As a huge RPG fan for 30 years - my rant about RPG's being called Action-RPG's!

[Kadayi]

IIRC you kept trying to persuade everyone that CRPGs are video games where you play a role.

LOL, if you think I'm getting drawn into any more of your roundabout chicanery you're much mistaken. Your powers are weak old man.

[c-Row]

Action RPGs. Speed matters. You don't even get to pause.

Well, that's fair enough.

What does dungeon crawlers have to do with anything? Dungeon crawling can be turn-based, real-time, top down, isometric or first person. It's a descriptor for the game's setting and content.

I understand your point, but the term is usually connected to a certain (simpler) play style rather than just the setting (Wikipedia seems to agree) even though the activity of crawling dungeons can of course occur in more complex games as well.

[archonsod]

Once you have such a variety, it's hard to say what is or is not an RPG, and easy to say "these are the things that are necessary for an RPG" and come up with a completely different list from everyone else. You couldn't possibly have these sorts of argument for many video game genres.

The problem is that you're looking at the wrong question. RPG isn't a vague term because what constitutes an RPG is ill-defined, it's vague because it's precisely defined - Role Playing Game. There's a couple of definitions of game which fit in context:
"a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators."

"an amusement or pastime: children's games."

Which means the actual mechanics are irrelevant, providing they fulfil the above definitions. In fact, I'm pretty sure there was a chess based RPG at one point. The key thing of course being that humanity has had several millenia of developing games, while we've only had a few decades developing computer games, so naturally the RPG genre is going to be somewhat expansive, simply because we've a few million games we simply need to add roleplaying to.

The same is actually happening in other genres too though, and will probably accelerate as the industry matures. Even the FPS isn't quite as distinct as you think - consider for example Crossbow, Operation Wolf, Terminator 2 (the arcade) and all the other gun cabinets in which you shoot things from a first person perspective. Now compare to Deus Ex or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. One could quite easily fabricate a rant about how the genre went downhill once Doom came out and true FPSs don't have movement keys.

[Berzee]

Well, it doesn't matter as such. But when I want to bitch a little about not having any new CRPGs to play, I don't want to be spammed with links to Skyrim, Fallout 3, Mass Effect 2 and whatnot.

Have you tried Human Revolution? It's one of those "Action-RPGs".

[Wizardry]

I understand your point, but the term is usually connected to a certain (simpler) play style rather than just the setting (Wikipedia seems to agree) even though the activity of crawling dungeons can of course occur in more complex games as well.

Yes, "simple" in terms of being more about combat, puzzles and items rather than characters and plot. That's what I meant by content. Being inside a dungeon is what I meant by setting. It's still nothing to do with being first person though. The Wikipedia article says that pedit5 was the first dungeon crawler, and that was a top down CRPG.

[c-Row]

Yes, "simple" in terms of being more about combat, puzzles and items rather than characters and plot. That's what I meant by content. Being inside a dungeon is what I meant by setting. It's still nothing to do with being first person though. The Wikipedia article says that pedit5 was the first dungeon crawler, and that was a top down CRPG.

Well, those were the examples I thought of first (association ftw!). ;)

[thegooseking]

The same is actually happening in other genres too though, and will probably accelerate as the industry matures. Even the FPS isn't quite as distinct as you think - consider for example Crossbow, Operation Wolf, Terminator 2 (the arcade) and all the other gun cabinets in which you shoot things from a first person perspective. Now compare to Deus Ex or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. One could quite easily fabricate a rant about how the genre went downhill once Doom came out and true FPSs don't have movement keys.

Have you ever tried to play a version of Doom with mouselook? Notice how easy it becomes? Obviously mouselook is an element of dumbing-down of FPSs! FPSs didn't go downhill with Doom, but they certainly went downhill before Quake!

[deano2099]

Well, it doesn't matter as such. But when I want to bitch a little about not having any new CRPGs to play, I don't want to be spammed with links to Skyrim, Fallout 3, Mass Effect 2 and whatnot.

Then use a different word? As a bit of a pedant about this sort of stuff, I do get it, but eventually you reach a point where you can either a) keep fighting for the original meaning of a word or b) be understood.

[NathanH]

Wizardry should start calling them CCRPGs---Classic CRPGs. Classic is a great word to use in a genre, because it basically just means old but sounds like it is a mark of quality. I guess the disadvantage is that people might assume he's talking about Planescape.

[Bhazor]

It is a fact universally acknowledged that everything peaked about 8 years ago.

[NathanH]

It is a fact universally acknowledged that everything peaked about 3 years ago.

And this state of affairs has been true for forty years.

[Nalano]

And this state of affairs has been true for forty years.

"Music was best when I was in high school!" - said without fail by the last four generations.

[Grizzly]

"Music was best when I was in high school!" - said without fail by the last four generations.

The last four generations had the right of it. Music has been quite awesome for decades now :P.

[thegooseking]

It's well known that Hesiod was complaining about societal decline and "the youth of today" in around 700BC, and that people who say such things today are just echoing an (at least) 2,700 year old complaint.

