A problem with RPGs: RPG developers are not well-read in myth and fantasy/sci-fi literature

[Konjad]

It all comes down to pay.

Gaming industry (that is in corporations) is simply low paid and it has consequences. When it comes to writing it means people do not have qualifications to actually write anything decent - they are either not up to the task or too inexperienced, and once they gain the experience they move to another industry. Who even stays in the underpaid gaming industry? People go into it mostly because it has easy entry, so as the first or second job it's fine, but once they get experience they leave somewhere that pays much better. It's not limited to developers, it's everybody: Writers, designers, testers, even managers.

Only losers stay in gaming industry unless they are small independent teams (and often have other jobs), but majority of people simply moves on. After all, it's an industry that pays low but requires an education, so people there are typically not complete morons, just inexperienced, and seek other opportunities when they present themselves.

 

[Maxie]

It all comes down to pay.

Gaming industry (that is in corporations) is simply low paid and it has consequences. When it comes to writing it means people do not have qualifications to actually write anything decent - they are either not up to the task or too inexperienced, and once they gain the experience they move to another industry. Who even stays in the underpaid gaming industry? People go into it mostly because it has easy entry, so as the first or second job it's fine, but once they get experience they leave somewhere that pays much better. It's not limited to developers, it's everybody: Writers, designers, testers, even managers.

Only losers stay in gaming industry unless they are small independent teams (and often have other jobs), but majority of people simply moves on. After all, it's an industry that pays low but requires an education, so people there are typically not complete morons, just inexperienced, and seek other opportunities when they present themselves.

that's good and should stay so
writing duties are a side activity that should be given to exceptionally weird programmers

 

[goregasm]

Aren't most "big" RPGs just all about social and moral degenerates, their "feelings" and sexual fetishism nowadays?

 

[Reinhardt]

yes. i forgot when last time i seen someone actually doing something heroic in vidya. no epic last stands, no heroic sacrifices, no saving the day.
fuck, just vague memories about previous party of nameless one shits on million dollar worth hours long cutscenes from modern games. blind archer ftw!

 

[ind33d]

Art used to organically flow from forgotten history like Skyrim being influenced by Hyperborea or Assassin's Creed retelling the occult aspects of the Crusades. Now due to central bank funding, it's the reverse: games are made to support a fictitious government narrative and replace our ancestral memories of what really happened. A thousand generations died for nothing

 

[Reinhardt]

name me any character who can serve as universal positive role model from modern western game. no such thing. everything must be drawn through mud and shit - "deconstructed".

 

[Harthwain]

That is partially true, but I think another reason behind subpar games (not just RPGs) is that games stopped being passion projects from a handful of nerds for other nerds and became big business that involve too many people who are just "doing their job" and not being very passionate about it. Indie developers approach this differently, because they are making their own "babies" and they still work on relatively personal level in comparison to big companies. They can also succeed by finding their own niche, instead of trying to go as big as possible in hopes of catering to everyone, because that is what AAA games have to do in order to recoup their development costs.

 

[Roguey]

Pillars of Eternity was made by History Bore Josh Sawyer and Harvard Alumnus Gen Xer Eric Fenstermaker. Compelling writing is just difficult.

You're also old and culture has moved on past you.

 

[0wca]

Yup, I've been saying this for a while and people just look at me like I'm being mean.

You are what you eat. And that goes for the mind as well.

So, if you fill your mind with vapid, empty, meaningless crap, then that's all you'll ever produce.

On the other hand, if you fill it with incline then it gives you a sort of humility and inspiration to measure up to the giants on whose shoulders you stand on.

 

[Machocruz]

Having an actual life would help them too, so that whatever they read does not just get excreted as fan-art on the other side, pure facade, but has some of the ring of truth to it.

 

[Bad Sector]

I remember reading once that generic orcs+elves fantasy sells much better than other settings, so IMO it makes sense why it is used more than anything else. And it also makes sense to me that it sells much better as fantasy is basically a simplified medieval setting with some extra fantastical elements, most people learn (some form of) medieval history as children and they also get introduced to (some form of) fairy tales around the same time, so it is much easier for them to grasp generic fantasy than anything that requires them to either relearn a very different universe from its basics or ignore things they know how they should be.

At the same time and for the same reasons it makes sense why authors (be it game developers, book authors or whatever) like it too. In a sense the generic fantasy provides an already understood setting and background that lets the writer to focus on what they want to focus on while at the same time giving them freedom to do pretty much anything they'd want to, as it isn't a truly established setting.

