Editorial 20 RPGs Every Game Designer Should Play @ Gamasutra

[FuriousGamer87]

I didn't see Arcanum
I didn't see Temple of Elemental Evil
I also didn't see Romancing Saga
and I definitely didn't see Tactics Ogre: Let's Us Cling Together nor Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen.

I rated that garbage of the article

 

[felipepepe]

You would probably need someone to slog through all the RPGs of old like CRPGaddict does. He's been going through all the RPGs for years now and still isn't close to being done from last I checked. It sounds like something like this would be a fulltime job that someone would have to dedicate a couple of years of their life to. There would be little reward for this though. Maybe you could try to Kickstart it, but not sure you could raise enough money to do something like this unless you were a somewhat well known on Youtube/Twitch. I don't know how much gamers make on Twitch though. Maybe someone could live off the income from it, if enough gamers knew about it.

There's middle ground between "I only know of post-1995 games" and "I've played every RPG ever made by man". The problem is when you have people acting as experts, as "long-time Ultima fans" when they can't even figure out the UI in Ultima Underworld.

 

[Grimlorn]

I'm just thinking you'd have to pay someone to sort out all the old games for college classes or whatever. What should be recommended, taught, etc. I'm trying to think of how movie critics ended up where they are. I guess instead of sites hiring mouthpieces to promote and hype the next big thing, they should have hired journalists with some experience playing 2-3 genres of games old and new. Just don't see how that can change in the future.

 

[felipepepe]

We lost specialists when the media changed, we might get them back not it's changing again. Youtube reviewers, bloggers and even the Codex. We have always been here, but people are paying more attention to us than ever before.

That Top 70 list we did isn't the absolute RPG canon (let's be honest, it lacks stuff like Diablo), but it's a damn good start for anyone looking into the genre. There's also Matt Barton's book, and even that book a Brazilian guy is editing...

 

[tuluse]

I didn't see Arcanum
I didn't see Temple of Elemental Evil
I also didn't see Romancing Saga
and I definitely didn't see Tactics Ogre: Let's Us Cling Together nor Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen.

I rated that garbage of the article

Troika games aren't that important. They didn't really inspire later games and they didn't even innovate that much.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Honestly, I wonder if folks at Atlus are more than a little envious of the runaway success of Pokemon. MegaTen games pioneered the idea of commanding a party of monsters through blob-style battles centered around elemental affinities/weaknesses. And in many ways, they're much better at it than Pokemon*; recruiting new monsters is much more interesting, fusion makes it likely that the player will actually use more than 10% of the total bestiary, battle are more than 1-on-1 "conga lines", etc.

The newer games have introduced party battles but it's kind of clusterfucky.

Spoiler

And I always thought fusion in SMT was too complex for its own good. They give you charts onscreen and it's still hard to predict what you'll get.

 

[Archibald]

Honestly, I wonder if folks at Atlus are more than a little envious of the runaway success of Pokemon. MegaTen games pioneered the idea of commanding a party of monsters through blob-style battles centered around elemental affinities/weaknesses. And in many ways, they're much better at it than Pokemon*; recruiting new monsters is much more interesting, fusion makes it likely that the player will actually use more than 10% of the total bestiary, battle are more than 1-on-1 "conga lines", etc. Maybe, somewhere in Japan, a dude is kicking himself for choosing a confluence of mythological entities as the motif for his game, rather than cutesy animals.

He definitely did kick himself, otherwise we wouldn't have gotten this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Megami_Tensei:_Devil_Children

As for including Pokemon over SMT? I can see reason with that since if you showed SMT to some publisher he'd say "well thats niche market, can't make enough money from something like this, probably will even flop in the west", but then you have Pokemon which is still a turn based game that basically prints money.

 

[FuriousGamer87]

I didn't see Arcanum
I didn't see Temple of Elemental Evil
I also didn't see Romancing Saga
and I definitely didn't see Tactics Ogre: Let's Us Cling Together nor Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen.

I rated that garbage of the article

Troika games aren't that important. They didn't really inspire later games and they didn't even innovate that much.

Wut?
I thought we are talking about games with that have something exceptional about them which every RPG designer should learn from them.
In that context, the Troika games I mentioned are important so I really don't get your statement.
Arcanum is about setting, characterization and atmosphere which it tie together pretty well, better than other games.
Temple of Elemental Evil is about good robust tactical turn-based gameplay that haven't been replicated since.

 

[tuluse]

Wut?
I thought we are talking about games with that have something exceptional about them which every RPG designer should learn from them.
In that context, the Troika games I mentioned are important so I really don't get your statement.
Arcanum is about setting, characterization and atmosphere which it tie together pretty well, better than other games.
Temple of Elemental Evil is about good robust tactical turn-based gameplay that haven't been replicated since.

I was thinking important is in rpg designers were already learning from them and using those lessons.

As for ToEE, that's still a no. It's just a fancier goldbox game.

