When an armour-clad Swen Vincke, boss of Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios, accepted the award for Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2023, he had just 30 seconds before the dreaded “please wrap it up” message ushered him off stage.
Vincke, like so many accepting awards during the show, didn’t have enough time to say what he wanted. He didn’t even manage to announce that evening’s release of Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox.
Now, in a series of tweets, Vincke has delivered the acceptance speech he had intended, thanking a number of people and teams associated with the development of the hugely successful Baldur’s Gate 3.
“What I wanted to say at the Game Awards,” Vincke’s tweets began. “Winning Game of the year is a great honour and I want to first thank everyone that voted for us and I want to congratulate all the other nominees. This has been an incredibly competitive year and you each would have deserved to win this award.”
Vincke pointed to Capcom and Remedy, who released fellow Game of the Year candidates in Resident Evil 4 and Alan Wake 2 respectively. He went on to praise The Game Awards “for creating an award show so big that it gets mainstream attention”, but said 30 seconds for an acceptance speech “is a bit short”. This tallies with much of the industry reaction to The Game Awards. Indeed, IGN reported this week on the Game Awards winner speeches we didn’t get to hear.
Vincke then thanked the Baldur’s Gate 3 community, the development team, and the more than 2,000 people listed in the game’s credits. Vincke singled out Larian’s quality assurance, localisation, customer support, operations, publishing, and playtesting teams, saying: “Baldur’s Gate 3 wouldn’t exist without you and you all deserve to be very proud of this.”
During his actual acceptance speech, Vincke mentioned the recent passing of Larian’s lead cinematic animator, Jim Southworth, and he again mentioned Southworth in the series of tweets, as well as Vincke’s father, who passed away before Baldur’s Gate 3 launched its early access campaign in 2020.
There’s a mention of PitStop Productions, who Larian worked with to record performance capture. On that note, Vincke praised the Baldur’s Gate 3 cast (Neil Newbon, the voice of Astarion, won the award for Best Performance), and thanked the Dungeons & Dragons team at Wizards of the Coast (Baldur’s Gate 3 is an officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons game).
“I’m really sorry to hear so many of you were let go,” Vincke said. “It’s a sad thing to realize that of the people who were in the original meeting room, there’s almost nobody left. I hope you all end up well.” That’s a reference to the sweeping layoffs currently ongoing at toymaker Hasbro, owner of Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast.
“I want to end with a story of a conversation I had a long time ago with a publisher,” Vincke concluded. “He told me, luckily for them, games are driven by idealism. He meant it in an exploitative way but he was right.
“Games are a unique art form, as important as books, music or movies. Many developers, myself included, make games because they love seeing others engage with their creations in a way only games can offer.
“They don’t care that much about the money made beyond it being the fuel they need to create new and better games. It’s worth reminding everyone that fuel is but a means, not a goal. Whereto and how we journey are what matter and what we remember. Thank you.”
Then, finally: “Also, Baldur’s Gate 3 is now out on Xbox.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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