Why do modern RPGs have 0% soul?

[Dorateen]

All new games: look the same, play the same, tell the same story.

gold box

Yes, we should have more Gold Box games, which demonstrated great variety across the different series. Adding new features, new mechanics based on setting (the Dragonlance trilogy, for example) and even the two sci-fi games. Wonderful template to build upon.

 

[Falksi]

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Or in Bioware's case, too many cocks.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I think the problem is so multi-dimensional, that somebody would have to write a PhD thesis on it to cover all the problems. Not something we can tackle here.

There is the inevitability of a cultural decline in an unsupervised capitalist system in a unipolar world that doesn't have anyone to compete with. There is the fact that only real gamer nerds used to go into gamedev. There is the fact that gamedev companies are larger than they were in the 90s, and with size comes sluggishness. There's been a change in work culture, a decline in T in the general population, the new generation is more pampered and less ambitious, there is less freedom in creativity due to the SJW era, and more and more and more factors to create this era of sterile entertainment that doesn't satisfy people who are used to the better product. Note that zoomers are perfectly satisfied with modern product, so there's very little motivation to change anything, which aggravates the situation.

We could sit here discussing it until we were blue in the face. We have to get our shit together and make good games instead. I can't do it, I've lost my eye of the tiger a long time ago.

 

[Skinwalker]

Because they are made for ADHD twitch retards who also have no soul.

 

[behold_a_man]

Because they are made for ADHD twitch retards who also have no soul.

Not the exact opposite? Older games are usually faster, so I'd expect them to cater to more impulsive folk.

 

[Lyric Suite]

People in general in the modern world have very superficial souls, which seems to be affecting art across the board.

It's not just gaming that sucks. When was the last time you saw a great novel being published? I mean truly great. Same with music, or movies.

Talent hasn't disappeared since it's not like human beings have literally devolved in a physical sense. It's the spirit that has degrated.

 

[Gregz]

All new games: look the same, play the same, tell the same story. Devs betray any idea of innovation after first 3 anonymous Steam complaints. This is Industry wide and exceptions are very rare

State of RPG and video games craftsmanship is below pathetic, in 2023. ESPECIALLY! in the West Games from 5 years, let alone 20 years ago, look like art from lost high-tech civilization

Let's discuss what are the reasons why Pillars of Eternity will never be what Baldur's Gate was. Why with more money, more manpower, 10x better technology and 10x more time, modern Game Devs can't make anything worth remembering

You know why.

This hobby has been infiltrated and destroyed by so-called 'woke' cultural marxism. Any kind of creative or artistic spirit has been strangled, suffocated, and crushed out of the AAA space.

 

[Lord_Potato]

This hobby has been infiltrated and destroyed by so-called 'woke' cultural marxism. Any kind of creative or artistic spirit has been strangled, suffocated, and crushed out of the AAA space.

Yawn.

Cry some more while I play good AA and indies that appear almost every year.

 

[Tyranicon]

Modern AAA games are profit vehicles from faceless corpo yesmen and incompetents.

There's still plenty of soul in AA and indie. I recently played Suzerain, a political CYOA/RPG that is clearly someone's passion project and was made with love. Same goes for games like Caves of Lore, Vargus, etc.

 

[NecroLord]

- Lack of creativity and desire to innovate. Devs and designers nowadays tend to not watch old movies or read old books on various subjects and mythologies to draw inspiration from.
- An overbloated, rotten, soulless industry whose only goal is to produce content for consooomers and to make big money. The marriage between games and movies (see the various "celebs" being invited at E3 and other shows) has been very damaging to videogaming.
- Back in the day, games were made by nerds for nerds, ones who could appreciate the qualities of the game they were playing and could interact with its makers. Now they must go through the process of "w0ke purification", they must come out as clean, or risk cancellation and public outrage. No longer can you tackle mature topics without having some danger hair trannoid nigger shout at you through his Twitter account and accuse you of racism because you didn't include one trillion blak brothers in your medieval Europe simulator...

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

It's several factors:

1. The combination of games becoming a LOT more expensive to develop (3D graphics with associated increase in world detail, full audio and voice-overs, localization of voice-overs and text into myriad of languages, physics, etc) with gaming audience's transformation into the mainstream. If games are a lot more expensive to make, you now need somebody to finance them, that somebody generally being the large business companies we know as publishers. Publishers exist to make money for their stakeholders and executives, not make fun games. So if the target audience is the average person now (compared to some nerd 20-30 years ago), the best way to make more money is to make McDonalds instead of high end Chef dishes.

An interesting thought to ponder along these lines is if eventually there will be game development studios who produce connoisseur games for the monocled at exorbitant prices (similar to pricey restaurants). But of course the issues of piracy and software would make this challenging to execute in practice. Then again, if someone is paying $10,000k for a game or whatever it ends up being, perhaps they can afford some exotic forms of anti-piracy. Cue Mission Impossible theme: This DVD will self-detonate in 10... 9... 8...

