose to) to pre-order and thus be able to participate in EA. Those same people are also likely viewing the prospect as a team effort - especially if they either participated in Larian's past EA periods, or read the numerous detailed experiential posts from those who did of what occurred therein. You referenced it in reply to someone else as 'money up front', but its almost certainly not money they wouldn't have gotten regardless.

Beyond the above more likely majority scenario however, we should just be blunt here and not dance around things: For anyone else, from what I've observed over the past few months, its only perceived as 'greedy' or touted as such by those who, for whatever reason, either don't have the same confidence in the company as the first pool, or are simply predisposed to be skeptical by nature....but yet obviously have an intense interest in the game regardless - and bottom line, can't figure out how to reconcile between their skepticism and their interest, and are wanting (begging in some cases) to be incentivized to make their internal reconciliation process easier. Simply put, no one that had no interest in the game would spend that much time trying to argue for a discounted or free EA period. Some of them also try and tout other games or developers and what they did, but Larian should not be unfairly held to someone else's standard...and especially not when they've already proven their way of doing things is a very successful approach, not just for company and the company's product, but the consumer as well. And ultimately, as nothing is going to change from Larian's perspective, those that fall into this 2nd classification/pool simply have to somehow make that reconciliation on their own.

It really is very, very simple for them though: if someone is unsure about anything to do with the game or Larian as the developer, as Raze pointed out earlier and as Larian as a whole is stating, they should simply wait until 1.0 release, purchase and try out the game within the refundable timeframe allotted at that point, and if not convinced, they should get a refund at that point. Or, they can (in their eyes) gamble on it by pre-ordering and participating in EA period and let the proverbial dice roll as they may - and I for one hope if they decide to take the risk, they roll a 20 on it.