Shin
Cipher
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2015
- Messages
- 684
That is something that is the most frustrating to me, now that you mention it. My question is "who says then can be? And on what authority?" Call me elitist, but I don't believe just anyone can validly alter meanings or classifications, I don't care how many other people do it with them. I think too much credence is given to what any random group of people thinks about all this. The term RPG isn't meaningless just because they have diluted it to mean whatever it is they want it to. Basically, if someone wants to alter something that was established well before they came along, the "burden of proof" is on them. Plus, Dark Souls is obviously an ARPG, a sub-genre that has been around since the early 80s. The first pioneers said "lets take the core play mechanic of arcade hack and slash games and add stats, level ups, and equips/lets turn this RPG into an action game." If the plebs don't even understand that, then we can safely ignore their opinion on the topic of classification because they literally don't know what they are talking about.
I think we should dismiss the opinions of the masses ('plebs') by the fact that they don't care. It's like a deaf person saying that Chopin is superior to Vivaldi, he might be right, but his opinion isn't valid once people who can actually hear the fucking music talk about it. That being said, I don't fully agree with your sentiment that once a term is coined, it can't be changed anymore. Words change, language changes and there's probably nothing we can do (even collectively) to 'protect' the term RPG. Most of the (other) retards outside this forum usually get into the 'BUT ITS IN THE WORDS!' argument of 'YOU JUST HAF TO PLAY A ROLE' which is beyond retardation imho, it's being as stupid as a brick.
But yeah, action RPG's are a legitimate genre, it's just that 'they' should name it something else as people ('plebs') get confused with 'real' RPG's. But again, this discussion is 'what is art' all over again.