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Interview Avellone, Ziets, Sawyer, Vincke and Kurvitz on the future of RPGs at Kotaku UK and PC Gamer

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Chris Avellone; George Ziets; Josh Sawyer; Robert Kurvitz; Sven Vincke

By some coincidence, over the past 48 hours two different websites have published interviews with celebrity RPG designers. Both interviews are about the state of the genre in 2018, a topic which is perhaps more relevant than usual in the aftermath of Pillars of Eternity 2's release. Yesterday's Kotaku UK interview asks Chris Avellone and George Ziets how the definition of RPGs has evolved over the years. Here's an excerpt:

Regardless of the particular definition of the form, as any abiding genre fanatic will attest, most RPGs live or die on the strength of their storytelling. It might be surprising but it wasn’t always that way, as veteran RPG developer George Ziets recalls. Ziets started working in the games industry around the turn of the millennium, eventually working on New Vegas and Torment: Tides of Numenera with Avellone, along with a host of other games including Dungeon Siege 3 and Pillars of Eternity.

Ziets recalls that early computer RPGs like Wizardry and the original Bard’s Tale essentially ported the most popular editions of their tabletop progenitors like Dungeons and Dragons to the personal computer, eschewing epic tales of sword and sorcery to focus on the tactical guts of the pen-and-paper experience. “Originally, most RPGs were Tolkienesque, monster-slaying fantasies,” Ziets says. “Now we have RPGs set in science-fiction worlds, modern times, etc. Similarly, most early RPGs had some version of D&D stats and skills, but many are now evolving away from strict adherence to those rules.”

To Ziets, this slow expansion beyond the realm of twenty-sided dice and Vancian magic reflects the advance of video games as a medium, in the same way as early television programs like The Twilight Zone resembled theatrical productions more than the elaborate multi-camera setups of later decades. “As the art form evolved, and creators discovered techniques that were unique to television, that gradually moved further and further away from the techniques of theatre,” says Ziet. “TV got better and came into its own because creators learned what worked best for their medium, but in the early days, they had to start with what they knew. I see RPGs in much the same way.”

As the genre shed its analogue origins and began to explore the immense possibilities of digital space, however, the expectations of the player-base began to change along with it. Avellone remembers the days when players were expected to draw their own maps, engage in tedious pixel-hunts, or — worst of all — call up premium hint lines for help with labyrinthine questlines. For a generation of gamers raised on the likes of THAC0 and needlessly-Byzantine attack tables (staples of early RPGs) the shortcuts of today seem like ostentatiously easy living. There’s a small-but-enthusiastic audience for games 'hardcore' enough to abandon these modern trappings, such as Caves of Qud or Brogue. Even something as lauded as Wild Hunt caught more than its share of flack for its less-than-immaculate inventory system and inexact player movement.

“I’ve noticed that Fallout has removed some elements and added others depending on the game,” says Avellone. “I suspect that’s done to make progression easier — easier for a more casual user to understand... Players expect quest-markers, an auto-map, easy equipment comparisons. Overall, things have changed over the decades to reduce a lot of the heavy lifting RPGs used to do. I’m not saying that’s bad, but its influences aren’t driven by the RPG market, but player expectations.”

When faced with the onslaught of skill-trees and coloured loot flooding the very top of the sales charts, neither Avellone nor Ziets expresses any serious concern about these mega-action games pushing less mainstream fare out of the market. In Ziets’ view the opposite is happening, thanks to the small horde of high-quality 'traditional' RPGs released in the past two years which grappled for the limited time and hard drives of genre fans: Pillars of Eternity 2, Torment, Wasteland, Divinity: Original Sin 2, the Banner Saga series, and stylish newcomers like Disco Elysium (formerly No Truce With the Furies).

“If anything," says Ziets, "I’m worried that the abundance of RPGs is going to make it harder for any individual game to stand out or cause burnout in the core audience.”
Today's PC Gamer interview with Josh Sawyer, Swen Vincke and Disco Elysium's Robert Kurvitz takes a more direct angle, asking whether the RPG genre needs to evolve from its nostalgia-based fantasy roots. As you might expect, Josh is eager to see change while Swen is more defensive, but it's Robert who is the true radical. I quote:

“The RPGs we play nowadays are based on massive revolutions. The first Fallout was, I think, the last major change to RPGs. It changed the setting and showed you could do completely different things from its high fantasy roots. I was 11 when I played that, but I’ve never seen anything as revolutionary in all my years playing since.”

Kurvitz sees a genre in stasis, and it’s the source of some frustration. “It’s very odd. RPGs are essentially reality simulators, and the hook is that the position the player is put into is the skin of one person. So it also simulates mental and physical faculties, giving not a bird’s eye view of reality but the subjective reality of one person. That seems in and of itself a tremendously open concept that should be constantly evolving.”

