Decline What killed off oldschool RPGs?

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

There are plenty of indie games thriving in their niche markets, but as far as the Infinity Engine-style RPGs are concerned - their time has largely come to an end. There's still the occasional pillow of infinity or an original sin here and there, but for the most part the genre has joined RTS games in the graveyard of genres.

It's pretty obvious why RPGs fell out of the AAAAAA game market (and good riddance), but why did they fail to seize the indie market as well? Is it the save-scumming? That goddamn accursed REST button? Janky controls? Unbalanced combat? Josh Sawyer?

Was going to make a poll, but the reasons are innumerable, so feel free to post your thoughts.

 

[Lilura]

ToEE failing to usher in a new Goldbox era.

 

[acer palmatum]

Young people are for the most part not interested in oldschool RPGs and old people simply lack (also for the most part) the time due to family issues. I guess that would be the major two reasons.

 

[Daemongar]

I'll just say "The Awesome Button" as in, so to speak, the removal of anything that was boring or at least wasn't fun. All games are vying for non-stop adventure. Well, fuck them. Oldschool RPGs and CRPGs required some dull events to find the best parts. Just like all good things.

 

[Arulan]

They died off because publishers no longer thought they were profitable enough. The early 2000s was a very turbulent time for a lot of smaller developers too, and the industry wasn't suited to indie developers like it is today. Ease of publication on platforms like Steam, and alternative (to publishers) means of fund acquisition goes a long way.

However, I do think the current situation is very healthy for CRPGs. There are far more fantastic recent CRPGs than Divinity: Original Sin and Pillars of Eternity. I don't think it's comparable to the state of RTS at all, though They Are Billions may spark a change in that genre as well.

 

[Luckmann]

See signature for reference.

 

[Grauken]

I thought this was a thread for Goldbox, Wizardry and Might & Magic games

 

[Davaris]

One thing I like to blame is 3D, because the team sizes got bigger and bigger when the industry went 3D and there's no sign of it slowing down.

Also if you watch the recent interview with Leon Boyarsky, he says 100 people worked on the Baldurs Gate game. That is AAA territory even today, so forget seeing nice looking big bitmap style games made by lone wolf Indies.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...view-with-leonard-boyarsky-part-three.120289/

IMO excellent RPGs can still be made by Indies, but until a make awesome art button is invented, both players and developers have to get over their obsession with graphics and focus on the game play, or things won't change.

Graphics ain't the game Bozos!

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

The general trend toward less abstraction across the whole medium as graphics improved. People prefer to see things represented with realistic images rather than words or numbers (alas). As soon as the graphics got good enough, other genres were going to become a lot more lucrative. Publishers invest where they think they can make the most money. Blame the sad logic of late stage capitalism.

Gamers who grow up with high quality first person 3D perspective want their games to play like first person shooters, which is how Bethesda became the most successful “RPG” developer. Many of them just can’t connect with a top down RPG. They can’t even connect with a first person or third person over-the-shoulder RPG unless it plays like a hack and slash game.

Plus, there’s a whole generation of kids who are semiliterate and can only communicate in emojis, which is not helpful for a genre that relies so heavily on reading.

...fuck... it’s Friday night. Fuck. What am I doing with my life?

 

[YES!]

People with poor taste, like this community. Everyone is coming in their pants for console games and either completely ignore the crpgs, or shit all over them with some sort of art pussy criteria they think makes them look smart when talking about games. What makes good art also makes poor games.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Diablo and Oblivion made RPGs onto mass market products and then X-box came, the combination of both factors transformed very diverse games market of eighties and nighties into present one where all the games has to look and play as Quake clone number 1235353353 in order to sell to common denominator and pay for those AAA budgets. Commissar second favorite genre the strategies have at least Slitherine, Matrix, etc.... which means I he is not forced to play with 3D rendered, real time with pause click a mole... Yet.

So in the end yes what Comrade Luckmann has said; RPG genre was killed or rather mutated by (((commercialism))) and to our misfortune the indie developers turned to be bunch of SJW cucks.

 

[Belegarsson]

CRPG is a genre that's incredible to play, but doesn't look quite good when demonstrated, especially when the gaming "industry" going for a wider appeal these days. AAA games aside, a lot of other indie darling genres like platformers, metroidvania, top down shooters or even walking sims can easily generate interest with a short trailer because they're visually appealing. CRPG doesn't really have that luxury, walking around in top down perspective doesn't look exciting, popamole audience gonna laugh at a game featuring grid based combats cuz BRUH IS THIS THE YEAR 2000 or some shit, and oh, trust me, they really hate text. These games are just really difficult to market to mass audience, unless they have flashy presentation like Firaxis' XCOM.

