Researching: the death of the CRPG industry

[octavius]

Yeah. Doom was a sharp decline after Ultima Underworld.

Ultima Underworld made me break up with my Amiga.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Oh not so fast morrowind was indeed not so accessible to the average gamer, but they bought it cause of the mindblowing graphics, it was an absolutely gorgeous game, the most beautiful game on the xbox.
But the tricks is not many of them finished it, and the true horror, not many of them were even able to find caius cosade...I do not lie, remember how it was in bethesda forums back them, that drove them to some radical dumbing down in oblivion. Same for bioware and kotor, thier next game mass effect was quite dumbed down already and mass effect 2 hit the bottom, its a pretty sci fi movie shooter. Many bioware fans are very happy of it . I do agree some want a real life relpacement with pseudo romance not a game with deep strategic options .

I should point out too not only the quality of release lower , bare a few gem like new vegas or witcher 2 (thats even stretching a lot the definition of rpg) , but they are also fewer. In the 90's you had many many rpg release, not all of them were great or unforgettable but they had at least the merit to exist. Now we only have 1 or max 2 action rpg a year, and a very good one every 5 years .

I’m in some agreement. Morrowind was the Box's best combo of art and tech until stuff like Panzer Dragoon and that game was on rails. And yes Morrowind road the GTA open world demand in a way that a game like ToEE could not. Where I might disagree is that there was a huge demand for western RPGs and a game like ToEE could have road that demand to more sells than it received on the PC provided they fixed the bugs and marketed it a little bit better than Dungeons and Dragons tactics on the PSP which sill came close to outselling ToEE.

The complaints about Morrowind were not what dumbed down Oblivion. It was the complaints strained through Beth’s incompetence. People didn’t like having their ass handed to them as soon as they ventured into the sticks, but level scaling was obviously not the solution. The scaling in Oblivion drew more of a reaction than anything from Morrowind. My guess is that folks wanted a more Zeldaish system with a larger low level bubble at the start. People also clamored for action combat but I think it had more to do with Morrowind being a one man party game. Beth shouldn’t have took that as a license to make a base hp sponge hak and slash.

Beth did make some common sense alterations like expanding the tutorial for crafting and spell creation. Even though the majority of consumers never visit a message board and had no idea if Oblivion would be easier to grasp than Morrowind they still went out and bought the game in mass.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

You may be right about there being a console market for games like ToEE. How do you imagine it technically, though?

Keep the radial menues and mix in some KOTOR and Halo Wars controls. Sell the game online and a manual\guide in stores.

 

[MajorNova]

Its because world died in 2000. All that's left are faggots.

 

[commie]

And yeah, DOOM certainly made the industry approach and make games more differently. Good point.

What's the problem with DOOM? It's not like it killed the market for the RPG as those gamers still were around and just played DOOM in addition to the RPG's they always played. In 1993 PC gaming was still niche and pretty hardcore so it's not like all of a sudden it attracted the retards.

If anything it's the death of DOS that opened up the PC to all manner of retards who could now use the computer to play shiny gaems without a lot of trouble. Even so the market for the RPG remained, increasing though at a far slower rate than the market for the simpler FPS/RTS games.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

There's nothing wrong with Doom. It just showed the money people that a "niche market" like PC gaming could be immensely profitable. As a result, more people with more money entered the market.

In fact... there's a pretty good chance that the "death" of DOS was also accelerated by the arrival of Doom. When Windows 95 was being plugged for its user-friendlyness, Doom was often used as an example. "Doom will run flawlessly on Win95" and "converting Doom to run on the Win95 OS only took two days" were but two of several phrases thrown around in 1994 as part of Microsoft's campaign. MS were probably well aware that DOS was restricting the PC gaming market, but Doom spotlighted the problem for all to see.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I don't see how the CRPG industry has died when we've had Fallout: New Vegas and the Witcher games within the past few years. Even the most recent Bioware games have been good RPGs in terms of C&C.

 

[CorpseZeb]

I don't see how the CRPG industry has died when we've had Fallout: New Vegas and the Witcher games within the past few years. Even the most recent Bioware games have been good RPGs in terms of C&C.

“C&C” is one side of coin of fun, really good tactic, turn based combat is another side. Story sits somewhere in middle. Any “big” games with TB nowadays out?

Ps. For good, non-scalable, non-TB, action RPG – Divinity (Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity and Divinity 2) series is worth mentioning.

 

[MMXI]

I don't see how the CRPG industry has died when we've had Fallout: New Vegas and the Witcher games within the past few years. Even the most recent Bioware games have been good RPGs in terms of C&C.

Troll?

