Why did developers lost interest in isometric RPGs between 2002-2012

[Tavernking]

Ten whole years, between Icewind Dale II in 2002 and the Pillars of Eternity kickstarter in 2012, and it had to be KICKSTARTED in the first place, not simply funded by a publisher. I thought the early iso RPGs were insanely popular with gamers, so why did they cease being popular with developers for ten years? Was it the desire to make everything '3D with polygons' because the technology had arrived and everyone else was doing it?

 

[v1rus]

Can't know for sure, but guessing it has to do something with immersion. While I luv both isometric and bird perspective, first person does have unique power. Then again, fuck me if I have any idea why is most of the shit in third person

 

[Roguey]

I thought the early iso RPGs were insanely popular with gamers,

Not compared to other genres, no.

Everyone moved to the xbox and console gamers typically aren't into that iso nonsense.

 

[Ismaul]

Technology.

Non-2D became viable (3D was butt-ugly in the late '90s), and the gamer market was driven by tech improvements until recently, or should I say, until the Crysis crisis. Gamers and publishers and hardware manufacturers were all about the cutting edge, the next shiney graphics effects or DirectX possibilities. (Remember when entering in a fog slowed your PC to a crawl? Now we have a new card / DirectX version optimized for it. Upgrade you pleb!). Devs had to follow suit. Top games were basically tech demos.

But as more people got PCs and gamed on them, the market became less about enthousiasts and more about casuals. People bought PCs and expected to keep them a while, not to change parts every year for new games. 3D became good enough, and people made more and more the choice of sticking with their older operating systems and DirectX versions, keeping their hardware and saying fuck you to the tech escalation. Also, recent consoles being old PCs kind of helped stop the race. ATI being too small to provide a competitive challenge to nVidia and shifting to low power stuff helped too. And finally, publishers realized after Crysis that to sell to most people, you have to cater to the type of system most people have, i.e. old PCs. Old ways of doing things that did not exploit the last tech developments were back as things to consider. Tech demos were no longer what was desired by most people.

Also, the tech bullshit has now moved to the VR realm. Good fucking riddance.

 

[Catacombs]

Consoles. Pretty hard to click around if you're using your thumbs on a controller.
Plus, all the Halo-playing, doritto-eating, Mountain Dew-drinking ~gamers~ don't have time to read all the lore that describes the game's world.
They just want to no-scope OjDaJuiceMan420 because he talked shit about their mom.

 

[Trashos]

What everybody is saying above. But in order to picture the very start of it, you have to imagine lobbyists from graphics card companies approaching the big studios and "seducing" them to get into 3D, so that said graphics companies can sell their new technology.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

Consoles. It's the same reason the RTS genre died out.

 

[Ladonna]

It wasn't a magic fairy land before 2002 either. There was a lot of rubbish, not to mention the 'MMO' craze, from the early 90s up to '97, with turn based combat being the largest casualty. There was a brief outing of some really nice games, and then the decline...

 

[Mark Richard]

A combination of 3D technology leaving behind its 90s growing pains, consoles bringing in the bigger audience, and mid-tier games getting phased out by the publisher mentality of all money or no money.