Topic: RPG Editorial -- Why One RPG Maker HATES Making and Playing RPG's....

[MysterD]

This RPG Maker of Spiderweb Software explains why he HATES RPG's

Jeff Vogel's View From the Bottom #7
The head of Spiderweb Software, a studio that develops award-winning fantasy RPGs, tells us that he hates them

February 09, 2007 - Avernum 4 is named for the vast subterranean domain in which it takes place. While life has never been easy in this murky realm, it has suddenly become even more perilous. The savage creatures that usually remain in the lower tunnels are emerging far more often, and huge beasts protected by powerful magic are terrorizing the cities. The cause of this turmoil is unknown, but perhaps you've found a clue. Geneforge 4: Rebellion takes place in a world controlled by the Shapers, a guild whose members possess the ability to create animals and plant forms to serve their needs and goals. Some have risen up against them, and have been joined by humans who want the powers for themselves. You have been sent to help fight the oppressors. Will you do so, or switch sides for the riches they offer?

In an era when many RPGs have multi-year development schedules, Spiderweb Software released the former title for the Mac late last year followed by a Windows version last March, with the latter game apparently on track to ship only about a year later. What makes this even more interesting is the nature of the company, its products and channel of distribution. The entire team consists of three people. Its offerings are so-called "retro" RPGs with plenty of gameplay and graphics that are reminiscent of a decade or more ago, and they are shareware. This may not seem like a recipe for success, but since principal Jeff Vogel has been at it since 1994, it obviously works. Having known him since shortly after that, we've seen that he has a number of interesting opinions related to various aspects of his profession.


Why I Hate Fantasy RPGs by Jeff Vogel

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.

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.

That's what RPG is about -- building your character's stats and their alignment, from scratch. Personally, this is what I love about RPG's, myself.

Though, most RPG Expansions AREN'T, since that if you start an expansion, you usually import your character from the original game OR start the expansion w/ a NEW High level character.

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.

RPG's are not really meant to be "pick-up and play" kind of games.

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.

Some RPG's, like Fable, are only say 10-20 hours short, if you do just the main quest. That would be one of the few, of course.

Oblivion's main quest is around 20 hours. But, Oblivion has the "level scaling" process going on, so Oblivion did a good job of letting you play the game at your own pace b/c of this.

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.

Yuh, it does -- those RPG's are usually EXPANSION PACKS.

I just played Final Fantasy XII, for the PlayStation 2 - an entirely worthy role-playing game. And, by turning the combat speed to maximum and skipping all optional quests, I managed to win it in only 47 hours.

RPG's are meant to time-sink.

There was one quest in it that finally broke my spirit.

You have to find this secret door into this castle. Fair enough. And you find out how from this guy in the sewers who sounds like Apu from the Simpsons, but a grumpy old man.

He knows how to open the hidden door into the castle. But does he give you a key? Or just, Heaven forbid, open it for you? No. He says, "To get into the castle, you must first get a darkened sunstone. Then you need to fill it with sun energy. By wandering the lands to the south, and searching for the four shadestones. Then you fill the crystal with sun energy. Then you..."

SHUT UP! I don't want to spend hours wandering and killing wolves and for the shadestones, whatever those are, to open a door. It doesn't make any sense! Just open the door for me, you creepy old Apu-sounding FREAK!

LMAO!

Sometimes, that is the fun of RPG's.
Sometimes, that is the tedious-ness of RPG's.

It usually depends on how it is handled by the developer, actually.

Finding the shadestones and charging the sunstone took 90 minutes. I could have watched a good movie in that time. 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.

LOL.

That's just bad design, to fight the same wolf 500 times. They should've made more enemy types and/or different wolf types for that area.

In any other sort of game, I could start out playing someone competent and immediately do stuff. In role-playing games, I have to prove that I deserve to be competent by enduring tedium. Then it lets me do the heroic stuff. And multiplayer games are like that times 10. Anyone who ever spent an hour in World of Warcraft killing 50 goblin chiropractors to collect 10 chiropractor shins knows what I am talking about.

LOL.
 

And the games I write are no better. They do exactly the same thing. Sure, it might be cool to make a game where your character starts out a level 50 badass and then just trashes bozos. But it just wouldn't sell as well. The addictive, statistic-increasing, time-eating quality isn't the problem with these games. It's the point.

I dunno, myself.

Starting off at level 50 would be awesome, actually. Usually, those are the expansion packs!!!

I'm tired of starting a new game and being a loser. I'm tired of running the same errands to prove myself. The next time I enter my fantasy world, I want it to not assume that I'm a jackass.

Then make *that* game.

I'd be ready for it.

So now, thinking about playing an RPG just makes me tired. I may play one again someday. All I need is a huge surplus of time oppressing me that I need to kill with extreme prejudice. And, until that happens, unless a game can be finished in under 10 to 12 hours, I'm not interested.

Okay....here's what you *could* do....

Make a short RPG game with some optional side quests.

Next, I'll talk about the thing that every RPG has and everyone hates. (Hint: trash.)

Oh, boy...I bet I know where *THIS* will be going....hehe.

There's been games that made this easy, by allowing you to directly travel to locations a la Oblivion.
Or the Divinity games, where you drop one teleport stone and place another where you will leave off, so you can jump into the stone's portal and go directly to that spot. Always wise to place one in town, so you can go straight to the merchant. Then, jump back through that portal stone, directly to the spot you were at.

