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[LectureMaster]

The big Larian interview: Swen Vincke on industry woes, optimism, and life after Baldur's Gate 3

Eurogamer sits down with Larian boss Swen Vincke to talk Baldur's Gate 3, the industry's woes, his cautious optimism an…

www.eurogamer.net

There are more than just the title, of course they talked a lot about recent industry layoffs and stuff.
But interesting part is that Larian has massively grown to 470 people from 50 since 2014, and Swen thinks they can keep all those jobs for a good number of years.

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. And have you been consciously mindful in mass hiring, that you're like, "We can keep these jobs even if you don't release the game for, say, five years"?

Vincke: So, we built multiple fallback positions in case it was going to go wrong - before we started doing this. I have a minority investment, so I had that in my back pocket in case it was going to go wrong. So this was my baseline, otherwise I wasn't going to take the risks that we took with Baldur's Gate 3, because it was too much of a risk. So that's actually also why I did it, or part of the reasons I did it. So there's that.

We also knew what our sales were, so Early Access gave us a really good indicator of where we were going to be going. So we can forecast, more or less, and function - if we don't fuck up too much, there's always a risk involved, right? I'm never gonna say there's no risk - but you can forecast more or less where you're gonna land, based on interest, based on Early Access sales. So we could see where we are. And so we're good for quite a number of years with where we are right now.

He also corrected that the new games from Larian are not gonna "dwarf" BG3.

You mentioned the new game briefly - the thing that I picked up from one of your other chats was that it would "dwarf" BG3...

Vincke: Did I say that, really like that? I think that I've been misquoted on this.

Oh really?

Vincke: Yeah, no. So that's a bit - I saw that pass by and said, like "I need to check what I actually said". 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. I mean, we have a couple of - we have two games that we want to make, and we actually intended on making after BG3, so we're just back on that track now. They're big and ambitious, that's for sure. But I mean, I think scope wise, BG3 is probably already good enough!

 

[BennyBlanco]

BG3 is an absurdly dense game. If their next game is half as long but equally as dense I would be happy paying full price for it.

 

[Gaelyon]

No dwarves in BG4 et 5 confirmed !

 

[Mister Wolf]

As long as they keep pumping out turn based RPGs I'll be there for it. Do not go the action-RPG route like Square.

 

[Loomy]

As long as they keep pumping out turn based RPGs I'll be their for it. Do not go the action-RPG route like Square.

The amount of tech and knowledge they've built up making these means they're locked on that path now, not that they had interest in doing an ARPG.

 

[Kacho]

Thank god for that

 

[Hrk69]

Would love a bigger game tbh

 

[amigastar]

I wouldn't mind a smaller scale game when the development wouldn't take as long as BG3.