Editorial Rockin' hardcore old school free style and stuff

[LlamaGod]

I demand that mckracken is stripped of his username. He's soiling my childhood memories.

I think this mckracken used the telephone too much.

 

[mckracken]

Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 rocked bigtime and are singlehandedly responsible for the rpg renaissance.

Get a clue Saint Proverbius.

Renaissance? See, in a renaissance, things actually get better. So, no, that never happened.

I would also imagine that in a renaissance new ideas are founded and explored?

Fantasy real-time D&D RPGs have been around since the 80s, so YEAH.

If you dont have anything to say lamer-God, then shut up altogether.

 

[kingcomrade]

Yeah, lamer-god .

 

[Kader]

Well I think that it is safe to say that we are headed for the ill-fated classic ‘gaming industry crash’ which arrived from the depths of console gaming once before. At the very least a significant shift from the players who care about the games/genres they play to players who just show up to a store with $50 to spend and allow their purchasing power to be dictated by shiny pretty cover art.

We all really DO understand that the mainstream pretty much drives the industry now as it so thoroughly funds it but it’s sad to have so few ‘rogue’ devs stray from the lowest-common to produce something truly innovative and enjoyable and most of all intelligent, fun, and playable without being simplistic and bland. This notion which devs have that leads them to believe that gamers wants/need bland, mediocre, and easy gameplay experiences should be kindly taken out back and shot in the fuckin head.

But hey that’s the difference between companies which make games to make cash and companies which make games because they actually give a shit about the player. (we’d better grasp onto and support those which still do…at least until they turn into corporate shills as well)

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

The sooner Oscar Wilde's vision (a lengthy article worth reading) is realized the better!

What is the best game made under socialism?

 

[kingcomrade]

Tetris!

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

3 : REBIRTH, REVIVAL

It's kind of funny even giving Baldur's Gate the credit for the "rebirth" of the CRPG genre when the industry never actually stopped making CRPGs, both Fallout and Fallout 2 came out before BG, and Diablo came out a full two years prior to BG and sold mad copies.

If you're arguing sales drove the psuedo-rebirth, then Diablo did it. If you're arguing from an artform standpoint, Fallout did it. About the only thing you can argue that BG "rebirthed" is the D&D CRPG, and that's really only because Interplay and SSI started churning out really shitty CRPGs based on previous titles and engines for the quick buck sale on the license. Then again, that's pretty much what followed BG. The infinity engine ad nauseaum is pretty on par with the EotB ad nauseaum of the early 90s.

 

[Jinxed]

Hey, some of these games weren't all that bad. Even a late clone like Lands of Lore was pretty nice. But that actually was what EOB 3 was supposed to be before Westwood got the axe. They took what they had and made Lands of Lore.

 

[Crazy_Vasey]

Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 rocked bigtime and are singlehandedly responsible for the rpg renaissance.

Get a clue Saint Proverbius.

Gods above, the first Baldur's Gate was the single most tedious game I have ever played. Even in my teenage years, when I was the epitome of computer gaming geek, I could not bring myself to play all the way through that game. Utter, utter cack. I'd rather play through KOTOR a dozen times than play through the first hour of Baldur's Gate ever again.

 

[mckracken]

3 : REBIRTH, REVIVAL

It's kind of funny even giving Baldur's Gate the credit for the "rebirth" of the CRPG genre when the industry never actually stopped making CRPGs, both Fallout and Fallout 2 came out before BG, and Diablo came out a full two years prior to BG and sold mad copies.

If you're arguing sales drove the psuedo-rebirth, then Diablo did it. If you're arguing from an artform standpoint, Fallout did it. About the only thing you can argue that BG "rebirthed" is the D&D CRPG, and that's really only because Interplay and SSI started churning out really shitty CRPGs based on previous titles and engines for the quick buck sale on the license. Then again, that's pretty much what followed BG. The infinity engine ad nauseaum is pretty on par with the EotB ad nauseaum of the early 90s.

Pretty much every entry of what you call infinity ad naueum was a quality rgp. (Icewind Dale)

And Diablo did nothing for the rpg genre, because the world agrees that it was and always will be an action adventure.

To have a revival, you need not only the critics to agree on a game, but way more importantly also the people playing (and buying) it. Fallout was never able to do that.

Twist it all you want, at the end of the day Baldurs Gate rekindled puplic interest in the rpg in a big way. The genre was in its death throes back then. And I should know, I was there.

