BioWare Co-Founder: RPGs Are Becoming "Less Relevant"

[Double A]

I believe he's just saying what EA wants him to say, and BioWare is doing what EA wants them to do. Mass audiences have may have some effect in this new change in direction, but it's more like they have an effect on EA.

Capatcha: scrap mansfun
How appropriate.

 

[genericusername64]

Ok. Lets say that Bioware is making action games. And?

Seriously, the elitism that is implied is sickening and just downright stupid.

"OH NOOOEZ, BIOWARE MAKES ACTION GAMES! BIOWARE APPEALS TO STUPID PEOPLE! HERP DERP!"

It's a freaking GAME. Why are we acting like playing RPGs is a sign of intelligence?

If Mass Effect 2 is the direction for future action games, I say count me in.

They're not making good action games, a good action game means that gameplay is fast paced and exciting. Dragon age 2 was none of this

 

[ZombieGenesis]

Bioware just became much less relevant.

 

[Nokiro]

/rant on

Bioware is RUINED FOREVER

/rant off

No but seriously. It feels like they just wanted to get people angry.

 

[NickCaligo42]

Strange, I would think that the fact that so many games are taking on RPG elements, like leveling, 'character sheet' development, loot, would make RPGs more relevant than ever before.

Yeah. Also, World of Warcraft? That most successful commercial game in the world? THAT one? The one that's a huge spreadsheet of RPG jargon?

Oh yeah. I can see how RPGs are less relevant.

/rant on

Bioware is RUINED FOREVER

/rant off

No but seriously. It feels like they just wanted to get people angry.

I would agree... even if this is what you think and what you act on in terms of business decisions, which is perfectly rational even if I disagree with it, you don't come out and tell fans--old, recent, or whatever--that their interests aren't relevant. This seems like the sort of thing that just wasn't necessary for them to say.

 

[devotedsniper]

I read this and the whole DA3 merging 1 and 2 and just sigh. RPG's still work just fine (e.g. The Witcher 2 and soon Skyrim), i think this is more a "oh well traditional RPG's don't work as well for consoles (e.g. DA1) so we want to make them more hack and slash for the console gamers (DA2)". That or it's making games for a wider audience ~.~ .

 

[NickCaligo42]

So let me get this straight: The company that's supposedly been making RPGs thus far and for as long as its been in existence has a founder that thinks RPGs are on the road to being irrelevant.

Not only that, good sir, but they like to take every opportunity possible to talk smack about other companies and go, "WE know what a REAL RPG is!" and yet here they are going, "meh, RPGs." Lack of credibility, much?

Let's think about this. They've never actually designed an original game. They've been using Dungeons and Dragons rules and game organization as a crutch ever since they founded their company. Their best, most successful properties are all licensed from tabletop RPGs.

Dragon Age is basically their attempt to have a tabletop RPG-style game without the license, and when they actually had to design the systems themselves it was mediocre at best. Mass Effect and Dragon Age 2, for as distant as they're trying to keep both of them from the source material, still aren't free from their dependence on tabletop RPG character sheet management type interactions. What little effort they've made to move away from that has proven pretty mediocre. Critics tend to agree that both Mass Effect games leave a lot to be desired in terms of combat mechanics; they put up with unremarkable shoot-outs to get to the dialogue, character interaction, and high-level decision-making. Nobody thought the resource gathering in either game was enjoyable, and it took an entire iteration before they were comfortable with the inventory. The less said about DA2, the better--if only to avoid the controversy.

To take this kind of attitude towards RPGs when you very clearly illustrate a dependence on other peoples' stone-age RPG mechanics, which you yourself consistently prove unable to duplicate without directly lifting them... It's just... foolish.

 

[Silenttalker22]

Well good Bioware, maybe now you can finally send Mass Effect in a consistent direction instead of tugging back and forth between deteriorating (from ME1 to ME2) RPG elements and a third person shooter.

