Researching: the death of the CRPG industry

[MMXI]

But the Mass Effect series isn't a a cRPG series. What does Mass Effect 3 supporting Kinect have to do with our precious genre? Also, the genre was dead way before Kinect. It was arguably dead way before the original Xbox was released, even.

 

[octavius]

Has any of the big publishers ever considered reducing devekopment costs instead of "making the games more accessible" to sell more units?
Do we really need voice acting by known actors, for example? Do we really need a new graphics engine for each new "franchise"? Do we really need all those cinematic cut scenes? Can't we just watch a movie instead?

 

[MMXI]

Do we really need any voice acting, for example? Do we really need a new graphics engine for each new "franchise"? Do we really need any cut scenes? Can't we just play the game instead?

Codex approved correction.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm talking about the approach. Ever since the gaming industry became a "real" business, ever since the question slowly changed from "how do we make a really great game that fans of the genre will love?" to "how do we get a return on our multi-million dollar investment?" to "how do we appeal to fucking everyone and make them buy this game?", the genre started declining and dying.

 

[MMXI]

I'm talking about the approach. Ever since the gaming industry became a "real" business, ever since the question slowly changed from "how do we make a really great game that fans of the genre will love?" to "how do we get a return on our multi-million dollar investment?" to "how do we appeal to fucking everyone and make them buy this game?", the genre started declining and dying.

But that doesn't exactly get to the root of the problem. Why did this happen? Why wasn't it like that in the good old days?

 

[Kos_Koa]

We think it about it as the core and more. Not more, leave the core. That's a recipe for failure. You have to be smart about it. You can't dumb the game down. But at the same time you have to make it so a lot more people can play it than just core gamers.

I like how they change the words every few years but in the end it means the same thing.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Because the promise of Big Money (TM) wasn't there yet. The industry was founded by 20 something geeks like Lord British (the name speaks for itself), Romero, Meier, Bradley, etc. They didn't know much about the business side and didn't care about it. They just wanted to make cool games.

From an old interview with Bradley:

Jonric: How did you get into the computer game industry, and into designing games?

D.W. Bradley: I was playing bridge at age 4, and a chess fanatic around 5, so I suppose gaming is just in my blood - I continued as an avid gamer through college, and I'd always be playing some game or other every day, regardless of whatever else it was I was supposed to be doing. When I left college, I had been booted from the computer room because I was programming games on the mainframe - a big no-no. I was working on Parthian Kings around this time on a borrowed Apple II+ and was a typical starving artist.

Fortunately, I happened to chance upon a fellow working in a local computer store who knew some business people desperate for special computer programs, and voila! The next thing you know we were in business together - he made all the money and I did all the work. My, how little things have changed, ha ha ha… By day I'd write all kinds of business applications - banking, medical, communications, database, inventory, blah-blah you name it - and at night I'd work on one of my games. Avalon Hill published Parthian Kings when I finished it around 1981.

Jonric: What was the progression of events from there to your best-known titles, Wizardry VI and VII?

D.W. Bradley: I had started work on my first computer RPG about the time the original Wizardry appeared, but I still continued doing business software during the day. Once it was completed, I sent the finished RPG to the publisher, and after about a year's worth of phone calls, they accepted it for publication with one caveat - they wanted to publish it as a Wizardry game. I had to rewrite the whole RPG over from scratch, and rewrote the insides of Wizardry while I was at it. This became Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom.

Click to Enlarge It was finished in mid-1986, but as the publisher had announced Wizardry IV: Return of Werdna several years earlier and it was still a year away from completion, they ended up holding the completed Wizardry V game for two years. Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom was finally released in 1988, some four years after I had finished the original version. With its success, I undertook to rewrite the Wizardry game system over from scratch; I created a new RPG system, and Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge was the result. Naturally, with it's success, Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant followed. What a monster that game was! I'm still very proud of Dark Savant.

^ Different mindset. They were crazy about games, eager to try different ideas without any input from marketing and other people who didn't give a fuck about the actual quality and just wanted to sell more copies. They will come much later when it will become clear that the gaming industry is capable of generating a shitload of money and attract investors and business people to manage the investments and deliver appropriate returns, without understanding the genres.

