"I never expected us to be 400 people to make BG3"
I just happen to have my old Shadows of Amn manual right here! Let's look at the end where the credits are listed ... hmmm, I see about 43 voice actors, about 44 people in the QA groups, 21 people on audio stuff, tons of art, animation, and programmer people, etc. I am not going to count them all, and the list is several pages long. So I guess my question for Larian would be, then how many people did you expect to make BG III?
I assume you don't know the process by which videogames are made and game credits are given.
Games are made by a wide selection of individuals, working for the developer, the publisher, a variety of sub-contracted companies, and freelancers.
Typically, all voice/performance capture actors are freelance. Some or all of the faciilities and staff used to acquire the voice/animation/performance data may be sub-contracted, localization is generally subcontracted, some or all of the QA may be subcontracted, and even core game engine code and art assets may sub-contracted. Similarly, publishing, sales and marketing may not be part of the company developing a game.
All these people are traditionally included in the game credits, whether or not they actually work for the developer. Not only that, but the credits contain lists of people that fulfill particular roles within the game development and production. If you go back to the SoA credits list, I'm sure you will find that some names appear many times in different roles.
Further, it's not really possible to know what a developer headcount means without having an organisational chart. For example, Larian are both developer and publisher, which might mean including publishing headcount that are normally external to the developer company.
In the case of our BG3 versus SoA comparison, we see Swen saying 400 people to make BG3, but we don't know which people Swen is including in this, while SoA has 220 final credits, some of which are duplicate individuals in different roles, while many others are for language localization, and other ancillary roles that are not usualy quoted in developer headcount.
From the SoA credits I would (gu)estimate Bioware was about 100 headcount at the time, developing their games at a relatively quick pace (1-2 years) because the capabilities of PCs at the time severely limited the graphical assets that had to be developed, and the cost of audio meant that very little was used.
Recent AAA studio team sizes for games such as Cyberpunk 2077 have been quoted in the region of 400, so Swen's quote of 400 seems aligned with the industry, depending on what he actually includes. Also note that the total development time when BG3 actually releases will be perhaps 4+ years.
The end result is probably at least 10x the input required for SoA, possibly much more. While some of the added cost for BG3 was predictable because SoA had almost no cutscenes, and very limited voicing, I think Swen was really saying he was surprised by how the development scope increased as they fleshed out their design, in order to keep the quality metrics they were aiming for.
Apart from some fuzziness over the expected duration of EA, I feel Larian have been perfectly clear about BG3 development. Unfortunately, interpretation of the meaning of language can be slippery, and judging by a number of the comments in this thread ( and others ), some people on these forums think they have been misled.