The source of this stagnation goes far beyond RPGs or even video games, he says. Kurvitz believes that it’s the product of culture, particularly pop culture, slowing down. “It’s calcifying. The internal generation engine of western pop culture is just very self-referential in general. So that could be one possible reason for it—just people growing old.”

Kurvitz’s solution? Broaden everything. Settings, mechanics, what an RPG means, even who creates them. Writers and artists from other industries with different expertise need to be tempted over, but he doesn’t see that happening until the love affair with high fantasy has ended.

“I’m going to sound elitist, but I’m going to suggest that a lot of really good writers don’t want to write in a high fantasy setting. They don’t want to spend four stressful years on Tolkien fanfic. You just won’t get really talented writers who can do tremendous things for your game that way, and you need to hire artists and writers outside of the usual development circuit.”

If we were to get away from the conventions of the CRPG, one of the best places to look would be tabletop RPGs. Again. Once you move beyond official D&D campaigns and all the expectations that come along with them, the tabletop landscape becomes a lot more unpredictable and experimental.

“People do these amazingly historically accurate D&D sessions of the Peninsular War,” says Kurvitz. “They order actual, real-life memorabilia and objects from the Peninsular War, and models, and play with them. I know that amazingly strange things are being done with tabletop, but CRPGs are really conservative in comparison.”

[...] “I think people are right that there’s a renaissance of traditional RPGs, or the traditional style of RPGs, but I don’t want us to squander this opportunity to really grow the genre into something broader,” says Sawyer. “We don’t need to abandon fantasy or crunchy number systems, but that doesn’t have to be the limit of what we make.”

What Kurvitz wants to see is a complete revolution, imagining RPGs that take decades or even a hundred years to make, flagging and reacting to every tiny thing you do. He envisions RPGs becoming a new mode of literature—programmed literature—putting programmers and novelists together to tell stories that literally span generations. It’s improbably ambitious and far-fetched, but still incredibly tantalising.

“I hope we’re going to get the ball rolling.”
Godspeed, gentlemen.
 

Bocian

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Is this interview thread going to explode like the previous one? What secrets still remain hidden? Who will be the brave man to unearth them?
Discuss!
 

Heretic

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Age of Decadence + Underrail >>> PoE + Torment + Wasteland
The journos either never played them because they are too hardcore, or they ignore them on purpose.
 
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Grab the Codex by the pussy
Avellone says that he regards customisation elements like ... building your own character from scratch as a modern addition to the formula that he finds personally appealing, but ultimately not “key to [every] RPG. He points to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as an example of a great RPG that doesn’t feature character creation.
:killit:
 

buffalo bill

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To Ziets, this slow expansion beyond the realm of twenty-sided dice and Vancian magic reflects the advance of video games as a medium, in the same way as early television programs like The Twilight Zone resembled theatrical productions more than the elaborate multi-camera setups of later decades. “As the art form evolved, and creators discovered techniques that were unique to television, that gradually moved further and further away from the techniques of theatre,” says Ziet. “TV got better and came into its own because creators learned what worked best for their medium, but in the early days, they had to start with what they knew. I see RPGs in much the same way.”​
Ziets is cool, but this opinion is pretty decline. Original Twilight Zone >>> nearly any modern television program. The analogy makes just about the opposite point he wants it to, in my eyes.
 
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Grab the Codex by the pussy
Ziets is cool, but this opinion is pretty decline. Original Twilight Zone >>> nearly any modern television program. The analogy makes just about the opposite point he wants it to, in my eyes.
No, it is not. I love Twilight Zone to death, but that's because there are few great episodes in the midst of bad fiction. What I can't accept is this statement that tv series and cRPGs both improved:

Ziets said:
TV got better and came into its own because creators learned what worked best for their medium, but in the early days, they had to start with what they knew. I see RPGs in much the same way.
That depends. FO, FO2, Arcanum, and PS:T, moved the genre foward, added more stuff and made it more sophisticated in certain aspects. But the recent airpeegees of the likes of Obsidian are bad.
 

MRY

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I think it is a fair criticism that so long as cRPGs are merely trying to recapture the excellence of the 1990s, it is almost necessarily the case that they won't advance the genre. There is something weird, too, that there is so much fan support for attempting to recreate 1990s-era RPGs when so many of those fans haven't actually played (or replayed down different paths) major games of that era that are perfectly playable today. That said, I guess it's not particularly surprising that after catastrophic "revolutions" in the genre, many would want to simply go back to the old way of doing things (as people often do after catastrophic revolutions in real life).

