RPG Designer hates RPGs

Today in RPG Vault, Jeff Vogel, a game designer who's been making shareware RPG's with his three-nerd crew at Spiderweb Software, lays it out on just why he hates RPG's. It's a long column because he's got a lot of bile; so much so that this is the first of two columns, but here are a couple of snippets -

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.

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.

As much as I loves me some RPG's, I can't help but agree with some of his points. And the best RPGs will address exactly that - take for instance one of my personal favorites, Knights of the Old Republic. In it, you start out as a bad-ass space hero, and progress right on up to Jedi, and then on to basically galaxy-shattering powerhouse. And yup, that's what make it fun, in part - in real life I could kick rats and sell their teeth (if anyone would buy them) but that's nowhere near as cool as raising a hand Jedi-style and watching everyone around me go flying like they'd been shot out of a cannon. Plus, I still have a crush on Bastila. (Call me, Babe!)

Fortunately, gaming is an evolving hobby and industry, so we can hope that the current model of developers-first, creatives-second gets turned on its head. Eye-popping graphics are groovy, to be sure - but nowhere near as compelling as a tight narrative that draws the player in and emotionally hooks him on the story. How many times have you seen a witless movie-franchise game that looked great but was zero fun to play? Now name your top five games of all times, and ask yourself if any of them didn't have a great story.

With outspoken developers like Vogel, maybe we'll see the ascendancy of substance over style come to pass sooner, rather than later.

And then maybe your mom will soar overhead riding a flying pig. (Or Bastila will call me.)