Decline Why did the crpg decline happen?

[Nifft Batuff]

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.

This is only (partially) true for the arcade games. RPGs made for the C64 were immensely superior to the NES ports. On the NES you cannot even save the game without a specific additional hardware.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

They didn't sell. There are thousands of CRPGs running around, all with brilliant 80's box art.. and only a very small amount of people bought them. Saying CRPGs sells is like saying Onlyfans is a career path. There's maybe 1% of them successful at that point and the rest died hard. It was ironically the PS1 that brought RPGs of all kinds mainstream when they became the vehicle for FMV spectral.

In the '80s and in the '90s they did sell, at least in the PC market. The problem wasn't the genre, but the fact that consoles, in particular the PS1, had a bigger market than the PC, and that some genre did't translate well on the consoles.

Now that consoles are just PCs with a controller, and that indies that don't follow the corporate execs idiocy anymore exists, you can have successful cRPGs again, like BG3.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

The early 1990's were kind of bad for the bigger companies making RPGs, which then led to a cascade of issues ending in closure of almost all of them by 2005. This made investors reluctant to fund games in the genre especially as they were always complex and expensive relatively to other genres(if Origin couldn't make a good 3d rpg why would so nonames be able to?).
Also it's notable that there existed more profitable alternative that scratched the same itch - diablo clones.

I think that ultimately it was a business issue.

 

[Inec0rn]

Closure is the negative way to describe it, these studio's sold their companies for a fortune to big publishers to milk.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The early 1990's were kind of bad for the bigger companies making RPGs, which then led to a cascade of issues ending in closure of almost all of them by 2005. This made investors reluctant to fund games in the genre especially as they were always complex and expensive relatively to other genres(if Origin couldn't make a good 3d rpg why would so nonames be able to?).
Also it's notable that there existed more profitable alternative that scratched the same itch - diablo clones.

I think that ultimately it was a business issue.

But this wasn't a problem specific of the RPG genre. Many big PC centric publishers were in crisis during the 90s, like Sierra or LucasArt. And the more expensive games at that time were those that started to feature FMVs, not a specific RPG issue. The buzzword at the time was "multimedia".

 

[Frozen]

It's a normal cycle of becoming too big to do anything:

Small studio (good games) lead to success lead to hire more people and expand lead to even bigger success (peak) lead to corporatization lead to hire even more (incompetent) people, lead to incompetent bad management and worse games, lead to even worse games, lead to quality people left, lead to shit games lead to "I'm too big to make them, I will just publish like a pimp" cope, lead to closing the studio.

Problem of current year is that Zoomers are worthless in everything including learn to code so we don't see good new small studio replacing the old. There is no reason a small studio couldn't make something like Red Engine was and blow this old faggy outdated Frostbite and Unreal out of the market. But they don't.

 

[:Flash:]

They didn't sell. There are thousands of CRPGs running around, all with brilliant 80's box art.. and only a very small amount of people bought them. Saying CRPGs sells is like saying Onlyfans is a career path. There's maybe 1% of them successful at that point and the rest died hard. It was ironically the PS1 that brought RPGs of all kinds mainstream when they became the vehicle for FMV spectral.

In the '80s and in the '90s they did sell, at least in the PC market.

Not really.
1992/93 saw the release of many great RPGs (Ultima VII, Wizardry VII, Ultima Underworld, Lands of Lore, etc.)
Those were the bestsellers of RPGs, and none of them sold that great. Ultima VII was outsold by Ultima Underworld, which was massively outsold by Wolfenstein 3D. Now think about what was easier to copy.
Why were Ultima VIII, Lands of Lore II, etc. massively dumbed down?
I remember back then the press already declared that RPGs were dead. Bethesda was basically bankrupt after Daggerfall and proceeded to produce Darkspire and Redguard. There was a small rennaisance of RPGs at the end of the 90s (Baldur's Gate), which was at least in part because its combat gameplay was inspired by RTSs, which were very popular at the time.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

I think the decline happened because the developers think all their players are retarded, so they're adding tools for retarded people in any game:

1. Quest markers
2. Fast travel
3. Too much UI
4. Huge open worlds

Diablo, Final Fantasy VII, Baldur's Gate and Oblivion ruined everything.

Also the industrial revolution.

Wtf did Diablo 1 ruin? I could see an argument for D2 maybe but D1 is harmless.

Plenty of RPGs had to turn into isometric real-time games with tons of loot so they could compete with Diablo and its clones. Not even D&D games were safe, just look at Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights.

