Interview "I'm going to reinvent roleplaying games again": Richard Garriott Interview at Gather Your Party

[Infinitron]

Multiplatform games always existed and were always feasible

Sorry, but this isn't true. Multiplatform development (and by multiplatform I mean simultaneous development for PC/console, not porting to different types of personal computers as in the 80's) was significantly more difficult on a technical level before the XBox came out. Otherwise, trust me, every single popular PC game in the 90's would have been multiplatform with NES/SNES/PS1.

Technology matters. Disruptive technologies are game-changers.

 

[Excidium]

The problem to you is not the problem to me necessarily because obviously people like excidium want something different than an old school RPG since he doesn't even like them.

I don't want something different, I want something improved.

 

[Mortmal]

Multiplatform games always existed and were always feasible

Sorry, but this isn't true. Multiplatform development (and by multiplatform I mean simultaneous development for PC/console, not porting to different types of personal computers as in the 80's) was significantly more difficult on a technical level before the XBox came out. Otherwise, trust me, every single popular PC game in the 90's would have been multiplatform with NES/SNES/PS1.

Technology matters. Disruptive technologies are game-changers.

90's popular games on nes/snes ps1 ?
Ultima 7 was on snes

,wizardry 6 on snes amongst others,

ultima underworld on ps1

wizardry 7 on ps1


See, i know my stuff, stop blaming the hardware the best ones were multiplatform, even if it was probably more difficult everything was ported.

 

[Infinitron]

Those were shitty ports (in U7's case it was more like an entirely new game), not cross-platform simultaneous development.

Multiplatform development united the audiences of many platforms into one unprecedentedly huge audience. For the first time ever, you could reliably sell a game to millions of people, not merely hundreds of thousands. But they had to be accessible, and we all know what that meant...

 

[Infinitron]

Compare and contrast with the strategy genre, which failed to make the multiplatform jump and remains largely PC-exclusive. The result: a much less dumbed down genre. (srsly, if your dumbest games are something like the Total War series, then your genre is in damn good shape)

And games like Total War or even Paradox games are hardly "indie". They're of decent quality.

 

[Excidium]

The problem to you is not the problem to me necessarily because obviously people like excidium want something different than an old school RPG since he doesn't even like them.

I don't want something different, I want something improved.

Improvement to you, decline to others.

RPG went from nerdy to 50% nerdy and 50% faggy. If you like that it's not a decline, if you don't it is.

Since you don't finish any RPGs it's clear where you stand.

When further decline came it was even worse, but it was declined a lot as far as I was concerned long before codex existed.

By improvement I mean more fleshed out mechanics, better enviroment and npc interaction, more room for creative solutions, more reactive world and npc behavior. I want the freedom and wider array of options that tabletop games provide and that old school games tried to simulate but just scrapped the surface, is that asking much?

It's even stupider than some guy who doesn't finish any RPGs coming out as an authority like Excidium tried to pull in this thread. You kids really need to learn when you don't have anything to say and just close your mouths.

BRO, you need to see the game over screen of every RPG released in the past 30 years to be allowed to talk about CRPGs!

Be less of a brainswashed newfag, please. Develop a mind of your own, stop posting just to earn KKKs and stop thinking everything in terms of the 1987 crawler you never played vs the 2011 cinematic experience that you found so horrifying you ended up in the codex.

 

[Dexter]

Sorry, but the real decline REALLY came with the Xbawks, and it spread infinitely with the XbawksNUMBERS and mass market ensuing from there, before that every platform had games specifically made for it, PC was PC for enthusiasts and considered "complicated" and "brainy" and all that.
Nintendo was Nintendo and did what Nintendo does (and still does up to today, they are the only ones that haven't changed hugely, but are in the process to with the Wii U), and SONY had the Japanese-fag market in their pocket with a lot of Japanese RPGs and stuff on their PlayStation 2.
Sure there were some ports, but that doesn't change that games were largely/specifically made for certain platforms and then maybe ported.

All of that stopped DEAD once Microsoft stuck their dick into the pie and started stirring, Microsoft Game Studios stopped doing stuff like Age of Empires/Mythology, Flight Simulator and all that stuff and went on to produce other shit for their console.
They bought off or influenced most major PC/Mac developers like Bungie, EPIC, iD etc. to develop for their CrapBox and are still doing it today, they introduced Paid Online Services, they introduced DLC and forced developers to use it and all that good stuff and they formed the market as it is today with "Call of Doody" (and Halo before) being the industry leader and everyone looking up to it...

