Rampant Games - The New CRPG Heyday...

Jay Barnson dares to be optimistic about the future of the genre in The New CRPG Heyday:

Exhibit B – Mainstream: During much of the last decade, mainstream CRPG fans who preferred single-player experiences – particularly PC gamers – often had a bit of a wait major between releases. The wait has definitely shrunk  over the last five years or so. While we can argue over the meaning of role-playing game and how far these mainstream games have moved to being conventional action games and shooters, the mainstream games professing to be RPGs are more plentiful and happily show off their big or bigger budgets.  While the purist in me may gripe, they are still plenty of fun (and sell plenty of copies…)

Exhibit C – Expanding Middle Zone: Somewhere between an indie working solo on a game in his basement and the latest EA-owned Bioware release costing eight digits to produce, you’ve got this nebulous, fuzzy zone of games that don’t seem to be truly indie or mainstream. Torchlight. Bastion. The Witcher II. My traditional view of indie is more along the lines of “self-funded, not a large publisher,” but things have gotten more and more complicated as the industry has grown, matured, and started weaning itself from its dependence on the big publishers.  But obviously, these guys are also making RPGs, and succeeding at least moderately well at it. And speaking of interesting funding methods…