 

[Claw]

People aren't interested in RPG. They are only interested in calling their entertainment roleplaying because they think it makes them intellectual.

 

[kingcomrade]

No, they are interested in calling their entertainment roleplaying because they heard Final Fantasy is a roleplaying game and Final Fantasy is sooooo cool it has some of the best stories ever I cried when Aries died.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Twist it all you want, at the end of the day Baldurs Gate rekindled puplic interest in the rpg in a big way. The genre was in its death throes back then.

I don't get all this bullshit about crpgs suffering it's final agony then to be miraculously saved by BG. All the decent crpgs developed at the time of release of BG or prior/after that has positively nothing that suggests inspiration from BG'sl success whatsoever.
Interplay -> BIS -> Troika did day own thing just continuing to make games in the vein they did Wasteland. M&M series, Wizary8 even Morrowind, what do these games have to thank BG for?
And as been said, renaissance is when there are lots of inovation and great pieces of art/craftmanship being created. Where's that in this case? Kotor? Fable? Sacred? Oblivion (lol)?
BG sold well because Bioware was one of the first to realise that producing rpg lites with shallow gameplay and cheap fantasy plot is the way to go seeing as average gamer grows younger and more casual every year. That was a smart move probably, but what does it have to do with this imaginary ''revival''? If IWD, NWN and DS stands for renaissance than what should we expect from decline?

 

[Crazy_Vasey]

To have a revival, you need not only the critics to agree on a game, but way more importantly also the people playing (and buying) it. Fallout was never able to do that.

Fallout didn't sell? Yup, that's why it didn't have any sequels . . . oh, wait. Give me a break, will ya? If it didn't sell then Interplay wouldn't have tried to cash-in on the license so many bloody times. It might not have been a bazillion copies sold smash-hit that funds a dev house for the rest of eternity but it sure as hell sold plenty and it was still selling right up to the point when they stopped producing new copies.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

The part about "the world" recognizing it as action adventure is amusing too, considering most fans of the game as well as 'critics' call it an RPG. It's another case of letting them bark up the wrong tree because no one cares.

 

[elander_]

I know how everyone likes to say that the casual gamer doesn't think and blablabla but this is idea which is hapily passed on by PRs that the casual gamer doesn't like to read too much or that he doesn't want complex games is also a great excuse to cover the asses of developers without any talent or willing to learn about game design.

The biggest lie of this industry is that games need to simpler and less complex to please the mainstream instead of make a complex and chalenging game more friendly to casual gamers. Some game designers say it can't be done that we have to compromise. Well that is because they design games with their asses.

 

[Keldryn]

It's funny, when I first read this a few days ago, when I read this quote:

Muzyka: We think there's a definite difference between your garden-variety hardcore gamer and the vocal minority that sometimes erupt online on message boards. You need to be able to tell the difference between the two groups and understand that the people yelling the loudest aren't necessarily the majority of players, nor are they necessarily even an influential hardcore player or early adopter... We should note that a minority of hardcore gamers actually do seek niche-type features that might cause the mainstream gamers to get turned off by complexity or difficulty, and, to be successful in reaching a large audience with their titles, developers definitely need to be aware of this phenomenon and be careful to screen all comments carefully before changing their designs based on those comments from fans.

...my first thought was this place.

I think Bioware has been pretty successful in producing games with depth and substance that manage to strike a chord with a more mainstream market. Do I think that Bioware makes the best games ever? No. I enjoyed the first Baldur's Gate when I played through it seven or years ago, but it would be rather tedious now. Baldur's Gate II is by no means a game aimed at the "casual" or "mainstream" gamer. It's an extremely long game with almost too much to do (in terms of sidequests), and there is a lot of micromanaging at times. I much prefer the first KOTOR and Jade Empire to either BG game. I would certainly classify KOTOR as a "great" game, in spite of the Star wars license. I've been a big Star Wars fan all my life (of the movies, not the novels), but SW games tend to be crappy. I'll proudly list KOTOR amongst my all-time favorite RPGs, right up there with Planescape: Torment, Ultima VII, and the Fallouts.

I am glad to see Bioware finally exploring their own IPs now, after Jade Empire and now Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Like it or not, the D&D licence is a huge marketing boost for any game. I don't think that the D&D system makes for a good video or computer RPG, but I've known a lot of D&D gamers who pretty much only play D&D games and only read D&D fantasy novels. Torment is an amazing game, but that is in spite of its licence; I think that the SPECIAL system probably would have been a better fit.

