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CRPG Book - Updated version

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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At the very least an updated version of the Book should point out that RPGs are still being made for these old systems, and the above suggestions would serve as excellent examples.
 

felipepepe

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At the very least an updated version of the Book should point out that RPGs are still being made for these old systems, and the above suggestions would serve as excellent examples.
Yes, this is what I intend to do. The updated version will only go up to 2019 anyway, so seems more interesting to talk about these games as a movement, also including stuff like SKALD: Against the Black Priory and The Fall of the Black Mage.

Maybe a good solution would be an article about the appeal of making & playing these games, like the ones on the first pages of the book.
 
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Konjad

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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
At the very least an updated version of the Book should point out that RPGs are still being made for these old systems, and the above suggestions would serve as excellent examples.
Yes, this is what I intend to do. The updated version will only go up to 2019 anyway, so seems more interesting to talk about these games as a movement, also including stuff like SKALD: Against the Black Priory and The Fall of the Black Mage.

Maybe a good solution would be an article about the appeal of making & playing these games, like the ones on the first pages of the book.
Felipepepe, do you accept game article contributions? I'd be happy to add Prelude to Darkness, Pathologic, The Void, Precursors and Vendetta to your book, including screenshots. If yes, how long should the text be? Do you have any limits for characters, so it fits the full page well?
 

felipepepe

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At the very least an updated version of the Book should point out that RPGs are still being made for these old systems, and the above suggestions would serve as excellent examples.
Yes, this is what I intend to do. The updated version will only go up to 2019 anyway, so seems more interesting to talk about these games as a movement, also including stuff like SKALD: Against the Black Priory and The Fall of the Black Mage.

Maybe a good solution would be an article about the appeal of making & playing these games, like the ones on the first pages of the book.
Felipepepe, do you accept game article contributions? I'd be happy to add Prelude to Darkness, Pathologic, The Void, Precursors and Vendetta to your book, including screenshots. If yes, how long should the text be? Do you have any limits for characters, so it fits the full page well?
Hey Konjad, I accept contributions, but I already have someone writing about Prelude to Darkness, Pathologic I'm still unsure if I'll add and the others are too niche, I can't add everything...

You can see the games that need reviews here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EesmyPbsVzEkSwoNOmvqCs2w9V89lyiP0lL3XurZG_0/edit?usp=sharing
 

felipepepe

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Can I review Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar for your book?
Sure, I'm always looking for help! :)

I need something about 400 words / 2500 characters, that gives a brief overview of the game's background then explains the gameplay and why you think it's a noteworthy title. Also, please try to include pros & cons of the game, the goal is to avoid reviews that are too fanboyish.
 

hitfan

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Yes, this is what I intend to do. The updated version will only go up to 2019 anyway, so seems more interesting to talk about these games as a movement, also including stuff like SKALD: Against the Black Priory and The Fall of the Black Mage.

Maybe a good solution would be an article about the appeal of making & playing these games, like the ones on the first pages of the book.

When I started to finally read the CRPG Book, I decided to do it from back to front—I just love the aesthetics of vintage computer games, so I am saving these for last. And I didn’t want to quit reading the book after I had gone past my favorite RPGs after page 150 or so.

As a creator of RPGs for old systems, I can give my own reasons for making them:

-familiarity with the system architecture
-nostalgia is certainly a motivation
-not too terribly concerned about making a lot of money (these are hobby/passion projects)
-I am striving to try to make the game I always wanted to make ever since I was 14 years old
-poets have a saying: “the limitations of form and structure are liberating”—and this certainly applies to making games on systems with limited resources. With that, there is far less chance of getting bogged by feature creep (who needs auto map?). And so the platform that you’re developing for will make a lot of design decisions for you (Realms of Quest V uses a 23 by 26 character screen size—which is more akin to a square rather than a rectangle).

I will say this about RPGs on old systems: they just seem to be more immersive. Just the simple wireframe graphics of the original Wizardry on the Apple II are very effective at conveying a claustrophobic experience and a forboding sense of danger.
 

DarkUnderlord

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Recommendation: Don't do an "updated version". Do a "Volume II" instead. Then those who bought the first can just buy the next volume. You could potentiality rework the first book into a volume for each decade. Then this becomes your life's work and you're stuck having to release a new volume every decade.
 

Silentstorm

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Honestly, for games that aren't full blown RPG's but still use RPG mechanics in cool ways, maybe they could have their own section in order to not annoy some people, because i find those cool and some may even have some actual impact on CRPG's or have something worth studying for future developers.

Also, i accept bad games being there as long the review says they were bad, many big releases over the years weren't exactly the stuff of legends and it's happened for decades, this isn't a "Recommended CRPG" book, but CRPG in general, big failures as long as they became iconic or well known by the community should get some mention if only to talk about why they suck, failures are part of the history of every genre.

Meaning, i accept Mass Effect:Andromeda being on the book, just as long as it doesn't appear in a "Recommended CRPG's" or "Best of the CRPG genre for gamers of any kind to try!" kind of books i am fine with it's presence.
 

felipepepe

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Recommendation: Don't do an "updated version". Do a "Volume II" instead. Then those who bought the first can just buy the next volume. You could potentiality rework the first book into a volume for each decade. Then this becomes your life's work and you're stuck having to release a new volume every decade.
But that's basically why I'm doing an updated version... I want it to be a "definitive edition", I really don't plan on ever updating it again once it's done... got other things to do in life :P

Also, doing a volume 2 would be very hard since I'm also updating some stuff on old reviews and adding a few older games that were missing, like SpellForce.
 

felipepepe

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Most people here know & are part of the CRPG Book's history, but today came out a podcast where I tell the whole story and chat with the guys at Video Game History Foundation about RPGs & stuffies: https://gamehistory.org/ep-34-the-crpg-book/

Was a fun chat, they're experts on game history & preservation, so it was much more interesting than just "what's an RPG, what are the best RPGs, etc..."
 