Jeff Vogel
Spiderweb Software

In 1994, Jeff Vogel founded Spiderweb Software. Since then, he has written many fantasy role-playing games for Windows and Macintosh, including the Avernum and Geneforge series. Demos and the like can be found at http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com

[The opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of the writer, and do not represent RPG Vault, Vault Network or IGN. - Ed.]

Okay.

[Xessive]

Haha I was expecting something like "I hate RPG's coz people are never happy with what you give them."

[scottws]

I didn't read all of it but I thought I'd add that I too have realized I hate RPGs.  They are just boring.  Especially Morrowind.  Baldur's Gate was decent, but even that bored me after awhile.

[MysterD]

Haha I was expecting something like "I hate RPG's coz people are never happy with what you give them."

LOL @ that.

Though, I would like to a game where you start off at the game's "Level 1", which would probably be equal to a very high level 20 character in under D&D rules.

That'd be cool.

[Cobra951]

I didn't read all of it but I thought I'd add that I too have realized I hate RPGs.  They are just boring.  Especially Morrowind.  Baldur's Gate was decent, but even that bored me after awhile.

I don't mind the whole character-development mechanic.  What I don't want to do anymore is get sucked into endless random-battle wormholes unpredictably, and for no reason other than "this is how the game works".  TES4: Oblivion approach all the way, please.

[Quemaqua]

People play games for different reasons.  This guy sounds like an idiot because of the simple fact that people like him shouldn't play RPGs.  There's nothing there they'd actually like.  Why are you playing a game that tries to immerse you in some kind of *world* with some kind of *persistence* when you want something that throws you in, lets you shoot a couple of things, then abruptly end?  That's not what RPGs are about, and none of his complaints are valid in that sense.  They're certainly valid complaints, but then the simple question has to be asked: why the fuck are you playing RPGs?  Instead of whining and making yourself look like an idiot, why don't you, I don't know... go play a game you might actually like?

Besides that, I disagree with him on a number of points.  Oblivion is nothing like he describes.  You start out decent, then get to a point fairly quickly where you're doing heroic things and making a difference in terms of the fiction.  You don't have to learn how to do stupid and rudimentary things.  If you're a fighter, you can kick some ass straight out of the gate.  You learn how to get better, but that doesn't mean you start out as an idiot.  Within the first few hours of the main quest you're doing amazing things that most of the other people in the world are amazed by.  And secondly, how many truly *good* movies are 90 minutes?

[Cobra951]

I have to agree with Que here.  I think the guy is just fed up.  He's been living and breathing RPGs for too many years.  He needs a break.

[idolminds]

What I find funny is the dude makes the very games he's describing. If he wants change, maybe he should lead by example?

[MysterD]

People play games for different reasons.  This guy sounds like an idiot because of the simple fact that people like him shouldn't play RPGs.  There's nothing there they'd actually like.  Why are you playing a game that tries to immerse you in some kind of *world* with some kind of *persistence* when you want something that throws you in, lets you shoot a couple of things, then abruptly end?  That's not what RPGs are about, and none of his complaints are valid in that sense.  They're certainly valid complaints, but then the simple question has to be asked: why the fuck are you playing RPGs?  Instead of whining and making yourself look like an idiot, why don't you, I don't know... go play a game you might actually like?

I think what he is picking at is that many RPG's stick to a certain formula -- and he's looking for something to break the mold. If he really wants to *evolve* the RPG genre in *his* own way, maybe he should make his own RPG this is NOTHING like most of them out there.

I do like his idea of having an extremely powerful character when you start the game. Though, most RPG's do that w/ expansion packs, where you import your character from the Original Campaign right into the Expansion. You pick up where you left off, which is very cool.

In many cases w/ these RPG expansions, you can even begin w/ the Expansion content w/out playing the original campaign. You can sometimes even begin w/ a new character and it'll force you to level up to whatever the game's starting level is -- NWN Hordes does that. Or, like say DS2: Broken World or Titan Quest's upcoming expansion, you can select a pre-made character, which is already at a high level. These  expansions are normally shorter games, anywhere from 10-20 hours, so maybe he should be playing these instead of full-fledged 40-60 hour time sinks.

Besides that, I disagree with him on a number of points.  Oblivion is nothing like he describes.  You start out decent, then get to a point fairly quickly where you're doing heroic things and making a difference in terms of the fiction.  You don't have to learn how to do stupid and rudimentary things.  If you're a fighter, you can kick some ass straight out of the gate.

Agreed.

You learn how to get better, but that doesn't mean you start out as an idiot.  Within the first few hours of the main quest you're doing amazing things that most of the other people in the world are amazed by.

Yes, Oblivion starts you off into heated stuff, as soon as the game begins.

And secondly, how many truly *good* movies are 90 minutes?

Code 46, to name one, if you ask me.

[MysterD]

What I find funny is the dude makes the very games he's describing. If he wants change, maybe he should lead by example?

Bingo.

Not every RPG needs to really start you off as a Level 1 scrub.

It'd be cool to be a Level 1 God-like character.

And if he really wants to break the mold, how about the hero/heroine doesn't save the land/world/planet/galaxy/universe?

[scottws]

I didn't read the article, but is he a programmer or a designer?  If he's a programmer, he most likely has zero say in how the game is going to play out.

[MysterD]

I didn't read the article, but is he a programmer or a designer?  If he's a programmer, he most likely has zero say in how the game is going to play out.

Designer.

[Ghandi]

News flash: Local man hates his job.