Nils said,

Couldn’t have said it better.

Picador said,

The Who, especially the song, “People Are Strange.”

I think you mean The Doors.

As for the feeling you’re having: yes, it’s unfortunate when an artist talks about how their own sensibilities have changed and tries to retrospectively apply it to their older work. But I think this is a symptom of our culture being obsessed with the notion of authorship. We place too much emphasis on what an artist has to say about their own work, instead of letting it be a stand-alone cultural product, with which fans can form their own relationships independently of whatever the artist has to say about it. Think William Shatner in that old SNL skit, denouncing Trekkies as freaks and losers: if the fans just considered him an actor who did some work on a show they like once upon a time, instead of revering him as a near-god, the skit wouldn’t have been funny.

This cultural attitude is bad for artist as well. Think Bob Dylan and his complaint that “Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything”. Artists should be allowed to change their minds and to hate their earlier stuff. But what they have to say about it shouldn’t be privileged as some sort of definitive evaluation of the product’s worth.

I think there’s clearly some truth to what the dude is saying in the interview: for many people, real-time action was always the holy grail of developing these sorts of games. And I definitely agree with him that it’s very strange and arbitrary how the “fantasy” (i.e. wizards and elves in the Dark Ages) setting got so closely linked to the RPG gameplay style. So I support the fact that some “fantasy game” afficionados are moving into developing non-RPG games in these settings. But of course, I agree with you that his statements go much too far in ascribing this view to everyone who worked on (or played) old-school RPGs.

Personally, I think it’s healthy for the computer “RPG” to get deconstructed like this. It’s a weird mishmash of gameplay styles, with elements of turn-based strategy, puzzles, item collection, and so on. I think we’ll see some very interesting games come out the other end of this process, as the value of these different elements is given a more explicit consideration in game design. I would really like it if this movement resulted in a prospective designer of “RPGs” having to stop and ask herself: why elves? why medieval Europe? why dungeons? why fighting? why magical weapons? why treasure collecting? why personal attributes? why experience points? why exploration? why health points? why magical spells? and so on, asking what each contributes to the concept of this specific game, instead of just falling back on “because it’s an RPG”.

Rampant Coyote said,

@Picador: Thanks – corrected. I was thinking The Doors, but I somehow wrote The Who. Maybe I was listening to “Behind Blue Eyes” when I wrote that.

And yeah, I get annoyed when games get mislabeled as “RPGs” just because they are about wizards & elves. The two have had some serious overlap since before the advent of “Personal Computers,” but that’s very different from being synonymous. I’m very cool with non-fantasy-genre RPGs, and likewise quite cool with fantasy games that don’t resemble an RPG. That’s a Good Thing. Just don’t pretend that the action game is the ultimate goal of RPG design.

Rampant Coyote said,

@Demiath – They are obviously uninformed, as we’ve had action games with “RPG elements” for a long, long time. Go visit CRPG Addict’s blog for some more examples. Somehow these people think Diablo invented the concept. No, like most things Blizzard does, they simply took an existing concept and refined it. But unless you were making an RPG before 1981, the technology excuse doesn’t really hold water. Lots of other people were doing it. No, not in full 3D first-person-perspective normal-mapped glory with voice-overs by B-list actors, but back then the choice of “arcade action” versus “turn-based” was a conscious choice by the developers based on what kind of game they wanted to make, not something dictated by the genre. Same as today.

And turn-based outdated? Yeah, I’m with you. Bullcrap. It’s a more methodical style of play (but not necessarily by much), and lends itself to more tactical gameplay, but it’s still just as viable – if not MORE SO – in terms of sales as it’s ever been. It’s just that they’ve moved the bar so far that a million sales represents a lackluster performance.

Picador said,

Just don’t pretend that the action game is the ultimate goal of RPG design.

But surely you agree that, for some people, it is.

