RPG General News - What's an RPG anyway?

Heh, this is a huge can of worms. I'm sure there will be no debate about it. But since I wasn't a member of the site back then...

I think I'm more strict on what an RPG is than most people, but at the same, I don't elevate to godhood and grant any extra value to a game just because it's a RPG. A good game is a good game, and whether a game is good and/or an RPG is independent of each other.

I think a lot of people get stuck in the term too much to define whether the game has a higher status, I know people that feel they would have less quality as a person or a player if the games they love couldn't be considered RPGs, as if that label carried some sort of intellectual badge, a medal to be proud, possibly derived from RPGs being typically associated with more complex games, with comples systems in which there is a lot of reading, and people who read and engage in more complex activities typically have a higher cultural level. Afterall, everyone likes to feel like they're above average. Above all those masses of random drones going about their simple lives.

This so in a way that most studios did their market research and realized that a game being a "RPG" elevated the status of the game, so now they shamelessly tuck the "RPG" buzzword into every title they pump out to add intangible, bullshit value to it and the term has become diluted beyond measure.

And now Assassin Creed is a RPG, God of War is a RPG, The Witcher is a RPG, and Call of Duty is a RPG. Sure. People have the need to believe that they're playing RPGs, others I guess just like the idea, and have succumbed to the propaganda from the likes of Ubisoft.

Listen here. The game I have most recorded hours in Steam is Terraria, at about 2000 hours. It's not a RPG, it's never been, it never will, and I've had insane amounts of fun, both alone and with friends. Im not a RPG player, I'm a good game player. Usually, my tastes align with what RPGs offer, but sometims it doesn't. I believe whoever needs a marketed buzzword to add value to the games they play is just focusing in the wrong thing, which is anything but how much fun they're having.
 
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Vaelith said:
....I know people that feel they would have less quality as a person or a player if the games they love couldn't be considered RPGs....
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Many people want games where their character grows more powerful and complex over the course of the game. Many people want games with a big story, supported by side stories, too. They've come to associate those with games labeled as RPGs. Companies have figured that out, so they are putting those elements into their games. Marketing may or may not push for the game to be called an RPG, but the elements are being put in because people have fun with them! Doom 2016 got some character progression, some 4X games have been incorporating stories and/or leaders that earn XP, and so on.

If you were to let 1997 me play Doom Eternal, I would have been completely confused on what to call the game. It's CLEARLY a first-person shooter but it also full of RPG elements, deep (if unsatisfying) lore, and even a lot of platform jumping gameplay like I would expect in a Tomb Raider game!

Our more advanced technology and much larger development teams have made it so games don't have to be just one genre. Trying to pick out a genre for some of these games is like trying to decide if a casserole is vegetable, meat, or dairy.
 
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Pladio said:
My definition of RPG is the right one and you're all wrong.

That's how these discussions tend to go...
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Unironically, that's a pretty solid abbreviation of it, when talking about something that doesn't have a solid definition.

I would amend it to say "My definition of RPG is the right one for me, and you're free to have a definition that's the right one for you."

The only hurdle would be to get the interlocutors to understand that it's fine to have different definitions of a concept that has no established definition, and they can all be right without having to battle it out with a shootout at noon. It doesn't even matter what definition most people agree with.
 
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Pladio said:
My definition of RPG is the right one and you're all wrong.

That's how these discussions tend to go...
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There's no easy definition. But you can always check for typical CRPG elements for a given game. If your personal treshold is reached you call it a CRPG.
That's the RPGWatch approach.
 
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Mark Darrah is inferring what an RPG might be from the term, which doesn't seem quite right. It's the other way round: people have named that a category of games inspired from the early wargames military was using to simulate attacks, and which changed over time. So I'm not sure the whole babbling makes it any clearer.

I just think we have to be somewhat tolerant with terms like RPG and open-world, otherwise it's impossible to have any discussion without causing a debate and losing focus on the topic.
 
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Vaelith said:
And now Assassin Creed is a RPG, God of War is a RPG, The Witcher is a RPG, and Call of Duty is a RPG. Sure.
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I'm not really shocked by AC or TW (I don't know God of War, and Call of Duty seems more of a shooter by its gameplay). That's also how I'd call them since they offer enough exploration, story, character evolution, and combat. The RPG term is vast enough not to raise an eyebrow, at least, and it gives the potential player a rough idea of where the game stands.

I never thought that RPG was a better class of games. Maybe it's perceived like this by others, but it's the first time I read about that notion. I'm enjoying other genres as much anyway.
 
