The Demographics have changed, both for gamers and gaming journalists. In order to reach more sales, the goalposts have been shifted, and efforts have been made to make gaming more "accessible" to those who were previously not interested. RPG's have been swept up in this maelstrom in the quest for money.
The first movement was in graphics; this is the first thing that sucks in people who are not interested in gaming. No RPG elitist I have ever known requires graphics to be up to industry standard, and indeed expects them to be one or two notches below (more if necessary) to accomodate the extra elements needed in an RPG.
As a consequence, at first of the graphical improvements, gameplay elements need to be taken away as time and money are finite resources. Suddenly developers see new gamers coming in, happy with the simpler gameplay (read: gamers that previously hated RPG's due to graphics, difficulty, etc) and better graphics.
Continue this trend, adding in better selling genre points thrown into the RPG mix, further simplification to grab an ever larger audience, etc and you finally get to the present.
It actually worked in reverse initially; Simple games did not grab gamers when computers first emerged from the University/business mainframes to the home. We were all quickly bored by the simple rubbish on offer. Wargaming, and then Role playing games changed this for me, and if we look at the greatest selling genre of the mid to late 80's and early 90's, we see that the RPG is King.
Developers had to ADD complexity, and extra gameplay in order to grab the dominant tech head market that existed then (most new gamers wouldn't be able to operate the computers that existed back then. Nerds and technophiles ruled supreme). If a game was too simple, it might get the "good for beginners" tagline, but not taken seriously. Complexity was IN. We wanted more, so long as it had a half decent UI.
Imagine that! In order to dominate the market back then, you had to be an RPG developer, you had to add intelligent additions to the gameplay, and the graphics could creep along at their own pace.
Look at 1987, these examples all show a different way of roleplaying. The graphics is the key though. All of these examples sold quite well, and were sitting happily next to each other on the shelves, snapped up by RPG gamers of the day, with graphics, while "cool", were not the main consideration;
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dungeon-master
http://www.mobygames.com/game/phantasie ... -nikademus
http://www.mobygames.com/game/rings-of-zilfin
http://www.mobygames.com/game/ultima-iv ... the-avatar
http://www.mobygames.com/game/might-and-magic-book-i
Look at the difference. And the press of the day was not debunking the graphics of any one game. And gamers were not shunning games like Ultima 4 and refusing to buy it.
Today, nothing of the sort could be considered in such a graphical difference. Today's gamers and gaming press would not even consider such a disparity between two games. Apart from the unserved holdovers like myself anyway.
This whining game "journalist" obviously knows nothing of gaming history, nor why "elitists" are not impressed by todays "rpg's"; They have nothing new from what came before apart from graphical upgrades and gameplay downgrades. They play more like shooters than RPG's ever did (unless all you care about is the talkytalky, larping part of RPG's, of which better iterations have come before anyway), they are all the same, and none of them try to include more "under the hood". They include less, to capture the new gamer who would have much preferred a movie to playing a game back in the day.
I am not interested in playing a movie. I am not interested in playing new games where the only improvement is graphical, with substantial downgrades in everything else, and where I feel progressively bored with each minute playing it. Today's games are also that easy they provide me with no sense of having achieved anything.
If you like to watch a B grade story unfold with a few additions and easy fights contributed by yourself, then by all means have fun with the new RPG games on the market. Today is your day. There is nothing evil about liking it.
For an "elitist" like myself, who enjoys diversity in RPG's, complexity, or at least something novel and challenging, all at the expense of graphics if necessary, todays RPG's hold nothing, and I will not part with hard earned money, and waste minutes of my life in playing them. They bore me.
Vibalist, if you enjoy the new RPG's, there is no sense in not buying them. Equally there is no sense in me buying them as I hate them. Simple.
) fun to offer, even if the writing isn't good or the setting isn't consistant.
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