After 10 million sales and record-breaking critical acclaim, Baldur's Gate 3 CEO explains the secret to the RPG's success: "Treat your players as you would like to be treated"
Apr. 19, 2024“We had the best marketing campaign in the world, which was our players talking about it”
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Baldur’s Gate 3was a runaway success both critically and commercially, and now its CEO has explained his philosophy behind treating the RPG’s ever-growing community.
In an interview withGamesIndustry.bizafter Baldur’s Gate 3’srecord-breaking win at the BAFTAs, Swen Vincke was asked how his team went about building momentum for the game, and then maintaining that strong start. What he offered was “a very Catholic answer - treat your players as you would like to be treated, that’s it.”
“We had the best marketing campaign in the world,” he continues, “which was our players talking about it. We had over a million players from the first week that were talking to their friends about the game.” Leaning on his time atParadox Interactive, Vincke explains that “there’s this old rule I once picked up […], that if you take your pre-orders and multiply it by ten, you know what you essential audience is going to be.”
Later in the interview, after discussing the importance of long-term thinking over short-term profit-seeking -something that Vincke has railed against since the release of the game- Vincke talks about the amount of work that’s gone into Baldur’s Gate 3 since release: “We updated it, we added new content - I think word of mouth is doing its job. There’s a lot of epople telling their friends that they should try BG3, so we’re definitely seeing a lot of new players getting on board with it. I mean, our marketing strategy was word of mouth. We said, if you get critical acclaim in word of mouth, the rest will follow.”
The rest has certainly followed. At GDC, it was confirmed that Baldur’s Gate 3 seemed well ahead of even Vincke’s estimates, eclipsing ten million sales. And whileno Larian-made sequel or DLC is on the horizon, the studio’s next two games -based around original IP- are certainly in a very healthy place.
Vincke said earlier this yearhe’d “finally figured out” the first act of his next project.
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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.
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