It's a little slow these days. We're kind of in-between seasons. It's not quite Christmas yet, but the big titles are almost on the store shelves. In the next few weeks there will be a few new releases that could sway the order in which we thought the yearly best games list would shape up. But now as the release date of the LotR :The Two Towers movie is closing fast, I'd like to explore a very inconsequential issue that might tickle the interest of some fans.

Milking the cow
The recent release of the LotR video game made many ask why the chosen genre had not been an RPG. It would have made sense too. Heck, the LotR trilogy is often credited for being the father of pen-and-paper RPGs, which in turn engendered their computer iteration. The LotR universe transpires with RPG opportunities, yet the game they decided to launch after the success of the first movie was an action oriented game.

Of course, this decision is easily explained : the masses crave for action games much more than RPGs which is still considered a niche genre. The Tolkien fans have to deal with it : LotR is now part of the terrifying realm of mass market popularity. Because of this, many seemingly inappropriate things get attached to the LotR name. Did you ever imagine for one second that one day you would drink your favorite beverage from a paper cup with a picture of Frodo holding the One Ring in his hand at your local fast food restaurant? Me neither, but there it is.

Geeks unite!
Now, that being said, the LotR fan base is still a very demanding bunch. To have launched an RPG game as a first attempt would have been a mistake, perhaps even a disaster. I suspect the vast majority of the books' fans are also fans of RPGs and not so much of action games. And I'm talking about true fans here, not those who just started reading the books after they saw the first film. I'm talking about people who, like me, read the books every single year since they were 17 years old. People who worship those books as if they were their own little bible, who take what's in them as a story that was not imagined but related to actual events forgotten in some deep seeded lore lost in time... yeah, I'm a geek.

Geeks like me want... no crave for an RPG set in the LotR universe. But we wouldn't settle for anything either, and that can be very frightening to any developer, however experienced they might be. If someone attempts to do it and so much as misses the point on one tiny feature you can expect a roaring outcry from a very small but very vocal group of fans, and that, my friends, would not be pretty... Playing around with an established franchise is tricky, even for those who created it in the first place! Can anyone remember a certain Jar-Jar creature?

Middle Earth Lives again!
Vivendi recently resuscitated the LotR online game Middle Earth Online (along with naming two other upcoming LotR related CRPGs), and that makes my skin crawl with both anticipation and dread. I can't possibly imagine how they can make this game as good as the fans expect it to be. And believe me when I say that expectations are already very high. I sincerely hope the developer attached to the project can pull it off, but quite honestly I doubt that it's even possible. It takes a great amount of dedication and talent to succeed in doing anything related to LotR. In my opinion, Peter Jackson did it with his movies because he's been a fan (I dare even say a geek, like me) himself for a very long time. Will we be this lucky with an RPG, or even an online RPG? Hmm...

I don't mean to be pessimistic... but unfortunately I am. There are only a handful of developers out there that I would consider better suited to at least come out with a good product, if not a faithful one. If Bioware, for instance, were to take on the project, my confidence might be slightly boosted, but even that could not be enough to make me happy and gleeful.

Trust no one
Dealing with a major and established franchise like LotR is a very tricky business. The chances of coming out with a product that is less than on par with the fans' expectations is more than great. That is why I look at the LotR future on the games market as bleak, at best. Maybe I'll be surprised, maybe they'll just blow me away with something I never expected, who knows? I just hope that an eventual game set in the LotR universe won't destroy anyone else's hopes. All I'm saying is : expect nothing, and perhaps then you have a chance of not being too disappointed.