Baldur's Gate Running Away From Starfield Was The Best Decision It Made

Summary

Baldur's Gate 3 moving launch date and admitting it was down to Starfield was a bold move.
But this underlined the confidence Larian had in the game, and in its own marketing.
By speaking to fans like people, not customers, Larian helped BG3 feel unique.

It feels like a story from a parallel universe that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur's Gate 3 once moved its release date to avoid being crushed by the juggernaut of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bethesda’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield. Fast forward a few months, and Baldur's Gate 3 became the first game ever to sweep every major GOTY award (including the most major of all, TheGamer's Game of the Year), while Starfield was a disappointing also ran. But a lot of Baldur's Gate 3's success can be traced back to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网🦹:that fateful decision tꦯo move its release date.

Baldur's Gate 3 took over the world when it launched last year. It dragged thousands of people into an unfamiliar genre, one with rote and overly complex rules, and made it feel like home. Starfield on the other hand is doomed to be a footnote in gaming history. People are still wading through Baldur's Gate 3 playthroughs, 16♒8澳洲幸运5开奖网:some for the second or third or seventh time, alwaysಞ finding new ideas, while far fewer dabbled in Starfield before moving on for good.

Baldur's Gate 3 Surpassed Expectations While Starfield Fell Short

A grateful Findal thanking Tav for saving him in Baldur's Gate 3.

Larian inflicted mild trauma when it announced it was 168澳洲幸运♋5开奖网:leaving BG3 behind to make an original game, leaving the characters 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:in the hands of Hasbro, whereas Starfield's recently announced DLC has been met with responses like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:'why bother?' and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:'maybe fix the game first?'.

At the start of 2023, if you were betting on one game winning the lot and another being buggy, dated, dull, and floundering by for a few months, most would have had Starfield as the GOTY contender and the CRPG from a decent sized indie studio making a pseudo sequel of a series from a different studio 20 years later as the wonky one. Even as excitement for Baldur's Gate 3 heated up from the early access and belief started to build that Larian could have something special, there was a general sentiment that it was sensible to not risk being crushed by Starfield.

In the end, did the release date change really help? There may have been a few more people who tried out Baldur's Gate 3 who may not have if it dropped right next to Starfield as intended, but a large chunk of players, myself included, were waiting for the console release which was mildly delayed, rather than the PC launch that confidently strode forward. There's also the fact BG3 was known to be a huge game, one you'd be unlikely to beat in the couple of weeks breathing room the move from August 30th (two days before Starfield) to August 3rd gave you.

Certainly, in hardcore gaming and journalistic circles, the conversation would have been dominated by Starfield at launch, even if that conversation was tinged with disappointment. But Baldur's Gate 3 has shown it has the quality to cut through the noise and convert the non-believers. While it might have helped with early sales, and could have ended up hurting Starfield a little by virtue of comparison, I don't think the launch day had much overall impact on the legacy of the two games.

Launch Dates Can Make Or Break A Game

We know launch dates can be very important to a game's reception. It's why games aim for certain windows, either looking for gaps in the calendar or targeting spending seasons and conversations to boost sales. It's generally agreed that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Titanfall 2 releasing between 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Battlefield 1 and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is a reason it failed. But the number on the calendar isn't the issue here. Instead, Baldur's Gate 3 moving seems to have been the start of its world domination.

In the statement Larian released, there is no corporate jargon. There's no line that seems to have needed approval from seven different executives, no USPs inserted for market penetration, no trace of the usual scent of C-suite that comes with these statements. It also doesn't feel like it's from a character, the way over-exuberant marketing can come across - Cult of the 🌌🦋Lamb once pledged to delist itself in protest to changes to Unity, only to later clarify the statement was a joke and go back to talking about kissing the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Angry Birds. That's less corporate, but it still feels false once you see through it. Right from the start, Baldur's Gate 3 has been genuine.

Despite my love for the game, I haven't always agreed with how it has engaged with fans. Each update incessantly altering the kiss animations seemed to devalue the storytelling in the romances and reduce it to fan art fodder a little too much for my liking. But Larian and its public representatives have always been straight-shooters who have engaged with their fans as fellow human beings that love something the team has created, not as consumers or potential market share or figures in social media metric.

One of the community managers published a thread last week about the strategy for the game, and it was built around making these human connections, keeping everything in house, and meeting your audience on level terms. That's much easier when you make a great game that everyone loves as opposed to when you need to duck under metaphorical rotten tomatoes and real death threats, but there's still a lesson in Baldur's Gate 3's marketing. There's something honest and authentic and a little bit vulnerable to it, and that all started with moving its launch date to avoid Starfield.