2007-Mar-30
From Jeff Vogel's View From the Bottom #7, wherein he expresses his hate about RPGs....do you agree with him? Or do you think he's full of it?
Why I Hate Fantasy RPGs
Being a professional designer of fantasy role-playing games (RPGs, as they're called by people like me), I play them a lot. It's a great way to find good ideas to steal. Plus, I can write them off.
During my recent intense bout of this market research (heh!), I finally came to terms with the fact that, after 23 years of playing them, I hate fantasy RPGs. I hate them, and I hate myself for making them.
The first horrible thing. Fantasy role-playing games are unique among computer games in one thing: they are fundamentally about starting out weak and learning to be strong. And that learning process generally involves a lot of tedium.
Consider other sorts of games. In Doom or Quake, you start out weak. How do you get strong? You pick up a big gun, and suddenly, you're hardcore. Sure. In Madden, you start out a good football team, and you play some football for an hour, and then you get on with your life. When you play Tetris, you don't have to rotate the L-shaped pieces for three hours before you're good enough to handle the straight ones.
But the fundamental, unifying quality of pretty much all fantasy RPGs is that you start out as a puny loser, barely able to flush a toilet with both hands, and then you train and practice and work until you are a certifiable badass. And how does the game simulate this learning process? By reaching out and grabbing a gigantic, triple helping of your time.
In a shooter, you start out as a hero, and you do hero things, so you can have a shooter that lasts 10 hours. In a fantasy RPG, you also have to spend all the time learning to be a hero. An RPG that lasted 10 hours wouldn't make sense.
Why I Hate Fantasy RPGs
Being a professional designer of fantasy role-playing games (RPGs, as they're called by people like me), I play them a lot. It's a great way to find good ideas to steal. Plus, I can write them off.
During my recent intense bout of this market research (heh!), I finally came to terms with the fact that, after 23 years of playing them, I hate fantasy RPGs. I hate them, and I hate myself for making them.
It was a completely nonsensical activity, but I fully understand the point of it. It was to get me to spend time wandering around and killing the same wolf 500 times so I could get experience and get stronger.I will now describe the two worst things about these games. It will be a two-part column, since that is the only way that the space will be big enough to contain my hate.
The first horrible thing. Fantasy role-playing games are unique among computer games in one thing: they are fundamentally about starting out weak and learning to be strong. And that learning process generally involves a lot of tedium.
Consider other sorts of games. In Doom or Quake, you start out weak. How do you get strong? You pick up a big gun, and suddenly, you're hardcore. Sure. In Madden, you start out a good football team, and you play some football for an hour, and then you get on with your life. When you play Tetris, you don't have to rotate the L-shaped pieces for three hours before you're good enough to handle the straight ones.
But the fundamental, unifying quality of pretty much all fantasy RPGs is that you start out as a puny loser, barely able to flush a toilet with both hands, and then you train and practice and work until you are a certifiable badass. And how does the game simulate this learning process? By reaching out and grabbing a gigantic, triple helping of your time.
In a shooter, you start out as a hero, and you do hero things, so you can have a shooter that lasts 10 hours. In a fantasy RPG, you also have to spend all the time learning to be a hero. An RPG that lasted 10 hours wouldn't make sense.
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