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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
| RPGDot Feature: When is a RPG not a RPG? |
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Wandering the wastelands of E3, Devin Cambridge wonders why every game wants to be billed as a RPG. Here's a taste:<blockquote><em>A friend once told me that the current trend of combining other game genre’s with a role playing game equates to the color beige. Beige will not offend anyone. Beige will appeal to the lowest common denominator. Beige will sell stuff. However, beige is boring. For a long time, reasonably priced computer cases came in beige. The publishing executives decided that games could be made beige by simply telling people that the game is an RPG. In the quest for a beige colored game, they compiled teams of marketing people who quickly went out to find out what people liked about Role Playing Games. As a digression, I like marketing people. They make me laugh. Whenever I think of marketing, memories from the Funzo Simpson’s episode pop into my mind. In the episode, a marketing team from a toy company takes over the local elementary school in order to provide market research for their upcoming product line. The result of off the cuff comments by the kid’s results in FUNZO, a Furby like character that says it loves you while systematically destroying all the other toys and entertainment devices it perceives as competition.</em></blockquote>Read it all <a href="http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=972">here</a>.
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Tue May 18, 2004 11:12 pm |
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roqua1
Guest
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Good article. I would comment more but I'm on vacation. |
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Tue May 18, 2004 11:14 pm |
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vaticide
Put food in here
Joined: 21 Feb 2002
Posts: 1122
Location: One step behind a toddler bent on destruction. |
Another stipulation I might add is:
The Player makes decisions that affect the game plot/direction.
-vaticide |
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Wed May 19, 2004 4:15 am |
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Guest
Guest
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If all those criterias have to be met, the Gothic series are not RPGs. Neither is ADoM (or most other roguelikes).
In my view, it's impossible to say that a game have to contain this and this to be called an RPG. It just doesn't work that way. |
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Wed May 19, 2004 8:57 am |
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Priest4hire
Head Merchant
Joined: 08 May 2002
Posts: 52
Location: Slocan, BC |
Actually, if all those criticisms were applied the original Dragonlance AD&D modules weren't real RPGs. That's right, when you were playing the paper & pencil RPG, mistakenly thinking that you were playing the original, real, RPG in fact you weren't playing a RPG at all. What with the pre-made characters, not to mention a fairly linear plot. Plus, not a lot of side quests really. After all, saving the world is kind of urgent. It's not like the bad guys just sit around in the bar waiting for you to traipse all around the globe doing random crap.
Actually, I think the lack of real urgency is an issue RPGs need to deal with. It's rather less than dramatic when the impending doom happily plays to the timetable of the characters. "Gee mister doom, I know I really should get my ass in gear and deal with you, but I just really want to see if I can't finish off all these fighter's guild quests."
_________________
Watch your back. Shoot straight. Conserve ammo. And never, ever, cut a deal with a dragon.
Grammaton Dragon
-==(UDIC)==- |
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Wed May 19, 2004 10:59 am |
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Lintra
Elf Friend
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 9448
Location: Bermuda, the triangle place with SANDY BEACHES |
quote:
Originally posted by vaticide
Another stipulation I might add is:
The Player makes decisions that affect the game plot/direction.
-vaticide
I second that. If I do not get the feeling that my choices and actions change the game world then it does not 'feel' like an RPG to me.
_________________
=Member of The Nonflamers' Guild=
=Just plain clueless= |
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Wed May 19, 2004 10:24 pm |
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hamsterdance
Village Dweller
Joined: 20 Apr 2004
Posts: 2
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The author has some good points. However, I would like to point out that Japanese rpgs always pre-defined PC's yet are still classed as rpgs. |
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Fri May 21, 2004 5:30 am |
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Sir Markus
Counselor of the King
Joined: 11 Jan 2002
Posts: 369
Location: Columbus, Ohio USA |
I think if it doesn't have some variation of skills/statistics/experience points/levels of some sort it really isn't an RPG, IMO. |
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Sat May 22, 2004 6:10 am |
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Moriarti
Village Dweller
Joined: 22 Sep 2003
Posts: 2
Location: Los Angeles, CA - USA |
Thank you everyone for the comments!
I wrote this article because a lot of the games shown at e-3 seemed like arcade games with a character sheet. In my opinion, if it looks like an arcade game and it plays like an arcade game, it is an arcade game.
The reason we lable things is to easily identify them. Back in the days when science was actually taught, we learned that scientists try to classify things in order to quickly identify objects in the area of study and quickly respond.
The RPG moniker aids players in their buying decisions. Also, as the lines blur, the producers will use the RPG moniker to make decisions on what types of games to produce. If a game does badly and is misclassified as an RPG, the producers will produce less RPG titles. Why not come up with a new classification system with a finer granularity to accurately categorize games?
To the reader that mentioned Dragonlance, I would like to comment that Dragonlance originally started as a novel series by Tracy Hickman based off of the D&D original Pen-and Paper RPG. The popularity of the books spawned the series and it was not looked upon as a n RPG by purists.
So my question still stands. Does anyone have any new names for some of the hybrids out there? |
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Sun May 23, 2004 12:03 am |
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Guest
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Japanese RPGs are not really RPGs so much as adventure games with crapass combat and ameteurish anime story-telling/character design. |
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Mon May 24, 2004 8:48 am |
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