1Up - The Future of Single-Player RPGs

Dhruin

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This roundtable from 1Up assembles four well-known developers to discuss the future of single-player RPGs. Bill Roper, Alan Miranda, Marcin Iwinski (co-founder of CD Projekt) and Feargus Urquhart participate. Here's a snip from Feargus:
1UP: Do gamers still want the big-budget RPGs like Dragon Age and Final Fantasy? Have piracy and the expense of the HD consoles made big-budget RPGs not as feasible as they once were?
FU: Absolutely. These games can offer something that many of the MMORPGs can't offer. It's the same as what we all look for when we go to the movies or an amusement park. They let us go on a big-ticket ride and enjoy ourselves, along with letting us feel like we accomplished something by actually finishing it.
As for piracy and the price of the HD consoles, I would be lying if I didn't say those were a challenge. However, I've never looked at piracy as you losing out on a sale. If they were going to pirate your game, they are going to do it -- just like with movies and music. You do need to make some effort to weed out the casual pirates, but no matter how hard you make it to pirate a game -- or any other kind of media like a game -- someone is going to get their hands on it without paying.

As for the HD consoles, that is an issue that I don't have a good answer for. However, at $299, whether someone gets the Xbox 360 or the new PS3, those are pretty powerful machines for the money.
More information.
 
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Since companies want to fight casual piracy they could do a better job then the current protection systems. What they should do is put a setting in a configuration file that you would change to disable the protection. If they make it fairly complicated to do then it would remove casual piracy since there is no reason to make a crack. That would mean anyone that wants to remove the protection would have to go through the process of disabling it and casual gamers wouldn't do it. People who make cracks won't have a reason to make one since they wouldn't see a need for it.

PS. It can't be too complicated or people will still make cracks but it needs to be complicated enough to preclude the casual gamer.

PPS. This is needed because it is easy for a fair amount of casual gamers to pirate games currently so the protection isn't doing it's job.

PPPS. Dragon Age did something similar with it's DLC and I found out when I was having problems with installing a DLC.
 
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The change from hardcore to more casual/mainstream RPGs has its pros and cons. I like games in both style, which is why I'm glad we're still getting the Risens and Dragon Ages, in addition to the Mass Effects and Fables. I think that it's obvious that as games require bigger budgets, they need to sell more, and so, out of necessity, they need to be more mainstream, more "pick up and play."

I agree, it all comes back to enjoying and feeling immersed in a good story, with interesting characters. "Mainstreaming" here can be a good thing, a move forward toward better storytelling and immersion. I'm thinking of voice acting and cinematic presentation, for instance, as well as more "mature" themes.

I didn't realize Germany was the home to the hardcore RPGrs. I find that interesting, since, in the next six months, we should be getting three German RPGs landing on the 360 in the US. Two of them (Risen, Divinity 2) are of the "hardcore" variety, and one (Venetica) seems more mainstream. It will be interesting to see how they are received.

And I would love a good pirate or Western RPG.
 
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...we should be getting three German RPGs landing on the 360 in the US. Two of them (Risen, Divinity 2)...

Aside from the fact that I would hardly call either of them "hardcore" by any stretch of the imagination (they are mainstream compatible action RPGs in my opinion) though that may be open to debate and depend on one's definiton of "hardcore" and all that blahblah :biggrin: it should be noted that Divinity 2 is not a German game but from Belgium.
 
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Yeah, I think it depends on your definition of hardcore. I'm not really in the mood to debate over terms like "hardcore" right now so I'll let it go. Substitute "serious" if that works for you.

The Belgium part is news to me. I can't remember the last game I played from Belgian developers.
 
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The Belgium part is news to me. I can't remember the last game I played from Belgian developers.
Outcast perhaps, from 1999? Or Divinity 1 from 2002? Or ... well, it's a small country. ;)
 
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Aside from the fact that I would hardly call either of them "hardcore" by any stretch of the imagination (they are mainstream compatible action RPGs in my opinion) though that may be open to debate and depend on one's definiton of "hardcore" and all that blahblah :biggrin: it should be noted that Divinity 2 is not a German game but from Belgium.


Well according to any review I've seen so far, Risen is far from being mainstream.

I'm not saying it is or it isn't, but most of the so called mainstream sites\mags didn't seem to think it was going to appeal to their demographic.
 
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Well according to any review I've seen so far, Risen is far from being mainstream.

