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RPGs, Fandom, Expectations, Suckage

VentilatorOfDoom

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<p>Gamasutra's Lars Doucet <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LarsDoucet/20110412/7413/RPGs_and_Suckage.php" target="_blank">shares his insight</a> into the aforementioned keywords, their meaning and how they're interlinked.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There's a few corollaries to the above.  First of all, terrible things <em>that you don't care about</em> generally don't "SUCK."  When you see people on forums ranting and raving about how awful the latest <em>Call of Duty* </em>or <em>Dragon Age* </em>game is, it's because they're deeply invested  in those games in particular and the genres they belong to in general.  You won't see them complaining about, say, the new <em>Barbie Horse Adventures </em>game, even if it's awful.  As the old saying goes, "The opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy."</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>The degree of emotional investment RPG fans exhibit strikes me as unique.  We are very protective of our genre and hold lengthy discussions of whether or not a certain game even "counts" as an RPG.

This article's point isn't to decide who's right and who's wrong - everyone has different taste and expectations, and that's okay.  But every fan is a potential customer, and convincing them that our game doesn't suck has a lot to do with managing their expectations.  A game they might have otherwise liked will be dismissed ifs framed in the wrong way, and given the heated passions of RPG fans, if your game is deemed to suck it will suck <em>hard</em>.

I think there's a reason that we argue about RPG's so much - it's the same reason we argue about "art" - we all disagree about what the word even means.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Another newsitem brought to you by Severian Silk.</em></p>
 
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Hey internet! We're thinking about making a sequel to your favorite game

Internet said:
0.jpg

Hey Codex! We're thinking about making a sequel to your favorite game

Codex said:
 

Spectacle

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Codexians have the power to hate, dislike and not care, all at once.
 

DragoFireheart

all caps, rainbow colors, SOMETHING.
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Because making waves of derp spawns with non-linear linear dialog choices, making pseudo action-RPG corridor shooters, and making giant sandbox GTA clones with more bloom is part of our expectations for RPGs? Seriously, have they not played Fallout 1, Planescape: Torment or even Fallout: New Vegas? How can you call your game a RPG when there is no choice to my consequences for either the actions my character takes or the way the world reacts towards those choices? Just because I can say something slightly differently and then have the same outcome occur doesn't make the game an RPG.

FFS, Final Fantasy Tactics is NOT an RPG, it's a Japanese style RPG. Clearly the author has no fucking clue what an actual RPG is and not a hybrid is. Very few games released are actually RPGs. The majority are linear JRPG or Action RPGs.

Oh, but then that style doesn't sell, does it? Fucking morans.
 

sgc_meltdown

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The fun thing about talking about rpgs is when people criticise or compliment one or take issue with your criticism or compliments, whatever they say is based on their own muddy concept of what rpgs are and what they want them to be, and therefore the range of potential definitions is about as flexible and pristine as sasha grey after five hours of work, and the resulting discussion about as dignified.
 
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sgc_meltdown said:
The fun thing about talking about rpgs is when people criticise or compliment one or take issue with your criticism or compliments, whatever they say is based on their own muddy concept of what rpgs are and what they want them to be, and therefore the range of potential definitions is about as flexible and pristine as sasha grey after five hours of work, and the resulting discussion about as dignified.
:thumbsup:
 

Serious_Business

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DragoFireheart said:
Because making waves of derp spawns with non-linear linear dialog choices, making pseudo action-RPG corridor shooters, and making giant sandbox GTA clones with more bloom is part of our expectations for RPGs? Seriously, have they not played Fallout 1, Planescape: Torment or even Fallout: New Vegas? How can you call your game a RPG when there is no choice to my consequences for either the actions my character takes or the way the world reacts towards those choices? Just because I can say something slightly differently and then have the same outcome occur doesn't make the game an RPG.

FFS, Final Fantasy Tactics is NOT an RPG, it's a Japanese style RPG. Clearly the author has no fucking clue what an actual RPG is and not a hybrid is. Very few games released are actually RPGs. The majority are linear JRPG or Action RPGs.

Oh, but then that style doesn't sell, does it? Fucking morans.

sgc_meltdown said:
The fun thing about talking about rpgs is when people criticise or compliment one or take issue with your criticism or compliments, whatever they say is based on their own muddy concept of what rpgs are and what they want them to be, and therefore the range of potential definitions is about as flexible and pristine as sasha grey after five hours of work, and the resulting discussion about as dignified.