It took them a few years, but making licenced games has allowed Bioware to reach the point where they are independent enough to develop original IPs. And Obsidian seems to be catching a lot of flak for picking up Bioware's table scraps, but it's a pretty sound business approach. Give them another couple of releases, and perhaps then they'll be in a stable enough position to work on more original titles. It's a smart move for any development house just starting up to begin with a few titles that have a broad appeal and built-in marketing.

 

[Twinfalls]

The sooner Oscar Wilde's vision (a lengthy article worth reading) is realized the better!

What is the best game made under socialism?

Communist Russia was not socialist - a point made in that essay, if you bother to read it. Here's a clue about the world you live in - If a political institution calls itself something, this alone doesn't mean that's what they actually are. The Nazis called their movement 'National Socialism' for example.

Read some Orwell for more insight. He points out that Communist parties were right-wing forces (ie stood for power in the hands of few).

 

[Keldryn]

How can he say this when Muzyka clearly said that they sort out the good from the bad by thinking how the proposed features affect sales? That their main concern isn't the quality of the feature?

We can't assume that hardcore gamers are the ultimate judges on a feature's quality. The more complex and difficult niche-type features that some hardcore gamers desire are not necessarily higher-quality simply by virtue of being complex and difficult enough to turn off a lot of mainstream players. A lot of hardcore gamers are quick to dismiss the exclusion such features as "dumbing down" to suit a mainstream audience. Sometimes this is true, and sometimes it isn't. Some of the "vocal minority of hardcore gamers" often seem to get a big ego boost from liking more complex features because they feel it makes them superior to the unwashed masses of mainstreamers. Said gamers also need to get a life. There can be an elegance to a streamlined and accessible approach, and balancing that with depth of gameplay is an artform. When you are intimately familiar with a style of game, it is easy to overlook the fact that many features might not be very accessible to people who haven't been playing these types of games for twenty years.

I think a good example is Jade Empire. A lot of RPG fans were not happy about its lack of a traditional inventory system, and accusations of dumbing-down were flying everywhere. But it was the right design decision for the game. Jade Empire wasn't just trying to be an Asian-themed version of D&D dungeon crawling. It was heavily inspired by the wuxia genre of film, and having the main character carrying a backpack full of potions, suits of armor, weapons, rings, and other such items to manage is detrimental to effectively portraying this theme. Turn-based combat also wouldn't have fit the genre the game was trying to evoke. It offered a fair bit of character customization, although it was disappointing that all of the martial arts styles were pretty much the same as each other. Jade Empire was a bit of an odd bird, as it was an "RPG-lite" by many people's definition (real-time combat, simple stats system, no inventory management), yet it had the most dialogue I've seen this side of Planescape: Torment. The conversations in the game are the sort of thing that would turn off a lot of mainstream gamers, yet that aspect of the game is frequently downplayed by many hardcore RPG fans in favour of ranting about it being an "RPG-lite."

 

[Keldryn]

When it comes to RPGs however, the death of Troika and seeing Bioware go from BG2 to NWN to KOTOR has pretty much proven that what I think is less worth than any random moron who doesn't know or care about roleplaying. At least NWN2, even if it may suck by itself, will allow real gamers to create the RPG they want to play without the need to cater to morons. That was the greatest feature of the first game, because that game did indeed suck by itself.

I agree that Neverwinter Nights wasn't very good -- at least what little I played of it wasn't very good. I'm not sure how BG2 and KOTOR relate to catering to morons though. The biggest problem with NWN, however, is that the engine sucks. It's ugly, it's extremely limited (not even truely 3D, as you can never have walkable terrain over or under another section of terrain), and it has a crappy interface. Dungeon Siege may have been a terrible game, but at least we were able to do some really cool stuff with the engine on U5: Lazarus.

And I thought that dialogue and story were two aspects of RPGs highly valued around here? KOTOR had a lot of dialogue, generally quite well-written. There were a lot of optional things to do in that game, and the choices that you made actually did have an effect on how events played out, to some degree, and certainly more than in almost every other game on the market. I've heard complaints that it's "too short" but it took me just shy of 50 hours on my first play-through (light side), and about 44 hours on my second play through a year later (dark side). And those were rather different experiences.

 

[Keldryn]

A hardcore gamer wants to play a game, while a casual gamer wants a mildly interactive narrative experience.

