A Change in the Nature of the RPG Community

by Robert Szkotak 

I remember playing my very first role playing game, Final Fantasy I. Boy, those were the days. No character personalities at all, just the six classes. The storyline was okay, but stale. And don't even begin to get me started on the graphics. Still, many of us enjoyed it. It didn't have Active Time Battle or a decent magic system, and when people attacked a creature that had died, they lost their turn. Dragon Warrior was equally un-innovative. It had the same storyline of save the world / princess and simplistic battle systems and graphics. But we enjoyed these RPGs. Why did we enjoy them? Why did few people leap to attack or defend an RPG? The answer is because it is all we had. It was FF1 or DW, and that was it for Nintendo.

As Martin Haller said in his editorial "The Changing Face of the Import RPG: Is America Ready for More?", and I quote, "Previously, RPGs were so rare that we were more ready to overlook their shortcomings. We were also receiving the cream of the crop, with a few notable exceptions..." This is true. We only recieved good games because those were the only ones that could make it back then. The RPG community was small, with a small voice and a small stick. So we liked what we had, because the alternative was nothing at all. A simple look at the translation of FFIV or DW1 reveals that today's poor translations are nothing new. And the butchering, and I use that word on purpose, of many RPGs back then would have had people today screaming in rage. But back then we took what we had.

Today, however, the community is a different story. We have grown up, so to speak; we have grown in size and in market power, and we now have the ability to influence the market. Or do we? With the growth of the RPG genre, we can see that the genre is undergoing a situation similar to that of the fighting genre several years ago: Everybody and their uncle is trying to cash in on the genre. Martin says, "Now, we're being given a flood of mediocre games, and the public has yet to respond." Maybe the public doesn't wan't to respond. Or maybe, just maybe, we don't have as big a stick as we would like to think we do.

The growth of the RPG community and genre has has the effect of creating games that are non-standard. However, this is often read not as "non-standard" but as "sub-standard." Martin says, "I took some chances, and trusted Square, and ended up with the horrendous Saga Frontier." Martin is entitled to his opinion, as are we all. But, obviously, the game has had some market impact and Square is making money from the game-- there's even a message board for it here at RPGamer. So all the complaining we can do won't do squat; the number of people who like the way the genre is going balance out the number of people who don't.

And the genre is changing, in more ways than just one. More emphasis is being put on graphics today than 10 years ago. A more free-form ability system, which allows us to custom tailor our fighters, has developed. And many games are taking on a more futuristic tone. There are a good number of people who would rather have more fantasy-orientated games. And the debate over graphics has flared up to become one of the hottest topics on the net and the RPG community. But, as much as we can petition, complain, and try and get our way, things will go on as they will, and not how we will.

And that doesn't even cover what I like to call "alternative" RPGs: Alundra, the upcoming Brave Fencer Musashi, Parasite Eve, and others like them which mix the RPG genre with others. I personally enjoyed Alundra. It wasn't meant to be a FF clone, and once you look past that, the game reveals its true colors: the best, if not only, Zelda-clone for the PSX. And although I am sure that there are poor games out there, both standard and non-standard, it is like that in every single genre. Why should we expect RPGs to be any different?

To be perfectly honest, we don't have the power needed to make the RPG genre any different. We can't even agree with each other on which games should be considered good and which bad (exception: Beyond the Beyond-- spew!). There are factions for each and every RPG released for the PSX, some saying the game was good, some bad. If you doubt this, look around the editorials here a little; they speak my point much more eloquently than I ever could. However, five or ten years ago, we could. And we did. After FFIV, a great push was made for equality of RPGs in America and Japan, and FFVI was only lacking one minor thing (the ability for Cyan to use tools in the WoR). But then, then we had power. As for today, I'm not so sure. The community has changed, as has the genre, and with that change, we have indeed altered everything. We have lost our ability to rise with one voice and dictate what needs to be done. And to end on an extremely odd note, the only was for us to regain the ability to shape RPGs is for RPGs to become less popular.