Larian Studios has been making role-playing games for nearly three decades. The studio was established back in 1996 and was best known for its Divinity series. However, recently, they released Baldur’s Gate 3 which became one of the biggest RPG hits released in the past few years. Most game critics, as well as millions of gamers, agree that the title will become a legendary role-playing game with a special place in gaming history.
With that kind of reputation, it is no wonder that the company behind the game decided to allow the modding community into its ecosystem. With a selection of very powerful tools, some of which are the backbone of the actual game, Larian Studios might have provided a big in-road for UGC creators who wish to focus on dense and system-heavy video game mods. This can be a massive signal to other companies providing tools and environments for modders who wish to go beyond the most basic gameplay mechanics and create sprawling user-generated role-playing worlds.
Larian Studios is no stranger to the modding community. Shortly after the company released Baldur’s Gate Patch 7, it offered a range of modding tools and a browser for in-game mods. However, the company has not fully unlocked all of the modding features just yet, even though they are available through an unofficial toolkit, including a complete level editor.
Larian’s CEO and founder, Swen Vincke, previously said that the company still doesn’t have the necessary requirements to officially support all of the tools that are available to the users. According to Vincke, Larian is a game development company, not a business that creates software tools. Despite this caveat, the gaming community is extensively using the newfound Baldur’s Gate 3 modding capacity.
The Patch 7 for Baldur’s Gate was hugely successful, showcasing over a million downloads on the first day of its release. Of course, not all of those who downloaded it will immediately start using its modding tools – in fact, it is safe to assume that the vast majority of those are regular gamers who want to enjoy the Larian-made content. However, the download numbers show that there’s a huge gaming community around the title and even 0.1 percent of those downloads, which translates to a thousand modders, will be able to churn out countless RPG gaming scenarios. For the wider UGC space, that’s an important addition in a field that is still underpopulated.
In the RPG modding community, a lot of old tools are still regularly used. For example, Neverwinter Nights, an RPG based on the Dungeons & Dragons systems was created by BioWare in 2002. Today, 22 years later, it is still considered one of the most relevant modding scenes, where users still create UGC campaigns that range from small ventures to multi-year, big team campaigns that can rival the content of games like Baldur’s Gate 3.
With the new toolset, Larian is likely hoping to tap into these kinds of scenes, being that it offers a similar setup that has been revamped for modern gaming standards. However, the company is clearly hesitant to push into it too fast and with too much force, likely because it sees many potential issues with that approach – no matter how unclear they might seem from the perspective of regular RPG games and modders.
In a way, producing role-playing games for the UGC space is a great deal for any tool provider or hosting ecosystem. By nature, RPGs are learning-intensive and require dedication of both time and effort on the players’ side. Having a successful RPG made by users could be a huge boon for both the creators and the ecosystem hosting it.
Players will likely spend much more time on such content – more than they invest in simple UGC games, like action, racing, and similar genres. However, as the Larian example shows, setting up a space for creators is rather complicated. More than that, it requires what is essentially a dual entity – one that covers tool development, as well as direct game-making and implementation. Due to this, it is understandable how decade-old ecosystems like Neverwinter Nights are still used and why the UGC RPG niche might be very slow to expand, despite its obvious potential.
