http://www.rpgwatch.com?rwsiteid=4 Watching out for news at Locus Inn http://www.rpgwatch.com?rwsiteid=4 http://www.rpgwatch.com/images/default.gif http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=19594 Swen Vincke writes another fascinating blog about the stress of preparing for press events. There's no detail about the games but for those interested in the human or business side of gaming, it's a great read: Three sicks guys sitting in front of a TV screen in the middle of the night – one has a splitting headache, the other a bad case of chinese food poisoning and the third, being myself, has a high fever.... 2012-05-01T22:28:49+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=19520 Swen Vincke has posted a new blog entry, discussing his reaction to their ~$45k E3 budget and how the marketing people convinced him it was a good deal. There's no insight into their games but those interested in the business side will find this a good read, as always: Because we are showing two games, we figured it’d be a good idea to have a wall in the middle of the booth so that we actually have two booths for the price of 1.... 2012-04-22T00:19:57+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=19355 Larian shows off their trademark humour with a humorous unboxing video of some mocap equipment that will be used for Dragon Commander.  Worth a quick look for a laugh. This video accompanies a new blog post from Swen Vincke where he looks at the extraordinary cost of facial capture that lead to the decision to buy their own equipment.... 2012-03-30T23:42:46+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=19257 Larian's Swen Vincke has posted a new blog entry titled What's Going On With Dragon Commander? The post covers a lot of territory from recent hires (congratulations to Raze from their forums who has been hired as a community manager), to their current focus, to engine changes.... 2012-03-16T23:05:39+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=19170 Larian head Swen Vincke has an interview at Neoseeker and follow-up blog post on the state of game journalism. It's not specifically RPG related, although Dragon Age 2 serves as one of his examples: Scoring is an issue in itself. As an editor, personally, I hate scoring.... 2012-03-04T00:49:37+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=19076 Lar has penned a new blog entry titled Organic development - how random ideas became strategy and looking back at the inception of Dragon Commander and Project E. Returning back from visiting some publishers, Lar scribbled some thoughts about game pitches.... 2012-02-22T20:47:14+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=18986 Lar has a fascinating piece on his blog, titled How I tried to save Divine Divinity. This is one for fans of the business side of gaming or who are interested in the history of Divine Divinity or Larian. It's quite long but I enjoyed it - Lar's intro explains the situation: Back in 2001, Divine Divinity was in serious trouble.... 2012-02-13T20:24:10+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=18937 RPGCodex has an interview with Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke. Swen talks Dragon Commander as well as Choice & Consequence, his design philosophy as well as other topics. Here's a snippet: 12) I agree C&C has become a bit of a buzzword as of late.... 2012-02-07T04:41:38+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=18922 In a decent RPG choices should have consequences or at the very least give you the feeling your choices matter and something in the world is changing because of them. Swen "Lar" Vincke talks about how choice and consequece is being implemented in Dragon Commander and also in Project E.... 2012-02-06T12:39:54+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=18887 Swen "Lar" Vincke discusses why indie developers should think about retail releases more often compared to only going for digital publishing on his personal blog. Larian’s distribution strategy can be summarized as follows, sorted by how we prefer a sale to be made.... 2012-01-30T21:57:21+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=18863 Rock Paper Shotgun has interviewed Swen "Lar" Vincke on Dragon Commander and on the move of Larian Studios to become self publishing. RPS: Yes, the game does seem quite different to your previous offerings, can you explain why you went that route? Vincke: I have this little notebook here full of game ideas that I’d like to do, and I’ve tried pitching them to publishers, several times, and I’ve never managed to get funding.... 2012-01-27T12:24:56+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=18840 Swen "Lar" Vincke continues his articles on publishers with a short one about why developers should be carefull in discussing the marketing budget with examples of how that budget is sometimes spent. It’s extremely hard to argue whether or not marketing costs are allowed.... 2012-01-24T12:36:24+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=18837 Larian has a free humorous Chinese New Year promo, offering up a Dragon Commander in-game item in return for your email address: Dear Customers, Today we celebrate the arrival of the year of the Black Water Dragon. The whole team of The Burning Imps, Inc.... 2012-01-23T21:06:31+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=18829 Swen 'Lar' Vincke writes about the "quality over quantity" debate and his own internal battle with the subject. He also mentions Project E in passing and although fans will know this is a full RPG, he confirms it saying "project E is very much what people expect from us, a big RPG with all the stuff that goes with it".... 2012-01-21T00:42:37+01:00 http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?rwsiteid=4&newsbit=18799 Once again, Swen Vincke has blogged about Larian's plans to make "the very big RPG that will dwarf them all", with more interesting insight into the business side. On the cost of making Dragon Knight Saga: Here’s a break-down of what it cost us to make the Dragon Knight Saga 4M € employees 900K€ freelancers 270K€ outsourcing of artwork 200K€ hardware 700K€ software licenses 400K€ localisation for a total of 6,5M€.... 2012-01-16T21:13:11+01:00