Armchair Arcade - Matt Barton Tells What He Would Like to See in Old School Rpgs

Daddy32 said:

This is not only classic "back in the day, the grass was greener" rant - the industry is changing rapidly, and so do its goals - so the resulting product is … very different, if nothing else.

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Yes, but changing the taste of a meal might not appeal to all who regularly go to this restaurant - and some perhaps do so because of the taste of that meal !

The questing then is : Is the restaurant happy with this decision to change the taste ? Can it afford the loss of some long-time customers for a wave of new customers ?

Big companies probably will, because they've got enough "backup money" to absorb their losses, but smaller restaurants probably won't. They would rather try to bring in new things on a much smaller scale.

Wow, I just about lost all my respect for this guy. He says some things I agree with but when he said the following, I just stopped reading:

Save the heavy dialog/story for the novelization. I know some games have pulled this off, but frankly, I'm bored with it. Nobody ever played Pool of Radiance or Wizardry or Ultima for the awesome storyline. Just toss in a bunch of stock characters doing predictable things so we don't have to bother reading any stupid text.

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Pathetic.

Agreed, that's a pretty stupid statement.

I do think some games go overboard with this (Torment) - but what we need is more story and better stories - not less or worse.

I think if you read the quote in its correct context, (a kickstarter rpg in an older style tradition) what he says makes a little more sense. He's interested in a particular type of game, I won't begrudge him that.

I very much doubt he'd have meant that more broadly...and I do agree, it is a silly thing to say interpretted that way even if meant half-jokingly, as he kind of did in the recent interview with Josh Sawyer.

Raggie said:

I also own the book, and didn't think too highly of it.

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Glad that you managed to sum up your thoughts so succintly.

Pessimeister said:

Glad that you managed to sum up your thoughts so succintly.

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Eh, your description already covers the details. It's pretty much a badly organized collection of Mobygames summaries and not much else. Maybe I'm spoiled by The Ultimate History of Videogames.

Pessimeister said:

I think if you read the quote in its correct context, (a kickstarter rpg in an older style tradition) what he says makes a little more sense. He's interested in a particular type of game, I won't begrudge him that.

I very much doubt he'd have meant that more broadly…and I do agree, it is a silly thing to say interpretted that way even if meant half-jokingly, as he kind of did in the recent interview with Josh Sawyer.

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Yes, he clarifies this in the comments section of the blog:

MattBarton said:

Regarding the role of story in these games, let me emphasize I'm talking here about a very specific type of CRPG: "old school," for lack of a better term. Think Wizardry, Bard's Tale, Pool of Radiance, etc. I'm not anywhere close to Baldur's Gate or Planescape here. I'm also not talking about hybrid games like Quest for Glory and Betrayal in Krondor. While all these games are great, I don't believe in advertising an "old school" game and then delivering a hybrid or something more akin to a story-based game.

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He speaks very highly of story-oriented stuff like Baldur's Gate and Planescape in his Matt Chat series coverage. In this blog he's only talking about a specific branch of old-school RPGs.

Anyway, I might not always share every opinion he has but I greatly respect the efforts he takes to keep interest in these old games alive. And The Matt Chat interviews with game devs are always interesting.

First time I've heard someone claim Betrayal at Krondor is not a fully-fledged RPG.