 

[The King of Comedy]

Stuff about Doom and Win 95.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN0K58EfJSg

 

[Excidium]

I don't see how the CRPG industry has died when we've had Fallout: New Vegas and the Witcher games within the past few years. Even the most recent Bioware games have been good RPGs in terms of C&C.

Troll?

Has to be.

 

[deuxhero]

I don't see how the CRPG industry has died when we've had Fallout: New Vegas and the Witcher games within the past few years. Even the most recent Bioware games have been good RPGs in terms of C&C.

“C&C” is one side of coin of fun, really good tactic, turn based combat is another side. Story sits somewhere in middle. Any “big” games with TB nowadays out?

Ps. For good, non-scalable, non-TB, action RPG – Divinity (Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity and Divinity 2) series is worth mentioning.

Atlus still does turn based, though they aren't "big" big, just largeish.

 

[Green Fairy]

The death of the adventure genre is also responsible for the great in CRPGs. As Grim Fandango went out in a blaze of glory, Diablo was rolling in sales.

 

[bloodlover]

Correct me if I am wrong but are we talking about the actual death of the cRPG industry or the "omg RPG's went mainstream and now they suck ass" ? If this is the case, let's look at things in another way : the market over the last years (decade maybe?) has been overwhelmed with FPS games. Now if the cRPG's would not have gone mainstream, they would have remained some forgotten (or actually almost dead) genre like the adventure game and ofc. always in the shadow of the popular FPS. Would you have preferred it this way?

 

[Roguey]

Correct me if I am wrong but are we talking about the actual death of the cRPG industry or the "omg RPG's went mainstream and now they suck ass" ? If this is the case, let's look at things in another way : the market over the last years (decade maybe?) has been overwhelmed with FPS games. Now if the cRPG's would not have gone mainstream, they would have remained some forgotten (or actually almost dead) genre like the adventure game and ofc. always in the shadow of the popular FPS. Would you have preferred it this way?

A world where Bioware, Bethesda, and Obsidian didn't go full next-gen? Where do you think you are?

 

[CorpseZeb]

Now if the cRPG's would not have gone mainstream, they would have remained some forgotten (or actually almost dead) genre like the adventure game and ofc. always in the shadow of the popular FPS. Would you have preferred it this way?

It is not so bad in the Adventure Department, Vampire Story, Ceville, Overclocked, Scratches, Whispered World, Grey Matter, Run Away series, Gemini Rue, Black Mirror series, Secret files Tunguska series, Still life 1, The lost crown, The Moment of Silence, Sinking Island, Art of Murder, Culpa Innata, Chronicles of Mystery, Alter Ego, Going downtown, Tale of Hero, Darkness within series – to enumerate some new (and new'ish) and decent (and decent'ish) titles. RPG shares far, far, far more dreadful and sad fate...

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Correct me if I am wrong but are we talking about the actual death of the cRPG industry or the "omg RPG's went mainstream and now they suck ass" ? If this is the case, let's look at things in another way : the market over the last years (decade maybe?) has been overwhelmed with FPS games. Now if the cRPG's would not have gone mainstream, they would have remained some forgotten (or actually almost dead) genre like the adventure game and ofc. always in the shadow of the popular FPS. Would you have preferred it this way?

My thoughts as you may have noted from post above is that there was room in the mainstream for codexian shit.

 

[BehindTimes]

Now if the cRPG's would not have gone mainstream, they would have remained some forgotten (or actually almost dead) genre like the adventure game and ofc. always in the shadow of the popular FPS. Would you have preferred it this way?

It is not so bad in the Adventure Department, Vampire Story, Ceville, Overclocked, Scratches, Whispered World, Grey Matter, Run Away series, Gemini Rue, Black Mirror series, Secret files Tunguska series, Still life 1, The lost crown, The Moment of Silence, Alter Ego, Going downtown, Tale of Hero, Darkness within series – to enumerate some new (and new'ish) and decent (and decent'ish) titles. RPG shares far, far, far more dreadful and sad fate...

Yes, adventure games have been making a comeback, but from Grim Fandango until about a couple years ago, that was the genre considered completely dead. The death of CRPG's is similar to adventure games though. They never were really popular to begin with to the mainstream public. When Wizardry and Ultima came out, people were pleased with 100,000 in sales. Nowadays, if you're not pushing a million+, it's considered a worthless game. The audience has stayed the same, but companies follow the money, and thus a niche audience tends to lose their heroes when they go mainstream.

Will indie developers save it? That's the question. The adventure game resurrection has been mainly due to indie developers and the fact that adventure games for the most part are dirt cheap to produce relatively compared to other games. The same can't be said about RPGs. A good artist, musician, and programmer can put together an adventure game fairly easily, especially compared to RPGs. There's just significantly more complexity into how everything interacts with each other. I mean, look at world interactivity. It's actually regressed since Ultima 7. NPC schedules went from having a job, and sleeping, where trying to do anything at night was pointless, to RPG's now, where even if they have a a schedule, it's as complex as just walking in a loop.