2. On top of issue 1, the woke insanity of the last 5-10 years has also contributed to soullessness. Games are hard enough to make when you just focus on fun gameplay, writing, etc. Now throw in the need to make them politically correct, ensure every single group is properly represented, etc, etc, and you have the formula to kill art.

3. We gamers are also probably to blame to some degree. A lot of "monocled" gamers pirate games or buy them on massive Steam/Gog/Epic sales. In a way, it's what intelligence would tell us to do, after all, why spend more when you can spend less. Meanwhile, all the morons out there who play Call of Duty and Ubisoft games and Fortnite are buying games for $70 on day one. So which games are being incentivized to be made?

With all of that said, as others have mentioned above, I do think it's not entirely hopeless. Games with soul are being made, in most cases either by smaller companies (indies or small studios) or in some countries where art still plays a role and it's not all just about business (e.g. Japan, Czech Republic, Poland). Hell, occasionally even in North America.

 

[Desiderius]

Weed

 

[Gahbreeil]

OP, you do understand people age and leave the industry?

 

[Great Deceiver]

women & faggotry

 

[Supermedo]

Because you only remember the good games and forget the shit one, we all remember good classic crpg, but of you went to any game database website and filter by date like from 90s to early 2000s you will find tons of RPGs you never heard about it and can't buy it anywhere or even download it because they were bad and nobody cares about it.

This is what rolling a critical failure persuasion looks like. You're a 2013 account, so I can't imagine you're actually young/ignorant enough to believe this. Anyone who's been gaming since the 90s has witnessed the decline themselves, and you can't just handwave that away.

Yeah I noticed a decline where there was no cRPG games were made and everything was console oriented action game with lite RPG elements, that doesn't change the fact that there are many great cRPGs being made by OwlCat, Larian, Obsidian and others, and they don't have to be exactly like the top 5 classics to be good. They have their own strengths and weaknesses and definitely aren't worse than average cRPG of old era.

I'm not trying to handwave the decline but saying that current cRPGs aren't bad, I enjoyed playing ATOM and underrails, which reminded me of the original fallout games. They are not perfect, but they are very fun and I rather have these cRPGs than nothing at all.

 

[Pirate Ronin]

As someone 'on the other side' - (I'm trying to make a SCP rpg) - you have to want to play the game you are making.

No desire, no soul!

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Design by committee and outsourcing to pajeets

 

[Humanophage]

 

[gurugeorge]

All new games: look the same, play the same, tell the same story. Devs betray any idea of innovation after first 3 anonymous Steam complaints. This is Industry wide and exceptions are very rare

State of RPG and video games craftsmanship is below pathetic, in 2023. ESPECIALLY! in the West Games from 5 years, let alone 20 years ago, look like art from lost high-tech civilization

Let's discuss what are the reasons why Pillars of Eternity will never be what Baldur's Gate was. Why with more money, more manpower, 10x better technology and 10x more time, modern Game Devs can't make anything worth remembering

There are modern RPGs?

(j/k, couldn't resist )

 

[9ted6]

Far more sophisticated dev tools make it easier to make games with less passion and effort.

Pursuit of profits at all costs.

Pandering to woke politics and analyzing all content through its lens.

And becoming more cynical with age. Skyrim generation complained it lacked soul compared to Oblivion. Oblivion lacked soul to Morrowind. Morrowind lacked soul to Daggerfall. Daggerfall lacked soul to older DOS CRPGs. It'll always happen.

 

[Raghar]

All new games: look the same, play the same, tell the same story. Devs betray any idea of innovation after first 3 anonymous Steam complaints. This is Industry wide and exceptions are very rare

State of RPG and video games craftsmanship is below pathetic, in 2023. ESPECIALLY! in the West Games from 5 years, let alone 20 years ago, look like art from lost high-tech civilization

Let's discuss what are the reasons why Pillars of Eternity will never be what Baldur's Gate was. Why with more money, more manpower, 10x better technology and 10x more time, modern Game Devs can't make anything worth remembering

ELEX was nice.

But I blame commercialism. The moment companies are thinking they have RIGHT TO earn money. The moment theirs artistic ability drops like stone. On old era, piracy was an indirect competitor. Steam was refusing to sell crap. Developers have self esteem and wanted theirs games to be still played after copyright expiration.

Imagine there wouldn't be barriers against commercialism in movies. We would see: porn, porn, porn. Instead we saw Antonio and Cleopatra. We saw decent movies in 1970-1980. And nowadays, there is no free competition there is no artistic pressure, there is just a propaganda demand for showing movies that mixes brown black yellow. And we see crap.

Obviously when games are becoming more and more about how to make money, developers like CA would release the least effort stuff. Zero creativity, zero inventivenes, just rehash of old. And then what would happen? 75 000 copies sold... Well you got your 4.5 millions or so. But Was it worthy? Is it enough to run over bloated team?

