Okysho said:
I honestly have got to know. I get that they have their flaws and their own bad titles, but what game genre doesn't?
Usually,they've got good plots, good character development, good music and clever gameplay which is basically what makes a game enjoyable.
So why is it that people don't like them?
I mean this is the most sincere way. I'm not that big of a fan of FPSs and it wasn't until I saw Halo legends that I started to enjoy the series (even then, not to a huge fanboy-ish extent) and Western RPGS with the exception of Mass Effect haven't really hit that sweet spot with me.
Please tell me fellow escapists Why do the bad men hate us so much?
With JRPGs I think it's that they were intended for a very specific audience of people. As gaming became increasingly mainstream and accessible with each generation, games that were mostly intellectual exercises became increasingly less popular in proportion to the overall gaming community as you had more and more people interested specifically in fancy FX and immediate gratification.
RPGs arguably used to be the bread and butter of gaming accross all platforms, RPGs and on consoles that means JRPGs, being the genere that produced most of the blockbusters.
Right now with there being such a tug of war between games, with big budgets being nessicary to produce them, you see a lot more hatred towards someone else's genere of choice in part due to the perception that time being wasted on games you don't like, will decrease the number of games being produced that you will like. The increasing perception that there is a conflict and that it's your games against theirs is one of the reasons why I think you see so much bile spewed at specific generes.
One also has to consider that when it comes to RPGs while it's a smaller fan base than more mainstream fare, it's still a substantial one. I think developers and producers are reluctant to abandon that number of customers, but ultimatly would prefer generes that are easier to develop. Making a shooter using say "Unreal" is comparitively cheap when you look at an RPG that typiclaly requires the development of it's own engine from the ground up, combined with a lot more consistincy since all the numbers and mechanics are visible, and frequently a lot more art assets even if a lot of them wind up being recycled throughout the game.
As a result I think you see the anti-RPG (paticularly JRPG) crowd being a bit louder due to superior numbers, and you see developers trying to find excuses to develop more action games without totally alienating one of the longest standing (and still fairly large) markets that is out there.
For example right now you keep hearing these ridiculous claims that with current technology a company like Square Enix couldn't produce a "Final Fantasy VII" because it would be too expensive to do all those enviroments. One of those classic "WTF" statements, since it makes fundementally no sense, if the current tech was actually that much more expensive and unwieldy it would never have been embraced for "next gen" use to begin with. In reality what I think it comes down to is that it cuts into the potential profit margins, after all a cheaper game means less cost and more profit.
Well, enough rambling, especially seeing as I am (again) speaking repetitively.
Things work in cycles, JRPGs are pretty much perfect as they are, which is why they have survived this long. I anticipate that attitudes will change in a couple of decades at the most when the current twitchy fingered kids get older and still want to play games, despite being slower and more cereberal in their outlook. While the younger generation will probably still outnumber them (simply given how things work) the increased numbers, and the fact that this generation will be the first generation of gamers holding the biggest purse strings (Gen Xers were skipped, hence why we're the "lost generation"), taking over from the baby boomers, your going to see some radical shifts in how things are going to work to get their money.
