Favourite RPG Developer?

Favourite RPG Developer?

  • Interplay / Black Isle

    Votes: 44 28.4%
  • Bethsoft

    Votes: 6 3.9%
  • BioWare

    Votes: 23 14.8%
  • Blizzard

    Votes: 3 1.9%
  • Piranha Bytes

    Votes: 25 16.1%
  • Troika

    Votes: 27 17.4%
  • Sir-tech

    Votes: 9 5.8%
  • Origin

    Votes: 12 7.7%
  • NWC

    Votes: 4 2.6%
  • Spiderweb

    Votes: 2 1.3%

  • Total voters
    155
There at least 7 games there for RPG fans. You're just think of fantasy RPG's like Legend of Kyrandia, The - Malcolms Revenge. but remember, that and Star Trail were part of a series of RPG's that came out every other year. Then you have Lord of the realms with a bit of strategy but still an RPG, then X-Com, with all it's stats and soldier skills being improved - if they survived - so that is an RPG Simulation with strategy, but with a ton of deep stats and roleplaying. System Shock was a lotmore roleplaying than Bioshock was, with the implants and choices of how you played the game with reasonable openness. Jagged Alliance, although seen as a strategy game had a lot of roleplaying in it, again with each mercenaries stats etc. The point is, all these games, and others in the list, had the depth of play that meant people who wanted to use their brains rather than their joystick/mouse flicking had lots to cater for their tastes. Now we get Mass Effect, which is half adventure with branching conversations trees and part third person linear tactical shooter! I don't know how it could be called an RPG when every conversation ended with a linear mission when you had corridors to go down, whether thy were valley's or rivers with absolutely no freedom at all - the hallmark of a good rpg. So I would say games not known as being RPG's, like X-Com and Jagged Alliance, have more RPG in them than the likes of Mass Effect or Bioshock!
 
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Aye, I agree. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Troika jumped 200+ votes in only a few days, which seems slightly suspicious considering how far it was behind at the time.


Someone summoned RPGCodex? ;) I remember another poll about what's the most promising game in 2009 and there were plenty of games, but there wasn't Age of Decadence. After someone made thread on RPGCodex about this voting there must have been so many votes for AoD, because RPGWatch added it to the vote poll :)
 
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Ok Uk John I get your point. In some ways I agree in others I don't. I guess when it comes to this genre I'm a glass is half full kinda guy. Which is very strange because I'm never like that :)

It's just you hear this year after year after year, the death of PC Gaming, The Death of quality RPGs. But yet somehow, someway we still are blessed with games like Wizardry 8, Drakensang, Witcher, NWN 2/MOTB, Gothic 3 AFTER THE PATCH, Eschalon, of course Spiderwebs games, and a whole lot of others that I just can't remember right now because it's like 3 am and I need me some sleep.

Just remember what I said keep an eye on Dragon Age. If you hate it, you can come back and tell me I told you so :) and if I hate it, I'll come back and apologize ;)There is another game that's soon to be released that I just can't remember right now. Anyways, I'm hopeful for our little niche. If not then screw AAA titles I'm going Indie :)
 
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skavenhorde, I am with you.I am a kind of half empty kind of guy, remember I have been a PC gamer for 20 years or so, so was around in the heyday that younger gamers look back on but were not there. I subscribed to magazine and read them, which you canno go back to them and do that as a lot of them have gone. I lived and worked in the U,S, for 6 years from 1991 to 1997 and saw the goings on in the largest PC gaming market while keeping an on he European side, then in 1998 I came back and watched the U.S. side while being in the European side. I also have ran a independent games store when it was PC, Amiga ST and still Commodore 64. I owned a distribution frachise selling Commodore 64 games before even that, and in the States for those years I ran a computer games business. So I know this business as someone who has worked in it, been to the trade shows, talked to the developers and media editors and subscribed to the trade mags that told thing consumer mags didn't and all the while I was doing that as my various jobs I was a gamer too - never interested in console gaming, always wanted to play games that used my brains.

Because of my background and experience maybe I have a different slant on the games business, where it's come from, and where it seems to be going than just a gamers who has a 360 and PC at home and has been gaming since 2002. I successfully predicted the the computer game recession in 96-97 by pulling my games publisher business out of retail distribution and making it a direct sell games company, lowering our prices by 40% in the process.90% of small games companies disappeared in those two years. I didn't. What I saw that no one else in the industry did was that everyone and the Uncle was jumping on the CD band wagon when no body had CD-Rom drives in their PC's. Being a gamer and still in the real world, I saw it was take 3years or more for gamers to have PC's with this 'new technology'. It was just not reasonable, as the industry and media insisted that gamers would upgrade. A few would, but the bulk of gamers even today may just about install a graphic card, but would not install a CD-Rom drive.