As an example in many generic fantasy stories and pretty much almost all generic fantasy games, you can kill some bandits (or local equivalent baddies), grab their stuff, sell that stuff to local merchants and have the local populace be thankful to you. Meanwhile in a modern setting killing the bandits will have you get convicted for murder, no retail store accepts their customers selling them stuff and if you manage to sell anything after a while the tax man will come after you. From that it should be obvious that, unless the work is really about working with the latter setting's restrictions, the generic fantasy setting provides more freedom to the writer (as another simpler example, nobody would bat an eye if in some generic fantasy setting everyone accepted the same currency, but they would find it very unrealistic for a modern setting as different countries have different currencies, while again in another generic fantasy setting they'd still not find it weird if the different countries also had different currencies).

Generic fantasy has a lot of positives going for it:

• It builds on existing knowledge people learn at school
• It builds on existing storytelling tropes people learn as children
• Unlike real history or modern settings, it has little baggage, it is very flexible
• Pretty much everyone understands it with little needed explanation
• Pretty much everyone can accept most takes on it
• Unless the focus is on the world, it lets writers focus on what they want to tell, while modifying it a bit where needed
• Because of all the above, it is very popular with both writers and readers/gamers

So yeah, of course generic fantasy is by far the most common setting.

 

[almondblight]

TL:DR: RPG needs heavy literary influences to flourish in terms of writing/world building. Only well-read people should be allowed to design RPG worlds. If you have not read at least 100 books from the canon of fantasy/sci-fi literature, you have no business even attempting to write RPGs or design their world.

No, one of the things that ruins games the most is failed writers trying to shove their novels inside a game. Them being better writers would make this somewhat less intolerable; it wouldn't make it good.

I honestly don't care if a quest is a generic save the princess from the dragon quest set in a generic fantasy world (honestly, at this point that'd be fairly refreshing) as long as the actual quest design and combat encounters are good.

 

[Chuck Norris]

TL:DR: RPG needs heavy literary influences to flourish in terms of writing/world building. Only well-read people should be allowed to design RPG worlds. If you have not read at least 100 books from the canon of fantasy/sci-fi literature, you have no business even attempting to write RPGs or design their world.

No, one of the things that ruins games the most is failed writers trying to shove their novels inside a game. Them being better writers would make this somewhat less intolerable; it wouldn't make it good.

I honestly don't care if a quest is a generic save the princess from the dragon quest set in a generic fantasy world (honestly, at this point that'd be fairly refreshing) as long as the actual quest design and combat encounters are good.

You misunderstood what I said. My point is that reading novels strengthens your imagination and with better imagination, you can create better creative stuff.

And the reason I mentioned novels is because they are the most visionary form of entertainment. Even if an acclaimed novel is bad/not your cup of tea, you can learn things from it. Anyone who has attempted making creative things knows that bad things can be just as inspiring as good things, as long as they are trying something new.

This has nothing do with being wordy.

From Software games are examples of games that are heavily inspired by literature (and Berserk, which is one of the most literary Mangas), but they are not wordy at all. Even if you hate those games, you can't deny they revolutionized the imaginative structure of RPGs for a decade and provided an alternative aesthetics to D&D for RPGs to follow.

 

[Vic]

My point is that reading novels strengthens your imagination and with better imagination, you can create better creative stuff.

nah, it gives you more ideas to work with but you still have to practice your craft. It’s like just watching football isn’t going to make you a good player.

The best writers are the ones who have an insane work ethic and of course talent. No amount of hard work can trump talent.

So if you’re a talented writer with a good work ethic, you’ll probably not be writing for video games.

 

[Shaki]

It's not about being well read. It's about writers in AAA companies being mostly diversity hires or people trying to outfaggot the actual faggots, so they don't get replaced by a diversity hire. No one wants to make fun fictional stories set in fictional worlds, every AAA game MUST be an allegory for the current USA culture war, where the trannies are the heroes and kill evil fascist wypipo. There is no amount of novels that can ever fix it.

 

[Tyranicon]

Piggybacking of what everyone else said, popular media is run by clowns in 2023.

Nevermind RPGs, you can look at established film IPs worth billions of dollars who seemingly have no idea what the fuck they're doing.

