While I’d been following Fallout-but-in-fallout-of-Roman-Empire indie-RPG Age of Decadence’s development at a comfortable distance, its world collided with Rock Paper Shotgun when Walker posted a little combat teaser the team behind this indie-RPG had released. The thread exploded with readers rejecting its turn-based formality, and then there was a counter-reaction to that. It basically turned into a debate about what the RPG should be in the modern age, and so when outspoken Lead Designer Vince D Weller started chatting behind the scenes, we decided an interview may be a worthwhile thing.

The results are a slowburn towards something incendiary. Vince is angry at many things, from the industry to the modern RPG, from the expectations of audiences to… many things. In fact, it’s somewhat appropriate for a man who steadfastedly believes in multiple-possibilities in the role-playing game, that there’s multiple targets for his ire. In fact, there’s a good chance that Vince is angry with you, specifically, but his J’accuse ranges further than that. Fireworks are lit beneath the cut.
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I seem to recall that one or two people were slightly unhappy with the anti-piracy measures on Bioshock. There was no big deal about it, was there? Of course there bloody was. Folk don’t take kindly to being told they can install something they’ve just paid real Earth money for a limited number of times. Now that the shouting’s died down, Gamespot’s reporting on a recent talk by 2K Au… 2k Austra… 2K Arrrrgh, no, can’t do it, sorry – Irrational’s Martin Slater about the controversial measures.

“We achieved our goals. We were uncracked for 13 whole days. We were happy with it. But we just got slammed. Everybody hated us for it. It was unbelievable… You can’t afford to be cracked. As soon as you’re gone, you’re gone, and your sales drop astronomically if you’ve got a day one crack.”

I agree and sympathise with him – those torrent sites are very busy these days, and I really can’t believe it’s not hurting developers – but I did feel Bioshock’s measures were far too stringent. If you crossover from protecting your game into insulting the guys who have keenly thrown their money at you, frankly you’ve gone too far. Seems Irrational are somewhat on the same page: “I don’t think we’ll do exactly the same thing again, but we’ll do something close.”

So it is going to happen again. Read the rest of this entry »