This is a good question, and I only know my own motives, but one propaganda technique is a presentation of "Watch out for those trying to use media to gain political influence" while attempting to use media to gain political influence.

To phrase it differently, "Watch out for their indoctrination, have some of mine instead".

Yeah but Valve/Steam doesn't support it as a DRM-free product, in case you have problems running it e.g. without the client. That is the biggie for me.

In addition to that, it is of course nice to have offline installers and being able to download with a mere web browser, or gogrepoc.py.

If you want it, get it. If you want to break your own rules, go for it. They sound like good rules but nobody is judging you :)

The "We have X at home" meme is fairly accurate for modern video games though. How many truly innovative games are released every year? Very few. And usually it's not your mother saying it, it's your subconscious trying to get past your suppressed memory of buying a game to play later and never getting round to it!

Ok

Even more than Larian's game, I'm intrigued by the game developers -- some well-known names -- "attacking" BG3 for creating standards that cannot easily be reached in the current "development space."

It's crazy that some longtime developers are arguing for lowered standards, smaller games, and -- in a round-about way -- incomplete experiences.

If Larian has become the current figurehead for a large, completed game released with player input and without microtransactions, I'll support that (even if I personally think they fumbled the last days of pre-release with an emphasis on sex).

For that alone I'll vow to purchase BG3... but again... when the price fits my budget. And with the current state of the economy, that might take awhile. For now I'm taking a trip into either Bard's Tale IV or Avernum. ;)

I don't think there's any question they are that now. It was CDPR, but they fumbled, hopefully they recover. But many games are designed with profit in mind 1st and the game's design is only in service of that.

BG3 was clearly made with the game's design in mind 1st, and then from that making a profit.

It's also amazing they did it with only 400 people. Diablo 4 credited like 9000 people.

Uhh. . . no, your mother.

It's not subconcious. I am quite aware that I already own more games (2000+ across all platforms?) than can be reasonably played. I keep buying because I find the idea of practically endless options comforting.

After playing a bit more, I'd advise you to wait for a full patch before you buy the game (hotfix don't count). Or maybe to wait for a small discount, whichever is the first.

Seems reasonable.

I'd add

4) Never pay over $20 for any game
5) Preferably a year (or two) after release, when bugs are patched and DLC is included in GOTY or GOLD edition

If you're still on the fence just remember...

You can fuck bears...

Having read story points, I can safely say this is never touch from me. But I'm also happy it has garnered so much success from players and outcry from developers.

It seems that my speculation in original post about less need for patching due to 3 years of early release was not accurate.

Probably a good time to get into the Pillars of Eternity and /or Pathfinder series. Or Divinity. Or Tyranny.

Dying Earth?

Indeed. Well, actually read the entire "Tales of the Dying Earth" omnibus.

The gist behind it is that wizards prepare for various situations by meticulously memorizing the right set of spells, as in there's some amount of planning to identify your challenges and the tools you'll need for a job.

That makes a lot of sense for pen & paper D&D, but in an RPG perhaps less so, as it means you can only cast a spell once. That leads to a number of things like tons of variations of what is essentially a healing spell.

As I said before, not really a fan of the ruleset in computer games, and whenever I play anything D&D I will, at most, go for a paladin, but never a full spell-caster because of the above. I tried a druid once in NWN2 and it wasn't fun at all.

Edit: Apparently the 5th edition D&D is more lenient in some aspects of spell-casting with a "relaxed Vancian" system. I may give BG3 a go at some point, see if it's any better then.

My point was to simply make it known if it wasn't. The Steam version is DRM-Free, too. It also supports cloud saves without signing up for a 3rd party account, which GOG does not, and has Steam workshop access (for the mods that are there and no where else). In this case, the Steam product is definitively superior to GOG.