RPGs you can at least handwave by saying they're mostly niche products without much market share. So of course they won't bother hiring the best writers or whatever. But then you have shit like the Star Wars sequel trilogy, which is basically an endless money printer if handled right, and they gave it to glorified fan fic writers.

We have reached such a low tide of quality that media producers are failing to entertain even mouthbreathers.

There are widespread systemic issues throughout every level of production, but especially at the top. Everyone who even has a shred of talent or dedication to their craft, has already left the machine.

 

[just]

lets seize the means of rpg production

 

[markec]

A persons upbringing, environment, education and personal beliefs all influence not only what one creates but also what one sees in others creations.

Two people with complete opposite worldviews will find different things to enjoy and find inspirational in the same body of work.

Or more simply put, if you want better writing in entertainment dont let women write.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

The original post is completely correct. There is a second layer to this argument however. A lot of science fiction and fantasy literature is actually pretty shit. Most aren't even "fun". You read it, or play games, because you expect to find deep secret knowledge or meaning, hidden within. You expect this because you have read a better work, that did have these things. Outside of Tolkien, few have ever created fantasy that was actually edifying or profound - so you are wasting your time playing a 150 hour RPG expecting to find that. You can't be told this - you must learn it through reading sci-fi and fantasy, then having the perspicacity to realise it. Just like video games; 90% of novels were not worth your time. So what makes that 10% good, and what makes less than 1% command a fanatical fandom? All the great works in a fictional entertaining genre, are not only fun, but have something profound to say, in tune with eternal laws; they aren't a political polemic either, forcing a model upon reality.

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

Many Hugo awards winners have writing that makes Divinity Original Sin 2 writing look like Shakespeare in comparison. I do not see how one can argue the fantasy/sci-fi industry as a whole has better writing then the video game RPG industry.

This is 100% true. Fantasy is broadly a dogshit genre filled with crap upon crap. With only minor exceptions like LOTR. 50s-80s sci-fi literature is where it's at. Which is also why more RPGs should be sci-fi instead of dogshit, uninspired fantasy.

High-quality fantasy writing:

• H. Rider Haggard- King Solomon’s Mines, She
• William Morris- The Well at the World’s End
• W.H. Hodgson- The House on the Borderland, The Night Land, nautical horror stories
• Lord Dunsany- Various stories
• Abraham Merritt- The Moon Pool, The Ship of Ishtar, Dwellers in the Mirage, Creep Shadow Creep
• Eric Rücker Eddison- The Worm Ouroboros
• H.P. Lovecraft- Various stories (though primarily horror, secondarily SF)
• Robert E. Howard- Conan the Cimmerian stories, Solomon Kane stories
• Clark Ashton Smith- Various stories
• J.R.R. Tolkien- The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy
• Fritz Leiber- Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories
• Mervyn Peake- Titus Groan, Gormenghast
• Jack Vance- The Dying Earth stories and novels, Lyonesse trilogy
• Poul Anderson- Three Hearts and Three Lions, The Broken Sword
• Peter S. Beagle- A Fine and Private Place, The Last Unicorn
• Michael Moorcock- Elric stories (1961-1977, in publication order)
• Roger Zelazny- Lord of Light, original Amber novels, Dilvish the Damned stories
• Gene Wolfe- Book of the New Sun (originally published as a tetralogy)

Yea when you look at older stuff you'll find more good things. Lord of light is also about as much sci-fi as it is fantasy. Great book. Still, 50s-80s sci-fi mogs fantasy as a whole any day.

1. Frank Herbert, Dune 1-3. Some people like the later ones but they're insane.
2. Any of Isaac Asimov's 50 books or so
3. Heinlein's the moon is a harsh mistress, and starship troopers (although I personally am not a big fan)
4. Arthur C Clarke's books, haven't read any of them personally but apparently a lot of them are pretty good.
5. War of the Worlds
6. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
7. Several of Ursula Le Guin's books
8. Lord of light
9. Neuromancer
10. Some of GRRM's older sci-fi works
11. More recently also works like the Three Body Problem by Liu Ciuxin and
12. the Expanse books
13. Consider Phlebas and the rest of the Culture series
14. Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, possibly the entire series? Idk I've only read the first one
15. Jurassic park
16. Roadside Picnic
17. Hyperion series
18. Red/Green/Blue Mars books

There's more I can't think of rn, but yea. Also some of these are from before the 50s or after the 80s, but hey. Sci-fi at least still pumps out classics in the modern day, unlike fantasy.