That's a stretch. I'm a firm believer that decline always originates from homosexuality so we must look at the earliest RPGs that were developed by homosexuals and contain homosexual content aka grooming. It seems that RPGs became increasingly more gay after Fallout 1. We can start there.

Diablo 1 ftr had zero homosexual subtext.

You can have gay sex in Ultima VII though. Makes you think.

It was possible to have gay sex even in Ultima VI. I remember how the player could talk to a male gypsy, and he was like: "Hm, I usually don't do that with other men, but you're so sweet I can't resist!"

 

[Nifft Batuff]

They didn't sell. There are thousands of CRPGs running around, all with brilliant 80's box art.. and only a very small amount of people bought them. Saying CRPGs sells is like saying Onlyfans is a career path. There's maybe 1% of them successful at that point and the rest died hard. It was ironically the PS1 that brought RPGs of all kinds mainstream when they became the vehicle for FMV spectral.

In the '80s and in the '90s they did sell, at least in the PC market.

Not really.
1992/93 saw the release of many great RPGs (Ultima VII, Wizardry VII, Ultima Underworld, Lands of Lore, etc.)
Those were the bestsellers of RPGs, and none of them sold that great. Ultima VII was outsold by Ultima Underworld, which was massively outsold by Wolfenstein 3D. Now think about what was easier to copy.
Why were Ultima VIII, Lands of Lore II, etc. massively dumbed down?
I remember back then the press already declared that RPGs were dead. Bethesda was basically bankrupt after Daggerfall and proceeded to produce Darkspire and Redguard. There was a small rennaisance of RPGs at the end of the 90s (Baldur's Gate), which was at least in part because its combat gameplay was inspired by RTSs, which were very popular at the time.

Yes, and Myst was the best selling PC game of the '90s. Even if the mantra at the time was also that adventure games don't sell. Also the RTS genre disappeared too, even if many though it was the best selling genre.

These are all mantras, often self-fulfilling prophecies, that execs and journos loved, and still love, to parrot. None of these had survived the test of the time. (by the way, apparently Bethesda was on the right track with Daggerfall, if we think at the success of Skyrim, years later).

If the food industry was piloted by the same logic of the gaming industry, we will now eat only pizza, because "pizza sells", in a world where 99% of restaurants became pizzerias.

 

[Inec0rn]

It's a normal cycle of becoming too big to do anything:

Small studio (good games) lead to success lead to hire more people and expand lead to even bigger success (peak) lead to corporatization lead to hire even more (incompetent) people, lead to incompetent bad management and worse games, lead to even worse games, lead to quality people left, lead to shit games lead to "I'm too big to make them, I will just publish like a pimp" cope, lead to closing the studio.

Problem of current year is that Zoomers are worthless in everything including learn to code so we don't see good new small studio replacing the old. There is no reason a small studio couldn't make something like Red Engine was and blow this old faggy outdated Frostbite and Unreal out of the market. But they don't.

pretty much. I find the "boomer" criticism thing ironic with zoomer's too given almost everything they've consumed from birth is poorly re-cycled Gen-X or Boomer IP (and that's all entertainment media). Now they have AI/ML to do, think and even create less :D .

 

[The Nameless One]

The day (and the following days) a lot of indie hamsters decided to "recreate" retro-istic, minimalistic excuses for games that flood all over distribution platforms didn't help for the cRPG to get better. Everyone thinks of the past when its about decline, but how much more can you do with current day tools in comparison with that past?
Think about it. Underrail was started by a single guy and even though game was mostly a pain in the ass to go through, it is by no means a poor cRPG. Quite the opposite.

Everyone started small, it's the idea that counts, and the balls (and resources) it takes to go through it all the way instead of taking shitty shortcuts or going for knock-offs. Now could perhaps be the better moment to get the cRPG on track once more, even by disregarding recent blockbusters.

 

[Beans00]

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)

All that is true, but I'm mostly talking about graphics and sound and memory. Ultima 6 got a direct port to the snes. Ultima 7 was too big because it needed like 9 floppies so it got a dumbed down release.

I had EOTB 1 on the super nintendo when I was a kid, and it supported use of the SNES mouse(which I had for mario paint).

 

[Beans00]

Halo was also dumbed down for the XBox.

A lot of people irrationally hate halo but so this will trigger people but I don't really care. The only thing dumbed down about halo was the weapon limit, which they designed the game around with consoles in mind.

FPS games were already trending towards linear design. Half life, red faction, medal of honour, shogo/blood 2 ect. Halo also had less linear levels than all of those games(it was still linear compared to doom or heretic or something).