Current developers are too creatively bankrupt, they have too high salary expectations, and a lot of them are working in too large teams.

 

[Doctor Gong]

Unless you pulling a Spiderweb, you have to invest a fair bit of money to make a modern game. If you investing that type of money, it a lot harder to take risks to try a new idea that may or may not work. This gets to be a bigger problem as you go higher up on the budget and the games have to be more "Tentpole" to sell enough copies to stay operational.

The other thing is that we forget all the complete trash that came out years ago since those games (like the masses of forgettable shareware) are forgotten, many times not even uploaded to the internet to be preserved.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Soulful games are generally created by a small development team (in terms of design, programming, and graphics), as in this list the Codex generated a few years ago:

1 Person
Akalabeth (1980), Ultima (1981), Ultima II (1982), Ultima III: Exodus (1983): Richard Garriott
Missile Command (1980): Dave Theurer
River Raid (1982): Carol Shaw
Alley Cat (1983): Bill Williams
The Lords of Midnight (1984): Mike Singleton
Tetris (1985): Alexei Pazhitnov
Doomdark's Revenge (1985): Mike Singleton
The Faery Tale Adventure (1986): David Joiner (including the music!)
SimCity (1989): Will Wright
Prince of Persia (1989): Jordan Mechner
Captive (1990): Antony Crowther
Another World (1991): Eric Chahi
Nahlakh (1994): Tom Proudfoot
ADOM (1994): Thomas Biskup
Papers, Please (2013): Lucas Pope
Paper Sorcerer (2013): Jesse Gallagher
NEO Scavenger (2014): Daniel Fedor
Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar (2017): Cleveland Blakemore
Return of the Obra Dinn (2018): Lucas Pope

2 People
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981): Andy Greenberg & Robert Woodhead
Galaga (1981): Shigeru Yokoyama & Toru Ogawa
Elite (1984): Ian Bell & David Braben
Boulder Dash (1984): Peter Liepa & Christopher Gray
Emerald Mine (1987): Klaus Heinz & Volker Wertich
Space Quest II (1987): Mark Crowe & Scott Murphy
Dark Heart of Uukrul (1989): Ian Boswell & Martin Buis
Exile (1995): Jeff Vogel & Andrew Hunter
Natuk (1999): Tom Proudfoot & Dave Gerry
Dwarf Fortress (2006): Zach Adams & Tarn Adams
Super Meat Boy (2010): Edmund McMillen & Tommy Refenes
Salt & Sanctuary (2016): James Silva & Michelle Juett Silva

3 People
Rogue (1980): Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, & Ken Arnold
Pac-Man (1980): Toru Iwatani, Shigeichi Ishimura, & Shigeo Funaki
Archon (1983): Anne Westfall, Jon Freeman, & Paul Reiche III
Might & Magic (1986): Jon Van Caneghem, Michaela Van Caneghem, & Mary Ellen Bloom
Sid Meier's Pirates! (1987): Sid Meier, Michael Haire & Arnold Hendrick
World of Goo (2008): Kyle Gabler, Ron Carmel, & Allan Blomquist
Knights of the Chalice (2009): Pierre Begue, Kelly Brake, & Marcel Králik
Hollow Knight (2017): Ari Gibson, William Pellen, & David Kazi

4 People
Battlezone (1980): Ed Rotberg, Jed Margolin, Howie Delman, & Roger Hector
Seven Cities of Gold (1984): Dan Bunten, Jim Rushing, Bill Bunten, & Alan Watson
Space Quest (1986): Mark Crowe, Scott Murphy, Sol Ackerman, & Ken Williams
Leisure Suit Larry (1987): Al Lowe, Mark Crowe, Ken Williams, & Chuck Benton
Dungeon Master (1987): Doug Bell, Mike Newton, Dennis Walker, & Andy Jaros
X-Com (1994): Julian Gollop, Nick Gollop, John Reitze, & Martin Smillie
Geneforge (2002): Jeff Vogel, Andrew Hunter, Brian Snoddy & Linda Strout
Braid (2009): Jonathan Blow, David Hellman, Sean Barrett, & Edmund McMillen
Legend of Grimrock (2012): Petri Häkkinen, Antti Tiihonen, Juho Salila, & Olli Pelz
Ghost of a Tail (2016): Lionel Gallat, Cyrille Paulhiac, Paul Gardner, & Jerome Jacinto

 

[Talby]

Massive studio sizes and outsourcing to streetshitter studios means most games have no hope of having a coherent vision or sense of authorship. Look at Starfield, it has absolutely no identity or sense of what it even is. It's like it's invisible.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Note that zoomers are perfectly satisfied with modern product

Zoomers don't play RPGs, they're too preoccupied with co-op/party/multi-player games. The decline is pushed by consoomer millennial/gen x who spend a ridiculous amount of money on sub standard products.