"Don't you know what it means to become an orgy guy? It changes everything! I'd have to dress different. I'd have to act different. I'd have to grow a mustache and get all kinds of robes and lotions and I'd need a new bedspread, new curtains, I'd have to get thick carpeting and weirdo lighting. 'Course I'd have to get new friends. I'd have to get orgy friends."
Seinfeld - The Switch
Attentive readers (permit me the vanity of imagining I got 'em) may note I trailed off in my Baldur's Gate 3 campaign. A long, uninterrupted playthrough was just making its worse points (say: the romantic interest NPC roster, teleportation, endless variable ratio reinforcement jug-looting, or other timesinks like individual inventory shuffling) chafe more and more and making it feel like a chore. I want to derive what enjoyment I can of my purchase, plus had I continued it straight through my commentary would've sounded harsher than deserved. Larian sank a truly impressive amount of both effort and expertise into making the most of the IP's name recognition, and even where I hate their design decisions, those are at least conscious, elaborated decisions and not slapdash filler or bandwagon-jumping. It's carefully measured mass appeal for a genre somewhat lacking in such.
Is it working? Is it appealing all of the masses? Well, with sales in the millions at full release price, it's at least appealing to a massive part of the masses. Which got me wondering: how does anyone get into games these days? For me, grizzled lone wolf what I be, BG3 is simply the logical continuation of a decades-long suite of declines or improvements in cRPGs. But the rest? How many just snatched it up for the TOTES BADASS opening cinematic with its hawt dragon-on-skyship action? How many bought it for the sex scenes? How many are tabletop gamers who always turned up their noses at computer adaptations but... weeelllll, maybe just this once? How many are MMO fans intrigued by the notion of an offline WoW-clone? Or maybe just Cthulhu fans drooling after face tentacles?
It was always an interesting question to ask in CoH, EVE or LotRO back in the day. The gamers I'd met in Team Fortress Classic or Counterstrike arrived via a predictable trajectory of Doom > Quake > TFC > CS > Call of Duty, and those in WoW had a similar history of "anything Blizzard" or other pissing contests over high scores or the most loot. But Homeworld was full of Ender's Game fans, and EVE-Online full of Homeworld fans, and Lord of the Rings Online or City of Heroes tapped their respective niches outside of computer games for customers whose other electronic interaction consisted of Minesweeper and Solitaire.
But that was twenty years ago. The niches had only just been defined, most famous series only up to their second installment (if that) computer games still fresh and edgy. I won't bother reiterating the steep decline to follow. Now they're just something Billy-Bubba thumbs on them thar smert-foan. Just another entertainment industry. Just as by fifteen years of age you mostly know whether you like SciFi movies or mystery novels or not, everyone has some idea of what turn-based "arrpeegeez" are and whether they appeal. Adaptations aside, how much genre/medium crossover still occurs in the third decade of the third millennium?
Social media sites' infamous propensity for narrowing users' attention to self-reinforcing obsessions has only compounded the pre-existing influence of advertising and other means of market manipulation by the rich, all designed to limit sapience to linear obedience. Does anyone even have a range of interests now? Is anyone still capable of both taking a walk in the park and then taking a virtual walk in Caras Galadhon? Reading a book and listening to a podcast? Liking something but admitting its flaws? Hating something but admitting its strengths? Must everything be fanatical devotion and witch-hunting?
"Do you ever just get down on your knees and thank god that you know me and have access to my dementia?"
But that might have a lot to do with the question of how anyone gets into a genre or medium nowadays. The internet's early days provided a lot of fan(atics) fora for their narrow interests. Did you like movie xyz? Then buy the novelization of xyz, play the game of xyz, compete in trivia contests of xyz lore, spend every moment on the xyz subreddit, buy the commemorative xyz mug with extra Z! And don't forget the twenty-three sequels!
After twenty years of having one's each and every thought socially mediated, dare one hope that routine might momentarily break down? A brief glimmer of smarter pop culture before the world ends? Decades-delayed throwbacks like BG3 have been derided as "nostalgia projects" and BG3 itself is a shallow, dumbed-down lower-common-denominator of what such games should be. But you don't get to pretend its success is coming solely from nostalgic old Infinity Engine fanboys or that it's a casual game being foisted on an uninformed public like Fruit Ninja.
Is it too much to hope that we're finally seeing larger numbers of economic consumers who merely want to try new things? Who don't need to validate their existence by staying within one group-approved niche? Hell, my first real cRPG was arguably VtM: Redemption, one of the most thoroughly mediocre pieces of interactive cold pizza you could ever consume. But the possibilities it revealed...
... maybe we should ask not just how good a game BG3 is but how good a gateway drug it is.
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