 

[Mortmal]

You all forget about MMOs. The last great RPGs in the 2000s were Fallout 2 and Baldur's Gate 2, then pretty much nothing at all, and clearly nothing that beat them until the Kickstarter era. People simply stopped buying single-player RPGs to play MMOs like UO at first, but then EverQuest, DAOC, and the ultimate killer, WoW. Back then, I was trying all kinds of MMOs too, and single-player RPGs took a back seat. And honestly, the single-player RPGs weren’t that good. For example, Ultima 9 came out while I was still playing EverQuest. Many people in the guild bought it, and they were all so disappointed we could have opened a support group. That was the death of Ultima. Then later, the Xbox 360 era happened, and that was the time of big-budget games with realistic 3D graphics. The niche genre of RPGs became irrelevant to this.

 

[anvi]

Early gaming was for cool geeks and nobody else really knew about it or cared. In the 90s it started getting huge and making a lot of money. That's when corporations came in and bought and dismantled all the cool game dev studios. Now everything is made by evil corporate cocksuckers who learned to only make tried and tested shit that is zero risk and low effort. They also learned that they can get away with selling empty games now and making people pay for each little bit of content as DLC. They have taken over the industry and crushed the smaller competition. Now gaming is trash like music and movies and everything else that is being run by corporate shitbags.

I used to care about this a lot and still do, but they did the same to the food industry and healthcare which is a far bigger problem for everyone.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Yeah, that's complete nonsense. I don't know what Bungie said in their documentaries, but they were lying since the Microsoft purchase. They tried to claim that being an XBox exclusive had nothing to do with the Microsoft purchase and it was just because they thought the console was so cool.

Microsoft didn't buy Bungie before Halo 1 you idiot. They made Halo based on Quake fundamentals. They realized an FPS was more fun with vehicles and leaned on the classics. Multiplayer is literally just Quake with Halo mechanics and they openly say this in many videos.

You all forget about MMOs. The last great RPGs in the 2000s were Fallout 2 and Baldur's Gate 2, then pretty much nothing at all, and clearly nothing that beat them until the Kickstarter era. People simply stopped buying single-player RPGs to play MMOs like UO at first, but then EverQuest, DAOC, and the ultimate killer, WoW. Back then, I was trying all kinds of MMOs too, and single-player RPGs took a back seat. And honestly, the single-player RPGs weren’t that good. For example, Ultima 9 came out while I was still playing EverQuest. Many people in the guild bought it, and they were all so disappointed we could have opened a support group. That was the death of Ultima. Then later, the Xbox 360 era happened, and that was the time of big-budget games with realistic 3D graphics. The niche genre of RPGs became irrelevant to this.

MMOs did replace the single player open world RPG style. WOW did a real number on PC RPGs especially.

Early gaming was for cool geeks and nobody else really knew about it or cared.

No, no it wasn't. There's stories of coin shortages because arcades were swallowing so many back in the day. Gaming has never been a geek only thing. It's always been an across the spectrum thing. It's weird people want to erase history to seem less normal and yet they're consuming hyper standardized media made for a mass audience.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

But this wasn't a problem specific of the RPG genre. Many big PC centric publishers were in crisis during the 90s, like Sierra or LucasArt. And the more expensive games at that time were those that started to feature FMVs, not a specific RPG issue. The buzzword at the time was "multimedia".

Yes of course, there's also the obvious elephant in the room of Doom - a game that was developed quicker, cheaper and had much simpler formula and sold more than most RPGs.
The thing is that despite that the market was still there, companies like sirtek just fumbled and bumbled until it was too late. Interplay was just as poorly managed and its problem were massive debts it had collected over the 90's, Fargo later noted in some interview that if it wasn't for them he probably could've just turned Interplay into the company managing old IPs and Black Isle, the RPG developer and that would still be somewhat commercially viable of a company and seeing from the existence of Obsidian, it was possible.
Some companies like NWC were, I believe, just unlucky. In any other situation, 3do giving them money would be a great deal, but 3do was also trying to break into console market and that decision is what why NWC couldn't give the later M&M titles the polish they deserved. That were just some of them though. The mismanagement of others made the investors sceptical about viability of the genre and so it died out.

Now there were some "structural" issues like PC section in retail getting smaller and smaller and digital distribution being unpopular, but the biggest point is that RPG developers and publishers "wasted" the mid 1990's and the consequences of these disasters led them into a situation where even when commercially viable formula was discovered, all revenue just went to pay off some loans that allowed them to get loans to make the next game pay off different loans and they couldn't get out of downward spiral.