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I like how you call an Eastern Europe "rich countries", but we tend to think about ourselves as a second word countries :)
 
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You say that news outlets don't talk about certain games. Have you though that this may be mostly caused by monetary interest of those who own/fund them, including advertises? Corporations can talk a lot about how they love free market, but they do everything to make sure no one would compete with them.
 

felipepepe

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You say that news outlets don't talk about certain games. Have you though that this may be mostly caused by monetary interest of those who own/fund them, including advertises? Corporations can talk a lot about how they love free market, but they do everything to make sure no one would compete with them.
Oh, for sure. And there's no way I can compete with that, so the only solution I can personally work on is to show the holes in reporting to lots of people and shame the journos for how incomplete and biased their reporting is.

The journos themselves know very well what they're doing, I had an argument with former Kotaku editor Brian Crecente about this and he straight up refused to comment on why websites like Kotaku and Polygon don't write about the biggest games out there:



I expect nothing from them, they might just reply "we're bloggers, not journalists" again, but I'll keep pointing it out for others to see it.
 
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You can show holes in coverage, however explaining people that one of the main reason behind this behavior is economical in nature is important. Most people understand how ideology/politics influences press coverage, but not many look at the economic aspect of news. And economical aspect can often explain a lot.
 

felipepepe

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You can show holes in coverage, however explaining people that one of the main reason behind this behavior is economical in nature is important. Most people understand how ideology/politics influences press coverage, but not many look at the economic aspect of news. And economical aspect can often explain a lot.
Yes, but the problem is that this approach can easily be distorted into "he's a gamegater talking about corruption & ethics in journalism, we can ignore him".
 

vonAchdorf

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Yes, but the problem is that this approach can easily be distorted into "he's a gamegater talking about corruption & ethics in journalism, we can ignore him".

I haven't listened to the Podcast yet, but why do you think they should talk about those games? They are made for the Chinese (and Korean) market and not very popular in the West. The only ting which makes them interesting is that they are hugely profitable.
Roblox is also a universe of its own, with a much younger audience, which generates huge revenues, but yes - it flied under the radar.
 

felipepepe

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Yes, but the problem is that this approach can easily be distorted into "he's a gamegater talking about corruption & ethics in journalism, we can ignore him".
I haven't listened to the Podcast yet, but why do you think they should talk about those games? They are made for the Chinese (and Korean) market and not very popular in the West. The only ting which makes them interesting is that they are hugely profitable.
Roblox is also a universe of its own, with a much younger audience, which generates huge revenues, but yes - it flied under the radar.
That's false, it's precisely the distorted perception that their bad journalism planted on you. Free Fire is not "just" one of the biggest games in the world and extremely popular in Asia and Latin America, it's also the top grossing mobile battle royale in the US: https://sensortower.com/blog/state-of-mobile-battle-royale-q1-2021

So even in the US it's bigger than Call of Duty mobile and PUBG mobile. Those two got coverage, Free Fire didn't.

Besides, let's be real about the monumental scale we're talking here. Free Fire had a peak of 100 Million daily players. Since 2013, when the PS4 was released, the console sold 103 Million units. In a single day there was almost as many people playing Free Fire as there were PS4 consoles sold in the last 8 years. Twice more than all of Xbox One sales! And the biggest video game websites never wrote anything about this game, not even as a curiosity. This is insane.
 

vonAchdorf

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So even in the US it's bigger than Call of Duty mobile and PUBG mobile. Those two got coverage, Free Fire didn't.

What are the reasons in your opinion? Both PUBG and Fire Fire are from Asian developers and both are part of the Tencent investment ecosystem?

(Just tell me to listen to the podcast if you already answered it there :D)
 
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felipepepe

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So even in the US it's bigger than Call of Duty mobile and PUBG mobile. Those two got coverage, Free Fire didn't.
What are the reasons in your opinion? Both PUBG and Fire Fire are from Asian developers and both are part of the Tencent investment ecosystem?
I think they legit don't care, don't have any financial incentive to care and talk to an audience that doesn't care/know. They don't play these games, don't know people who play (or develop) them, other websites also don't report on them and the PR companies haven't been able (or haven't tried) to make them care.

Most current journos are fans with little interest in the industry as a whole. They care about individual games, they rarely talk about the industry as a whole except a few topics like liberal identarian politics. There used to be industry-wide debates about things like Facebook games, the indie boom, kickstarter, the "indieapocalypse" and gamergate, but now it's just... silence. The industry has radically changed, but they don't like the changes and just stay in their bubble pretending that the PS5 is the next big thing.
 

Tyranicon

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Now this may come of no surprise to most of you, but

  • Traditional journalism is largely dead and buried, game "journalism" has never been any more than a pale shadow
  • Game journalism, with a few exceptions, has never risen above blogger-level
  • Game journalism has now been largely supplanted by streaming and social platforms like reddit
  • Game journalism is now (always) just mostly shilling
 

Silentstorm

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Looking at some review scores of games in the past, i can certainly believe corruption or bad taste has always been part of gaming journalism, there are some awful games that got great reviews and great games that were mostly ignored.

Sure, few cases as famous as Rise Of The Robots getting insanely great reviews in almost every magazine other than Amiga Power despite that being a piece of crap fighting game, but there are those if you look around.
 

Archibald

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In defence of game bloggers I'm not sure if there is that big of an audience for such coverage. This is not about "they are not made for us", but about games themselves. I do spend some (a lot?) of time playing various match 3 and other mobile games and I never felt the need to read something about them. All the information I'd ever need I can find on some community wiki.
 

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