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Larian Studios - New RPG, Shop and More

Lar posted another lengthy update a week back that we missed and, surprisingly, noone pointed it out at the time because Swen talks about their next RPG project, launching their own online shop (called the Larian Vault) and a host of Dragon Knight Saga / FoV updates. It's too long to post, so here's a snip and head over for the latest on DKS and the rest:

Quote:

Now in case you're wondering, despite the crazy list of releases we have this month, the stuff that keeps me the most busy for the moment is our next RPG (on which work has started) and a speech I have to give in a month or so. More about the speech in a second as I could use some input, but first a little bit about the next RPG coming from Larian. No third parties are involved yet so I can pretty much say whatever I want about it, but the concepts are still converging, so I won't give too many details yet. What I can say is that it's quite different from our previous work, should still feel very familiar to Divinity fans and contains an idea I'm pretty fond of, so I hope it'll work out well (read, I don't think it's been done by anybody else yet)

Undoubtedly I'll talk about it in more detail later on and actually I'm hoping that we can make the development of this one very open so you can see what's happening as we develop it, and take a more active role in making suggestions, a bit like when we made the first Divinity. I'll keep you posted if we find a way of making that work without having to throw our unique selling points into the open too soon, but I've seen so many intelligent things written down in these forums, that I think it'd be stupid as a developer not to take take more advantage of it (that probably came out wrong, but I hope you get what I mean).

Our ability to do that will be pretty much dependent on the level of publisher involvement, and that'll depend on how good this vault thing works (shameless pitch intended

), the better it works, the less involvement there'll be. Personally, I much preferred developing on Divinity 1, where we were lucky enough that the publisher didn't really bother about what we were doing, and I could just react with changes in the game immediately on what I saw happening in this forum (yes for those new here, it's been around for quite some time and it's a pity that it crashed once and we lost all the old posts - if you see a white cat in Divinity games, he was born in these forums - as a matter of fact, many of the features in the original Divinity were born in this forum )

Thanks, Alrik!

More information.

This is a smart move! Larian cuts out the middle man . I hope we see alot more Indie companies doing this . This is the movement to save gaming as an art form, i enjoyed Divinity series and am looking forward to DKS and more.

I belief all indie companies are doing this already. Larian Studios isn't an indie company. What they want is to make themselves less dependent on publishers. As the cost of game development goes I think they will not be able to fund themselves completely. So there will be a need for a publisher.
However if they are able to fund a large part of the game themselves then they get a much bigger vote in the business decisions, such as not releasing a game too early, to name one.

I think they are trying to cross-founding themselves - especially through Monkey Labs now.

In Belgium, Monkey Labs seems perhaps to be a big hit, but I really can't say, because I know almost nothing about software and games in Belgium.

But fact is, that Monkey Labs is a game series meant to accompany school books about maths. So it gets some press there, I think.

And don't forget Ketnetkick, which is tied within a Belgian TV programme. Which means they might have already have or had a TV producing station as a co-operator in terms of Ketnetkick.

Personally, I have the feeling as if their cross-funding might be relatively well, but I really don't know, because I don't have any inside info or numbers at all. This is purely an impression of mine, personal and subjective.

Simply opening an online shop won't help much. They also have to actively drive traffic to it, again and again. And I doubt they have the time to work on this.