It's only one facet of a multitude of differences between two ill-defined and idiotic terms, but I think it greatly summarises the difference in attitudes between experienced gamers and the newcomers, with particular regard to RPGs. If nothing else it would explain why the "story with timesinks" formula that JRPGs and most of Bioware's shit follow is so popular.

I agree that "hardcore gamer" and "casual gamer" are ill-defined terms that don't encompass the reality of a wide variety of gaming interests. But I don't think your evaluation of experienced games and newcomers, in regards to taste in RPGs, really holds water. It's a lot more complicated than that, and I don't think you can easily divide gamers into camps based on their experience. There are a lot of experienced gamers, who spend most of their leisure time playing games, who thrive on JRPGs. They've been around and following that same formula for almost twenty years now, and there are a lot of gamers who have been with them for the entire ride. The majority of them probably spend more time playing games than I do. For some gamers, the story is paramount, and the gameplay is secondary, as evidenced by the fact that many JRPGs follow an extremely linear progression, with hundreds of random battles and a dozen half-baked mini-games breaking up the storyline. (Disclaimer: I don't hate JPRGs, but I am getting extremely bored with the formula.) Some gamers are drawn to the tactical battles and statistics management of many RPGs, particularly the Japanese strategy RPGs.

Given your assumption, after a certain amount of time, gamers that enjoy the "story with timesink" formula should "graduate" to a higher degree of sophistication and move on from those games. But they often don't. Perhaps some of these gamers were just never exposed to a more open-ended game like an Ultima or Fallout. From around 1987 through 1990, I was very much engrossed in games such as Dragon Warrior, Phantasy Star I & II, Pool of Radiance, The Bard's Tale, and Might & Magic. Then I played Ultima VI, and my whole perspective changed -- here was a game where the bulk of the gameplay wasn't about fighting monsters, accumulating wealth, and levelling up. I'm sure that some diehard JPRGers might experience the same thing if they played Ultima VII, Fallout, or Torment. But many of them probably wouldn't. My finacee is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. She's a voracious reader of sci-fi and fantasy literature (and not of the "sanctioned fan fiction" licenced type). She was playing electronic games since the SNES days. And she can't stand most PC RPGs, with their tiny isometric characters and reams of dialogue. But she'll devote 80+ hours to Legend of Dragoon and love every minute of it. Or Breath of Fire, or a SNES Final Fantasy.

It's a matter of gamers' tastes, and there are distinct styles of games within the RPG genre. I don't think that any judgment of quality or sophistication can really be made based on the style of the game. Fans of each type of game make equally valid arguments.

I'm not really sure how you can equate "most of Bioware's shit" with JRPGs in terms of formula. Bioware's games all have a lot more in common with Ultimas and Fallouts than they do with any Japanese RPG. Might & Magic or Wizardry, I could see.

 

[Keldryn]

Warren Spector was right when he said that it is imperative that developers find alternative sources of funding. They need to allow themselves the freedom to create without being constrained by any pressure to turn a profit/please a market. Art isn't made to cater to perceived majority opinion, rather it is the creative outlet for an inspired individual. If other people like what they see, great. If they want to sponsor you/encourage with money, great. But the direct ties between making a game and selling it on a market are poisonous.

I agree with this, at least in terms of needing to find alternative sources of funding. Of course the big question is "who?" Most people who have money are not interested in spending it on projects that are not very likely to turn a profit. While art is a creative outlet for inspired individuals, modern electronic games have become so complex to produce that it is extremely difficult for a game to simply be created as the inspired work of a few creative people. That isn't to say that it is impossible, of course, but it takes an incredibly dedicated group of people to actually be able to finish a game if they aren't doing it as a full-time day job. Look at the number of fan-based projects that are announced to great fanfare and then fall apart before they're even off the ground. I think it's a testament to our project director's drive that Lazarus was actually completed; I don't know if I've seen any volunteer-based projects of this scope actually completed. And it still took over five years.

