We Have Become Elitists

by Robert Giles

We as players of RPGs ignore or ridicule those who attempt to become a part of the loop. We were introduced to video games with such titles as Street Fighter, Mega Man, Super Mario Bros., and for some, Asteroids. We saw games as a time to turn into a vegetable and perform mindless tasks and eventually we were bored. Then came the breakthrough in games with something called a RPG and this breakthrough was led to popularity by a series called Final Fantasy. These games were innovative in that they did not require the fastest reflexes but only a sharp mind and best of all they had stories, they had plots, and they had plot twists. Now that we had found this wonderful genre we "knew" that everybody must know about it already and we struggled to find all the information that we could. Once that was done we talked and we talked and we became just like the characters of High Fidelity. When someone asks an honest question we ridicule them. Those who honestly suggest games which would appeal to the fledgling RPG player receive the scorn of their peers for giving away the valued secrets of the Role Playing brotherhood.

We uphold games, series and companies as infallible, and those who disagree are unworthy of our attention. We believe that one game, one series, and one company define our genre. We grade every game that comes out by any other company against the merits of games preceding it and not on what it is able to do on its own. We compare everything to the ending of Final Fantasy 4 or every silent character to Crono. Without question we buy any game with a particular logo on it without consideration of its content. We rate it in our top games of all the time and said logo and company must struggle in order to displease us. When they do, however, we rage and we rant and we promise but we crawl back to them by the time they release the next game.

We are elitists and I pity us. I have run into the roadblock put up by so many of the RPG community. There are those that honestly tried to suggest games which would be enjoyable but so many suggest games that are so obscure and are upheld for their obscurity as well as their often dense and overbearing stories and game play. We are afraid of new things and when a company attempts to change the standard formula in order to offer us something that is worth the fifty dollars we now pay for our games we dismiss it almost immediately, compare it to our upheld classics, and simply refuse it. I have become an elitist in that I uphold one company as good although I have seen a faltering in their past. I try new things, though, and struggle to break the mold that I have been cast in along with many others. This is not easy and just like exercising it is easier with the help of others. We are viewed as elitists by the gaming public at large and I say that we challenge that view, that we break the mold and share the joys of a good RPG, any good RPG, with all who are interested.