I'm pretty sure there is a parallel for people who complain about artistic decline. I wouldn't be surprised if there were people who, on hearing Beethoven for the first time, loudly proclaimed that, "In my day, we listened to Mozart! You know, proper Classical music! None of this modern Romantic rubbish that the kids like these days! Rock me, Amadeus!"

On a more recent note, one can hardly fail to notice how the debate about whether CDs or digital downloads (and this also applies to boxed games vs. download games) are better mirrors the debate about whether vinyl or CDs are better. On a broad level, a lot of these arguments can be boiled down to people who embrace change vs. people who fear change - neophiles vs. neophobes, as Robert Anton Wilson framed it. Rational discourse is pretty much superfluous when the real thing you're arguing about is the subjective value you place on the notion of change.

[Nalano]

Rational discourse is pretty much superfluous when the real thing you're arguing about is the subjective value you place on the notion of change.

Unless you're a daoist.

Tho I don't remember a CD vs DD debate. After all, they're both digital and thus capable of the same fidelity. Sure, there's an RIAA vs Apple debate, where CD singles sales have died in favor of buying songs online one by one (or just getting a subscription), but that's the publishers' problems, not ours.

[Namdrol]

I know the OP is writing his posts under the influence, but maybe someone stumbling over this thread and wondering about the term action-RPG would be interested in this article: http://insomnia.ac/commentary/the_rpg_conundrum/

It's cool, you should check it out.

Thanks, that clarified things for me.

as the Encyclopedia Britanica states, a role playing game is a game wherein the player takes a role and engages in collaborative story telling; where, within the rules, players can improvise freely & their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games."

This cannot happen without real AI in single player videogames. Which leaves MMORGS, but the author is right when he wrote

...in a world in which everyone was an adventurer there could be no adventures worth pursuing. After this realization set in there was not much to say or do about MMORPGs. They were -- and still are -- the only electronic games which deserve to be called RPGs (with the exception of computer-assisted RPGs); but they were sad, and boring, and ironically they ended up having less of the spirit of role-playing about them than even the earliest, dumbest dungeon crawlers.

I'm going to consign the label rpg to the 'meaningless marketing term', at least for single player videogames. I will however, keep an eye on the mmorgp space to see if something truly innovative comes down the pike.

[Bhazor]

On a more recent note, one can hardly fail to notice how the debate about whether CDs or digital downloads (and this also applies to boxed games vs. download games) are better mirrors the debate about whether vinyl or CDs are better. On a broad level, a lot of these arguments can be boiled down to people who embrace change vs. people who fear change - neophiles vs. neophobes, as Robert Anton Wilson framed it. Rational discourse is pretty much superfluous when the real thing you're arguing about is the subjective value you place on the notion of change.

I don't know. I think that debate is really about over production in the studio removing all the "imperfections" like the sound of breathing or fingers sliding along strings or what have you. People just can't tell and blame the CDs for it when those things could have still gone on the album but were edited out. Likewise the issue with digital music downloads is about how much the music has been shaved down to save bandwidth. There is undeniably a difference between audio qualities but how noticeable they really are is up for debate. Or angry shouting as is their want.

[Namdrol]

I don't know. I think that debate is really about over production in the studio removing all the "imperfections" like the sound of breathing or fingers sliding along strings or what have you. People just can't tell and blame the CDs for it when those things could have still gone on the album but were edited out. Likewise the issue with digital music downloads is about how much the music has been shaved down to save bandwidth. There is undeniably a difference between audio qualities but how noticeable they really are is up for debate. Or angry shouting as is their want.

I know this is totally ot, but there is more to the vinyl/dl/cd debate than that. First, there is the whole loudness war thing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ One of the ways people have of communicating emotionality and meaning is by modulating the volume of their speech/music/singing etc. An actor whose voice is the same volume whether he is shouting in rage or expressing his love is a bad actor, yet that is what modern music production does to most non-classical music.

If you put ate 80's cd version of Master of puppets, for example, in a cd player and adjst the volume so it is comfortable, then put in 2010's Death Magnetic and don't touch the volume, you'll blow your speakers. There are real quantifiable differences between 2000s music production and pre-2000s.

As to vinyl, Yes vinyl is inferior in every respect, but ironically that inferiority makes it superior. if it is done right (i.e. they just dont use the cd master waves) it will have more dynamic range.

Mastering for vinyl is different than mastering for digital. A master for vinyl with the same dynamic range as one for a modern cd/digital download, will sound horrible (and they do that quite often so they don't have to master twice). I wont go into technical crap, but the upshot is vinyl masters have to have a modicum of dynamic range because of the medium's limitations, and so the masters used for vinyl sound better than those used for the digital versions. IIRC, Tom Petty included a cd version of the vinyl masters with the vinyl version of one of his albums, and that cd version was vastly superior to the regular cd version with the waves that had been master for digital media.

edit, just scanning my morning news and noticed arstechnica has a feature on mastering for the ipod age if anyone is interested, dont know if the article is any good theough. http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...e-ipod-age.ars

edit number 2: terrible article.