REBUTTAL TO: On the Importance of the RPGamer
Fans of RPGs have been known to take gaming more seriously than those gamers whose favorite games do not include RPGs, and rightfully so. By their very nature, the games that RPG fans prefer invoke a different kind of involvement from the player than the that offered by fighting, strategy, first person shooter, sports, racing, or action/adventure games; RPGs’ focus on a captivating story contributes to the player’s sense of being part of a much more epic event than the type of events offered by other types of games. The narratives that players encounter in RPGs can easily become as valued as those that one might encounter in a novel or a movie. That being said, it’s fair to say that it is easier to become emotionally attached to RPGs; the effect that nostalgia has had on RPG re-releases, remakes, etc. illustrates this perfectly. However, there comes a point when an attachment to the role-playing game in general can obscure one’s judgment of certain facts. Carl Sagan said it best: “Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.” While browsing the editorial archives in order to get a general idea of how the editorials process works at RPGamer before being hired, I stumbled upon an editorial that exemplifies what happens when infatuation with a particular game genre hinders logical analysis.
When speaking of the role of game genre availability on a particular gaming platform in determining the gaming population’s preference of a platform, it becomes far too easy to make inaccurate, sweeping generalizations. I find it difficult to believe that RPGs can be attributed as the genre that makes or breaks a gaming platform’s success. While individual platforms are often attributed as being more proficient in facilitating certain game genres (i.e. the Sega Genesis’s better sports line-up over the Super Nintendo’s or the Playstation’s besting of the N64 in the RPG market), it does not follow that, just because the platforms that have been successful have also been the ones that provided the best RPGs, specializing in the production of good RPGs on a platform is the cause of the platform’s success. It is true that sales figures prove that the SNES outlived the Sega Genesis and also courted the RPG market more effectively, and it is also true that the Sony sold more Playstations than Nintendo did N64s and also had a stronger backing in RPGs. However, there is no direct relationship between a platform’s success and its focus on RPGs. Any correlation between these two characteristics of gaming platforms is post hoc at best. Just because the dominant gaming platforms in the console or handheld wars throughout the years have traditionally been those that also have a successful RPG market does not mean that the possession of the best RPG market is the cause of a platform’s case. To make this case is to come to a fallacious conclusion based on the flawed idea that just because an event happened after another, then the former event must be the cause of the latter.
While temporal sequences of events are certainly integral to notions of causality (a cause, does, after all, always precede an effect), the use of a temporal sequence of events alone is not enough to prove that one thing is the cause of another. Perhaps an example of this form of logic being used will assist in making this point more clear. If I happen to trip on the sidewalk, then I might try to recall what happened right before I tripped to ascertain the cause of my tripping. Suddenly, I remember that I crossed paths with a black cat moments before tripping. Surely, the encounter with the black cat is the cause of my misfortune.
Obviously, most of us (I hope) would not accept the above logic in determining the cause of my tripping. Just because I saw the cat before I tripped does not mean that the encounter was the cause of my tripping. On the same token, just because, over the course of a successful platform’s lifetime, many RPGs have been released on the system, one cannot legitimately claim that the existence of numerous RPGs is the cause of a platform’s success. Absent any independent proof that most consumers buy platforms based on its RPG market, this argument is completely erroneous.
The popularity of gaming platforms in particular is subject to a wealth of other factors. The types of games released on a platform are certainly important in determining how many of the platform’s units are sold (Microsoft found this out the hard way in the first year or two of dismal games being released on its Xbox). However, there are more logical reasons for a platform’s success than arguing that its prosperity stems from the releases of a specific genre. The SNES outsold the Sega Genesis thanks to Nintendo’s unstoppable production schedule and greater quantity of games that many considered to be must-haves. The Playstation beat out the N64 thanks to the fact that it had over a year’s head start to attract both third-party game developers and customers. In the current console wars, Sony has proven to be the champion (in the financial sense), selling more units than Nintendo did with its Gamecube or Microsoft with its Xbox. Many attribute Sony’s success, once more, with its head start; the Playstation 2 was released before the Gamecube and the Xbox. Sony’s reputation with the Playstation 1, combined with the Playstation 2’s built-in DVD playback abilities (for the first few months after the Japanese release of the Playstation 2, the top-selling product that was played in the console was the DVD of The Matrix; the inclusion of DVD features was a huge incentive for Japanese customers to buy the Playstation 2 due to the fact that DVD players at the time were fairly expensive) further stimulated sales of Playstation 2 units. The economics of the sale of gaming platforms is much too complicated to allow for the characterization of a platform’s success according to its courting of a single type of game genre.
Let’s be realistic; is it fair to attribute a platform’s success solely on whether or not it produces a vivacious RPG market? The Sega Genesis’s, N64’s, Gamecube’s, and Xbox’s relative inadequacies in producing numerous great RPGs in comparison to their competitors is clearly not enough to warrant arguing that those platforms’ lower sales figures were caused by the fact that they produced fewer “great” RPGs. Absent any verifiable indications that RPGs are the primary genre that consumers are interested in, arguments that claim that attracting those who primarily play RPGs guarantees winning the current platform war are unsound and are the results of interference by personal bias.
|
RSS feed
iTunes