Oh also the Black Company is a good fantasy book series. And all the Terry Pratchett books, I guess.

 

[Sunri]

Make your own video game?

 

[0sacred]

outside of indies, no one goes "I have some ideas for a fun game" anymore, I guess. Watch Tim Cain's videos to take a trip down memory lane, when this was still possible. As I see it, there are now three motivations behind making AA and AAA RPG's:

1. make money (lowest common denominator)
2. suck up to current thing (make even more money)
3. where possible, inject your own politics and power fantasies into the game, if they align with MSM (I'm sure this is motivation for current gen writers)

 

[Serus]

Although i agree about current mainstream crpg devs being not well read - this really isn't the worst problem with the mainstream crpgs today or their writing. The first problem is that those games have too much of it, they are too verbose. It should be gameplay > storytelling, not the other way around. Mainstream crpgs today must have "epic" stories and hundreds of pages of text with story, lore, whatever. There is quality in brevity, certainly in case of computer games' writing. Something that you can do with 1/10 of time and money (text needs presentation: dialogues, cinematics, etc...) used today. Energy and money saved put into making gameplay or technical aspects (not just graphics but interface, optimalization, etc...) better.
At the same time mainstream crpgs are full of, let's say questionable themes, of romances, oversexualization, deconstruction of cultural tropes or simply attacks on cultural heritage and ending the list with all the lgbt nonsense, to put it mildly. Even IF the writers were well-read - but still followed the above - it wouldn't matter much. You'll just end with 100s of pages of WELL written stuff about strong women and evil masculinity, how everything in christian/western culture heritage is shit, and the numerous romances (also masterfully written and many homo or even weirdo -sexual). The difference is that all of the above would be made by people who actually read something, unlike the game writers today. That are not the droids improvements i'am looking for.
Fix the problem with what and how much is written and how much importance writing is given to, relative to gameplay. THEN and only then start to think about better writers. Starting with finding "well-read" writers won't make shit go away. The shit will be as big as always - just smell better.

 

[almondblight]

Many Hugo awards winners have writing that makes Divinity Original Sin 2 writing look like Shakespeare in comparison. I do not see how one can argue the fantasy/sci-fi industry as a whole has better writing then the video game RPG industry.

This is 100% true. Fantasy is broadly a dogshit genre filled with crap upon crap. With only minor exceptions like LOTR. 50s-80s sci-fi literature is where it's at. Which is also why more RPGs should be sci-fi instead of dogshit, uninspired fantasy.

High-quality fantasy writing:

• H. Rider Haggard- King Solomon’s Mines, She
• William Morris- The Well at the World’s End
• W.H. Hodgson- The House on the Borderland, The Night Land, nautical horror stories
• Lord Dunsany- Various stories
• Abraham Merritt- The Moon Pool, The Ship of Ishtar, Dwellers in the Mirage, Creep Shadow Creep
• Eric Rücker Eddison- The Worm Ouroboros
• H.P. Lovecraft- Various stories (though primarily horror, secondarily SF)
• Robert E. Howard- Conan the Cimmerian stories, Solomon Kane stories
• Clark Ashton Smith- Various stories
• J.R.R. Tolkien- The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy
• Fritz Leiber- Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories
• Mervyn Peake- Titus Groan, Gormenghast
• Jack Vance- The Dying Earth stories and novels, Lyonesse trilogy
• Poul Anderson- Three Hearts and Three Lions, The Broken Sword
• Peter S. Beagle- A Fine and Private Place, The Last Unicorn
• Michael Moorcock- Elric stories (1961-1977, in publication order)
• Roger Zelazny- Lord of Light, original Amber novels, Dilvish the Damned stories
• Gene Wolfe- Book of the New Sun (originally published as a tetralogy)

Yea when you look at older stuff you'll find more good things. Lord of light is also about as much sci-fi as it is fantasy. Great book. Still, 50s-80s sci-fi mogs fantasy as a whole any day.

I'd say Lord of Light is completely SciFi, and doesn't even make sense if viewed as Fantasy. The whole point of the novel is that the colonists are using their tech to pretend to be gods, I'm not sure how a reader could mistake them for actual gods.

Same with Book of the New Sun. Other than Severian himself (and even then, I probably missed something), it is fairly solidly SciFi. Wolfe wrote fantasy as well, though (Wizard Knight, Latro).

 

[MerchantKing]

They should be required to read the Tanakh too.