It's only a matter of being willing to to digest news over the medium term so you can ascertain facts. It's being willing to spend just a few minutes a day educating yourself as a gamer about what's going on. For example, a couple years ago, with the aid of a calculator, I spent about 10 minutes or so adding up all the review scores given by Gamespot the year before, I the divided the total by the number of reviews to get an average. At the end of the current year (at the time) I spent another 10 minutes or so doing the same with that current year. The results were in 2006 the average score was 77% and about 80 games were reviewed, and in 2007, the average score was 67% and about 60 games were reviewed. Anyone can spend 10 minutes and do the same thing for the 2008 reviews, but I am guessing it will be way fewer reviews, because their were way fewer PC game releases and would not be at all surprised if the review percentage went down again to show a continuing decline in the quality of PC gaming.

When I started a thread in Gamespot to give these numbers out, you should have read the excuses gave, from reviewers getting harder on games than before (why?) to me not doing the math right! About 1 in 10 just said 'Wow, I didn't realise' or actually looked at the numbers and had a serious answer.

Now I shouldn't have had to done that. Gamespot should have done that. But nobody is really interested in the facts, mostly th industry, media and PC gamers want to keep their heads in the sand. Well, that doesn't work. You need debate, petitions, complaints, gamers unions, gamers cooperatives, putting pressure on the media an by extension the industry, but we don't have these consumer groups, we don't even have an investigative media. Take away the press release regurgitation and what do you have on most gaming and PC sites? Practically nothing. When digital camera's started taking off, there was a huge debate in photography magazines about the repercussions and what it meant for the consumer, the market and the industry, some of what was talked about was quite unpalatable for certain groups, but it was talked about anyway. Our gaming media just don't do any of that. That's why when the games industry said 'we're going to put PC games into DVD cases, as it will mean smaller publishers will be able to ge on the retailer shelves, the gaming media just went along with it. Even though they knew how the distribution system worked, they knew it wasn't because of lack of shelf space that smaller publishers couldn't get their titles into retail,it was because the big guys had made sure the distribution served their purposes. There cost meant 70% discount to a distributor and a 40% discount for a retailer was within their budget because of their size, but that it kept everyone else out. I knew that, the industry knew that and the media knew that. It was the media's job to tell it's readers this but it didn't. It's because since around 2001 the gaming media has supported the industry, not it's readers. This is why World of Warcraft's 10 millionth subscriber was huge news throughout the media, and DOSBox's news of it's 10 millionth download was not mentioned at all in any of the major gaming press, print or web.

Given the state of the PC games market 15, 10 and 5 years ago, it doesn't take a lot of work to see that PC gaming has declined markedly. PC sales are around 40% of what they were 10 years ago with around 70% fewer PC titles being released than back then. It's got nothing to do with the consoles either, or Microsoft wouldn't have been able to make grounds into the the console market and the Wii could not have done either. How you succeed is simply giving the customer what they want. The customer doesn't want to upgrade every 18 months, the customer doesn't like that a game with 12 hours of gameplay sells for the same price as one that ha twice that amount. The customer doesn't like DRM or buggy game releases and the customer doesn't like his favourite genres being lopped off so that all games can become action/adventure/roleplaying games, that are actually none of the above!

We gamers get the industry and media we deserve, and that why I think the gkas is half empty and the hole in said glass is getting bigger every year.
 
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You make some interesting points, but this is way off topic now :) Start a new thread with that last post in Off Topic and I'll be happy to discuss this further.
 
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Wizardy & Jagged Alliance -> Sir-Tech

Oh yes - Sir Tech. Did some work with them in the States. They sent me Crusaders of the Savant to have a look at. You, Sir, are a very intelligent gamer, obviously. We need more like you in our PC gaming ranks! :)
 
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Voted Origin. Ultima 7 and part 2 + their expansions are the best games I have ever played and I can still play them and enjoy them just as much as I did when I first played them. Sir-Tech was close behind though.
 
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I went with Interplay/Black Isle. Fallout, PsT, Icewind Dale, plus they had a hand in BGs if I'm not mistaken.

I'd probably pick Troika 2nd but even that I'm not sure about. I mean, what a track record. One near brilliant RPG (Arcanum), except for the horrible combat system (at least PsT's was adequate), bugs, and archaic engine/UI. One with great writing and voice acting (Vampire) but again a failed combat system, more bugs and a poorly optimized engine, and some "iffy" content. And a 3rd which got the combat system spot on but was a simple dungeon crawler with one of the dullest towns and lamest quests ever in a game.

If Bethesda ended with Morrowind and it's expansion packs, I'd have picked them 2nd but Oblivion & Fallout 3, err, enough said.

Bioware? BG2, still the greatest OVERALL computer RPG experience. But starting with KOTOR their games became chock full of story and not much else. Non-challenging gameplay, very little choice & consequence, extreme linearity = Bioware Post BG2. But man I love BG2!!!!

And Sir Tech, I salute you! :) Wizardry 8 is another of my faves, not to mention the earlier games (Wiz 1 - 3) being some of my first RPGs back in the 80s!
 
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Agree with what you say about Bioware. Who would have thought they would go from BG1 and BG2 and Planescape Torment to so-called RPG's like Jade Empire and Mass Effect, which to my mind have so little roleplaying they should be considered action-adventures! Only hope, I fear, for decent, deep isometric RPG's are from smaller Eastern European countries and indie developers.
 