Indeed. I see a lot of people defending it as merely blending, but ME2 almost only qualifies as an RPG because ME1 was. It's advancement was honestly nothing like an RPG's leveling system. I'm fond of the observation that God of War's advancement system was more RPG than ME2. It was a Role-Playing Shooter. A good one for sure, but an RPG, I don't agree.

Is this his way of telling us that the next Dragon Age is going to be an FPS?

lol

 

[xPixelatedx]

So because they're removing RPG elements from their games, RPGs are less relivant now.

Cool story bra.

It kind of reminds me of how Microsoft and Sony kept touting how Motion control was silly and retarded because they weren't doing it. I am happy we have such smart companies to tell us whats relevant and what isn't in our entertainment.

 

[kiwi_poo]

so are they now consentrating less on the dialouge in general, or are they aiming to make it a good shooter with dialouge on par with the other Mass Effectses?

 

[LordFisheh]

He kind of has a point, in terms of the direction games should take.

Games shouldn't be made with the intention of trying to be an RPG, FPS, or whatever. Developers should create what they feel will be fun, rather than try to fit as best they can into various genre pigeonholes. You could have a brilliant game ruined by tacked on features because the developer was trying to make the game 'more like an FPS', as some people think about ammo and regenerating health in ME2. In Crysis 2, the suit upgrades in the single player campaign felt to me totally unneeded, like someone said 'we should add RPG elements'.

It's not just RPGs that should be less relevant but all of the genres. Developers should be making good games, not jumping through hoops to fit into an arbitrary archetype.

 

[coakroach]

Bioware ruined by EA.
Blizzard ruined by Activision.
God damn.

 

[Manji187]

Games should be less about the audience and more about conveying the experience that the developer wants to convey. That's how the truly great games are made.

While true in itself...how do you suppose they would have to implement that in a cutthroat business environment of "financial failure is not an option"? Drastic experimentation/ genuine innovation equals gigantic risk in this setting.

It's a standard story really....once a developer becomes established, all it thinks about is staying in profitable, stable business for as long as possible. All the first-hour visionaries eventually leave, often in disgust...and the managers and financiers (who often don't give two shits about the medium) rule with an iron fist.

 

[Silenttalker22]

Regardless of his actual intentions, that was a pretty stupid thing to say. Especially when he's part of a company well known for making RPGs.

Exactly. Regardless of your interpretation, how he worded it was terrible. I've read the article thoroughly, twice, and the message I hear is the same as most people here. So those on their condescending horses with "You people didn't read it, or misinterpreted it" are, as far as I can tell, fully convinced their own interpretation is right.

 

[Spencer Petersen]

This is the problem I have with Bioware. They make games with ok RPG combat and let you pick dialogue options but keep the 2 so firmly entrenched away from one another that they are essentially 2 separate games. Want proof?

Imagine you are watching 2 separate playthroughs of Mass Effect 2. One of which is just the interactive cutscene parts where the dialogue wheel is present and you get the paragon/renegade scores, but you cannot watch the combat sections or look at the talent trees. The other is the opposite, you can watch all the combat but cannot see the interactive cutscenes or the paragon/renegade scores. Now, with all the information, I cannot think of a single way you could even tell what class or battle strategy (as if there was more than one) you are using with the first part and you could barely guess what morality you are choosing in the second part, with the only clue being your face scars if you choose to not heal them and are renegade. The combat/RPG elements/upgrades/strategies have absolutely no bearing on the story/characters/dialogue options and vice versa.

Other RPGs do this infinitely better, especially Obsidian RPGs. I know its hard to write a dialogue tree where the choices do something other than choose slightly different responses and a couple nonsense points for whatever blanket morality you are shoehorned into, but you have to at least try. I want to see a violent Shepard be rewarded with extra combat prowess. I wanna see paragon options be rewarded with extra supplies/help from allies you made. I wanna see non-violent options, stealth elements, more coercive tactics, not just being plopped down in a level full of chest high walls and dudes to shoot and be told that I'm choosing my own story, even though my good Shepard who values all life (in cutscenes) will just as easily freeze you in place with a frozen bullet and shatter you with a karate chop just cuz.