 

[Renegen]

The adventure game genre was never dead, you just ceased paying attention to it. Grim Fandango came out in 1998, The Longest Journey in 1999, Syberia in 2002, Broken Sword 3 in 2003, Syberia 2 in 2004, The Moment of Silence in 2004, and the rest, as betailed by CorpseZeb follows that. Maybe a small drop in quality in the early 2000s, but thats it.

 

[BehindTimes]

The adventure game genre was never dead, you just ceased paying attention to it. Grim Fandango came out in 1998, The Longest Journey in 1999, Syberia in 2002, Broken Sword 3 in 2003, Syberia 2 in 2004, The Moment of Silence in 2004, and the rest, as betailed by CorpseZeb follows that. Maybe a small drop in quality in the early 2000s, but thats it.

But a similar arguement can be made about RPGs. There's a major difference between the style of adventure Grim Fandango is and something like Syberia. (Similar to tactical vs action RPGs). And then you have games like Broken Sword which moved into a 3rd dimension and turned into something completely different.

 

[Renegen]

The adventure game genre was never dead, you just ceased paying attention to it. Grim Fandango came out in 1998, The Longest Journey in 1999, Syberia in 2002, Broken Sword 3 in 2003, Syberia 2 in 2004, The Moment of Silence in 2004, and the rest, as betailed by CorpseZeb follows that. Maybe a small drop in quality in the early 2000s, but thats it.

But a similar arguement can be made about RPGs. There's a major difference between the style of adventure Grim Fandango is and something like Syberia. (Similar to tactical vs action RPGs). And then you have games like Broken Sword which moved into a 3rd dimension and turned into something completely different.

I don't know, most adventure games haven't changed that much or taken advantage of 3D. It`s still about clickon on stuff and talking to people. And most still use the same style of 2D gameplay of different "locations" connected to other locations.

 

[CorpseZeb]

If you look for an adventure equivalent of DA/ME RPG's, then something like Heavy Rain (of Quantic Dream fame) comes to mind. This is a design/art direction where big money likes to go.

 

[Severian Silk]

IMO the reason classic RPGs "died" is that it began to take more time to develop the engine than the game itself. Devs from an older hardware era went in up to their necks and drowned. They couldn't compete with the Quakes out there which were so tightly wrapped around their game engines that they could get away with focusing on pushing the technological envelope and changing virtually nothing else. RPG developers began to have to develop a Quake game *and* an RPG on top of that.

While the newest devs can use a pre-existing game engine and instead simply develop content for it, as you can see in Troika's case it's still hard to pull off successfully. You can make a classic RPG today if you have a small staff, but that necessitates using existing or better yet outdated tech. Otherwise, you're forcing someone on your team to do double duty as programming guru instead of focusing on developing the actual RPG.

If the classic RPG makers had stuck to the technology they were accustomed to they may have sold fewer copies but they would have stayed profitable a few years longer (ultimately dying anyway).

 

[Severian Silk]

There's also the matter of RPG devs wanting to be "artists" (momma's boys) and not have to deal with the yucky business stuff. Hence they all flock to big name publishers (daddy's money) who can "take care of it" for them. But big name publishers don't want to develop stuff based on old tech (grandpa's clothes).

If you look for an adventure equivalent of DA/ME RPG's, then something like Heavy Rain (of Quantic Dream fame) comes to mind. This is a design/art direction where big money likes to go.

Maybe with the National Endowment for the Arts funding some stuff now we'll see one or two more quality titles. :shrug: But at less than 1/2 a million dollars (five developers for one year?) you're not going to see a whole lot of successful development. And, maybe once there is a good RPG engine out there that is amenable to classic design concepts *and* can be updated easily with the hottest new bling then there will be more of a resurgence than there has been up to now.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Shit like this killed it:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011- ... rts-kinect

"Grow the audience and make it more accessible," was EA Games boss Frank Gibeau's to-the-point answer when Eurogamer asked the question.

With spiralling development costs, Gibeau explained, publishers can no longer afford to sell one million copies – the sales benchmark previously thought to indicate success.

"When you're in this business now you have to be able to get to the widest possible audience. Games are so expensive to build now that you can't have a sustainable business if you're in the million unit seller range. You've got to be multi-million units.

"You have to think about not just the core gamers but the hit buyers and the more casual buyers; having a design and a story and an interface that works across all of those segments without losing the core. It makes life interesting.

"We think it about it as the core and more. Not more, leave the core. That's a recipe for failure. You have to be smart about it. You can't dumb the game down. But at the same time you have to make it so a lot more people can play it than just core gamers."