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I liked piranha bytes for Evil Islands. But since they arent going to make a game like that any more, screw them. So its Obsidian for now, they have Chris Avellone now and most of teh interplay team back. So i have confidence in them.
 
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Evil Islands was made by Nival Interactive IIRC. Piranha Bytes made the Gothic games.
 
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Evil Islands was made by Nival Interactive IIRC. Piranha Bytes made the Gothic games.

Oh wow. Nival made quite a few good games. I loved Ether Lords.
 
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Agree with what you say about Bioware. Who would have thought they would go from BG1 and BG2 and Planescape Torment to so-called RPG's like Jade Empire and Mass Effect, which to my mind have so little roleplaying they should be considered action-adventures! Only hope, I fear, for decent, deep isometric RPG's are from smaller Eastern European countries and indie developers.

This is true, Bioware don't really make western/PC RPGs anymore.

I doubt they ever will either. Now that they design with consoles in mind, their games will always be simplistic, action-based affairs. Such a shame, too. I played Jade Empire recently for the first time on my PC. Kept thinking, this would be a fun little adventure game on a console but an RPG???. Oh wait, that's it was originally!

So it's not that Bioware is a bad developer, their games always have good production values and are somewhat enjoyable - for action/adventure games. They're just a bad RPG developer.
 
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I joined the forum as soon as I saw this thread. It is strange how Troika is the king of the hill with 362 votes (including mine) and a ratio of 32.32% . Maybe for people like me, there is still hope after all.
Well, Troika was not a very successful developer, but games like Arcanum (which is the best RPG I have ever played) will always have their place in my heart (and on my HDD for a long, long time).
BlackIsle is second, which IMHO is OK.
AND I am very happy that Bethsoft is near the end of the list. A long time ago I liked them very much. Then came Oblivion, which was OK, but not what I expected. But after what they did with Fallout (I mean the so-called F3), I am not sure that I can stand them anymore.
 
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@Relayer, but what's it going to do to RPG's when we sit back and let the media call games like Jade Empire and Mass Effect and even Bioshock and STALKER RPG's!? And what is it with gamers that they will flame you for saying Mass Effect is an action-adventure not an RPG? In fact why do so many gamers flame anybody that is trying to discuss where PC gaming is going, or PC gaming might have a problem,k etc. It seems you cannot debate about anything unless it's how great a new game is going to be or how well PC gaming is doing despite all the facts and figures!

The attitude of the majority of PC gamers is also a reason I don't hold out much hope for the PC gaming format, and am just glad I have my 800 game PC collection, DOSBox and Virtual PC to fall back on!
 
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The attitude of the majority of PC gamers is also a reason I don't hold out much hope for the PC gaming format, and am just glad I have my 800 game PC collection, DOSBox and Virtual PC to fall back on!
No matter how stuck things may seem, there's still enormous potential due to the high-tech nature of these games. Don't forget that all of this, the games and the platforms they run on, are made by businesses (not the government, for example). So the landscape can change very quickly.

My own background is in the communications industry where the working paradigm changed many, many times, so much so that the term "paradigm shift" became trite. It turned into a wild roller-coaster ride full of unexpected twists and turns. Experts came out of the woodwork to predict every possible future or refute it.

Today's PC-gaming picture can change, I think, but only after someone sticks their neck way out to try something very new and different.
 
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Squeek: It would be nice if you were right, but unfortunately, those empty PC game shelves are going to get filled by console games. Hardware companies producing high end video cards, cases, fans, neon this or that, etc etc, will start going bust as few see the need to upgrade due to so few titles coming out. If a PC game comes out that needs us all to upgrade to play it, very few of us will nowadays, as the quantity is not there to make it worthwhile. Hence STALKER a game with 'dated HL2 graphics' (whatever THAT means!) that ran on today's machines has outsold Crysis, Far Cry 2 and Bioshock (on PC) that needed higher levels of hardware.

There is some hope with indie developers in the short term, where long-time gamers know where to go to find them, but with no PC's in stores capable of playing this years PC games in a couple years, with no more video cards (or much more expensive one's as the market shrinks), etc, new customers won;t come along as they won't see PC gaming anywhere in their life.

For us long time gamers, there won't be enough indie developer's producing the type of product we want to give us enough new product to play, so more and more, if we play games at all, we will go over to console, or play our older PC titles we loved from before. That's what I am doing right now. As, other than Fallout 3, I have not purchased a single PC game this year.
 
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Well… If you mean sir tech canada

All they developed was jagged edge, wizardry 8 and jagged edge 2?

Best developer ever those are all A+

the only reason I wouldnt say black isle as a developer, the in house interplay developer,

Is because icewind dale was so much more boring than baldurs gate.
I dont know why but in the 5 infinity engine games they made the very best one and then the only bad one imo

they were great for making fallout 1 and 2 and planescape torment though.
 
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