Bioware haven't mastered choice or the RPG, they have mastered making you think the game is deep without making it so.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Oh BioWare. You really know how to piss off your loyal fans, don't you? (Not a fan of them, personally.)

What they did with Mass Effect 2 was a good decision, because in my opinion, if you look at Mass Effect solely as an RPG, it is subpar at best and always will be. I liked Mass Effect 1 but the RPG features were just bogging it down. Sure, I'd like to have a happy medium between the two games, but I thought Mass Effect 2 was way more fun.

That worked for Mass Effect because it already had the shooter aspect of it. It didn't work for Dragon Age because Dragon Age was designed as a tactical RPG. You remove some of the RPG elements from the game like you did with 2 and what's left?

There's still good RPG's being made. The newer Fallout games, Deus Ex 3. It's pretty obvious that BioWare just want to make action games with dialogue bits now. (Nothing wrong with that.)

 

[faspxina]

MY GOD! Bioware is so drunk with power, they decide when RPGs live or die!

In a decade or so they're gonna be all like "Hey, we made this sweet game very true to the traditional RPG style, you know like that old school game Dragon Age? Yeah, we're bringing it back."

 

[Raso719]

I'd like to submit the crazy ass idea that maybe the problem isn't that RPGs are becoming less relevant but that the problem is that too many RPGs (especially American RPGS) are basically shooters with huge text walls between all the gun fighting. Western RPGs are becoming less relevant because some one decided to start making them into shooters and completely abandon other means of making RPGs. Yeah, we can still have RPGs that are shooter/RPG hybrids but we need to not pretend that by having RPG shooters that this makes turn based or encounter based RPGs obsolete because it doesn't. Both can exist together.

Meanwhile, fewer and fewer RPGs want to focus on telling a concrete story which, in my opinion, makes the story less relevant to begin with, and are intent on trying to trick American gamers into playing an alien dating sim or morality test rather than actually having control over the over all plot. When you make every moment in a story have multiple outcomes or multiple ways of happening it makes the over all story lose it's value. Yeah, you gain the value of controlling the minor details of the story but the characters lose their gravity. Not every game needs to ask me why response very 5 seconds based weather I want to respond like a jerk or big jerk.

Now at the risk of sounding like a fan boy (and apparently losing all credibility) I think we need to see more RPGs like JRPGs. I'm not talking about the 12 year old girls in school girl outfits and emo 14 year old boys with 9 foot long swords I'm talking about the scope and scale that these games cover. Xenosaga takes place on a planet that's basically the bodies of 2 gods and an American game developer would never make a game like that because it's too awesome, pisses off some zealots, the mountain is a nipple and all other sorts of reason that shouldn't have to be dealt with but are because every game has to sell to EVERYBODY! That's a problem! We don't target demographics because American has basically destroyed them all by starving them to death! Now every game needs to be a shooter, have a male, military solder as the protagonist and Islamic terrorists or communists needs to always be the bad guys.

We need more RPGs that aren't shooter hybrids, have more ridged stories that are more memorable and we need to get as faaaaar away from the real world as possible while still being coherent. Why does every WRPG need to have racist humans living in a dark and gritty version of middle earth doing benign things and fighting benign monsters while trying to bang the elf chick? Why can't we have greater scale and scope with a more coherent story?

Why can't American game developers make games like Mass Effect or Dragons Age AND games like JRPGs? Why? The longer you starve and suffocate smaller niches the harder it will be to cultivate them when the shooter bubble collapses.

 

[The_ModeRazor]

More meaningless "insights" and "musings". Cheap, irrelevant, perfunctory.

How I hate these.