 

[Xorazm]

Genuinely curious question for felipepepe and others -

Do you think that it's essential for someone to have a background in table-top RPGs to have an informed opinion about cRPGs? How does saying that you're a fan of cRPGs and not knowing table-top RPGs compare to claiming to be a fan of the Elder Scrolls and never bothering to investigate Daggerfall or Arena?

I ask because I've had very little experience with table-top RPGs (don't believe I've ever known anyone with background or interest in playing one) and I'm curious about the sort of things that I might miss or might not understand due to lacking that experience.

 

[MRY]

My two cents: Presumably you have to play P&P RPGs to opine about how cRPGs compare to them, but I'm skeptical that that is the most fruitful mode of analysis since cRPGs are hardly simulations of P&P RPGs, however much they pretend to be: cRPGs can do so much more under the hood and can have a much higher degree of polish in their expressive content,* but they can't capture the freedom or reactivity of P&P RPGs. They don't even come close. That's not to say they can't have freedom and reactivity, it's just that the kinds of freedom and reactivity are very different. So I think P&P RPGs might give you the wrong phobias and wrong aspirations, though there's obviously lots of learn from them.

* That said, for no obvious reason, worldbuilding in P&P RPGs seems to be much stronger than in cRPGs -- which is why cRPGs so often license P&P RPG settings. I guess it has to do with the length of the design cycle -- P&P RPG settings need foundations that can last decades, and then they are built up over those decades -- but it just seems odd to me, given the respective market sizes and budgets, that cRPG companies can't hire the equivalent of Monte Cook to incubate a setting for them.

 

[Gozma]

Real P&P, the kind you can actually get into for long term stable play in the real world, is pretty damn constrained compared to the thought experiment version of P&P. I think a class of P&P-aspirant CRPG is analogous to actual P&P like a frozen burrito is to growing your own food. It's shitty, but the convenience ratio is compelling.

 

[felipepepe]

I think it's something important for anyone seriously into CRPGs. I'm not talking about being a grognard with hundreds of books, but at the very least to have played it a few times, even if only D&D and Vampire.

As MRY said, CRPGs aren't actually simulations of P&P RPGs; they have different pros and cons. You should understand that to better criticize them. But a lot of things overlap, and knowledge from one can help you in another. Many devs playtest their CRPG campaigns by making adapted P&P sessions, for example. And I firmly believe that things like Ron Edwards' GNS Theory are valid both for P&P RPGs and CRPGs.

Besides, the variety of content, systems and rules you'll find in P&P vastly outnumbers what we have CRPGs. If anything, they are a wonderful source of inspiration and references.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Gamasutra

After this point I thought "Oh man, this should be good :D "

 

[tuluse]

If your desire is to learn about cRPGs the best you can, one thing I would strongly recommend playing some PNP for is to get a good grasp of what it means to roleplay (it isn't shitty acting for dressing up like a nurse in the bedroom), and why numbers aka the charactersheet don't get in the way like many poorly educated internet reviewers would have you believe, but instead work in concert with the player's mind to create a character with specific abilities.

 

[Black]

Tags: Baldur's Gate

http://www.rpgcodex.net/tags.php?id=104
As expected of gamasutra.

 

[AwesomeButton]

If your desire is to learn about cRPGs the best you can, one thing I would strongly recommend playing some PNP for is to get a good grasp of what it means to roleplay (it isn't shitty acting for dressing up like a nurse in the bedroom), and why numbers aka the charactersheet don't get in the way like many poorly educated internet reviewers would have you believe, but instead work in concert with the player's mind to create a character with specific abilities.

I've rarely done PnP, but it has been fun. The problem with it is it requires the use of imagination and vocabulary, which are skills harder to acquire than it is to buy a flashy videogame. Also, after prolonged sessions your mouth gets dry :D

 

[AngryKobold]

Gamasutra. Moron- infested website, no reservations to host the worst gibberish excreted by a crackpot. Like this one: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/21172/Opinion_Grim_Fandango_And_Diegesis_In_Games

I don't find the article disappointing. It's exactly what the reader should have expected.

 

[TigerKnee]

battle are more than 1-on-1 "conga lines"

SMT is generally a better single-player experience than Pokemon as a whole, but Pokemon's 1 on 1 battles is at its core actually much more interesting than SMT battle system is most of the time, which basically boils down to "hit Elemental Weakness a lot and make sure your buff/debuffs are all up"

Before anyone says "you hit elemental weakness for super effective all the time in Pokemon too", that's because the in-game AI is moronic - try spectating a high level competitive Pokemon battle. It has a lot more switching going on and a good human opponent generally wouldn't leave in and expose an elementally weak Pokemon UNLESS he had something up his sleeves to turn the tables.

Unfortunately Pokemon in-game AI is going to continue to be the way that it is because they want children to be able to beat the game, but imagine a "hardcore Pokemon" version targeted with the same mechanics but much superior AI - the strengths of its battle system would be able to show more clearly then.