In terms of two specific points:

“Originally, most RPGs were Tolkienesque, monster-slaying fantasies,” Ziets says. “Now we have RPGs set in science-fiction worlds, modern times, etc. Similarly, most early RPGs had some version of D&D stats and skills, but many are now evolving away from strict adherence to those rules.”
I love George, and I think he's brilliant, but this doesn't seem factually accurate. It may be true that enemy-killing was a major element of early RPGs, but as cRPG Addict and felipepepe have proven, early RPGs were extremely diverse in settings and systems. Just at a glance at cRPG Addict's list, in 1983, you have Expedition Amazon, The Return of Heracles, and Galactic Adventure. Or in 1986, you have Mafia, Starflight, and Roadwar 2000. In 1990, Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday, Captive, Escape from Hell, Megatraveller, QFG 2, Fountain of Dreams, Space 1889, Spirit of Excalibur, The Savage Empire, and Hard Nova. Etc., etc. The RPGs of my childhood were if anything much more diverse in terms of systems and settings than the RPGs of today.

[EDIT:

Actually, the statement is "factually accurate," but it's misleading. It is true that "most RPGs" were "Tolkienesque,* monster-slaying fantasies" early on. (* Assuming this just means "high fantasy with multiple humanoid races.") It is also true that "now we have RPGs set in science-fiction worlds, modern times, etc." But you could just as easily write, "Originally, we had RPGs set in science-fiction worlds, modern times, etc. Now most RPGs are Tolkienesque, monster-slaying fantasies." That's so because (1) fantasy, combat-oriented RPGs have always been the norm and (2) there have always been exceptions to this norm. What makes the statement misleading is that it suggests that the norm was stronger earlier on, and the exceptions more eccentric and common today. But I think the opposite is true. There was more experimentation and diversity early on than now, and the predominance of certain tropes and settings in cRPGs is much stronger now.

Thus, the statement is a little like saying, "In medieval Europe, most people did not die violent deaths, but in modern Europe, many people are murdered every year." Each fact is true, but they are applying different standards, and when juxtaposed, they imply a conclusion that isn't true. Likewise here.

]

"The first Fallout was, I think, the last major change to RPGs. It changed the setting and showed you could do completely different things from its high fantasy roots. I was 11 when I played that, but I’ve never seen anything as revolutionary in all my years playing since.”
I love Fallout and I'm excited about Disco Elysium, but this also strikes me as historically wrong. Fallout is just a somewhat more serious incarnation of a setting that was well trodden in cRPGs by the time Fallout came out, with Wasteland an easy example but certainly not the only one (Roadwar 2000, Fountain of Dreams, perhaps 2400 AD to some degree, etc.). The quest design and dialogue trees are at least somewhat reminiscent of Dark Sun, and the skill system is somewhat reminiscent of Wasteland and others. I think it is rightly regarded as one of the greatest games of all time for weaving together systems, setting, art, writing, etc. into something special, but I'm not sure that's "revolutionary" so much as an instance of carefully building upon existing elements.

Similarly with the Twilight Zone point. If anything, I think that after perhaps a very early copy-catting of tabletop wargaming, early cRPGs reveled in the things you could do with computers that you couldn't do in tabletop systems (like dynamic visuals and audio, procedural generation, large-scale combat, NPC simulation, remote multiplayer) and went all over the place in terms of settings (Tolkien fantasy, Arthurian legend, Greek myth, "Orientalist" Asia and "deepest darkest" Africa and America, cyberpunk, mech warrior, hodge-podge fantasy, space opera) and rules (reagents, MP, Vancian magic, HP, bodypart-specific HP, etc.). If anything, the problem today is that too many cRPGs are self-referential (here I agree with the Disco Elysium analysis) and market-research driven, whereas in the past they were inspired by a million different things and made before it was possible to really know what the market wanted (or by people who didn't really care what it wanted).
 
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Bigg Boss

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“I’m going to sound elitist, but I’m going to suggest that a lot of really good writers don’t want to write in a high fantasy setting. They don’t want to spend four stressful years on Tolkien fanfic. You just won’t get really talented writers who can do tremendous things for your game that way, and you need to hire artists and writers outside of the usual development circuit.”
 

ScrotumBroth

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“If anything," says Ziets, "I’m worried that the abundance of RPGs is going to make it harder for any individual game to stand out or cause burnout in the core audience.”
mMrHICA.png


A good game will stand out, generic memberberries Kickstarter game won't. I was hoping for him to add zest for innovation in connection to WL3.

Kurvitz seems genuinely enthused to talk about pushing the boundaries and evolve. Granted, it's easier to have that approach when you're a newcomer, but still.

Edit: MRY beat me to the punch :)
 

Latro

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do any of these dudes even play videogames. I mean: sit down, play a game to full completion, not mess with it for 5 hours total to see what's hip n new and never touch it again
 

Grauken

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No, why would they. Most of them don't even like playing RPGs, let alone be good at it. They are designers, following a higher calling.

