General News - History and Future of ARPGs

The designer of Diablo, Stieg Hedlund, writes about the history and future of Action RPGs:

The Future of the ARPG

The Action Role Playing Game (ARPG) has grown into a game genre with its own integrity and uniqueness. Recent conversations with colleagues caused me to contemplate where this category is headed and in doing so, where it has been.

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What they call ARPG was IMO "one hit wonder" game that spawned numerous clones later.

I don't believe any entry to the genre can beat Diablo series, unless it's on another platform somethng similar to EA's Bejeweled getting nailed by Candy Crush.

And yeah, while I did enjoy Diablo back in the day, Diablo 2 not so much, Diablo 3 no chance to buy ever… I don't think it's RPG at all.

autocustomization really seems to be the improve with use model several CRPG's have already done.

I do agree the genre is stale and I use genre a little tongue in cheek. Diablo clones is the genre. ARPG has come to mean a much broader thing these days, I prefer to label these clones Hack'n'Slash. They're shallow but enjoyable mindless clickfests. Diablo was great for the excellent atmosphere and music but let's stop pretending it was more than it was, it was real time NetHack. Not evolutionary. Several traditionally turn based genres were experimenting with real time about the same time, the computer hardware had finally got to the point it could handle it. Diablo 2 lost that atmosphere but was popular for reasons I never fully understood. I never bothered to touch 3. I've tried a few of the clones as well, some were ok, some not so much. Maybe some day I'd play another one, I've heard good things about Victor Vran for instance, but I played Diablo when I was a kid, my gaming time is way too limited these days to not need some meat on my RPG.

I did laugh at how the author just shrugged off "complex" systems like multi-classing as cruft. Cruft didn't fit in his vision of the future of the genre I guess. No wonder I stay away from them and no wonder the genre is so god-awful stale.