 

[GlutenBurger]

I've rarely done PnP, but it has been fun. The problem with it is it requires the use of imagination and vocabulary, which are skills harder to acquire than it is to buy a flashy videogame. Also, after prolonged sessions your mouth gets dry :D

Not to mention the difficulty of organising a session when all participants are adults. It can be sort of hard for an adult to find sufficient time to invest in a good CRPG, but that's nothing compared to the challenge of finding perfectly aligned time for five different adults to engage in a P&P campaign.

I suppose the fact that the younger folk are more easily exposed to 4th edition D&D than any other P&P system might speak ill for the future of RPG appreciation. When even your P&P games purposely adopt the restrictions that computer programming have traditionally imposed, what hope have you of truly appreciating CRPGs attempting to move beyond these restrictions?

 

[AwesomeButton]

I've rarely done PnP, but it has been fun. The problem with it is it requires the use of imagination and vocabulary, which are skills harder to acquire than it is to buy a flashy videogame. Also, after prolonged sessions your mouth gets dry :D

Not to mention the difficulty of organising a session when all participants are adults. It can be sort of hard for an adult to find sufficient time to invest in a good CRPG, but that's nothing compared to the challenge of finding perfectly aligned time for five different adults to engage in a P&P campaign.

I suppose the fact that the younger folk are more easily exposed to 4th edition D&D than any other P&P system might speak ill for the future of RPG appreciation. When even your P&P games purposely adopt the restrictions that computer programming have traditionally imposed, what hope have you of truly appreciating CRPGs attempting to move beyond these restrictions?

Well, the conclusion may be that PnP is going becoming extinct as a pastime A hundered and fifty-sixty years ago, picnics were becoming a widely adopted pastime activity, but they have mostly disappeared as a culture nowadays...

 

[Shaewaroz]

The list is completely meaningless, they merely drop names just for the heck of it. A gigantic waste of time.

Why not emphasize something like Valkyria Chronicles, Beyond Good and Evil, Shadow Hearts, Persona or Bahamut Lagoon, games that actually tried something different instead of just replicating what dozens of games have done before.

And Eldershit but not Ultima Underworld? Or maybe the game developers are supposed to play it after finishing Ultima IX?

 

[AwesomeButton]

The list is completely meaningless, they merely drop names just for the heck of it. A gigantic waste of time.

Why not emphasize something like Valkyria Chronicles, Beyond Good and Evil, Shadow Hearts, Persona or Bahamut Lagoon, games that actually tried something different instead of just replicating what dozens of games have done before.

Gamasutra is not a games site, according to their own editorials, don't make me quote that shit about "Gamers are dead". Instead they've decided to be a clickbait site for people who don't know where to look for information on games. Yellow journalism.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The purpose of the article was to pick 20 important series and make a quick analysis of each one, it's not a Top X Games of All Time.

Unfortunately Pokemon in-game AI is going to continue to be the way that it is because they want children to be able to beat the game, but imagine a "hardcore Pokemon" version targeted with the same mechanics but much superior AI - the strengths of its battle system would be able to show more clearly then.

I don't think improving the AI would change much, becoming skilled at that battle system means getting better at predicting the opponent's moves and setting non-obvious traps, two things AIs aren't very good at if they have to obey the same rules as the player.

 

[Arkeus]

Did they miss Shin Megami Tensei or was I just too drunk to see it?

Yeah, they did. (While including the Tales of games!)

Tales of has got to be the worst jRPG series out there. Why would anyone include that in any list? Or NIS games for that matter. It's obvious that the article writers knowledge on jRPGs is on the shallow side and so probably should've left them out entirely.

Is that a joke? SMT games are some of the most popular JRPG games there are. Hell, pretty much any Atlus games is over there.

While I think the list is simple as heck and very very biased, half of the list is made of less-played super-popular games while the other half is super-mainstream. That they somehow missed super-mainstream SMT or other Atlus things but instead chose some more recent games is a bit annoying, sure, but it's not like you are complaining about actual niche games.

This list just look like "asking people what kind of old games are semi-popular", which explains exclusions like Etrian Odyssey (too recent), though it doesn't explain why stuff like Fire Emblem are there given they are pretty recent too.

If anything I was pleased by the inclusion of Tales games given it's neither mainstream nor classics.

Why not emphasize something like Valkyria Chronicles, Beyond Good and Evil, Shadow Hearts, Persona or Bahamut Lagoon, games that actually tried something different instead of just replicating what dozens of games have done before.

They only seemed to have taken 'safe' choices that were super-mainsteams or nostalgic cult games. Valkyria Chronicles is too recent, Beyond good and Evil is not cult enough, Shadow Hearts is too niche, Persona would have been perfect except that it's too famous maybe? Bahamut Lagoon is also too niche.