Next you expect writers to actually read books
 

Grauken

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“Originally, most RPGs were Tolkienesque, monster-slaying fantasies,” Ziets says. “Now we have RPGs set in science-fiction worlds, modern times, etc. Similarly, most early RPGs had some version of D&D stats and skills, but many are now evolving away from strict adherence to those rules.”
I love George, and I think he's brilliant, but this doesn't seem factually accurate. It may be true that enemy-killing was a major element of early RPGs, but as cRPG Addict and felipepepe have proven, early RPGs were extremely diverse in settings and systems. Just at a glance at cRPG Addict's list, in 1983, you have Expedition Amazon, The Return of Heracles, and Galactic Adventure. Or in 1986, you have Mafia, Starflight, and Roadwar 2000. In 1990, Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday, Captive, Escape from Hell, Megatraveller, QFG 2, Fountain of Dreams, Space 1889, Spirit of Excalibur, The Savage Empire, and Hard Nova. Etc., etc. The RPGs of my childhood were if anything much more diverse in terms of systems and settings than the RPGs of today.

But how many of these diverse ideas and settings were successful? The greats we remember today Wizardry, Might & Magic, Ultima, Bard's Tale, Goldbox were all fantasy to some degree

Actually RPGs then and now have always been quite diverse, its just that most of that diversity and variety (both rules- and setting-wise) has been limited to niche titles few people played. Which was true then, which is true now.

The games that seemed overwhelmingly fantasy and similar are the big releases, and I don't think it has changed all that much, with the exception of maybe more SF-titles like Mass Effect
 

fobia

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But how many of these diverse ideas and settings were successful? The greats we remember today Wizardry, Might & Magic, Ultima, Bard's Tale, Goldbox were all fantasy to some degree

The games that seemed overwhelmingly fantasy and similar are the big releases, and I don't think it has changed all that much, with the exception of maybe more SF-titles like Mass Effect

Which is only logical.
Because of (A)D&D and Tolkien(esque stuff)'s popularity in the 80's these games had a fundament on which they could buid and a fanbase that would buy them.
And despite all the satanism drama and whatnot, D&D was already pop culture back then, you didn't need to read Tolkien to know the settings, even if it was a derivation of the originals.
Retrospective ties them together and imho led to the orthodoxy of fantasy and RPG going hand in hand.

I'd still say that it's not because fantasy is such a strong genre/setting for RPGs per se.
 

MRY

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It's really hard to know how successful games were back then -- sales data is hard to come by. Starflight apparently sold over a million copies. Starflight, Wasteland, QFG 2, Buck Rogers, The Savage Empire all pulled sequels. All of those games are pretty memorable.

The other thing is that "all fantasy to some degree" is quite a fudge from "Tolkienesque, monster-slaying fantasies." The M&M games don't feel "Tolkinesque" at all -- they are much more Piers Anthony. Ultima has some Tolkienesque qualities, to be sure (the ~Ring Wraiths), but it's pretty reductive to call Ultima IV onward "monster-slaying fantasies." The settings really aren't particularly Tolkienian, either.

If you consider it an RPG, Pirates! was quite successful. Same deal with Elite.

But I guess more importantly than all this, you're totally changing George's point which was not that non-"Tolkienesque, monster-slaying fantasy" RPGs were unsuccessful early on, but that they simply didn't exist because developers had P&P tunnel vision and couldn't imagine such radical notions, and that it took decades of distance from P&P and of artistic evolution for these new settings to be explored. But that's hogwash. Early RPG developers were wildly creative with settings and rules; it may be that over time market forces narrowed things down toward fantasy and monster-slaying, but that would prove the opposite of George's point -- that evolution was reducing, rather than increasing, the eccentricity of RPG developers' visions. Put otherwise, mainstream RPGs today aren't in the era of Hitchcock and Welles breaking free of the shackles of stage plays -- they're in the era of Disney-Marvel market-based formulas.

[EDIT: This all sounds more annoyed than I really am. It's not a big deal, I just think that it's a kind of a "medieval people thought the world was flat" bad myth to think that early cRPG developers couldn't imagine deviating from P&P norms.]
 

Grauken

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No, the point was that both George and you were wrong. Agreed that RPGs were highly diverse from the very beginning (so George is wrong there), but also that the mainstream RPGs were most of the time fantasy (regardless over your hair-splitting whether they were Tolkienesque or not, which is quite funny as Tolkien wasn't about monster slaying, which was more DND than anything else) and the diversity of options was mostly a niche thing. You might have a point that some of the early non-Fantasy RPGs might have been more successful, but I would say what many remember from those days are the fantasy ones again.

Basically, I don't think we need a revolution, but rather we need the mainstream (of RPGs, which in itself is a niche) to include more diversity from the existing, more diverse niche-titles. AoD and Underrail are better than any of the mediocre Kickstarter-driven disappointments that hog all the news.
 

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