This is what I am hearing endlessly about why Baldur's Gate 3 is a success. I say that's a crock of shit sold by bad companies and developers and an insult to Larians hard work.
These are the things for my opinion:
- They have 20 years of experience making CRPGS with the Divinity series
- They do Early Access to test and perfect their systems
- The listen to customer feedback and distill the good from the bad, ending up with a better product
- They don't insult their customers and respect them
- No microtransactions or Day 1 DLC, or mention of upcoming DLC and Season Pass
- They hire Writers, Composers and Developers BASED ON MERIT!
- You can see the love they put in the games from the Panels from Hell and social media
I am sure there are many more things that add to their success but random chance and luck is not the reason; hard work, dedication and good management is!
Just a little rant and pet peave I wanted to get off my chest.
This viewpoint is so disconnected from the actual reality that it's disingenuous at best. I have worked in the games industry for nearly 20 years working with AAA and small teams. I have never felt like I've hired someone, or have had someone on my team who didn't earn their position through talent and passion. You're making up some political reality that does not exist, and being angry at something that is not happening just to weave some weird narrative that I feel is about 5 seconds from you simply saying "go woke, go broke".
It is important that you realize that diverse viewpoints makes games better, and that has to come into consideration for teams as well! More diverse viewpoints on your team will make a better RPG! Yes, you obviously need passionate and talented people, that goes without saying. But to make the best games, you need a diverse team.
I said nothing about diverse viewports. That is your own skewed perceptions jumping in. I am all for diversity and equality. Everybody should be treated equally!
What I am against is FORCED hiring practices. I know nothing about the hiring practices of Larian, and you can see they have a very diverse team, but you can also see, from their various podcasts, that the people there are capable and love doing what they are doing. There is no "in your face" agenda pushing from their material.
Why are you so afraid of hiring by merit? But, just continue to push your own narrative in your head if it makes you feel better.
Huh? I literally said in my post that I've never run into an instance of someone not being hired by their merit. I don't understand how anyone could not hire someone if they didn't have talent and passion, so we are in agreement there, unless you have a different definition of merit.
What does happen at any company that measures diversity in their talent pool, Larian included, is they will look at the diversity make-up of their teams and make an effort to find more diverse candidates for full-time roles and ensure there is multiple types of candidates in an interview cycle for a role. All this does is ensure as a hiring manager, you are able to evaluate a greater variety of people, and find that best and most talented candidate. Again, you're describing situations where people are "forced" to make some kind of decision, and making it sound like it's some bad decision like they had to leave a "better" candidate on the table, when I have never seen this happen. You want to know what companies hate to do? Firing people because they can't do the job. It wastes everyone time, costs us money, lowers team morale, potentially impacts timelines and the quality of the project. I can promise you no company would ever choose some diversity candidate who is bad at their job, just to make some number go up. If that were the case, the diversity numbers though out the industry would be in a MUCH better place than they are now.
I don't know what you're thinking about with the "in your face" agenda point. Do you have an example that comes to mind of other studios? BG3 covers topics of sexuality, race, and gender in the storylines and character interactions from what I've played, so it's not like they ignore these topics which are often debated IRL politically. It's handled with tactfulness in a fantasy setting, and the player is given agency throughout, so they may not lead down certain side-stories, but it's certainly covered in the game.
This is lucky for you, I have not been so lucky and had to be forced to train people that did not have the ability to do the job but were hired solely based on other factors even though their were better candidates. But of course YOUR experience invalidates everything else.
Did I even mention all the stuff in the game? If fact It even said it was GOOD WRITING by QUALIFIED people. No I did not... again projection on your part trying to force a narrative that is not there.
My point always has been and will be.. Hire on merit and not to fit quotas. This is not political or any such thing, it again is YOUR projection for YOUR narrative.
The thumb-twiddling industry is on a hiring spree?
Just because that was YOUR experience doesn't mean it invalidates what, based on consensus, is coming practice which is merit based hires. Sorry you had that problem, but that alone does not make it an industry wide problem.