Thread 3867038

Why did RPGs peak in the late 90s? Why is this fucking planet and the human species incapable of producing kino RPGs anymore?
We maybe get 1 every couple of years. What the fuck is going on? I've played everything that's worth playing.
WHY AM I FORCED TO SCRAPE THE BOTTOM OF THE FUCKING BARREL?
WHY THE FUCK AM I PLAYING VAGRUS?

>>3867038 (OP)
>Why did RPGs peak in the late 90s?
What didn't?

My life also peaked in the 90s and I was born in 96.

>>3867038 (OP)
Because they still had tabletop at heart. Hybridizing to RTwP was arguably a misstep, but these games still drew from the right place and you can tell those designers played tabletop or at least understood.

>>3867038 (OP)
You get them. They're all action RPGs now, though.

>>3867039
Almost everything, nostalgianigger.

>>3867038 (OP)
It's because video games in the '90s were an artform, primarily. People who made them were passionate about them. They were dorks and geeks who really wanted to create an experience they enjoyed and were proud of.

That is not what the games industry is today. Today it is an industry primarily. It's there to extract money from a target audience. The most efficient / effective way to do that is to set up a free-to-play game-as-a-service with a carefully engineered addiction-loop that then aggressively pushes the victims to a cash shop. It's a casino model. Literally. Like there is an entire cohort of psychology majors who were LITERALLY headhunted by game dev HR departments specifically for the purpose of designing systems that would maximize revenue.

Thus, the lootbox was born. It's a quasi-legal loophole in what used to be laws written to regulate casinos (for example age restrictions: you can't let children into a casino, but children can play a video game while their parents' credit card is on the account...). It's how we get shitty cosmetics shops (a "skin" which is just a palette swap... that'll be five bucks thanks). It's how we get pay-to-win gimmicks in games like Black Desert.

The point of video games today is not to make art. It's to extract revenue from an addiction-captured target audience.

And RPGs... are famous specifically for being extremely expensive and time consuming to make, being cerebral narrative-driven experiences, and thus not useful for an addiction loop while being "inefficient" to make.

That's literally the whole story of the last twenty years in game dev. So now you know.

>>3867038 (OP)
>WHY THE FUCK AM I PLAYING VAGRUS?
I was looking at this game, is it any good?

>vag pus
Ew.

>>3868296
It's tedious garbage and very, very dull with bad combat and even worse writing. Imagine a game where you constantly do Skyrim radiant quests, but with a survival mode mod installed, and nothing pretty to look at or good music to listen to. That's Vagrus.

>>3867038 (OP)
Vagrus sucks. They focused so much on making it "punishing" that there is no enjoyment to the game.

>>3868279
it was always trying to make money, but the salaried employees themselves were much more invested and trying harder back then. Big videogames are such a huge money investment now and therefore so fundamentally inorganic that corporate employees don't give a fuck about consuming or contributing to the finished product anymore. They want their personal responsibilities to look good so they can get another similar corporate cog job when they get laid off after the game goes gold but there is zero sense of contribution. Whatever zeal they had for games that made them enter the industry was worn down to a nub in their first year of corporate work, much less after 10+.

This is also why you get stuff like nagging left wing talking points inserted in games, because that is a quasi-religious concept of passionate higher order meaning to these people that they don't at all get from doing the work itself anymore. Upper management only cares in fits and spurts, generally have the same religious biases, and are mostly happy to tell investors their hands are tied.

>>3868313
Of course game developers had to pay bills.
But that wasn't their motive. It was a necessity.
It's not like that anymore. Now, game devs are exploited like any other slaves under capitalism, exploited *by* the capitalists who are extracting profits from what used to be an artform by subverting, perverting it into an addiction mechanic.
It's like the difference between making love to your wife/husband and paying for a prostitute. You're helping to pay for the rent of the other person in both cases. But the motive of the interaction matters. The full context of the relationship matters.
Your drug dealer does not fucking care about your happiness. They're using your addiction to extract money from you.
By contrast, when your mom bakes cookies for you, she's not doing it to exploit your fondness for sugar. She's doing it because she wants you to be happy.
The motive... matters.

>>3867039
Global average temperature.