I went to a gaming expo in Singapore last year, they had an "indie centre" with 7 or 8 booths for different games funded by Singaporean government, one of them was Masquerada: Songs and Shadows, the rest are mostly VR/mobile/experimental games. I stayed there for 2 days and I could count the number of people trying the game on my hands. It was pretty fascinating to see a made by Asian isometric RPG, but on the other hand, I felt quite bad for the devs because they ventured into a genre that has very little exposure in this continent and unless a miracle happened, the game just wouldn't sell. That game looks great, but it just can't compete with other more fancy looking games surrounding it.

And the hype culture which is the product of AAA gaming industry these days... gosh, I still don't understand how things like Destiny 2 which scratches the most basic definition of video games can be a huge success.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

marketing departments

 

[Wyrmlord]

You are assuming that the genre has been killed off.

The way the cRPG genre really works is that certain types of games either never get attention when released, but suddenly surge in popularity more than a decade later. Or they were popular, then disappear from public sight, then become popular again.

Torment never received much interest when it was new. It really surged in popularity around 2005-06. Then again, it disappeared from public view. Then after GoG, popular again, and then out of sight. Then after Pillars of Eternity, people started playing it again.

Did you know that back in 2005, when I wanted to play Torment, I went to the last Australian online seller that was selling a copy online and bought the last copy they had? It was a stroke of luck. I remember feeling an electric thrill when I finally held the copy in my hand, delivered by mail. How disappointed I felt years later when Good Old Games made this game available by digital distribution. Torment was no longer the rare treasure you had to hunt up and down stores and websites for, but something available everywhere.

Pretty much most great games I played, I played at least a decade after its release. You have to see the long game - of 20, 30, and 40 years.

PS: Same story in shooters. Deus Ex is a good example. Invisible War had nearly killed the series, before it got revived again.

 

[Polydeuces]

I'll just say "The Awesome Button" as in, so to speak, the removal of anything that was boring or at least wasn't fun. All games are vying for non-stop adventure. Well, fuck them. Oldschool RPGs and CRPGs required some dull events to find the best parts. Just like all good things.

Setting up awesome things next to more awesome things is going to lead to fatigue, and the devs are going to resort to even more outlandish scenarios to trump the previous one.

 

[shihonage]

1) Consoles and the "sink into your couch while twiddling thumbs and leave your brain at the door" mentality they brought, perverting the idea of stimulating the player's mind.

2) Evolution of the Internet, young people offloading 90% of their brains onto Google search, no longer reading fiction books, atavism of the education system, leading to general retardation of the First World.

3) Gameplay mechanics, world design, and writing being dwarved in priority by graphics, leaving behind tightly knit small teams of game industry professionals, and saddling us with giant amorphous corporations cranking out the same game in a different skin year after year, more akin to a 3D engine masking a spreadsheet than anything with a smidgen of creativity, passion, originality or talent. Alternatively, we get tightly knit indie teams of millennial retards cranking out Baby's First Quirky Side-Scroller With Match-3 Mechanics.

 

[Morkar Left]

There are plenty of indie games thriving in their niche markets, but as far as the Infinity Engine-style RPGs are concerned - their time has largely come to an end. There's still the occasional pillow of infinity or an original sin here and there, but for the most part the genre has joined RTS games in the graveyard of genres.

It's pretty obvious why RPGs fell out of the AAAAAA game market (and good riddance), but why did they fail to seize the indie market as well? Is it the save-scumming? That goddamn accursed REST button? Janky controls? Unbalanced combat? Josh Sawyer?

Was going to make a poll, but the reasons are innumerable, so feel free to post your thoughts.

1. They aren't AAA anymore. Which means popamolers aren't interested in it. Back in the day rpgs were cutting edge technology for 2d and therefore could pull in the sensational crowd.
2. Reding is te hard. Most people don't like to read anymore when it comes to stories. The amount of time they spent reading in the past on games and books is now substituted by social media.
3. Oldschool rpgs are hard to make. The premise for good crpg systems is the knowledge of pnp rpg systems. People don't play that much pnp rpgs anymore. And often they use systems specialized for storytelling which are less suitable as a influence for crpg systems.
4. There are actually pretty good ones in the making and very decent ones released in the last couple of years. But people with interest in oldschool rpgs are very, very specialized nowadays with very specific tastes. That is mostly true for older players. They tend to take the best of all of their favorite rpgs and take this as the lowest standard new released games have to fullfill. Of course they will end up dissappointed.
5. New genres got invented which cover aspects of rpgs. People who always liked these aspects of rpgs the most spent their time with these new genres as well (MOBAs, survival, action games with leveling, all kinds of sims with rpg elements).

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

There are plenty of indie games thriving in their niche markets, but as far as the Infinity Engine-style RPGs are concerned - their time has largely come to an end. There's still the occasional pillow of infinity or an original sin here and there, but for the most part the genre has joined RTS games in the graveyard of genres.

