The History of CRPGs: Should We Go Back to Go Forward?
Matt Barton's extensive (but hardly exhaustive - that would take textbook-sized tome!) retrospective on computer roleplaying games concludes over at GamaSutra this morning:

The History of Computer Roleplaying Games, Part III

This retrospective covers two of my all-time favorites in detail: Ultima Underworld, and of course Ultima VII. And it chronicles the decline of this great series, starting with Ultima VII part 2: Serpent Isle (which was more linear and bug-riddled than the first one - including a nasty show-stopper that prevented me from completing it... though I enjoyed it up until that point), and then Ultima VIII which lost many fans of the series, and finally the mess that was Ultima IX. Richard Garriott, AKA Lord British, blamed EA's involvement, as they purchased Origin during the latter stages of development of Ultima VII: The Black Gate.

I'm sure that figured strongly into it. However, it's also possible that they just had problems scaling their production process with the complexity of the game engines. Barton notes that their aggressive creation of new engines was probably a leading contributor to their downfall, while the Might & Magic series suffered from a lack of ambition in updating their engine.

Barton also talks lovingly about the early entries of the still-popular Elder Scrolls series. I missed Arena (though you can download it for FREE now, so if you want to know what you missed, you can play it now via DOSBox), but Daggerfall hooked me but good. And it highlights the hallmark of the series - which made me love Oblivion even though it often felt more like an FPS than an RPG - the sheer, staggering open-endedness and non-linearity of the series. A source of bugs and balance problems, but also of great fun and enjoyment.

This is also where three more of my favorite RPG series were introduced: Baldur's Gate, Diablo, and Fallout. The controversy surrounding Diablo continues to this day, and Barton goes into some detail about it. I echo his sentiments when he says, "Diablo and Diablo II are truly CRPGs for the masses. At the risk of sounding like a jaded old curmudgeon, I can't help but feel a pang of regret about the overwhelming triumph of this series, since it seems to have come at the expense of the older, more sophisticated CRPGs of past eras." I love the games - don't get me wrong there. But like Oblivion, I really expected these to be more of exciting variations on a great and incredibly broad genre, rather than the shape of all things to come.

Is Our Future In Our History?
Mr Barton makes an interesting comment: "Indeed, although it's a commonplace in game history to blurt out things like, `We've sure have come a long way since Akalabeth!', at one level we really haven't taken more than a few timid steps. Sure, there have been enormous changes in graphics, sound, interface, and so on, but much of what we cherish in a modern CRPG was already present in (older games)... In short, rather than view the history of CRPGs as a neat time line that begins with total crap and just keeps getting less crappy all the time, I see it as a treasure-filled, monster-infested dungeon. While you can get from one point on that path to any other, you'll never travel in a straight line--and you never know what's waiting for you around the next corner."

Amen. In fact, in some ways I think we've lost a few things the quest for mainstream over time, and abandoned some great ideas that were never fully explored. Can we go back and check out those side passages, please? Those might have led to whole new worlds.

Barton isn't so sure it's going to happen. "The single-player, standalone CRPG reached its zenith during this period, and I've begun to doubt if Baldur's Gate II will ever be surpassed. Even in many of these games, though, the presence of online, multi-player options signaled the impending doom of the old CRPG we knew and loved. At the end of the platinum age, the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, or the MMORPG, dominated the scene, and, at least to this critic, the future of the CRPG is grimmer than anything ever dreamed up by Lord British." Though he amends this view at the end of the article by concluding, "Like Pool of Radiance, Baldur’s Gate, or Fallout, the next big CRPG won’t be so much about doing something new, but doing something right."

Possibly. Although each of those games did offer some innovations in their own way. But they really were more evolutionary than revolutionary, building in their own way on tried and true design principles. None were particularly mind-blowing graphically, but the graphics worked with the gameplay, the characters, and the background to meld into a whole new world where we could be transported.

I would hope that we're only at another dip in the road. With the amazing success of the Elder Scrolls series (and the somewhat more distant success of Diablo II still resonating years later), interest by publishers in RPGs remains high. But publishers, leery of the enormous expense of making RPGs compared to other games - seem to focus on cutting the wrong things to keep things on budget. Maybe not the wrong things from a short-term, "let's make this as profitable as possible" perspective. After all, we gamers are having fun - which is the whole point - and the games are making money. But I feel they are painting themselves into a corner in the long term.

I think in some ways, we DO need to go backwards. I think there were a lot of possibilities suggested out by some of the games discussed in this series of articles that were only partially explored. Maybe it was because of the lack of technology to pull it off, or maybe it was just a running out of steam. But I see lots of uncharted territory out there to be explored.

It's the same problem with the rest of the game industry - as budgets have increased, willingness to risk failure in experiments has correspondingly decreased. Games cost about ten times to make now as they did only a dozen years ago. At least in mainstream game development. For indie games, we're looking at budgets much more in line with what we had back in the mid-to-late 80's and early 90's. And while there's less chance of a breakaway hit due to the competition from out mainstream cousins, there's still enough profit potential (or so I convince myself, wondering why I'm spending hours and hours writing games instead of playing them as much as I'd like) to make it worthwhile. If for no other reason than that there's a portion of the audience out there that's being underserved.

And hopefully that will provide some room to experiment and explore.

So call me an optimist. I really appreciate Matt Barton taking the time to do this extensive look back at where we've been, what we've tried, what went wrong, what worked, and --- if we're lucky --- what we should go back and revisit. If the history of RPGs is more of a treasure-filled, monster-infested dungeon, I have a sneaking suspicion that we've bypassed or only partially explored way too many side passages that could have led us to entirely new, unexplored levels filled with even more gold and wonders.


(Vaguely) related pining for the fjords:
* The Evolution of Computer RPGs
* What Makes a Good Casual RPG?
* Oblivion: The Flower-Picking Simulator
* Innovation in RPGs?
* Original Dungeons & Dragons Trivia
* How to Get Me to Buy Your Indie RPG

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Labels: Mainstream Games, Roleplaying Games

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