5 réponses à ce sujet

[Nikator]

(I hope the thread-title is not misleading, if so, please post and I will change it into something more suitable, if such an option exists . Also, I thought it was most suitable to post this in the Off-topic forum since it is not entirely about Mass Effect 2, it just uses that game as its focal point. If people think otherwise, I will ask a MOD to move the thread somewhere more apropriate )

Hi all,

Being mainly a "lurker" (I read more than I post on these forums) I do not usually post, but one thing that has really got me thinking while reading on these forums for the last 2-3 weeks has to do with the term "RPG" (Roleplaying game), and what it means to people/players. Mainly this has to do with the release of Mass Effect 2, Biowares latest game, and the impressions/reviews/opinions of people who have played it and are fans of the "RPG"-genre.

It has come to my understanding that many people (Or perhaps some, I am unsure and dont have any hard numbers to present, this is merely personal observations and can thus be "off") consider Mass Effect 2 to be a "dumbed down" RPG that is more of a shooter, or not an RPG at all?

Lets take the game "Borderlands", for example. This is a game that titles itself as a mix of "FPS" and "RPG". But the elements it takes from the RPG-genre is mainly the looting/inventory system aswell as the leveling aspect (To various degrees of sucess, according to people). There is, however, no sign of any ability to alter the story in any way, nor is there any dialouge-system (Another aspect of RPG's, perhaps most famous in Bioware games?) Would you consider Borderlands to be an "RPG"? If not, what is lacking in order for Borderlands to become an actual RPG (I know this is perhaps a dumb question, seeing as it was never designed to be a "Pure RPG")? Seeing that Mass Effect 2 lacked an inventory/looting system, is Borderlands more of an "RPG" than ME2? If not, why?

Another example would be the "Diablo" series, who, I wish to recall, is sometimes refered to as "RPG". This genre adopts the same definition of "RPG" as Borderlands, namely that the defining factor of an RPG is the inventory/loot system aswell as leveling and character development.

Now, I myself definately consider Mass Effect 2 to be an RPG mainly because the thing I associate with the term "RPG" is the ability of me as the player to shape the plot of the game. And on this end, Mass Effect 2 certainly delivers. Ofcourse, there are some/many mechanics that are considered to be iconic for the "RPG" genre, such as an inventory/loot-system, leveling system etc. (Mass Effect 2 most definately had a leveling system though I have read complaints that it was to "shallow") but I wonder, how many of these aspects can a game lack and still be considered an "RPG"?

My main reasoning being the focus of "Role Playing", namely that one can play the role of a character in a certain setting. This is, however, perhaps flawed thinking, as by this definition almost any game is an "RPG" considering you play a "role" in it. But to develop my argument I believe that the role you play is one you can change and determine for yourself.

Taking the game Halo as an example (Not anywhere near being an "RPG", I know, but keep reading) where you play "Master Chief". Now, by a very literal interpretation of the word "Roleplaying" one could say that Halo is an "RPG", since you play the "role" of "Master Chief". However, you have no direct control of the development of his character. Everyone's "Master Chief" will have the same moral, the same "character", and thus the same outcome of the story.

Which brings me to my next point, namely the concept of "character development". To some, this might mean in which way you can develop your characters mindset and personality. For example, in "Mass Effect 2" you can influence wether Commander Shepard is "Paragon/Renegade" etc. But for others the term "character development" might mean in which ways you can level up your character, spend his talent points and increase his power, as in the Diablo-games.

My main reason for creating this thread is that I am curious as to what the word "RPG" means to you? What defines an "RPG" in your book? It seems to me that the term "RPG" nowadays is very broadly used, and in different conjectures, leading to a sort of "Identity crisis" of the word, seeing as it means different things to different people, making it, perhaps, hard to distinguish what an "RPG" "truly" is? Since "Mass Effect 2" was released, and I read the many different thoughts and opinions about it and wether or not it fits into the "RPG" genre I actually gave it a lot of thought and actually discovered what "RPG" means to myself. However, I am still curious about the opinion of you other players out there.

And please, I do not mean to provoke or cause trouble, I am merely curious as there seems to be quite an ammount of different opinions regarding this topic. Lets try to keep it civil, I am not looking for "my definition is better than yours", merely "my definition is...", followed, if possible, by why.

(Know also that while I included some of my personal thoughts/opinions on this matter I by no way consider my opinion to be "the right one", but I felt that I had to include it for the sake of argument and to get started up.)

Modifié par Nikator, 15 février 2010 - 09:29 .

[David Gaider]

Personally, I find it interesting that so many RPG players claim to be fans of the genre but make their requirements for what constitutes an actual RPG so narrow that it doesn't seem to be a genre at all but simply a selection of their few favorite titles. A few titles does not make a genre, after all.

Another thing which I find interesting is the role that nostalgia plays in this. These same players will often swear up and down that there is no nostalgia, but I suspect part of what made older games so special to them is because they were new. That seems like it should be self-evident, but I see a lot of people running on the assumption that the novelty they felt playing an earlier game can be recaptured simply by replicating the features in their entirety -- and looking at those features as if they could exist independently of each other, rather than in the context of a game where there are often trade-offs.

It's also strange that these same people will make contradictory demands: they want novelty and innovation, while simultaneously wanting nothing to actually change. If there was an RPG they liked in the past, they want a new RPG to be made that's just like it but to feel as fresh and new as when they played it back then -- ignoring the fact that they are no longer who they were.