Look, I share your attachments to many specific RPG gameplay elements that are hard to find in other genres:

1. I really like playing a game as one or more specific, distinct personalities.
2. I like these characters to be differentiated from each other and from the universe of other possible characters by choices I make during their development. I don’t like games where a single development strategy is either hardwired or heavily favoured.
3. I like exploring new spaces, at my own pace, and to be rewarded for this exploration.
4. I like looking forward to the next reward (level up, treasure etc) because of the developmental choices it will give me.
5. I like being able to interact with the world (including other people) in some way other than attacking it.
6. I like my interaction with the world (including combat) to follows the same rules as for character development, i.e. heavily divergent based on my choices. I don’t like a single gameplay or combat style to be hardwired or heavily favoured.

To the extent that a game that isn’t a pure “RPG” doesn’t have these things, I probably won’t like it all that much. To the extent that it does, I probably will like it. I loved Oblivion because of its encouragement of exploration and its multiple ways of interacting with the world and its inhabitants (even though player characters tend to converge as they level up, rather than diverging, thereby failing tests 2 and 4). I loved Demon’s Souls for its excellent character development, risky and rewarding exploration gameplay, and deep, strategic combat (even though it doesn’t do a great job at test 5). I’m playing Assassin’s Creed 2 right now, and while it fails most of these tests, I’m enjoying it a fair bit simply by virtue of the exploration gameplay and the well-paced leveling-up rewards.

These are all action games that nonetheless have enough of what I like about RPGs to satisfy me. In many respects, they’re better RPGs (in my book) than something like Dragon Age, which was actually kind of crap for exploration gameplay, and also for non-combat interaction with the world.

I guess what I’m saying is that the recent crop of RPGs has shown me that “old school”, to the extent that it means anything, isn’t always better in my book. Dragon Age is sort of turn-based, which allows some cool party-based strategic combat. Demon’s Souls is twitchy, but this is layered on top of a combat system that requires you to make complex strategic choices. I much preferred the latter game. While I hate twitchy games as a general rule (I find the combat in most top-10 games to be the most annoying part of their designs), I think it can actually be a great way of ratcheting up tension IF layered properly on top of meaningful player choices made during character development and during the fight itself. The challenge as I see it is for more developers to go the Demon’s Souls route and figure out a way of effectively marrying action gameplay to RPG gameplay, instead of just replacing it wholesale. What this guy is saying in the interview implies that all the RPG elements can just be jettisonned now, because all we ever really wanted since 1977 was Halo with magic swords. That’s obviously wrong as a blanket statement, even if it’s true for some subset of the previous RPG fanbase.

Rampant Coyote said,

I don’t believe that there is an “ultimate goal” in RPG design, actually. I want variety. If all RPGs were turn-based tactical affairs, I might get pretty bored with ’em. In fact, circa 1993, that really was the problem with the genre – many of the RPGs were very much alike, but with varying degrees of quality. Fans were a little overwhelmed with too much of the same. It took a game like Diablo (and shortly thereafter, Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, and Final Fantasy VII) to help focus attention on what else an RPG could be. And for that brief period, it looked like RPGs had broken out of their rut, and we were all going to be treated to an incredible variety of titles that – while not for every RPG fan – were exciting and different.

But then everybody decided they wanted to be exactly like the latest best-seller. Blah.

Chance said,

Oh God, this is my generation’s fault (and I use the term ‘generation’ in the broadest sense). Kids these days only play Call of Duty (cliche, yes), and no one wants to use their imagination, or wait more than thirty seconds for an explosion, or ‘sit through’ the storyline instead of shooting people.

The worst part is I know people in their forties that only play Call of Duty, and refuse to acknowledge all the good old games out there.

This may sound dramatic, but I think that ‘gamers that love GAMES’ are a dying breed, and it bums me out.

getter77 said,

Stuff like this reeks of “trying to hard” on top of just being ridiculous.

Yes kids, Choose Your Own Adventure novels were the first ARPGS—built upon frantic speed reading, snap decisions, and savagely ravenous page turning~

“Gaming History” thoughts are pretty hilariously off the mark 9/01 times due to the somehow “blinders…ON!” aspect that, “grand evolutions” are a thing actually entertained as a frequent occurrence. Yes…in a mere 30 years time, a blip of a fart versus most aspects of human culture since we came up with semi-systematic ways of doing expressive things. How about…no?

