About the episode
Baldur’s Gate 3 It was released as a full game exactly one year ago, during the recording of this podcast episode. Jo van Borik, Jochem Visser, Sam van Zuylen, and Niels Kolos talk about that development process and the secret to its overwhelming success with one of the game’s chief creators: Farhang Namdar, World Building Director at Larian Studios.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a role-playing game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, which has been in development for over five years at Larian, headquartered in Belgium. After its full release, the game was almost unanimously voted the Game of 2023. It has been awarded so many awards that staff planning and activities should take into account when a delegation of manufacturers manages to get an award somewhere.
In addition to its critical success, the game has also been a resounding commercial success: according to independent figures, Baldur’s Gate 3 grossed over $650 million in sales on Steam alone in 2013. This is almost exclusively made up of copies sold—after all, the game has no microtransactions or subscription models.
As World Builder, Farhang Namdar is responsible for planning and presenting the entire game world in the game, and also has a broad view of the development process, given his nearly twenty-year tenure at Larian – and as one of the Dutch-speaking staff. He has previously worked on, among other things: Divinity: Original Sin And the direct successor to that game.
We also talked about Baldur’s Gate 3 in detail ahead of the full game’s summer 2023 launch. We discussed the game as one of the top four games of that year, in our end-of-year podcast – as well as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, New Super Mario Bros. Miracle And Alan Wake II.