Actually, it reminds me of Deadwood:

"The changing nature of the American West: The series follows the dying days of the 'Wild' West, as the rugged individualism that drove people like Seth Bullock to set up in the camp is undone and replaced by corporate capitalism, bigger government and the corruption inherent in either structure. Eventually, the camp is changed entirely, with individual prospectors moved out and all the local gold mining consolidated into George Hearst's holdings."

Hearst doesn't come when Deadwood is nothing but a few tents. He comes when the infrustructure is built and the town is ready for him. Same with the gaming industry. It was built by "rugged individualists", developed by first studios, and then consolidated by the likes of EA and Activision.

 

[Cassidy]

I think this is the main problem. Video game have become as main stream as movies, and the lamer/consoletard to nerd ratio is now probably 1000 to 1.

You mean "non-nerds" who want to live in a fictional world (immershun, LARPing, romances, obsessive exploration, etc.), who grind in MMORPGs, who spend many hours a day playing games like Fallout 3, Oblivion, Morrowind, World of Warcraft, spend tons of money on their hardware even if they are poor, etc?

Seriously, if just liking to play an isometric/turn-based cRPG is "nerdy", then what the fuck is pathologic shit like this?

Also, when I started playing Fallout, I was an ADHD kid and a hooligan. Another guy that played it was ADHD kid too. We were just browsing demos from a cover CD and got immediately hooked on it after seeing the great death animations.
Another childhood friend that I know that liked Fallout had ADHD too and was involved in car-stealing gangs. Next Fallout fan that I met was a popular guy in high school - we would talk a lot about Planescape Torment too.
But no, according to you, aspie nerds, all the fans of isometric/turn-based/text-rich cRPGs are just like you.

It's funny how most of these modern popular cRPGs appeal to the lowest no-life nerd instincts, but still normal people get blamed for them.

I don't think there is an exact word to define "person who is like a nerd, minus the intelligence"*, which to me comprises the greatest fanboys of these "hardcore" games you just mentioned.

*Consoletard maybe, but it is still too broad.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

This might sound familiar.

Many cable channels are created to fulfill a specific programming niche, and their name is Exactly What It Says on the Tin — the Golf Channel shows golf, the History Channel shows history programs, the Game Show Network shows Game Shows, and so on.

Some channels, however, are not as wedded to their original concept as others. Meddling Executives look at the Demographics to whom their channel appeals and decide that, hey, since the people watching their Speculative Fiction channel are mostly 18- to 31-year-old males, and Professional Wrestling is hot among that demographic, surely no one would mind if they started showing Professional Wrestling!

The fans of the original programming will mind, of course, but the channel tends to keep going regardless. This may show up with only a couple of odd programs in the schedule, but far too often, given enough time, a channel will have pretty much abandoned its original concept. Whether or not the former invariably leads to the latter is a subject for debate.

Since the network is strongly impacted by the ratings, and the highest ratings go to generally the same few demographics, this tends to lead to networks becoming more and more like each other, either in similar programming or outright airing the same shows.

It could be argued that the changes to network programming are inevitable and necessary. Some changes can be chalked up to the changing landscape of TV. As the number of channels goes up, networks re-align themselves to try and hold some of their market. That, or the parent companies who might own seven or more cable channels each shuffle stuff for "synergy" or to reduce redundancy.

History Channel - History, Made Every Day.
MTV -formerly an initialism of Music Television.
SyFy - Now trademarkable and easier to market other goods and services on without the risk of being associated with science fiction.

Similarly, the term RPG is now a brand of its own in entertainment media, with all the marketable possibilities that this entails, malleable and to be redefined, diversified or spun-off with the right PR overtones as needed for the required amount of commercial success.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

I'm talking about the approach. Ever since the gaming industry became a "real" business, ever since the question slowly changed from "how do we make a really great game that fans of the genre will love?" to "how do we get a return on our multi-million dollar investment?" to "how do we appeal to fucking everyone and make them buy this game?", the genre started declining and dying.

EA is the follower in the equation. The genre started declining before EA thought it wise to go back to publishing RPGs. EA probably looked at how IWD 2 and ToEE sold and was a 100 miles from publishing an RPG. Then Morrowind, KOTOR, and Fable came along and EA wants to wet their beak.

It was downhill when games like Planescape Torment failed to reach the mainstream.