At the moment things are somewhat changing though (and have been) the last few years because of Steam/Valve, who remained largely faithful and tried to profit from it while everyone else ran to papa Microsoft and SONY just went on copying them and creating the same types of games. And also through the Indie game movement and now KickStarter etc. Not to forget the dreadful iPad/Mobile/Social market, there's lots of disruption going on.

 

[Excidium]

EXcidium - stop trying so hard, bro.

Only if you promise to do the same.

 

[Infinitron]

That, and also 3D engines in general.

So you have a working 3D shooter that comes with your engine. What's your game gonna be? A 3D shooter! Turns out this is a lot easier than making a whole new manner of game all the time.

It's true that the advent of 3D added a technological hurdle that made RPG development more difficult (Interplay and early Bioware got around it by just saying "fuck it" and continuing to release 2D games), but that was a temporary thing that would have eventually been overcome.

 

[Jaesun]

And thus spake our most Holy Lord MCA:

I can’t tell you how happy I was to be driving home from inXile one evening trying to figure out how we’d pull off a function using the controller, and it occurred to me THAT IT’S NOT OUR PROBLEM ANY MORE, and the “issue” was solved. THANK GOD.

Amen.

 

[mondblut]

As long as games were PC-exclusive, that wider audience simply didn't exist

The "wider audience" went into existence since the windows allowed to boot up a computer and even run a game without tinkering with config.sys for 30 minutes first, letting millions of untermenschen aboard.

 

[Infinitron]

As long as games were PC-exclusive, that wider audience simply didn't exist

The "wider audience" went into existence since the windows allowed to boot up a computer and even run a game without tinkering with config.sys for 30 minutes first, letting millions of untermenschen aboard.

Technically true, but my point is that it still wasn't wide enough (to dumb games down to the intelligence-insulting point they are at currently)

 

[Tramboi]

As long as games were PC-exclusive, that wider audience simply didn't exist, so dumbing down was pointless and counter-productive (see: the last two games in the Ultima series).

I slightly disagree, most Amiga and ST owners were only gamers.
No config.sys/autoexec.bat, it just worked.

 

[Mortmal]

Some guy who's not a programmer really shouldn't talk about a complicated subject like cross-platform development. It's like telling a doctor about brian surgery, son. If you don't know quite a lot don't even crack your teeth, and even then no one is an ultimate authority and even experts disagree.

It's even stupider than some guy who doesn't finish any RPGs coming out as an authority like Excidium tried to pull in this thread. You kids really need to learn when you don't have anything to say and just close your mouths.

A luck i am not a programmer indeed , if i had chosen this career i would not be developping ultima games but likely slaving in kotick sweatshop on the next call of duty game. I know its not nearly the same to port wiz 7 on the playstation from the pc , than kotor from the xbox to pc, but i just wanted to point out nothing hinders you in making the most sophisiticated pc games on the consoles , yes except the mouse support but you can bypass that, i am pretty sure even a fallout(1-2) game could works very well with a pad if you put the effort into it and redesign an interface around it.


Now about the pc exclusive thing and windows allowing untermenschen to come aboard.Amiga and ST were way , way more accessible than those and that before windows 3.1, you just put the floppy in and it works flawlessly , no config, hardly any bugs , much more cheaper machines. The audience was not quite as wide as the xbox , but they were popular machines and mostly used for gaming by the average guy.Yet the games werent as mainstream as today, i dont think the average guy was more clever by then.The decline is not a question of hardware its a question of will.

 

[Infinitron]

The audience was not quite as wide as the xbox

Gee, you think?

Nobody's saying it's a question of hardware per se. It's a question of numbers, and the fact is that lots and lots of people happened to own the XBox hardware.
Again - once huge audiences of millions were unlocked via efficient multiplatform development, gaming could never be the same again.

 

[Tramboi]

Don't know, there probably have been 10 millions of cumulated ST and Amiga units in the wild.
I think what the consoles brought to the table was highly decreasing the piracy rate compared to the 16/32 computers and the PC. Therefore a much higher penetration rate. Sadly.
We brought this on ourselves by pirating too much in our young years.

 

[Infinitron]

Don't know, there probably have been 10 millions of cumulated ST and Amiga units in the wild.
I think what the consoles brought to the table was highly decreasing the piracy rate compared to the 16/32 computers and the PC. Therefore a much higher penetration rate. Sadly.
We brought this on ourselves by pirating too much in our young years.

