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<blockquote data-quote="Rygar" data-source="post: 7719127" data-attributes="member: 6756765"><p>It's not lazy, it's very intentional.</p><p></p><p>About 7-10 years ago video games diverged hard from RPG's. Electronic Arts acquired Bioware and after they released Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect, EA pushed them to move away from CRPG to more action oriented gameplay or straight up Shooter gameplay instead of the RPG type gameplay that's centered on a Character and the separation of Character skill versus Player skill. Bethesda acquired Fallout and pushed their Elder Scrolls and Fallout properties the same direction, Player based skill and minimize or eliminate the RPG aspects. But "Geek" sells now, and they wanted to capitalize on that so they kept branding their games as "RPG" instead of accurately branding them Action-Adventure or Shooter.</p><p></p><p>There was initial pushback, both video gamers and certain RPG sites called them out on it. As this was the time period where Publishers started really directing "Games Journalism", game sites started pushing the narrative that these games were "RPGs" and started dropping the "C" in CRPG because that was fuel for the fire. When they called them CRPGs people pointed out all of the components of Pen and Paper RPGs that were being dropped and derided by these developers as the reason why they weren't CRPG's, game journalists doubled down and started dropping the "C" and claimed "RPG's have evolved!". They then started referring to PnP RPG's as TTRPG's or PnPRPG's to lead the reader to believe that the games being produced by EA and Bethesda were RPG's and Pen and Paper RPGs were something else.</p><p></p><p>Then something serious started happening about 5 years ago. </p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Of course, as well all know here, D&D started resurging and Pathfinder was continuing to make tremendous strides</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Boardgames also resurged</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In the video game space Wasteland 2 and Divinity Original Sin made huge splashes, and in the process demonstrated a lot of the things gaming journalists had been claiming to be very wrong.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gamers started catching on in droves to the sad state of "Journalism" in video games. Journalists gave high marks to outright broken or fairly bad games, and Gamers called them on it. Review aggregator sites let people do statistics on reviews and found major discrepencies in how reviews were handled for Publishers versus Indies. Streamers started becoming huge and gave much more balanced information.</li> </ul><p></p><p>So claiming that these games are RPG's started becoming a liability rather than a way to sell units to people before they realized they were mislabeled because people were now experienced with RPG's and boardgames and games journalists no longer have any ability to influence the customer base. EA started shifting from calling Mass Effect an RPG to an Action game series. Bethesda, of course, continues to double down on claiming that they make RPG's while removing anything that is even remotely a component of an RPG, but they're in trouble now as well as most discussions amongst Gamers tend to have a fair number of people pointing out that Skyrim isn't an RPG.</p><p></p><p>So the whole thing was calculated in order to push the narrative that EA and Bethesda had "Evolved RPG's" and to avoid getting caught in an argument they couldn't win when people leveraged the "CRPG" argument in response to declaring Action-Adventure and Shooters the "New RPGs".</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Rygar, post: 7719127, member: 6756765"] It's not lazy, it's very intentional. About 7-10 years ago video games diverged hard from RPG's. Electronic Arts acquired Bioware and after they released Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect, EA pushed them to move away from CRPG to more action oriented gameplay or straight up Shooter gameplay instead of the RPG type gameplay that's centered on a Character and the separation of Character skill versus Player skill. Bethesda acquired Fallout and pushed their Elder Scrolls and Fallout properties the same direction, Player based skill and minimize or eliminate the RPG aspects. But "Geek" sells now, and they wanted to capitalize on that so they kept branding their games as "RPG" instead of accurately branding them Action-Adventure or Shooter. There was initial pushback, both video gamers and certain RPG sites called them out on it. As this was the time period where Publishers started really directing "Games Journalism", game sites started pushing the narrative that these games were "RPGs" and started dropping the "C" in CRPG because that was fuel for the fire. When they called them CRPGs people pointed out all of the components of Pen and Paper RPGs that were being dropped and derided by these developers as the reason why they weren't CRPG's, game journalists doubled down and started dropping the "C" and claimed "RPG's have evolved!". They then started referring to PnP RPG's as TTRPG's or PnPRPG's to lead the reader to believe that the games being produced by EA and Bethesda were RPG's and Pen and Paper RPGs were something else. Then something serious started happening about 5 years ago. [LIST] [*]Of course, as well all know here, D&D started resurging and Pathfinder was continuing to make tremendous strides [*]Boardgames also resurged [*]In the video game space Wasteland 2 and Divinity Original Sin made huge splashes, and in the process demonstrated a lot of the things gaming journalists had been claiming to be very wrong. [*]Gamers started catching on in droves to the sad state of "Journalism" in video games. Journalists gave high marks to outright broken or fairly bad games, and Gamers called them on it. Review aggregator sites let people do statistics on reviews and found major discrepencies in how reviews were handled for Publishers versus Indies. Streamers started becoming huge and gave much more balanced information. [/LIST] So claiming that these games are RPG's started becoming a liability rather than a way to sell units to people before they realized they were mislabeled because people were now experienced with RPG's and boardgames and games journalists no longer have any ability to influence the customer base. EA started shifting from calling Mass Effect an RPG to an Action game series. Bethesda, of course, continues to double down on claiming that they make RPG's while removing anything that is even remotely a component of an RPG, but they're in trouble now as well as most discussions amongst Gamers tend to have a fair number of people pointing out that Skyrim isn't an RPG. So the whole thing was calculated in order to push the narrative that EA and Bethesda had "Evolved RPG's" and to avoid getting caught in an argument they couldn't win when people leveraged the "CRPG" argument in response to declaring Action-Adventure and Shooters the "New RPGs". [/QUOTE]
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