I think that part of the problem that makes the ties between creating a game and selling on the market poisonous is that the marketing of a game often seems to be based on what the Marketing Department thinks that game's mainstream appeal will be. If they don't think the game will be a bit hit, they won't spend much time and money promoting it, and instead spend that on a game that doesn't actually need a massive marketing campaign. To use a couple of common examples, look at Psychonauts or Beyond Good & Evil. Both of these games kick Kingdom Hearts' ass in every conceivable way, yet Kingdom Hearts sold millions, and the others sold next to nothing. KH also received a marketing push that neither game could hope to get. I heard that BG&E was an experiment by Ubisoft to see if a game could sell based entirely on word of mouth, but I don't know if it's true. I do know that Psychonauts was originally to be an Xbox exclusive, published and heavily marketed by Microsoft, but they abandonded it late in development, leaving it for the much smaller publisher Majesco. Had it received the same level of marketing, could Psychnonauts have been as big a seller as Kingdom Hearts, Jak & Daxter, or Ratchet & Clank? I think it could have been at least in the same league, though I doubt it would have outsold any of them. Would fans of those games enjoy Psychonauts? I certainly think so.

Do any PC RPGs get even a fraction of the marketing budget of a Final Fantasy? Of course not, because the publisher "knows" that they won't sell as well, so they'll devote a much larger chunk of their marketing budget to the sure thing (I know that no PC RPGs are published by the same company as FF, this is just to illustrate a point). But it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't think that the staff of most marketing departments even play electronic games. The marketing is all based on artificial "focus group" results and what they, as non-gamers, think that gamers will like. Who seriously buys a game based on the fact that the marketing materials claim it has over 80 types of monsters, 50 kinds of weapons, and over 150 different magic spells!!!

And then you get the odd title like The Sims. It isn't really a very "casual" game when you really look at it. It is extremely time-consuming to play, and the game is almost entirely concerned with micromanaging. You can spend hours and hours downloading extra content for it but never actually playing it. It's actually a fairly complex game to really learn how to play. EA didn't think it would do well in the marketplace, and wanted to cancel it. The bosses apparently let Will Wright finish it just to "shut him up." Somehow it became the highest-selling PC game in history. I don't think anybody actually predicted that outcome. I don't remember how much of a marketing campaign there was for The Sims when it first came out though, but I think EA may have stepped it up once they realized that it was selling very well.

For any activity to be sustainable as a means of earning a living, it obviously needs to be profitable. But perhaps the biggest problem is that those with the most influence over whether a game gets made and how it gets promoted seem to be those with the least interest in playing games and the least knowledge of actual game design.

 

[Keldryn]

maybe it died after giving birth. lol

RPG like KOTOR getting so many RPG-awards is probably a good evidence why it's so lacking nowadays, while those games we really wanted to like , something like TOEE gets the bug-bomb.

I couldn't disagree more. KOTOR is probably my favorite RPG since PS: Torment, and definitely one of my all-time favorites. TOEE didn't interest me in the least; it seemed to focus far too much on dungeon crawling and combat, and not very much on character interaction -- which was one of the high points of KOTOR.

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

The sooner Oscar Wilde's vision (a lengthy article worth reading) is realized the better!

What is the best game made under socialism?

Communist Russia was not socialist - a point made in that essay, if you bother to read it. Here's a clue about the world you live in - If a political institution calls itself something, this alone doesn't mean that's what they actually are. The Nazis called their movement 'National Socialism' for example.

Read some Orwell for more insight. He points out that Communist parties were right-wing forces (ie stood for power in the hands of few).

Then socialism is imaginary and never existed and no games were ever made under it. And didn't Oscar Wilde die before the Russian Revolution? He couldn't have made any point about it.

If instead we put countries on a scale of free-market to socialist I assert that the best games come from the most free-market countries.

You might find the economics of fascism and the vampire economy interesting. Regarding National Socialism specifically and the concentration of power under socialism, there's Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Pretty much every entry of what you call infinity ad naueum was a quality rgp. (Icewind Dale)

Oh please. The only thing good to come out of the Infinity Engine was Planescape: Torment. The only good "clone" of BG was Prince of Qin. Everything else was pretty much rubbish. Most everything else is easily forgotten, and that includes NWN.

And Diablo did nothing for the rpg genre, because the world agrees that it was and always will be an action adventure.

And for your next trick, masturbating to anime elf porn!

To have a revival, you need not only the critics to agree on a game, but way more importantly also the people playing (and buying) it. Fallout was never able to do that.

Reviews, for the most part, were the only thing Fallout had after it's release. There was no fanfare when Interplay released it commercially, because no one knew it came out except a few gaming magazines.

Twist it all you want, at the end of the day Baldurs Gate rekindled puplic interest in the rpg in a big way. The genre was in its death throes back then. And I should know, I was there.

Yeah, you were there. But much like today, you were an idiot then too.