Complete freedom in a digital world: what does that mean? Do you want to be able to choose a wind direction in a vast landscape and just go exploring? Or do you want to slyly examine all the possibilities with dice in your pocket and thus determine how the story will proceed? In other words: you choose Zeldaor just before Baldur’s Gate?
That was the question for the journalistic jury of the international Game Awards. With tens of millions of viewers every year, it is the largest game awards gala in the world.
It was an extremely good year for gaming, but Nintendo’s work (The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom) and the Ghent Larian Studios (Baldur’s Gate 3) towered above the competition. This was mainly due to their ambitious visions on player freedom. Realizing those visions is labor-intensive and therefore risky, because the gaming industry is unstable and hit-prone. The people who make the games often work overtime, are poorly paid and are not sure of their jobs.
The redeeming word came on Thursday night. Literally in armor, just like characters in his game, Larian took head Swen Vincke received the award for Game of the Year – as the first game maker from the Dutch language area. Vincke dedicated the award to the recently deceased animator Jim Southworth and to the “more than two thousand people” who worked on the game for six years. “I did not expect this.”
Giving a player the feeling of pure autonomy: that is a downright dizzying, almost impossible task. As a creator, you not only have to anticipate every choice a player might make, but you also have to have the technical and financial resources to properly explore the consequences. Especially because these consequences offer room for more player choices, and an even broader range of consequences. Nintendo and Larian had to dig deep into their pockets – and make compromises where hard work and money simply weren’t enough. But they succeeded, gamers thought.
For the team behind The Legend of Zelda intuition is sacred. In Tears of the Kingdom you walk through a vast area in search of secrets while trying to save Princess Zelda. Critics praised the design, which guides you on your journey of discovery with visual tricks, and invites you to experiment with objects you find to solve puzzles, build bridges and design vehicles. There was hardly any friction: you had a thought and ran after it.
In the acclaimed Baldur’s Gate 3 a group of armed adventurers searches for a cure for a parasite in their heads. Larian built it on the mathematical backbone of board gaming Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). ‘Just’ D&D takes place at the kitchen table, led by a ‘dungeon master‘. For example, when players enter a dungeon to find treasure, the dungeon master reviews the rules, asks the players to roll dice, and decides the consequences based on that. Larian applied exactly that free principle Baldur’s Gate. Only that creative, thoughtful dungeon master was replaced by a computer program. He not only had to know all the rules, but also all the ways in which he would have to apply those rules, and what scenarios were conceivable. About two thousand people worked on building the game for six years. For example, processing the almost endless feedback from players; the game had been for sale in a test version for years.
Where Nintendo hides the rules, Larian puts them on display. With every choice you make, probability and dice are involved. Instead of following an intuitive flow, the player has to be calculating: if I throw a four here, I can sneak past somewhere, if I throw a three I will be caught – do I take that risk?
This year it turned out to be the formula that drove gamers, the gaming industry and reviewers to the most superlatives. The trick of Zelda was fantastic, but that of Baldur’s Gate 3 set a new standard, gamers shouted, and gave player autonomy a new dimension.
And so that Game of the Year statue ended up in Larian’s hands on Thursday night, along with four other awards, including best acting performance (Neil Newbon) and the audience award. Zelda received the award for best action-adventure game.
The organization made little time for the hard work of the makers of all that beauty: Swen Vincke was allowed to speak for thirty seconds, after which he had to finish. The wave of layoffs that has affected thousands of game makers this year was also not mentioned. While the party continued inside, demonstrators stood outside the door of the ceremony plates in hand: ‘best year for games, worst year for game workers’.
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