Gaming doesn’t yet have enough age on it for people to act like Pong and Robotron and Wizardry were the equivalent of the Dark Ages. By and large, past all the suit-beget hype and developers oddly within a bubble and not making any effort to examine the context of things contemporary and otherwise—we’re still very much in the first lap, or at least the first few mile, of a cross country drive. Part of this is myriad hardware issues, part programming languages, part dumb luck of people coming across with a certain take on XYZ.

The future isn’t about turn based versus realtime, nor is the present, and that certainly wasn’t the elephant in the room in the past. Most RPG trappings came out of P&P/Wargamery…and in general that makes abundant sense given that virtually all the Mythological source material/culture was paper in origin and presentation as opposed to living history back in the day. Strategy is a bit hardwired into mankind in all respects well beyond any other life on the planet—of course there’s a place for reactive and pre-meditated wranglings. That’s freaking reality/science/what begets progress!

If somebody wants to attempt to spit history on me from up high to denigrate RPGs and basic logic, then they’d best bring their “A Game” as to what exactly their spot in the Pantheon is meant to be and how they are intending to go about it. There’s a world of things nobody has gotten right just yet, really basic things, so it is laughable to think an Ivory Tower has any business being erected on such porous grounds.

If anything, something as ridiculously blind as this has actually managed to ire me enough towards a bit of further inspiration to get things going better for the lot of everybody. But hey, supposedly all publicity is good publicity right?

For pity’s sake, I’m only 26 as wasn’t even around, nor had access to the bulk of relevant things—yet even I know much better and semi-humble, yet critical, industriousness is the order of the day.

Charles said,

Maybe that guy wasn’t around back then, but the turn-based rpgs could very well have been real-time. Thinking back at Gauntlet, Autoduel, or heck, any old platformer it isn’t hard to imagine them with RPG elements like leveling, stats, story & npc interaction. They wouldn’t have been 3D just yet, but it seems to me turn-based was chosen gameplay.

Wait. Wasn’t Zelda pretty close to an action RPG? And Flight Simulator 1 was fake 3D.

Maybe I haven’t analyzed enough.

UDM said,

Screw chess, who needs chess? We have Command & Conquer 4 – real-time and streamlining various strategical elements so you get to focus on the tactics instead of getting sidetracked by resource gathering! Evolution!

Hell if RPGs took a 30 year detour, strategy games must have taken hundreds of years.

skavenhorde said,

I’ll just add my voice to the masses here and say he’s a pretentious jerk.

I could give a lot of reasons as to why, but I think you guys have covered the basics.

I’ll just add that I like all types of games from The Sims Medieval to The Witcher 2 to Knights of the Chalice. I play them all for different reasons and enjoyed all of them.

sascha said,

I recently particularly enjoy older games more than new ones. It seems the more realistic a game appears (hi-end 3D graphics, tons of lip-synced dialogs etc). the more it steals room for my own imagination, the less interesting the game is for me. It all becomes more like watching an interactive Hollywood movie rather than playing a game. Sometimes I like that (that’s why I play CoD:MW) but most of the time such games feel very shallow, especially if they try to hide all the complexity under the hood (if they even have complexity to hide).

pasmith said,

The guy is marketing an action game. You expect him to do an interview and talk up how great turn-based gaming is?

If nXile does a turn-based RPG next, he’ll be doing interviews talking about the depth of immersion that only turn-based combat systems can offer.

No need to get yourselves all spun up about it.

Rampant Coyote said,

@Demiath – Yeah, I was just just using your point as a jumping-off place for a tangent.

But the flip side is that these indie games are becoming more and more unique. As I said above – the mainstream biz is *done* making these kinds of RPGs, which bugs me a little, but I’ve mainly made my peace with it. I do object to their revisionist history – A LOT – but every time that happens, I realize that they are retreating from the battlefield where there’s still much to be gained.

Action RPGs: Still Not a New Thing said,

[…] guess my post today is an echo of my earlier post, but Hardcore Gamer has a useful little post about the long history of western “Action […]

So you created an action RPG. Stop congratulating yourself. « sinisterdesign.net said,

[…] won’t be the first to erupt in howls of indignation over this, and Jim Rossignol on RPS does a fine job […]