I'm not saying it is or it isn't, but most of the so called mainstream sites\mags didn't seem to think it was going to appeal to their demographic.

That's just the question though isn't it? Is that what defines a hardcore RPG? And how many reviews are we looking at here? Do we include German reviews? Or should we rather not listen to what the reviewers say but judge the game on its own merits? Or should we maybe take sales data as an indication (note: Risen has been dominating the German sales charts for the last month, being a huge mainstream sales success... after over a month and in spite of heavy competition, it is still in 3rd place according to the German Media Control charts posted on 4Players.de)?

As for myself, I tend to ignore reviews (reviews to me = opinions I don't really care about to be honest) and prefer to look at the game itself. What I am seeing in Risen's case is an action RPG that is mainstream compatible.
- It's got a pretty barebone character development system that is far from being deep or complex.
- The story and quests are mostly straight forward enough for anyone to make progress in the game.
- The difficulty can be adjusted according to the player's skill (and although I have not tried it myself the easy setting certainly must be very easy).
- The combat system is easy to pick up and has a rather moderate learning curve as you will only get access to more features once you level up.
- There is a fair amount of (optional) guidance thanks to the quest map.
- etc.

Just about the only hardcore element I can think of would be the fact that it is potentially dangerous to wander off the beaten path in the early stages of the game (but even then you can still run like hell). But that one element hardly warrants labeling Risen "hardcore" IMHO.

Well, just my 2c on the matter :) .
 
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Well, I have the sense that only about 5% of RPGs would be classified as "hardcore" by you, Moriendor. That's fine. Personally I dislike the "hardcore" label, because it is usually used in a "mine is bigger than yours" sense (not saying you are doing that; I'm just speaking generally).

Maybe a better way of saying it would be "traditional" RPGs. I am saying that we've got some traditional RPGs from Germany/Belgium coming to the 360, and it should be interesting to see how they are received.
 
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Well, I have the sense that only about 5% of RPGs would be classified as "hardcore" by you, Moriendor. That's fine. Personally I dislike the "hardcore" label, because it is usually used in a "mine is bigger than yours" sense (not saying you are doing that; I'm just speaking generally).

I agree with you that some people seem to like to use the "hardcore" label like that. Please rest fully assured that I am in fact not :) . I despise any form of such elitism.

You are correct, however, that I would only call a very small number of RPGs hardcore. To me a big part of "hardcore" = niche, unpopular etc.
I find it funny if people are calling games like the Baldur's Gates hardcore RPGs. Nothing could be further from the truth in my opinion. The BGs sold a total of over five million copies! And that number is from 2004 or something. Who knows how many more copies have sold in the meantime?
Anyway, that huge level of success certainly makes the BGs mainstream games in my view.

In fact, if we look at the RPG genre, then I'd be very tempted to say that the whole genre began to heavily shift from its niche to the mainstream way back in 1996 already when Diablo was released. Diablo 2 was another major push. Just like BG and all other Infinity engine games. And then there was KotOR. And a lot of other games that were basically clones of the mentioned titles, each one responsible for pushing the RPG genre more and more into the mainstream direction.

And here we are. Nowadays RPGs have become about just as popular as any other genre in my opinion and there are only a few niche titles left that are truly deserving of the hardcore label. Spiderweb games (Avernum, Geneforge etc.) come to mind here or other indie efforts. To be honest I'm not overly familiar with the last few "real" hardcore RPGs. I'm more of a mainstream guy myself :) .
 
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(note: Risen has been dominating the German sales charts for the last month, being a huge mainstream sales success… after over a month and in spite of heavy competition, it is still in 3rd place according to the German Media Control charts posted on 4Players.de)


I'm glad to hear that, and I'm starting to think that gamers in Germany simply might have better taste than gamers from a lot of other places.
 
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If the game has innovations , good combat system (horse archery included -of course) and moding tools it doesn't have to be big budget . Community can add stuff , developers too , then they can release content updates as official patches .

Piracy can work as promotion too
 
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Piracy can work as promotion too

Or as a backlash, like in Titan Quest.


I have just wondered myself how we would define "meanstream [RPGs]" ?

All action-RPGs ? Blizzard, maybe ?

Is then everything non-action = "hardcore" ?

And who defines this ? Editors ? Customers ?


Personally, I tend to view upon TOEE as a very much an "hardcore" RPG. But that's just my personal view.
 
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