I still think piracy is a secondary factor here, at best. Even without piracy, gaming just wasn't as big a deal back then, except for a scant few arcade hits (eg Pacman) that had little to do with the type of games we care about here on the Codex.

 

[Tramboi]

Yes, and gaming is probably not as big a deal now than in ten years. Market will keep growing with the 3rd world wanting more leisures and free time.

But I strongly believe that we computer niche-lovers (adventure, RPGs) made sure than theses niches were not profitable enough by pirating too much.
Halving the sales of COD is not the same as halving the sales of Arcanum.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Yes, and gaming is probably not as big a deal now than in ten years. Market will keep growing with the 3rd world wanting more leisures and free time.

But I strongly believe that we computer niche-lovers (adventure, RPGs) made sure than theses niches were not profitable enough by pirating too much.
Halving the sales of COD is not the same as halving the sales of Arcanum.

You mean, you, not us. When Fallout, Arcanum, etc. came out I had plenty of cash. Still, I have never finished Arcanum, I have never bought Bloodlines because they wasn't into FPP games and bought ToEE only after Troika was long dead because I had no idea what the game is about.

 

[Tramboi]

I bought all these games in the 90s. I already had the money to. But it wasn't the case on my ST 5 years before and my CPC even before, though I bought original games too.
Please remember all the people you knew back then. Could you tell me the piracy wasn't massive?

 

[Mortmal]

Don't know, there probably have been 10 millions of cumulated ST and Amiga units in the wild.
I think what the consoles brought to the table was highly decreasing the piracy rate compared to the 16/32 computers and the PC. Therefore a much higher penetration rate. Sadly.
We brought this on ourselves by pirating too much in our young years.

I still think piracy is a secondary factor here, at best. Even without piracy, gaming just wasn't as big a deal back then, except for a scant few arcade hits (eg Pacman) that had little to do with the type of games we care about here on the Codex.

Its hard to quantify gaming as it was in my youth , but many other kids had 8 bits machines , then 16 bits amiga and st when they became less expensive. There was really lot of creations,many start ups, even french ones , ill find you some of the most bizarre and alien games of all time ,captain blood:

Extase:


It was an era with many many creations, gaming was a bigger deal than you remember it to be . All of those studios died cause of lack a sales, piracy was the primary factor , without it , i cant even imagine the kind of games we would still be playing.

 

[Infinitron]

Thing is, piracy was (and still is) less of a problem in the United States. In general, it's the US market that has historically driven global trends in videogames.
Consoles were also a much bigger deal in the US than in Europe. This cannot be overstated, the NES/SNES was a part of every middle class American kid's life in the late 80's and early 90's and that dominance never really faded away even during the brief era when PC games were perceived as the coolest (mid-late 90's).

The point is, if you're European, it's probably a mistake to jump to conclusions based on your own personal experiences.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I bought all these games in the 90s. I already had the money to. But it wasn't the case on my ST 5 years before and my CPC even before, though I bought original games too.
Please remember all the people you knew back then. Could you tell me the piracy wasn't massive?

Yeah. Except that in their case not pirating meant not playing the game, not buying the original version. At least that's how it was in Potatoland.

 

[Tramboi]

You're right about the difference between Europe and the US.
There were as much 16/32 computers in Europe than SNES, yet it wasn't the case at all in the US of A.

 

[Jarpie]

The Decline really started off with PS1 and especially PS2 - those were the first consoles what really managed to get the mass audiences and paved the way for XBawks, XBawks 360 and PSucko 3. PS1 and PS2 especially were sold by bazillions and brought huge profits to the publishers who took a notice that if you cater to the lowest common nominator they can sell much more copies than doing "Games for Nerds" which in turn brought in the "Focus Group" thinking; "Let's ask from the random people what they want"...so lo and behold, the monster was born. "Me just wanna play teh game and not thinkz too hard or put effort".

Like Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert said in their BroChat - adventure games have remained as popular as they were, but suddenly when mass markets opened up to the publishers, the 200 000 - 500 000 units sold weren't enough when they can publish games what would sell 1 million - 5 million units. The same probably happened to the traditional CRPGs - the new audiences doesn't like them, won't buy them and won't play them - Bioware, Bethesda etc came out with Kotor, Oblivion and so on to cater to the new audience of storyfags and larpers.