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Redglyph said:
I never thought that RPG was a better class of games. Maybe it's perceived like this by others, but it's the first time I read about that notion. I'm enjoying other genres as much anyway.
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It does have the connotation of being a more cultured activity, similar to how in general we associate reading a book with a higher cultural level than watching a sports game on TV, and people that may feel socially awkward about admitting they watch football games will be quick to puff their chest about every book they've read.

Big studios know this, and they market their Action-Adventure games as RPGs. They add map nodes to chase endlessly and level up systems that give you +1 to all stats when you level and simultaneously every enemy in the world levels with you, getting +1 to all stats, literally changing nothing for the player, but granting themselves the ability to call their game an RPG, or have "RPG elements". Meanwhile, you don't get to make a single plot-altering choice through the whole game, which is one of the core features that anything that aspires to be called an RPG must have in my book.

I'm fine with that, really. I just don't need that type of shenanigans to enjoy a game, and I don't need Ubisoft's help to feel better about myself when I play a good game like Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I'm an adult, and I'm cool with playing dumb games if they are fun to play. So I call an RPG what to me is an RPG.
 
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HiddenX said:
If your personal treshold is reached you call it a CRPG.
That's the RPGWatch approach.
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Was there an (internal) vote on that? :p

I would prefer a non-binary outcome but instead a continous result like "RPG-score is 70%".

I understand that the the Watch Analyzer implicitly has this by the number of fulfilled conditions. But I'd go this extra step, because even if a game is not considered an RPG the information about the number of the fulfilled must-have conditions has some value. Also for RPGs (which have all must-haves fulfilled) the number of fulfilled should-have conditions is valuable.

Edit: I see from some newer analysis that there is a "CRPG index". Perhaps that already is what I meant. Can you point me to where it is described?
Also is there a list of games that had been analyzed?
Sorry if I'm too stuipd to find this myself...
 
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Stingray said:
But the developers/publishers must think it is, otherwise why do they keep referring to their non-RPGs as RPGs?
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Maybe. But do they? And if they do, isn't that just a vague way to describe their game? If that's intentional, it's silly because the critics will describe the game for what it is, and any false pretence will come back and bite them. It would also fail to target the proper audience.

We should look at individual examples, but I don't care enough to spend much time on that because there's no proof of such intention. The above examples of AC and TW could be in the RPG category, and I don't see RPG in the description of CoD (neither on their website or on Steam).
 
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Vaelith said:
It does have the connotation of being a more cultured activity, similar to how in general we associate reading a book with a higher cultural level than watching a sports game on TV, and people that may feel socially awkward about admitting they watch football games will be quick to puff their chest about every book they've read.
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I don't see that connotation for RPGs. And for me, culture is all about a broader knowledge, not a more restricted one.

BTW, you won't find many people in my country who think any less of someone for watching or attending a football game instead of reading books. These days, people know that life needs balance and doing too much of a single activity is bad. But sure enough, there will always be those who think their favourite activity is better.

Vaelith said:
Big studios know this, and they market their Action-Adventure games as RPGs. They add map nodes to chase endlessly and level up systems that give you +1 to all stats when you level and simultaneously every enemy in the world levels with you, getting +1 to all stats, literally changing nothing for the player, but granting themselves the ability to call their game an RPG, or have "RPG elements". Meanwhile, you don't get to make a single plot-altering choice through the whole game, which is one of the core features that anything that aspires to be called an RPG must have in my book.
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If they thought people prefer RPGs, they would simply make RPGs; trying to trick the customers doesn't work, as explained above, so why take the risk? When they add RPG elements to action games, it's more likely to reach a wider audience or to distinguish their game from existing ones. Similarly, they are making action RPGs.
 
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Redglyph said:
If they thought people prefer RPGs, they would simply make RPGs; trying to trick the customers doesn't work, as explained above, so why take the risk?
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Because making (good) RPGs is more expensive than making games of other genres?
 
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Morrandir said:
Because making (good) RPGs is more expensive than making games of other genres?
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That remains to be seen; do you have a specific comparison in mind? I'm not even sure you could find one, because how would you compare? The cost of making a game depends on a lot of things, like the time spent on development, the cinematics, the voice acting, the OST, ... You can find those features in any game. Stating that as a general rule just won't hold.

Even if it were true, that wouldn't be a good reason. If you're selling something else than an RPG and pretend it's an RPG, it won't sell. Even if you had invested less, you wouldn't gain much except a bad reputation.

Anyway, we have yet to name a game that pretends to be an RPG when it's not, so the discussion is rather vague and pointless.
 
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