Decline Why did the crpg decline happen?

[ColossusCimmerian]

Reading old post, from my little knowledge about the subject. I'll say:

• Bugthesda the company.
• Bugthesda and the whole situation with Fallout and interplay.
• Bethesda with their 3D first-person adventure games (TES)
• Blizzard with Diablo and World of Warcraft.
• Console and console "RPGs"

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Popularization leads to casualization.

 

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

Oblivion

 

[Contagium]

It's not just CRPG's, the entire world has been in a downward spiral for the last couple decades...and I mean everything. Games, music, movies, the economy, world affairs, etc.

 

[Lemming42]

It was almost entirely due to the rapid rise of consoles. Pretty much every genre was affected, except ones that were virtually entirely PC-only like grand strategy. It's partly because consoles were total shit in the 2000s but far more than that it's because publishers came to believe that the best way to make cash was to make games mindless and basic, under the erroneous belief that this was the key to mass appeal - basically, they thought console gamers were fucking stupid and would only take to simplistic, straightforward games.

It's largely been rectified from the mid-2010s onward for a few reasons:
- The Kickstarter boom freed developers from having to come up with something with mass-market appeal; this era has more or less ended but it's what gave us the first round of the so-called "cRPG renaissance"

- Console gaming caught up with PC gaming in terms of allowing relatively complex actions (though fuck knows how people tolerate playing stuff like Dragon Age or BG3 with a controller), and technical advancements in consoles meant that being multi-platform no longer dragged PC titles down

- Developers and publishers seem to be increasingly realising that you don't actually have to dumb things down to achieve mass appeal, and that anyone with an IQ above 10 can play pretty much any game as long as the interface isn't a big pile of shit and the mechanics aren't arbitrarily obscured

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Developers and publishers seem to be increasingly realising that you don't actually have to dumb things down to achieve mass appeal, and that anyone with an IQ above 10 can play pretty much any game as long as the interface isn't a big pile of shit and the mechanics aren't arbitrarily obscured

Can they? Perhaps. Will they? Eh. BG3 was a vidya blockbuster and people go for blockbusters due to the sheer spectacle of it. And to the extent that it being a proper CRPG contributed to its success, then it was more of a novelty item for those casuals that heard about TTRPGs, D&D & co. from pop culture and wanted to try out the video game equivalent out of curiosity (and convenience when compared to trying out a TTRPG). But once they got to experience that, they'll probably veer towards casualized stuff with RPG elements rather than seeking out other proper CRPGs for their mechanical depth.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Also:

Every major CRPG force being run by people making bad business decisions (Origin, Sir-Tech, Interplay, SSI, New World Computing).

Even Bethesda only survived thanks to the success of Morrowind, which they went all-in for.

 

[Lemming42]

Can they? Perhaps. Will they? Eh. BG3 was a vidya blockbuster and people go for blockbusters due to the sheer spectacle of it. And to the extent that it being a proper CRPG contributed to its success, then it was more of a novelty item for those casuals that heard about TTRPGs, D&D & co. from pop culture and wanted to try out the video game equivalent out of curiosity (and convenience when compared to trying out a TTRPG). But once they got to experience that, they'll probably veer towards casualized stuff with RPG elements rather than seeking out other proper CRPGs for their mechanical depth.

Just the fact that a turn-based cRPG became a blockbuster and one of the biggest games of the year punches holes through the idea that publishers seemed to have circa 2005 that the only way to have a popular game was to have it be extremely mechanically simple and full of novelty stuff like QTEs.

It's not just BG3 of course; there's a lot of games over the last 15~ years that have built us toward the situation we're in today where devs and publishers are far more willing to take risks. Dark Souls' ludicrous success punctured the idea that gamers would get annoyed at difficulty, rather than embrace it. nu-XCOM proved that tactical turn-based combat, considered old-fashioned and inacessible for many years, was actually incredibly popular. Indie hits like Slay the Spire have proven you can gamble on relatively novel/niche ideas and attain huge popularity too, which wasn't something most publishers/devs believed 20 years ago.

On top of that of course, the market is just so diverse and vast at this point that anyone can make pretty much anything and distribute it on GoG or Steam, and word of mouth alone is often enough to generate enough profit for the devs to make more - Iron Tower Studios being an obvious case, as well as stuff like DUSK which seemed to come out of nowhere.

 

[Beans00]

It was almost entirely due to the rapid rise of consoles.

- Console gaming caught up with PC gaming

I'm pretty PC master race myself. That being said do people not remember the NES/SMS being way better than most 80s computers? Or the snes/genesis being better than most late 80s early 90s pcs?
Compare an NES to a C64, or zx spectrum. There's no competition.