:lol:

The entire Codex entreprise is based on shitty semantics issues. Cue in faggots who want to pose themselves as the ultimate authority on a subject that is inherently pluralistic and fragmented, and you have a great intellectual void of bad taste and pretentiousness. No one cares if your favourite band sold out to the mainstream
 

Gragt

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin
Post-modern bullshit that evades all serious questions by saying it's all about subjective value. I ate spicy food and I'm pissed off. Die in a fire.

:rage:
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
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Yeah, pretty much the problem some guys see in music. Both "rock music" and "RPG's" are vague concepts. Frank Zappa, Radiohead and Avril Lavigne all play "rock music". Baldur's Gate, Final Fantasy and Wizardry are all "RPG's". Sure, you can go into hundreds of sub-divisions, but there will always be someone shouting "this is not rock/rpg, is shit", or something like that.

But music has millions of albums being released, you can't keep track of all, and probably something you like has been released this year. RPG's, on the other side, have something like 1 game per month. It's easy to know what's comming up and to start complaining no one is making games for you, "doing this shitty game instead".

Following the article conclusion, if more developers start to make RPG's, we may reach the point when even the Codex users will spend more time praising (and playing) games they like than hating the ones they don't like.

That is Utopian, of course.
 

sgc_meltdown

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felipepepe said:
we may reach the point when even the Codex users will spend more time praising (and playing) games

the difference here is that you can release a fucking amazing music album that has sex with your ears without spending fifty million dollars on the sound and another fifty convincing people that they're fags if they don't like it

unfortunately making 30 hours of a game on a budget is not the same as making 1 hour of music on a budget and the latter can still make a good profit at 5000 sales for a ten dollar ambient music album compared to the same for a game.

ps yes i am a bit of a musicfag but I don't participate in a community or anything
 

Roguey

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The best part of the article is the RPG mechanics chart. Fallout with a dot under turn based battles, Baldur's Gate without. It's just good to see that outside the Codex.
 

deus101

Never LET ME into a tattoo parlor!
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Project: Eternity Wasteland 2
By its simplest definition, a Role-Playing Game is one in which the player assumes a centric part in a developing story. This definition is extremely vague and encompasses pretty much EVERY story driven game ever made... Which is good because in the widest sense, every story driven game requires a player to play a part, and thus MUST be an RPG. By this definition RPGs, FPSs, Fighting games, RTSs with stories... ALL become RPGs.

:smug:
 

sgc_meltdown

Arcane
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dozens of rpgs are being made every year to cater to all tastes

action rpgs
squad rpgs
first person rpgs
strategy rpgs
tactical rpgs
dungeon crawling rpgs
horror rpgs
adventure rpgs
simulation rpgs
multiplayer rpgs
romance rpgs
one or two turn based rpgs

rpg heavan
 

deus101

Never LET ME into a tattoo parlor!
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sgc_meltdown said:
felipepepe said:
we may reach the point when even the Codex users will spend more time praising (and playing) games

the difference here is that you can release a fucking amazing music album that has sex with your ears without spending fifty million dollars on the sound and another fifty convincing people that they're fags if they don't like it

unfortunately making 30 hours of a game on a budget is not the same as making 1 hour of music on a budget and the latter can still make a good profit at 5000 sales for a ten dollar ambient music album compared to the same for a game.

ps yes i am a bit of a musicfag but I don't participate in a community or anything

The problem is storyfags, the publishers want to forget that the game market is fractioned, so the only way to make up for the generic accecbility soup is to go on and on about how dark and edgt their stories are and how important storytelling is.

So they spend shitloads of the profitmargin on cinematics and actors.


Variety is something we had in the old days, unless some soon finds out that there are starved out niches out there that can be profitable with a sober budget.
 

felipepepe

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sgc_meltdown said:
the difference here is that you can release a fucking amazing music album that has sex with your ears without spending fifty million dollars on the sound and another fifty convincing people that they're fags if they don't like it

unfortunately making 30 hours of a game on a budget is not the same as making 1 hour of music on a budget and the latter can still make a good profit at 5000 sales for a ten dollar ambient music album compared to the same for a game.

ps yes i am a bit of a musicfag but I don't participate in a community or anything
My point was focusing the consumers, but you're right. The markets have different entry costs, RPG's is making a game, music is getting your album noticed by someone.
 

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