Larian ponders next game as Divinity: Original Sin sells 500k
"So much for turn-based fantasy RPGs not selling..."
Developer Larian Studios is working out what to make next after turn-based fantasy role-playing game Divinity: Original Sin sold half a million copies.
In a blog post titled "Thoughts after releasing Divinity: Original Sin and what comes next," Larian boss Swen Vincke said D:OS, which launched on Steam on 30th June priced £29.99 after a successful Kickstarter campaign, had sold "well over" half a million copies - a milestone that means the project has reached the break even point.
"Our debts have been paid and we are now in the profitable zone," he said. "While not all of the money is for us as we had private investors on board, the game did sufficiently well for us to envision funding our next endeavors with it, meaning we're pretty happy about its performance.
"So much for turn-based fantasy RPGs not selling, crowdfunding not working and a developer like us not being capable of bringing a game to market without the help of seasoned publishers."
In the post Vincke runs through the struggle he and the studio faced while making the game, and the pressure of having to release it in order to generate revenue that would satisfy investors.
"I think we would've continued development even longer, but when I had to dash to a far away place where lived the one last bank director who still wanted to give us sufficient credit to pay a part of what we owed to another bank, it was clear that we needed to finish," he said. "I wasn't joking when I said it was all in."
Larian will continue to support Original Sin "for quite some time" because it considers the game the RPG framework upon which it will build its next title. It's "fooling around" with controller support for a big screen version with co-op play, and pledged to improve the engine and add new features.
But what's next?
"The foreseeable future for Larian (i.e. the next couple of years) is going to see us making further progress in improving our RPG craft and creating dense game worlds with hopefully new and innovative gameplay systems based on old school values," Vincke said, without giving away anything.
"These last months I've been very busy expanding our development force so that we can continue to compete in tomorrow's market."
Whatever the next game is, it seems that, unlike Divinity: Original Sin, it won't be crowdfunded.
"The current thinking is that we shouldn't go back to Kickstarter. That's not because we're ungrateful of the support we received through our Kickstarter community or because all those rewards caused a bit of extra work, but because I think the crowdfunding pool is limited and it should be fished in by those who really need it.
"Since we now can, I think we should first invest ourselves and then see if we need extra funds to fuel our ambitions. Only then it makes sense to look at crowd funding."