If you compare success to market size, the NES moving 60 million units in 1985-90 is way more culturally impactful than the ps1/ps2 moving 100/150mill in the early 00s.

dos/ibm clone pcs got way better in the early-mid 90s.


My opinion, decline in game complexity has nothing to do with hardware. Devs just because lazy, and it's less work to make a shitty linear game than to design big sprawling levels.

Deus ex 1 was on the ps2. So I don't buy for a moment that IW was dumbed down because of the xbox. It was dumbed down because they didn't have the talent for lightning to strike twice, and its easier to make tiny shitty levels.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

On top of that of course, the market is just so diverse and vast at this point that anyone can make pretty much anything and distribute it on GoG or Steam, and word of mouth alone is often enough to generate enough profit for the devs to make more - Iron Tower Studios being an obvious case, as well as stuff like DUSK which seemed to come out of nowhere.

I think that we'll keep getting a decent amount of mainly AA stuff, as we already have for quite a while. I just doubt that we'll get many new AAA ones on the level of BG3. Publishers might be more openminded in seizing new opportunities depending on the level of investment required of them, but when it comes to investing a lot of money for AAA stuff (esp. with publicly traded companies) they'd much rather replicate a moderate success with 'ARPGs' and the like rather than gambling on more 'specialized' stuff.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Millennials.

Seriously though, the market became absolute idiots. People who think role-playing means LARPing. Furfags, anime enjoyers, romance option demanders, Resetera posters and Horse Armor DLC buyers.

Developers deliver what the market wants, and the market wants shit.

 

[mondblut]

Computer gaming stopping being a hobby for nerds, by nerds.

In other words, when Windows 95 came around and allowed retards to use computers.

 

[Zarniwoop]

basically, they thought console gamers were fucking stupid and would only take to simplistic, straightforward games.

They're 100% right tho.

 

[Jaesun]

The focus on money and profits and not just focusing on good RPG mechanics for a game.

 

[Lemming42]

I'm pretty PC master race myself. That being said do people not remember the NES/SMS being way better than most 80s computers? Or the snes/genesis being better than most late 80s early 90s pcs?
Compare an NES to a C64, or zx spectrum. There's no competition.

True but you might argue that PCs always allowed for more complexity in gameplay just due to the controls. A lot of early ports of PC games to consoles (like the Japanese Pool of Radiance NES port) are just kind of weird and have to change things around and compromise at times to make the game playable on a controller that has nothing but a D pad, two buttons, and Start/Select. Obviously text parsers were never really possible/convenient on console, and later, mouse-based interfaces gave PC games a lot more options than you could get with a controller. By the early 90s you can really see the difference in what sorts of games are possible on each platform.

I'm not a big fan of many 1980s PC games but of the ones I do like, like Wasteland and Starflight* and Dungeon Master, I can't imagine them really working on consoles. They could be ported and be technically playable but it'd probably just be kind of annoying with an NES controller. Although apparently, people nowadays are happily playing shit like Stellaris with a controller, so maybe I'm just shit with controllers.

*which did get a console port!

 

[Morality Games]

Reading old post, from my little knowledge about the subject. I'll say:

• Bugthesda the company.
• Bugthesda and the whole situation with Fallout and interplay.
• Bethesda with their 3D first-person adventure games (TES)
• Blizzard with Diablo and World of Warcraft.
• Console and console "RPGs"

- cRPGs require a lot of time and resources to develop (although some companies seem to be moving the needle on this issue, I would say it's still probably true)

- they require a lot of effort and attention to play and have low completion lates (not necessarily an issue, but it often is)

- they don't have multiplayer so word of mouth is limited

- complicated systems and gameplay ensure they aren't pick up and play affairs like say Team Fortress

From a marketing POV there's just a lot to be said against them. It's no surprise that co-op became a reoccurring theme with games like SWTOR and that the eventual 'saviors' of the cRPG Larian Studios led a revolution in co-op in cRPGs by trying to make them play more like a tabletop RPG.

It's also no surprise Bethesda was as successful as it was during the Dark Ages, as their "hiking sim" approach overcame the effort-attention and complicated systems-gameplay barriers.

Not that I have an issue with that per se. That games are enjoyable to play will always be the single most important factor of consideration for me and sometimes a low entry barriers are a way to achieve that. It's only when there is nothing *except* games that have a low entry barriers that it starts becoming a problem.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Because the zeitgeist of the '00s was that classic RPGs (insert here also any of your preferred game genre from the '90s) don't sell. History scholars still debates on why this irrational belief came to life in these years.