Now that's not to say that people don't like what they like -- just that there's a lot of factors that go into the whole "what is an RPG?" question, many of them emotional. You ask that question and you often get "what should an RPG be?" back. Speaking for myself, I think there's a lot of room in the genre for exploration, and I'm uncomfortable with the entitlement of those who claim to be spokemen for the "real RPG" model -- what they like is intelligent and everything else is "dumbed down" and thus for the less intelligent hoi polloi.

Ideally there would be room for RPG's to come out that cover the spectrum of interests within the genre. If the market is there, the industry will find it. I think what you often encounter is a fear amongst RPG fans that there isn't a big enough market for what they personally like and yet a desire that triple-A games should still be made for them regardless.

[David Gaider]

eyesofastorm wrote...
If BG2 was a huge success and DA is a success (it seems so to me, but I haven't seen the inside numbers), then are these games not being made becasue there is no market, or is there no market because these games are not being made?

Hard to say. There are a lot of assumptions regarding what will sell, both within the industry as well as amongst the fanbase. I'm not sure DA is the best model to bring up -- most developers couldn't have worked on a game for as long as we did, and when you're looking at sales you really have to also look at the amount of expense that was incurred in its creation. That kind of development cycle simply isn't very sustainable in the long run.

Does that mean that triple-A "traditional RPG" titles shouldn't be made more frequently, then? Again, that's a difficult question. RPG's are already more content-heavy than just about every other type of game out there, with a fanbase that already seems to rate an RPG in comparison to the lengths of games which were made back in the day when such content was cheaper to produce... for a genre of game which, while it can sell pretty well, does not generally produce the kind of sales that attract the money that such content creation needs. I'm no businessman, but that's not exactly a winning formula.

I'd like to think that "if you build it, they will come"... but the answer's a bit more complicated than that, clearly.

[David Gaider]

SkullandBonesmember wrote...
"AAA"?

It's an industry classification -- perhaps North American, I'm not sure, as it's a baseball reference. But a "triple-A title' means a game that is at the top of the pile: it has a lot of development money invested in it, is going to have above-average to top-of-the-line graphics... basically the latest and greatest.

Why is that important? Media has a lot to do with it. If your game is seen as a triple-A title, then you'll get coverage by the gaming media. If it isn't, you're relegated to the sidelines. If someone thinks that's not important to the industry, they're vastly mistaken.

The catch is that triple-A titles cost way more to produce than they used to. Comparing a triple-A title made today and one made ten years ago (BG2 is a good example) doesn't mean much without an awareness of the change in the industry during that time. You may not like the change, but ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

[David Gaider]

eyesofastorm wrote...
Well, did DA really need to take 6 years to develop?  The addition of console versions added to the development time.  The development of the world and lore as an IP certainly added to it... if it wasn't a majority.  And was Bioware putting 100% of it's resources (or as much as any game you develop ever gets)  into getting DA from concept to reality or was it shuffled around as you (as a company) worked on ME, ME2, and SW:TOR and transitioned from being just Bioware to being a subsidiary of EA?  I think you are right that using DA as a model isn't the best choice, but unfortunately, it's the only remotely recent choice we have.

I'm not sure what any of these questions matter. The size of development companies varies, as does the size of the teams they put onto their projects. What is important is keeping money flowing into a business. If you don't have any income coming in, you don't have a business -- period. There's a lot of gamers who don't like to think of gaming as an industry, but there it is.

But could the market for RPGs have been built and sustained similarly if developers as a whole had chosen to make the effort... I think it's worth considering at least.  Unfortunately, at this juncture, we may never know.

That depends on what you mean by "make the effort". Do you mean invested the money? Let's say you're the average investor in a game -- do you invest money in a game that requires less content but can sell equally well if not better? Or do you invest money in a game where the players for that game will judge it by the amount of content that goes into it, for possibly middling to good sales? I'm also not sure of the assumption that the players who bought shooter games would have been equally willing to buy content-heavy RPG's had they been more available... but I suppose you're right, we'll never know that.

I think we're getting a bit off topic, here. The thread isn't precisely devoted to the industry of making RPG's, but rather what constitutes the RPG genre. So I'll leave the discussion at that.

[David Gaider]

distinguetraces wrote...
Gamers like me -- still playing Infinity-engine games after all these years -- would play and pay for such a game very happily. Are there enough of me to make this a way for lengthy and complex RPGs to continue to be produced at a budget price in 2D?

Well, right off the bat you have a game that would not be a triple-A title (not like the IE games were in their day)... meaning that it would largely be ignored by the media, and considering the budget would be lower you're not going to make up for that with paid advertising. So the question is whether there would be enough sales to make up for the number of people required to make that amount of content? We're not talking about content that can be whipped up by five guys in a basement, after all... at a certain level the need for a triple-A title comes about because that's the level of sales you need to recoup the investment, which largely comes via salaries.

My suspicion is that it couldn't be done without the market changing to be less triple-A title driven. There is a growing acceptance of indy games and smaller titles, but right now the gulf between them is still pretty huge. But that's just my impression. I don't know for certain that companies aren't just chasing after the top sales instead of aiming lower... and I couldn't say for certain that aiming lower would actually be beneficial for them, either. Beneficial for the gamer seeking a niche game, sure, and I'm certain their effusive praise would warm the hearts of developers standing in the unemployment line.

Modifié par David Gaider, 16 février 2010 - 01:07 .