>>3867038 (OP)
>Why did RPGs peak in the late 90s? Why is this fucking planet and the human species incapable of producing kino RPGs anymore?
DEI hiring/Wokeslop content practices

Look at all the resources burned on Minority Effect 3, Dragon Anal 2, DACisquisition, DACisquisition 2, VTM:Non Binary, Pillar of Equity 1, 2: Deadname, Avwoken, The Outed Wokoids etc.

>>3867038 (OP)
>Why did RPGs peak in the late 90s? Why is this fucking planet and the human species incapable of producing kino RPGs anymore?

RPGs now are written by people who are younger than you, and who read less than you.

>>3868516
1. They had more interesting life experiences or at least had close relationships with people who did.
2. Technical limitations curbed certain excesses, in particular the excess of cutscene-oriented storytelling and immersive 3D worlds.
3. Triple threat culture discouraging experimentation (technology, business, and education). Time-saving technology (game engines, UI frameworks, content markets, etc), well-established genre expectations in the market, and developers following youtube/reddit design principles on how to do balance and so on.
4. Culture war has tainted everything

>>3867131
>Hybridizing to RTwP was arguably a misstep
No, it was a great idea. Of course if every dumbass and their brother had presumed RTwP was the new eternal standard, that would have been retarded. But that's not what it was and RTwP was and REMAINS a perfectly valid (and frankly under-explored) niche.

RPGs are adapted from wargames in the first place. A traditional turn-based RPG is a turn-based tactical wargame played from the perspective of a unit going on independent adventures rather than a troop commander in military warfare. Baldur's Gate was essentially that, taking a Warcraft-like RTS and turning it into a single-player RPG.

>>3867039
>Music videos
not sure when they peaked by 90s fashion for short video editing are garbage
>Internet Debate Culture
Peaked in the early 2000s. Killed by millennial mega blogs, YouTube and social media.
>MMORPGs
peaked in early-2000s with EQ, DAoC, FFXI and WoW classic
>Microsoft Windows
peaked at 7 in 2010s
>Crossover Capeshit Cinematic Universes
You can argue that capeshit movies are cancer and that actual cinema peaked in the 90s but you have to admit that it wasn't possible to pull off something like the MCU during the 90s.

Can we get some peak titles in here for the love of god

>>3868279
>>3868318
>Now, game devs are exploited like any other slaves under capitalism, exploited *by* the capitalists who are extracting profits from what used to be an artform by subverting, perverting it into an addiction mechanic.
Sure, but in exchange we have way more indie devs who are just as passionate as the old devs were. The problem for them is that there's a flood of games and it's hard to standout, not a lack of passion. What's missing though is devs with that passion (and the ability to use it) also doing the cutting edge, high budget game development.

It's not that there aren't passionate people at AAA companies, there absolutely are. But they're stifled, not allowed to take risks. The budgets are too high - and teams too large - for that now. The same problem that developed with big budget movies.

Look at Harada's post here, he describes the issue well. His Twitter account in general is great for inside look at how game dev has changed.

>>3867038 (OP)
Limitations, no propaganda aso

>>3868296
It peaks in the demo, which is fucking hilarious but also kinda sad. So just play that, it's a self-contained campaign.

>>3868516
This is actually the same problem plaguing fantasy literature. It's all too incestuous with writers drawing from other fantasy works, which in turn were already derivative.

>vagrus
>scraping the bottom of the barrel
vagrus is better than every single game released in the 90's combined

>>3868704
As someone who completed the game with the wealth victory condition, I completely agree the game peaks with the demo. I don't think it's a bad game, but the Demo is better.

Every person responsible for monetizing video games WILL get the rope. I personally guarantee it. See you all when I see you. t. professional analyst who digs up information and correlates things for a living.

>desperate for a decent game to play
>try OP picrel
>can't customize how my character looks
>immersion-breaking popup from developers appears: "this game is designed to be super hard and stuff. you're supposed to avoid combat. if you don't like that, you should play on Story mode lol"
>do nothing
>die
>alt-F4

thats not an RPG, OP

>>3868624
>The budgets are too high - and teams too large
That isn't actually the case. It's that if a dev studio is part of a large company like EA it more and more turns into
>unless this game makes an asronomical amount of money, regardless of it being profitable or not, it's "not worth" investing in
It's why games like the successful Dead Space remake had the team shuttered. It made money, just not insane amounts of money for it to be noticeable on EA's yearly reports.

Shareholders. Death to all shareholders.