Also Blizzard and Bioware, by corrupting the nature of RPGs, are two of the prominent enablers of this belief.

I don't consider Bethesda a significant cause of the decline because their games, in their goods and bads, are still unique, there are no skyrim-likes around, the Ubisoft and Rockstar openworlds are completely different beasts.

 

[Daemongar]

Diablo

 

[Inec0rn]

Probably end of 2000's. Publishers aren't stupid and have good decades make record profits. They very much know how to hit minimum tolerated for the maximum price. I used to care about them, but it's the retard consumers spending money with them that are the real culprit. Gamers are weak consumers that can't help buy into marketing hype, buy DLC, buy season pass, buy forced online SP games, spend billions on MTX, pay for $ubscription services, continue buying products from predatory publishers regardless of what they do.

Right now though AAA is finally looking shaky (although a lot of smart execs sold to MS at the perfect time), I think Ubisoft and possibly Square may chapter 11 soon, EA's is still making bank but pretty much only with copy-paste EA sport's IP at this point. Popcorn prepped.

Shoutout to Indy dev's still making half decent games though in 2024.

 

[Necrensha]

1- CRPGs were never all that popular regardless of how many there were
2- Money. Creating games of more popular genres=more money
3- Console population started to massively surpass PC gaming, all attention shifted towards them
4- CRPGs are hard to make, and they get exponentially harder the more technological demands increase and most people are allergic to low quality graphics if you haven't noticed
5- Voice acting. Most people will NOT play a game where characters don't have a voice, and CRPGs have extreme amounts of characters which means a lot of money invested into voices.
6- Many CEOs became completely convinced that casuals cannot play anything more complicated than Animal Crossing and started abandoning all genres that fit this theory, like RTS, turn-based tactics, etc.
7- Controls. Consoles have limited buttons and ways of doing things, and you know the rest.

 

[Krivol]

There is no simple moment when decline has happened. But the symbolic date - for me - was Oblivion.

 

[anonagon]

My opinion, decline in game complexity has nothing to do with hardware. Devs just because lazy, and it's less work to make a shitty linear game than to design big sprawling levels.

Deus ex 1 was on the ps2. So I don't buy for a moment that IW was dumbed down because of the xbox. It was dumbed down because they didn't have the talent for lightning to strike twice, and its easier to make tiny shitty levels.

I don't think hardware is entirely out of the equation. Particularly in the seventh console gen, when multi-platform releases became widely expected, games were held back by the consoles, particularly the 360, as the 360 still used DVDs and installing games to the console was not a standard. Oblivion had a ton of cut content, particularly a lot of voiced dialog, as that takes up a lot of space, and its not like they left it in for the PC players.

But I do think the main culprit is the cultural/market differences between PCs and consoles, with technical restrictions and developer incompetence as secondary factors. PC games (especially cRPGs, strategy games, and sims) were developed by and for computer-literate nerds, while console games, particularly after the video game crash and the reestablishment of the market with the NES, were designed as family/kids entertainment. The markets began to converge in the late '90s and into the '00s, so one approach had to win out.

 

[Maxie]

Reading old post, from my little knowledge about the subject. I'll say:

• Bugthesda the company.
• Bugthesda and the whole situation with Fallout and interplay.
• Bethesda with their 3D first-person adventure games (TES)
• Blizzard with Diablo and World of Warcraft.
• Console and console "RPGs"

Avellone ruined it with storyfaggotry

 

[almondblight]

Deus ex 1 was on the ps2. So I don't buy for a moment that IW was dumbed down because of the xbox.

The Deus Ex PS2 port pretty much proves that IW was dumbed down for consoles. The port happened two years after Deus Ex's release, and they still had to dumb down a lot of the game. See here:

The game mostly consists of the same dialogue and area layouts as the PC version aside from some minor changes: e.g. the layout of Liberty Island. This was due to the fact that the PS2 version had smaller sectioned maps compared to the PC counterpart. The game also uses higher-resolution character models with lower-resolution textures. Generally, the game runs more poorly than the PC version, especially during high octane fights.

The controls were entirely retooled to work with the limited amount of buttons of the PS2 controller, however, the game is compatible with a USB mouse and keyboard, with controls very similar to the original PC release.

Some gameplay elements were simplified. For example, instead of taking damage separately for each limb, JC only has a singular giant health bar, akin to Invisible War. The player is also able to turn on auto-aim in the options menu, and can only use one augmentation at a time and must switch augmentations using the augs menu.

Halo was also dumbed down for the XBox.

 

[Fedora Master]

they thought console gamers were fucking stupid and would only take to simplistic, straightforward games.

They are.