 

[Saldrone]

From what i've read about this and other threads, why is linear level design a bad thing? Genuine question.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

From what i've read about this and other threads, why is linear level design a bad thing? Genuine question.

1. Reduces replayability
2. Makes your choices meaningless
3. Static world
4. No exploration
5. Less side content
6. No creativity in problem solving

 

[anvi]

Early gaming was for cool geeks and nobody else really knew about it or cared.

No, no it wasn't. There's stories of coin shortages because arcades were swallowing so many back in the day. Gaming has never been a geek only thing. It's always been an across the spectrum thing. It's weird people want to erase history to seem less normal and yet they're consuming hyper standardized media made for a mass audience.

Arcades were different, that was like a social thing. I think consoles are different too, the NES and SNES were mainstream and popular and not very geeky. And also aimed at kids and was wholesome and nice. Then later the PS1 was a bit cool, used by a lot of club scene people who would come home still coked up and play Ridge Racer or whatever. I am thinking more about computer gaming, PC, Amiga, etc. Hardly anyone even owned a computer back then, if a kid had access to one it was because they had a parent who needed one for work and it was rare. PC gaming was far above consoles and arcades in terms of intelligence. It was full of adventure games and flight sims and simcity, populous, early cRPGs. RPG players had a reputation for being disgusting nerds with yellow fingernails. It was only partly true. I think it got cooler in the 90s with games like Xwing and Syndicate etc. A lot of console gamers who were interested in playing something real, started asking questions about games like that. And PCs went from being a beige metal industrial box to nice looking and were being sold on TV. I would still say it was geeky but it was good geeky. The NES and SNES were mainstream but I don't think gaming went huge until Xbox era.

And that's when geeks were ethnically cleansed from gaming and now it's all made by corporate shitbags and their DEI hires.

 

[Hell Swarm]

From what i've read about this and other threads, why is linear level design a bad thing? Genuine question.

1. Reduces replayability
2. Makes your choices meaningless
3. Static world
4. No exploration
5. Less side content
6. No creativity in problem solving

1. No it doesn't. I can replay Dark souls many ways with different weapons.
2. No it doesn't. Even games with fixed characters can be played many different ways. What if I play DMC5 but I only use one weapon on Dante and use different devil breakers? Many choices there.
3. Linear doesn't mean static. There are plenty of ways to make a linear game dynamic. Most roguelikes are linear and very very dynamic.
4. So Doom doesn't have secret areas to find? Linear game but they're there.
5. Possibly but the quality of most side content is worthless. And you still have a lot of side content in bioshock inspired shooters or optional side areas.
6. Couldn't be more wrong. Plenty of linear games give you tools and let you figure it out. Halo is unironically probably the most creative sandbox experience in any game ever. Havoc physics's engine allowed so many dumb things you can't do in most open world games. You can throw a grenade at a cone, have the cone launch and kill someone when it hits them. Are you going to do it often? No. But a lot of linear games with good phsyics engines allow a lot of solutions.

Early gaming was for cool geeks and nobody else really knew about it or cared.

No, no it wasn't. There's stories of coin shortages because arcades were swallowing so many back in the day. Gaming has never been a geek only thing. It's always been an across the spectrum thing. It's weird people want to erase history to seem less normal and yet they're consuming hyper standardized media made for a mass audience.

Arcades were different, that was like a social thing. I think consoles are different too, the NES and SNES were mainstream and popular and not very geeky. And also aimed at kids and was wholesome and nice. Then later the PS1 was a bit cool, used by a lot of club scene people who would come home still coked up and play Ride Racer or whatever. I am thinking more about computer gaming, PC, Amiga, etc. Hardly anyone even owned a computer back then, if a kid had access to one it was because they had a parent who needed one for work and it was rare. PC gaming was far above consoles and arcades in terms of intelligence. It was full of adventure games and flight sims and simcity, populous, early cRPGs. RPG players had a reputation for being disgusting nerds with yellow fingernails. It was only partly true. I think it got cooler in the 90s with games like Xwing and Syndicate etc. A lot of console gamers who were interested in playing something real, started asking questions about games like that. And PCs went from being a beige metal industrial box to nice looking and were being sold on TV. I would still say it was geeky but it was good geeky. The NES and SNES were mainstream but I don't think gaming went huge until Xbox era.

And that's when geeks were ethnically cleansed from gaming and now it's all made by corporate shitbags and their DEI hires.

