Interview Fargo, Sawyer, McComb and others weigh in on the future of RPGs at Rock Paper Shotgun

[ERYFKRAD]

Meh, all these buggers and they're years too late in predicting Realms Beyond.

 

[StaticSpine]

The idea of a sandbox game with writing that’s as good as Tides of Numenera is exciting

 

[CRD]

esigners and studio heads he has spoken to want CRPGs to be “heavier on the action and lighter on the exposition” than they are now.

decline, they just want to appeal more to the phone/console gamer.

if CRPGs of the future have fewer words,

decline, same as above, lower the bar, get the retards aboard. Even divinity with a focus on combat and a mediocre story, have decent amounts of text.

One of the reasons that Tides of Numenera didn’t sell as well as expected was because it was too text-heavy

false, they sold shit because the writing of the game is a shit version with cut content of what already have been done. Try with young new motivated writers and fresh original ideas.

Fargo believes that CRPGs will increasingly feature multiplayer

decline. He just saw fallout 76 and is drooling over all the money they are going to make. He doesn't want to change because he thinks will be better for the genre, is just a money decision. And I don't blame him for this, he have a company to make money not a NGO, but man, don't try to sell it as if people were fucking retards waiting to swallow stupid arguments and smile after that.

more and more difficult to do a single player game.

laziness and business decisions, not more difficult.

I just hate when PR teams try to mask business decisions as pro-consumer/fanbase changes. Be a fucking man and deal with it, say the truth. You want to earn more money appealing to a broader spectrum of people and that can only be made by simplifying things, don't hide behind lies.

 

[Archibald]

I don't see how fewer words are a decline. After all we are not talking about games having 2000 words in total, but about single game having more words than Tolkien's entire LotR saga. That shit is retarded.

We could definitely see a cut on:

1, Deep lore that most of the time has nothing to do with the game itself.
2. Every companion and many NPCs talking in detail about their entire life because you was friendly with them.
3. Describing shit that we already see on the screen.

Luckily since many of those wordy games ended up doing badly maybe we will see less words in the future.

 

[FeelTheRads]

When the mention the “metrics” pointing towards catering towards multiplayer... yeah exactly where did you get those metrics? From 14 year olds?

From the lowest common denominator.

Multiplayer and coop are actually major selling points in that category.

There were people who donated to TTON's kickstarter (so you could assume they knew at least SOMETHING about what they were giving money to) who were asking for coop. The stupidity of the masses in mindboggling.

Oh, and Fargo is also in love with Twitch if I remember correctly. In some other place he was saying TTON didn't sell because it's not a game suitable for Twitch.

 

[CRD]

I don't see how fewer words are a decline.

Learn to read PR marketing between lines. Fewer words usually doesn't mean 60% of the original content cutting the shit and keeping the meat, but
- DURR?
- HURR!!
- DERP

He clearly said they don't want to write but to make arpgs while calling them CRPG trying to keep the fanbase buying their games using name-dropping marketing.

oh look, a crpg!

 

[FeelTheRads]

Looks like somebody missed the target for a Dirty Sanchez on that one.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I just hate when PR teams try to mask business decisions as pro-consumer/fanbase changes. Be a fucking man and deal with it, say the truth. You want to earn more money appealing to a broader spectrum of people and that can only be made by simplifying things, don't hide behind lies.

 

[Heretic]

I already said it under the previous interview and I will say it again, even though Infinitron will roll his eye at me again.

These hacks have nothing to contribute to a discussion about the future of RPGs. They haven't created a good RPG in the last decade.
The future of indie RPGs is being created by the teams behind Age of Decadence, Underrail and Kingdom Come.
The future of AAA RPGs is being created in CDPR and in various japanese studios.

Also Annie Mitsoda? Why would you ever ask HER of all people? Those others I can understand, they used to have at least some cred.

 

[Infinitron]

The future of indie RPGs is being created by the teams behind Kingdom Come.

I'm definitely gonna eyeroll at that.

 

[Heretic]

KCD is one of the best RPGs of the decade. Come at me, bro!