Old-school RPGs were killed off in the second-half of the 1990s. They were replaced by Biowarean decline, where both combat and exploration were undermined and dumbed-down in order to appeal to people who don't like to play RPGs but just want an excuse for companion dialogue and romances. This period of decline was so severe that it led to the CRPG Wasteland era of 2003-2011, when only a few worthwhile CRPGs were published. Fortunately, Legend of Grimrock in 2012 heralded a new era of hemi-semi-demi incline, created by new developers looking backwards to subgenres that had been abandoned in order to move forward with new developments while remaining faithful to RPG game mechanics. Since 2012, we've had not only the two Legend of Grimrock games but also Paper Sorcerer, Shadow Returns, Expedition: Conquistador, Might & Magic X, NEO Scavenger, Wasteland 2, Lords of Xulima, Serpent in the Staglands, Age of Decadence, Underrail, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar, etc. Not to mention a bunch of Japanese RPGs. And there are more to come with Underworld Ascendant, The Bard's Tale IV, Age of Incandescence, Copper Dreams, System Shock 3, Knights of the Chalice 2, and so on.

 

[Telengard]

The indie marketplace just isn't ready to make games with 10 novels worth of text, 1000 different spell effects, 100 different classes and variants, a chain of hundreds of feats and special abilities, and then to make it all challenging, and then to make it all pretty as a picture on top of it. And then to turn around and refine all of that in order to make it all fun to play. If you really want a game that ticks all of those boxes for you and doesn't cut corners, you're looking at 10 million. And if you want to make use of a team of top quality people (instead of just having one big name "involved"), and so have a chance at producing a top quality game (a good team has a chance at producing a top quality game, but no guarantee; a poor quality team has no chance at all), then start moving that money bar sharply up.

The indie market favors game types that DON'T require huge amounts of upfront programming and tweaking and playtesting. It favors games where the core dynamic is simple, easily programmable, and the small handful of devs can get it all done and then spend their time refining rather than implementing. Which doesn't mean that one can't make an rpg on an indie budget, rather it means that the indie budget does not give favorable odds on making a successful rpg. Which is why most indie rpgs crash and burn.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

4. There are actually pretty good ones in the making and very decent ones released in the last couple of years. But people with interest in oldschool rpgs are very, very specialized nowadays with very specific tastes. That is mostly true for older players. They tend to take the best of all of their favorite rpgs and take this as the lowest standard new released games have to fullfill. Of course they will end up dissappointed.
5. New genres got invented which cover aspects of rpgs. People who always liked these aspects of rpgs the most spent their time with these new genres as well (MOBAs, survival, action games with leveling, all kinds of sims with rpg elements).

Good points, especially the last two. As I read over Felipe’s opus, it’s crazy how much garbage came out during the heyday that I either never played or forgot about. And when something mediocre came out, or even outright bad, we just stopped playing it (and never thought about it again for twenty years—looking at you Return to Krondor). These days mediocre RPGs are met with withering contempt, true garbage evokes a supernova of loathing, and even decent stuff gets pilloried.

We just had more volume back then and thus got more masterpieces in absolute terms, but probably not that much more as a percentage of annual RPG output. And the bad ones were bad in different ways.

I also wonder if the ascendancy of the JRPG—FF7 on—ended up taking a lot of market share from CRPGs. Damn you, Nippon!

Real life romance is also kind of antithetical to the addictive timesuck that is a great RPG; as the generation that came of age during the golden age and the renaissance grew up, many of us cut back on our consumption. At least, I’m guilty of that, or I was for years until I found where my significant other had been hiding my balls.

FYI: they were in her medicine cabinet, behind the tampons.

 

[Davaris]

The indie marketplace just isn't ready to make games with 10 novels worth of text, 1000 different spell effects, 100 different classes and variants, a chain of hundreds of feats and special abilities, and then to make it all challenging, and then to make it all pretty as a picture on top of it. And then to turn around and refine all of that in order to make it all fun to play. If you really want a game that ticks all of those boxes for you and doesn't cut corners, you're looking at 10 million. And if you want to make use of a team of top quality people (instead of just having one big name "involved"), and so have a chance at producing a top quality game (a good team has a chance at producing a top quality game, but no guarantee; a poor quality team has no chance at all), then start moving that money bar sharply up.
.

I don't want to read 10 books, play with 1000 different spells, or 100 different classes, hundreds of feats and special abilities. I want small games that leave you wanting more at the end like Fallout 1 did. Moar! Moar! Moar! is why we can't have nice things.

How big was their team? How big would their team be if they fired all the graphics people (engine and artists) and the game makers used a rougelike engine? It would probably drop down to a few people working in their spare time. lol

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Storyfags.

 

[Infinitron]

? Is this thread from 2011? This is what happens when you spend years in Prosperland I guess.

There were never that many non-indie "Infinity Engine-style RPGs". I'd say there are at least equal numbers of them now and in 2000.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

? Is this thread from 2011? This is what happens when you spend years in Prosperland I guess.

There were never that many non-indie "Infinity Engine-style RPGs". I'd say there are at least equal numbers of them now and in 2000.

Apparently Obsidian doesn’t exist.

 

[Luckmann]

marketing departments

Isn't that what I just said?