The C64 sold 12 million machines in the UK alone that we know of. PC as in Pentiums, DOS and windows were rare until the late 90s but micro computers were bigger than consoles in Europe. Almost everyone had a C64 or an Amiga.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Progress in (gaming) hardware made abstraction in favor of larping realism obsolete.

 

[Radiane]

Progress in (gaming) hardware made abstraction in favor of larping realism obsolete.

Basically yes, but it isn't really about "larping", older games were designed with more care because the designers had to work with more limited ressources and also needed to make sure their game was in a good shape when shipping (bugfree and all)

Technology advanced too fast and designers were lured into getting too lazy by that ("let's draw some colorful 3d sprites in 5 minutes and add shitty animations, customers will surely find it much more appealing than any pixel graphic and it will also be much less work for us, ahaha")

Also, many copycat developers (more or less everyone copies from each another, so that alone isn't really a bad thing) just do not understand the gist of what makes some games great in the first place, and still try to build upon the great games, because they are full of greed and want to make some quick cash or some similar retarted reason, and in the end, shit out some inferior product.

 

[mondblut]

From what i've read about this and other threads, why is linear level design a bad thing? Genuine question.

Because some dumbfuck high on his farts doesn't get to decide where my character/party wants to go and what to do. Gimme a world and systems to play with, then kindly fuck off.

 

[anvi]

From what i've read about this and other threads, why is linear level design a bad thing? Genuine question.

1. Reduces replayability
2. Makes your choices meaningless
3. Static world
4. No exploration
5. Less side content
6. No creativity in problem solving

1. No it doesn't. I can replay Dark souls many ways with different weapons.
2. No it doesn't. Even games with fixed characters can be played many different ways. What if I play DMC5 but I only use one weapon on Dante and use different devil breakers? Many choices there.
3. Linear doesn't mean static. There are plenty of ways to make a linear game dynamic. Most roguelikes are linear and very very dynamic.
4. So Doom doesn't have secret areas to find? Linear game but they're there.
5. Possibly but the quality of most side content is worthless. And you still have a lot of side content in bioshock inspired shooters or optional side areas.
6. Couldn't be more wrong. Plenty of linear games give you tools and let you figure it out. Halo is unironically probably the most creative sandbox experience in any game ever. Havoc physics's engine allowed so many dumb things you can't do in most open world games. You can throw a grenade at a cone, have the cone launch and kill someone when it hits them. Are you going to do it often? No. But a lot of linear games with good phsyics engines allow a lot of solutions.

Early gaming was for cool geeks and nobody else really knew about it or cared.

No, no it wasn't. There's stories of coin shortages because arcades were swallowing so many back in the day. Gaming has never been a geek only thing. It's always been an across the spectrum thing. It's weird people want to erase history to seem less normal and yet they're consuming hyper standardized media made for a mass audience.

Arcades were different, that was like a social thing. I think consoles are different too, the NES and SNES were mainstream and popular and not very geeky. And also aimed at kids and was wholesome and nice. Then later the PS1 was a bit cool, used by a lot of club scene people who would come home still coked up and play Ride Racer or whatever. I am thinking more about computer gaming, PC, Amiga, etc. Hardly anyone even owned a computer back then, if a kid had access to one it was because they had a parent who needed one for work and it was rare. PC gaming was far above consoles and arcades in terms of intelligence. It was full of adventure games and flight sims and simcity, populous, early cRPGs. RPG players had a reputation for being disgusting nerds with yellow fingernails. It was only partly true. I think it got cooler in the 90s with games like Xwing and Syndicate etc. A lot of console gamers who were interested in playing something real, started asking questions about games like that. And PCs went from being a beige metal industrial box to nice looking and were being sold on TV. I would still say it was geeky but it was good geeky. The NES and SNES were mainstream but I don't think gaming went huge until Xbox era.

And that's when geeks were ethnically cleansed from gaming and now it's all made by corporate shitbags and their DEI hires.

The C64 sold 12 million machines in the UK alone that we know of. PC as in Pentiums, DOS and windows were rare until the late 90s but micro computers were bigger than consoles in Europe. Almost everyone had a C64 or an Amiga.

That's a hell of a lot considering the population was only 60m or whatever. I get it though computers were new and exciting and that was affordable. I had the Sinclair Spectrum which I loved. Although a few years later I played some games on a PC that were amazing and I was desperate for one after that. I remember seeing Amiga 500 for sale in a magazine and asked my parents if I could have one for Christmas. But it was 2 grand! In the end we got an old PC that made my life.