Also I don’t buy EA’s theory. EA has a history of riding stuff when they are trendy and ruining their products when they try to reach a greater market. I don’t see any evidence that the move to accessibility works beyond simply going multiplatform. Look at Fifa, NHL, and Skate. Those games didn’t take the competition until they became the flavor for the hardcore.

 

[Jasede]

Can't we just... make cheaper games? I don't really need millions spent in graphics and voice-acting. I appreciate some of it sometimes, but when the price we pay is the game itself, then we must ask ourselves: why make a game?

A game is something that you play for enjoyment. Play, not watch or listen to, even though that's part of it. Bring the game back into our games and the role back into role playing.

My hopes rest in indies and myself. Maybe I can learn to program well enough to make a nice Open D&D combat engine one day and share it with you, sort of like KotC but with a module editor.

Big business gaming has lost its soul. Sometimes a game still has life, but, as silly as it sounds: to make a good game, you need passion. You need to put something of yourself into it. It needs to be a labor of love, or it'll just be a consumer good, like a yoghurt you eat and throw away and forget about.

I am far from a hippy, but we need to ride out into the wild west and make our own games. It's on us to make RPGs, now that almost nobody remembers anymore.

I'll remember. We remember. We'll remember, no matter what Skyway says.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

I am far from a hippy, but we need to ride out into the wild west and make our own games. It's on us to make RPGs, now that almost nobody remembers anymore.

"Mr Jasede. We're interested in publishing your RPG game product with a few slight modifications. We have the resources to make you into a household name in gaming. Let's do lunch."

 

[Jasede]

Where do I sign?

 

[bloodlover]

You can't make cheaper games because the industry kind of made the audience want full voice-acting, 1337 graphics etc and this is the reason why the industry is going on this route. Sure there are exceptions from this rule but the big money does not come from the ones like us.

This is the gamer of today and the games or made for him -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCwABcpM ... re=related

 

[Konjad]

Because the promise of Big Money (TM) wasn't there yet. The industry was founded by 20 something geeks like Lord British (the name speaks for itself), Romero, Meier, Bradley, etc. They didn't know much about the business side and didn't care about it. They just wanted to make cool games.

From an old interview with Bradley:

Jonric: How did you get into the computer game industry, and into designing games?

D.W. Bradley: I was playing bridge at age 4, and a chess fanatic around 5, so I suppose gaming is just in my blood - I continued as an avid gamer through college, and I'd always be playing some game or other every day, regardless of whatever else it was I was supposed to be doing. When I left college, I had been booted from the computer room because I was programming games on the mainframe - a big no-no. I was working on Parthian Kings around this time on a borrowed Apple II+ and was a typical starving artist.

Fortunately, I happened to chance upon a fellow working in a local computer store who knew some business people desperate for special computer programs, and voila! The next thing you know we were in business together - he made all the money and I did all the work. My, how little things have changed, ha ha ha… By day I'd write all kinds of business applications - banking, medical, communications, database, inventory, blah-blah you name it - and at night I'd work on one of my games. Avalon Hill published Parthian Kings when I finished it around 1981.

Jonric: What was the progression of events from there to your best-known titles, Wizardry VI and VII?

D.W. Bradley: I had started work on my first computer RPG about the time the original Wizardry appeared, but I still continued doing business software during the day. Once it was completed, I sent the finished RPG to the publisher, and after about a year's worth of phone calls, they accepted it for publication with one caveat - they wanted to publish it as a Wizardry game. I had to rewrite the whole RPG over from scratch, and rewrote the insides of Wizardry while I was at it. This became Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom.

Click to Enlarge It was finished in mid-1986, but as the publisher had announced Wizardry IV: Return of Werdna several years earlier and it was still a year away from completion, they ended up holding the completed Wizardry V game for two years. Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom was finally released in 1988, some four years after I had finished the original version. With its success, I undertook to rewrite the Wizardry game system over from scratch; I created a new RPG system, and Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge was the result. Naturally, with it's success, Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant followed. What a monster that game was! I'm still very proud of Dark Savant.

^ Different mindset. They were crazy about games, eager to try different ideas without any input from marketing and other people who didn't give a fuck about the actual quality and just wanted to sell more copies. They will come much later when it will become clear that the gaming industry is capable of generating a shitload of money and attract investors and business people to manage the investments and deliver appropriate returns, without understanding the genres.

