RPGs at the GC

Those RPGWatch readers that understand German might find this article of SPIEGEL online quite an interesting read. Its subject is the current Games Convention, hence this thread seems like a good place to bring it up.

Schlichte Spiele fuer die Massen

Under the headline "Simple Games for the Masses", it discusses the swing in publishers' attention towards casual games, and criticizes this move for failing to develop games further as a storytelling medium, opting for shallowness and easy distraction instead. It draws parallels to the movie industry, likening the present trends to choosing slapstick over "Metropolis" or "Modern Times", but expresses the hope that the financial profits from the sales of casual games might allow for the production of more serious titles in the future as well. It mentions Fallout 3, Crysis, Mass Effect etc. as a few examples for such titles that will indeed be shown at the GC, but does add that these will probably represent a fairly violent approach to the storytelling genre.

I found it quite interesting to read such a discussion in the mainstream media, which were, until a few months ago, dominated more by the discussion about and outrage at "killer games".

Such an article on Spiegel Online? Cool.

4Players spreads the following rumor:

They´ve heard rumors at the GC that JoWooD will announce the Gothic 4 developer today and that it is Funatics!


If the rumor is true it would be a big surprise for everybody expecting a cheap outsourcing job to Eastern Europe. You can look up Funatics track record, and that of their founders, at Mobygames.

For the record: This rumor is now obsolete :
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2529
(Posted by yourself. )

Here´s a brief assessment of the games I´ve seen:

• Jagged Alliance 3
  TB, true to the rest of the serious, graphics as expected. Exactly what the fans want.
• Disciples 3
  See above. Looks better. Both games have a projected Russian release in Q2/08.
• The Witcher
  The intro is superb! A 7 minute fight. The Witcher is playing cat & mouse with a monster which reminded me of a mixture between a warg and that thing from The Relic. I don´t want to tell you what it really is. Very interesting movie.
  The graphics are convincing. Although they certainly won´t blow Fallout 3 away they create the right atmosphere for such a setting.
  Can´t say anything about the gameplay.
• Sacred 2 XBox360
  The big unknown. The things they have shown were convincing, except some graphic details which are still WIP. The concept is simply aiming for the best aRPG ever, there´s a lot of money behind it (2 full teams), they have a lot of good ideas and are showing an incredible attention to detail. But can Ascaron really pull this one off, clearly improve Sacred 1, hold the niveau for 200 hours SP and still move their focus to MP? They are shooting very high, and they are doing a lot of things right, but it´s too early to make a prediction.
  One interesting detail: SP == MP with one player. You can invite other players to play the campaign and kick them out again as you like. Save anywhere, continue later. The game scales automatically depending on the number of players present.
• Drakensang
  Will be a deep game. The devs are staying close to the source material and at least the project lead knows The Dark Eye inside out from personal experience. It´s obvious DraSa is no contract work. Radon Labs wants to make this game.
  Expert character generation is in. Stat influence on dialogs also. Command queues in combat, special moves tied to certain weapons. Detailed commands for each character, for example: hit him once, then run away.
  Setting looks like medieval Germany. Graphics decent and pleasant to the eye, but certainly not ground breaking.
  Drakensang won´t be as hardcore as the classics, but compared to the other upcoming games it should near the top of the list when it comes to serious RPGs.

Thanks for that. Drakensang is on my definite to buy list already!! Witcher is a possibility, but I'm still unsure. Forget the rest!!

Thanks for the quick summary, Gorath . One (OK, several) question(s) about Drakensang: Did you get to see a bit of the travel and how you proceed from one location to the next? From dev comments on the German forums it seems like the game will be very adventure-like (i.e. no world simulation like day/night cycle etc.) where you travel from one location to another just finishing whatever that location has to offer. Did you get to see some of that? Do the different locations seem big? Does it look like (except for the main hub which should be the city of Ferdok) you need to revisit any locations or do you just finish them and go on? And what about linearity? Are locations locked or can you go anywhere?

Heard about a rumor: The dev team of Drakensang is - as they say - in contact - or at least they try to - with Guido "Guy" Henkel, who contributed the music (in part) among other things to RoA.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Heard about a rumor: The dev team of Drakensang is - as they say - in contact - or at least they try to - with Guido "Guy" Henkel, who contributed the music (in part) among other things to RoA.

Would be a nice marketing hook for the game. I´m not sure Henkel will agree though.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Thanks for the quick summary, Gorath . One (OK, several) question(s) about Drakensang: Did you get to see a bit of the travel and how you proceed from one location to the next? From dev comments on the German forums it seems like the game will be very adventure-like (i.e. no world simulation like day/night cycle etc.) where you travel from one location to another just finishing whatever that location has to offer. Did you get to see some of that? Do the different locations seem big? Does it look like (except for the main hub which should be the city of Ferdok) you need to revisit any locations or do you just finish them and go on? And what about linearity? Are locations locked or can you go anywhere?

None of this was a topic at Bernd´s presentation.
He only said a few sentences about life simulation. Eating etc. is only optional, it´s not necessary to make sure your party eats enough. They´ve decided against day & night cycles because they wanted to have the effects available when they want to create a special atmosphere somewhere.

Did you read articles about the speach by Radon Labs at the GC? Their budget for Drakensang is small. I think somewhere close to 1.5M. Of course both publisher and developer will give you many colorful reasons as to why a certain feature is not included or has been modified … but the truth is probably that they decided the original DSA context is either not ideal for a computer game, makes their target audience smaller or is simply not the best use of their limited resources.
My impression is that Drakensang is some kind "test balloon". Radon Labs would like to make an add-on and a Drakensang 2, include co-op MP and make everything bigger and (even) more detailed. dtp doesn´t know if the sales potential is high enough to warrant such an investment. Other publishers already answered this question with "no".

Hmmm… dammit. Why do they never cover the real interesting stuff at these presentations?
And -yes- I read that PC Games article on the Radon Labs speech. Was their CEO the guy who claimed that German developers rarely score with foreign publishers because of the language barrier and because they don't drink enough beer together? Funny fella that .
Anyway, I was also pretty shocked at the low budget. It is amazing what they are doing with their limited means. The choice of characters/archetypes and the transformation of the DSA 4.0 rules seems to be very well thought through. I just really wish it would be more of a sandbox/world simulation rather than an adventure-type game so that's why I was curious if Beyreuther said anything about that.

Thanks again!