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Where will RPGs be in 20 years in the future?

gaussgunner

Arcane
Joined
Jul 22, 2015
Messages
6,151
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ХУДШИЕ США
Everything is built in some generic open-source 3D world builder sim, using free stock assets with creative prosper-ous edits & effects, scripted in a language that's basically Apple ROM BASIC but shittier. VR and AI are long forgotten. All phones run Android v196.2.3.12 which is crippleware. They're mainly used as paperweights. Desktops are in again because nobody really leaves their house much. Or maybe tablets are all the rage again. Game designers are reinventing the 80s again, in that 3D world builder thing. It's basically one giant RPG universe with RPGs within RPGs and minigames within those. For the average loser, life is an RPG. All game designers are hobbyists, nobody makes a cent from creative work anymore. They all live off basic income, supplemented by prostitution and drug dealing. There are Internet Walls around every metropolitan region, impenetrable to all but the most elite incel hackers. While there exists a great diversity of regional gaming cultures, each and every one of them is homogenous shit in its own unique way.
 

Severian Silk

Guest
I don't think RPGs will get technically more advanced. We have powerful enough computers, but it still takes a person to program the shit. I also don't think quality will improve. It might even regress.
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
They will become interactive movies. Who wants boring stuff like actual gameplay, deep systems, complex character creation/advancement and so on. All you need are unskippable cutscenes and an awesome button!

:negative:
 

Kitchen Utensil

Guest
They will become interactive movies. Who wants boring stuff like actual gameplay, deep systems, complex character creation/advancement and so on. All you need are unskippable cutscenes and an awesome button!

:negative:

The question was what they'll be in 20 years, not what they are now.
 

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
7,530
Location
Kelethin
It will be great. The entire games business has splintered into multiple audiences which will become more pronounced in time. Currently there are dumb games for the mainstream, and niche games for hardcore gamers. In the future this will grow so the mainstream will still playing dumb stuff with enormous budgets, but hardcore gamers will be getting Blackguards / Divinity type games but with much bigger budgets than they have today. They wont be as big as Elder Scrolls 24, but they will be good enough for an audience that values gameplay over blingy graphics and J-Law voice overs.

The same will happen in multiple genres too, so we will end up with flight sims, space games, fps, etc. but all will have mainstream and hardcore varieties and everything in between. This started to already happen in the early 00's and has continued to today, and it will continue in the future. 5 years ago I thought RPGs were fucked, but crowdfunding changed all that and now we have DOS and DOS2 and more.
 

KateMicucci

Arcane
Joined
Sep 2, 2017
Messages
1,676
It will be great. The entire games business has splintered into multiple audiences which will become more pronounced in time. Currently there are dumb games for the mainstream, and niche games for hardcore gamers. In the future this will grow so the mainstream will still playing dumb stuff with enormous budgets, but hardcore gamers will be getting Blackguards / Divinity type games but with much bigger budgets than they have today. They wont be as big as Elder Scrolls 24, but they will be good enough for an audience that values gameplay over blingy graphics and J-Law voice overs.
DOS is great but not really "hardcore". Probably too structured and timesinkish for the normiest normies indeed, but it's almost mainstream.

I see a split down the middle of the RPG genre developing soon. There are people who like the combat/exploration part and people who like the C&C Virtual Novel part. Big budget RPGs can try to please both sides, but smaller ones will have to make comprimises and pick one or the other. There will be small-budget hits on both sides of this divide over the next 20 years that play so completely differently from each other that the frankenstein term "rpg" will mean something different than it does now.
 
Self-Ejected

aweigh

Self-Ejected
Joined
Aug 23, 2005
Messages
17,978
Location
Florida
you know what's more depressing than this thread? the fact that non-codexers who stumble into this thread will read the replies and be like "can't wait!"

in an attempt to be at least a tiny bit hopeful for our future however my answer is:

well, Wizardry came out in the mid-1980's and there are still Wiz-clones being made, and Interplay's output began in the early 90's and is seeing a resurgence 25 years later... maybe in 20 years there will still be good games if only because they will be copies of good ones we've already had.

15 years ago the codex was arguing and making threads about the exact same shit today's threads are about so there's a good chance in 20 years we still won't be able to agree on what an RPG is, which is a good thing.

that's about as positive a prediction as any of us can expect i think.
 

Catacombs

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 10, 2017
Messages
5,928
100 percent VR MMORPG.
The world would take a life on its own.
People would work, socialize and otherwise live inside the world.
Who needs to be in the real world when the game's world is a lot better?
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
kjl4wfp16kawhzzvvpu3.gif
 

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
Fuck you all! Future games will be great. Admittedly, the great ones will be like gems of glittering among the sea of mediocre VRMMORPG but they will be great.

However, you will never have time to play them as you must work 4 full-time jobs to survive.
 

mondblut

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
22,205
Location
Ingrija
You'll sit around the table, pull out a pouch of your treasured dice and roleplay clerks working in their cubicles.

Very soothing after a day of fighting machete rape gangs and hunting feral children for meat.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
The guy who made Fallout 3 grew up with Ultima VII. Imagine what the guy who grew up with Fallout 3 is gonna make.

Another guy who grew up with Ultima made Divinity Original Sins. Hopefully we will see developers who grew up with D:OS.
 

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