Actually, it reminds me of Deadwood:

"The changing nature of the American West: The series follows the dying days of the 'Wild' West, as the rugged individualism that drove people like Seth Bullock to set up in the camp is undone and replaced by corporate capitalism, bigger government and the corruption inherent in either structure. Eventually, the camp is changed entirely, with individual prospectors moved out and all the local gold mining consolidated into George Hearst's holdings."

Hearst doesn't come when Deadwood is nothing but a few tents. He comes when the infrustructure is built and the town is ready for him. Same with the gaming industry. It was built by "rugged individualists", developed by first studios, and then consolidated by the likes of EA and Activision.

 

[commie]

Has any of the big publishers ever considered reducing devekopment costs instead of "making the games more accessible" to sell more units?
Do we really need voice acting by known actors, for example? Do we really need a new graphics engine for each new "franchise"? Do we really need all those cinematic cut scenes? Can't we just watch a movie instead?

Exactly. It's a self fulfilling prophecy that they themselves promote. Who spends untold millions on advertising? Who hypes 'next gen' graphics(actually from 5 years ago), well known actors doing VO work?

Gamers DID NOT ASK FOR THIS STUFF!!! Not even casuals who are happy with HOG's and Farmville and those diner management casual things. Even the original casual game superfranchise The Sims is pretty primitive technology-wise.

Fact is that it's the publishers who create an artificial demand for such things and then whine that they have to sell 10 million copies to break even!

 

[Trojan_generic]

Exactly. It's a self fulfilling prophecy that they themselves promote. Who spends untold millions on advertising? Who hypes 'next gen' graphics(actually from 5 years ago), well known actors doing VO work?

Mr. commie. I am Jen-Hsun Huang from NVidia. We're interested in sponsoring your RPG game product with a few slight modifications.

 

[CorpseZeb]

I don't think “Big Evil Money” or “The Big Evil Corporation” explains everything. More important is vision or I should say, lack of it. Look at movie industry. Big Evil Money? Check. The Big Evil Corporation? Double check. Voice actors? Triple check... But yet, they have people like, say, Lars von Trier, Tarantino, Scott or (put here your favorite director). As long as games will be a “hive developer, statistical gamer, voice of forum” projects instead of one person realization of his/her vision nothing, nothing change. Games needs a real “director”, real person who want to produce own wet dream, not to fulfill another people statistical erotic nightmares...

 

[Morgoth]

I don't think “Big Evil Money” or “The Big Evil Corporation” explains everything. More important is vision or I should say, lack of it. Look at movie industry. Big Evil Money? Check. The Big Evil Corporation? Double check. Voice actors? Triple check... But yet, they have people like, say, Lars von Trier, Tarantino, Scott or (put here your favorite director). As long as games will be a “hive developer, statistical gamer, voice of forum” projects instead of one person realization of his/her vision nothing, nothing change. Games needs a real “director”, real person who want to produce own wet dream, not to fulfill another people statistical erotic nightmares...

And yet everyone around the Codex hates David Cage for being a "visionary".

 

[CorpseZeb]

And yet everyone around the Codex hates David Cage for being a "visionary".

… like many people hates von Trier. But "hates" doesn’t change status and importance of personal vision.

Ps. Double quote - you can argue with one person in respectful manner, but you can't do the same with “group, hive” - there real hates lies - without double quotes.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Has any of the big publishers ever considered reducing devekopment costs instead of "making the games more accessible" to sell more units?
Do we really need voice acting by known actors, for example? Do we really need a new graphics engine for each new "franchise"? Do we really need all those cinematic cut scenes? Can't we just watch a movie instead?

Exactly. It's a self fulfilling prophecy that they themselves promote. Who spends untold millions on advertising? Who hypes 'next gen' graphics(actually from 5 years ago), well known actors doing VO work?

Gamers DID NOT ASK FOR THIS STUFF!!! Not even casuals who are happy with HOG's and Farmville and those diner management casual things. Even the original casual game superfranchise The Sims is pretty primitive technology-wise.