 

[CRD]

KCD is one of the best RPGs of the decade. Come at me, bro!

A glorified pseudo-realistic skyrim with more praises than the game deserves just for politics, and more critics than deserve also for politics.

a meh game.

 

[Infinitron]

(My problem is actually with calling it "indie")

 

[Heretic]

(My problem is actually with calling it "indie")

Doesn't detract from my main point.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

So Sleazy Charlatan, Autist SJW Lord and Colon McCuck's views on RPGs.

Remind me again which of their recent projects is a palatable RPG?

 

[Bohrain]

They are really incapable of seeing whether their games fail because of bad execution or wrong design choices. While I do agree with Fargo's point that the Nu-men-era had bad pacing when it came to combat and story, the game also had horrible writing and aesthetics. A hard cap on wordcount would've done more good than aping D:OS combat mechanics.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

None of these guys get it, imho. They keep focusing on all the wrong things, like the false dichotomy between "old school isometric stat based cRPGs" and "new school console friendly 1st/3rd person games". Some of the greatest old school RPGs were 1st/3rd person, and this distinction is meaningless. You can make a good or bad 1st person or isometric game. Each perspective, each approach have their own strengths and weaknesses, and the problem with all these modern mediocre developers is that instead of coming up with innovative features as companies did in late 90s, early 2000s, they keep pushing out gimmicks and non-starters disguised as design.

Take D:OS games for example, everyone keeps bring them up as these great examples of using the environment. But are they really? In Dwarf Fortress, you can dynamically dig out a large space underground to serve as a reservoir, dig out tunnels from this space to the surface to serve as pipes, connect these tunnels to above-ground rain-pools, put in floodgates and levers, and have a fully functioning well that can be refilled on demand after rainfall, and that your dwarves use to get water. In Ultima Underworld, you could drain a massive indoor pool to reveal a hidden space with an item required to advance the game. What can you do in D:OS games other than keep combining 2-3 spell effects together in a fight after fight until it becomes just a longer way to cast a spell? Can you solve quests using environmental interaction? Can you use it in novel ways or is it just the same "cast water/oil, follow with electricity/fire" over and over?

These AA devs like Obsidian, Larian, inXile are kind of stuck in no-man's land, re-hashing old ideas that are already stale and doing even that in an inferior way. If I was them, I would try to find younger project leads, more willing to take risks, and try to recapture not the ideas and design of late 90s, but the spirit of those times.

 

[Strange Fellow]

And if CRPGs of the future have fewer words, developers will want “more incisive, entertaining, and direct writing”, with fewer “winding monologues. In at least the immediate future, prose-heavy games are going to [be] much more niche,” he says.

 

[abnaxus]

 

[Invictus]

Yeah I think because of the rising costs of development and the fact some of these studios are pretty big and have to answer to higher ups who only care about profits the margins for errors are slim to none so they simply don’t take risks coming up with something innovative

Dont you think Sawyer could come up with something really cool? He seems like a fairly interesting guy but seems kind of stuck doing something safe, proven and that has a supposedly waiting audience

There was a time where a couple of guys could do something increible on their garage but others than idies I don’t think we will see much innovation from even smallish publishers such as these, let alone the bigger guys

 

[Dorateen]

Fargo, Sawyer, and McComb are on the sinking Titanic.

Sawyer cries out, "Women and children first!"

Fargo replies, "Screw the women and children!"

McComb says, "Do you think there's time?"

 

[LizardWizard]

Swen ruined rpgs confirmed

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I would love some more D:OS enviromental interaction, maybe take a page from other games, too.

You could go really hog wild if you took a page from tactical games and included full enviroment destruction.

 

[Freddie]

Why I have this feeling that over the years I have read so many variations of 'we want mp games audience' that I'm really getting tired of it.

Fargo may have a point regarding more action oriented games appealing to streamers, but overall, meh.

 

[Thonius]

Soooo bad writer, the man who got tired of making rpg's and snake oil salesman meet up and decided to talk bout rpg future? Huh...