Actually, larpers and graphics whores did.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I don't think “Big Evil Money” or “The Big Evil Corporation” explains everything. More important is vision or I should say, lack of it. Look at movie industry. Big Evil Money? Check. The Big Evil Corporation? Double check. Voice actors? Triple check... But yet, they have people like, say, Lars von Trier, Tarantino, Scott or (put here your favorite director).

The movie industry is more mature, but the main difference is that movies are easier to make and the appeal is much wider by default. Kevin Smith shot Clerks in a few months, during evenings and weekends. It cost him 27k, was shown in less than a hundred theaters (which is a nothing), and made 3 mil. Such a scenario is impossible with games, which makes the entry barrier very high. It takes years to make a decent game and few people can do that on their own, without being hired by a studio.

 

[Renegen]

A quick way for the industry to mature would be for the industry to stop worshipping Shigeru Miyamoto and replace him with some artistic visionary of today. In fact, just throw all of Nintendo to the curb.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm talking about the approach. Ever since the gaming industry became a "real" business, ever since the question slowly changed from "how do we make a really great game that fans of the genre will love?" to "how do we get a return on our multi-million dollar investment?" to "how do we appeal to fucking everyone and make them buy this game?", the genre started declining and dying.

EA is the follower in the equation. The genre started declining before EA thought it wise to go back to publishing RPGs. EA probably looked at how IWD 2 and ToEE sold and was a 100 miles from publishing an RPG. Then Morrowind, KOTOR, and Fable came along and EA wants to wet their beak.

First, Morrowind came before ToEE. Second, ToEE was the highest selling Atari title for awhile, although obviously it didn't sell as much as much dumbed down (from Daggerfall, which almost bankrupted Bethesda) Morrowind.

And I'm not blaming EA for anything. The consolidation was inevitable and it doesn't really matter which company ended up on top. Could have been Interplay if Herve wasn't busy funneling money out of the company.

It was downhill when games like Planescape Torment failed to reach the mainstream.

Because it wasn't a mainstream game.

 

[MMXI]

Eh? Planescape: Torment "failing" can't have had much to do with the death of the cRPG industry. I mean, it wasn't a typical cRPG by any measure. If cRPGs had stuck to being combat heavy turn-based dungeon crawlers throughout the 90s then Planescape: Torment failing would have suggested that it had failed for being a fringe cRPG, causing developers to stick to proper cRPGs. But that was obviously not the case because cRPGs started to turn to shit way before Planescape: Torment was released. Probably by the mid 90s. Maybe 1994.

In other words, Planescape: Torment couldn't have been indicative of anything because it was never a standard game in the genre to begin with.

 

[SCO]

This might sound familiar.

Many cable channels are created to fulfill a specific programming niche, and their name is Exactly What It Says on the Tin — the Golf Channel shows golf, the History Channel shows history programs, the Game Show Network shows Game Shows, and so on.

Some channels, however, are not as wedded to their original concept as others. Meddling Executives look at the Demographics to whom their channel appeals and decide that, hey, since the people watching their Speculative Fiction channel are mostly 18- to 31-year-old males, and Professional Wrestling is hot among that demographic, surely no one would mind if they started showing Professional Wrestling!

The fans of the original programming will mind, of course, but the channel tends to keep going regardless. This may show up with only a couple of odd programs in the schedule, but far too often, given enough time, a channel will have pretty much abandoned its original concept. Whether or not the former invariably leads to the latter is a subject for debate.

Since the network is strongly impacted by the ratings, and the highest ratings go to generally the same few demographics, this tends to lead to networks becoming more and more like each other, either in similar programming or outright airing the same shows.

It could be argued that the changes to network programming are inevitable and necessary. Some changes can be chalked up to the changing landscape of TV. As the number of channels goes up, networks re-align themselves to try and hold some of their market. That, or the parent companies who might own seven or more cable channels each shuffle stuff for "synergy" or to reduce redundancy.

History Channel - History, Made Every Day.
MTV -formerly an initialism of Music Television.
SyFy - Now trademarkable and easier to market other goods and services on without the risk of being associated with science fiction.

Similarly, the term RPG is now a brand of its own in entertainment media, with all the marketable possibilities that this entails, malleable and to be redefined, diversified or spun-off with the right PR overtones as needed for the required amount of commercial success.

^ He needs a tag. Something like "master of the depressive codexian post" or something like that.