The evolution of video games, movies and how it might relate to RPGs

[Derren]

Baldur's Gate is fringe?

Really?

Really?



When Baldur's Gate came out, it was praised lavishly for it's beautifully hand-painted scenary and the ability of the Infinity Engine to create weird and wonderful backdrops. As for it being fringe, it's one of the games that helped prevent the total extinction of the cRPG, and is still praised as being one of the best RPG series made.

Baldurs Gate was/is the king of fringe, but still fringe. The whole RPG business (especially western ones) is a niche market compared to shooters, sport games and casual titles.
Not even Dragon Age, an RPG with many concessions to the mass market can, while being successful and having a high marketing budget, come close to Halo, Call of Duty or The Sims 3.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Baldurs Gate was/is the king of fringe, but still fringe. The whole RPG business (especially western ones) is a niche market compared to shooters, sport games and casual titles.

...By what standards? I'll give you Wii Do Stupid Crap games, but choose a pokemon title, and it outsells any sports or shooter game that's been made. In fact sports games are NOT big sellers, especially not compared to WoW.

Baldur's Gate went gold, which is a big deal. And it wasn't niche - the game was pretty well known. I grew up in the damn 90's, and you couldn't escape Baldur's Gate .

Honestly, RPGs, even western ones, aren't fringe. The issue is with the gaming industry being hilariously inept and poorly constructed, and driving straight for another crash as fast as they can, not with the games themselves.

 

[Derren]

...By what standards? I'll give you Wii Do Stupid Crap games, but choose a pokemon title, and it outsells any sports or shooter game that's been made. In fact sports games are NOT big sellers, especially not compared to WoW.

Baldur's Gate went gold, which is a big deal. And it wasn't niche - the game was pretty well known. I grew up in the damn 90's, and you couldn't escape Baldur's Gate .

Honestly, RPGs, even western ones, aren't fringe. The issue is with the gaming industry being hilariously inept and poorly constructed, and driving straight for another crash as fast as they can, not with the games themselves.

Just look at any chart for video games and you won't find RPGs anywhere near the top unless its World of Warcraft. Even Dragon Age doesn't manage to beat mass market title.
And no, I don't count Pokemon as RPG.

You grew up with Baldurs Gate because you are part of the Fringe Market with an interest in RPGs. So of course you know of it. The average video gamer on the other hand might have heard of it, but plays other games like Halo, Call of Duty, Sims or Madden/FIFA.

I prefer RPGs over any of those titles, but I have no illusions that the big money is made with the games above and not RPGs. Call of Duty manages to sell more copies on a weekend than a RPG does over its whole lifetime.

 

[Betote]

And no, I don't count Pokemon as RPG.

Why not?
And what about the Final Fantasy series?

 

[Ariosto]

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was extremely profitable because
(A) it did not cost too much to make; and
(B) it kept running for ... how long? If not more than a year, certainly more than the usual few weeks allowed a "blockbuster". And
(C) it appealed to the "mainstream" of the whole population, rather than to a narrow demographic such as that of teen-aged boys (some of whom ended up buying tickets anyway, going to it as a "date movie").

 

[Ariosto]

Winged Migration and In the Shadow of the Moon seemed to be pretty "fringe" in my neighborhood of the USA, showing only at the usual-suspect "art house" theaters.

Of course, the same holds true for most Asian hits (before Hollywood remakes). Miyazaki, for instance, is IMO a long way from "fringe" in the bigger picture -- but that's no sure predictor (even in a bad way) of provincial attitudes.

"[So and so] is a pop music star where?!"

Even the observation that the two films I mentioned above were both documentaries is not conclusive.

fringe films like March of the Penguins

Sez who, based on what?

Look, anything that I see on the marquees of 2 out of 3 big chains of theater is not "fringe" in my book.

Even bigger ones sometimes are exclusive to one chain. (And only the biggest was able to bring Spielberg to terms sensible enough to make it worthwhile to screen one of his flicks. Yeah, Steve, you really are too sexy for our market -- so good luck with that plan of taking 100% of NO ticket sales, dude!)

People with connections get their pictures moved into lots of venues -- especially if they've got a big advertising budget to go with them. Predictions of popularity are to a little extent self-fulfilling, as even if the public does not eat up whatever is set before it, there's some difficulty for consumers in consuming what is hard to find.

 

[Barastrondo]

That would fit exactly in my categories in the first post. Also, this would make game easy to play online. See my paragraph about the VTT online lobby. People who can spontaneously meet, load an adventure and play it without much preparation. Maybe people will have personal characters which grow and can be used in adventures, but it is possible to scale them down to run lower level ones. And, as it is a random group one evening must be enough to play it.
Living setting online.

I'm curious what can compete with already-existing roleplay chatrooms where there are no real rules besides "no godmoding" and "stay in keeping with the accepted genre."

 

[Ariosto]

I'm curious what can compete with already-existing roleplay chatrooms where there are no real rules besides "no godmoding" and "stay in keeping with the accepted genre."

Good question. Maybe to the point is the question of how much those resemble -- in the very goals to which their means are so well suited -- RPGs in our sense. Both hobbies may use the same name, but that does not mean one is properly regarded as a form of the other. When you get down to it, they may just be different species. Rule books and numbers and dice are fine for us, but it does not follow that the free-form players have any use for them!

(Even within our subculture, "old style" D&Ders and others get by just fine without the countless big books of rules from later TSR, White Wolf, Wizards, etc.)

 

[Barastrondo]

Good question. Maybe to the point is the question of how much those resemble -- in the very goals to which their means are so well suited -- RPGs in our sense. Both hobbies may use the same name, but that does not mean one is properly regarded as a form of the other. When you get down to it, they may just be different species. Rule books and numbers and dice are fine for us, but it does not follow that the free-form players have any use for them!

That's exactly what we're looking at. There's no question of "how do we get these people roleplaying?", because they already are. The real question that's being asked here is "how do we get them to play the kind of roleplaying games we like best?", or to some extent "how do we get them interested in buying rules?"

A recent job applicant at our company mentioned that she had tried tabletop roleplaying (specifically, Mouse Guard), but she disliked the dice mechanics; she said "I just want to get back to playing my mouse!" For most old-timers, rolling the dice is a part of playing our mouse -- but the perspective is not universal, particularly when we're talking about the current popular forms of roleplay.

 

[Ariosto]

Rolling the dice is a pretty small part of playing my rabbit in Bunnies & Burrows, or my [whatever] in old Dungeons & Dragons. Even in RuneQuest II, which on the face of it has a good portion as many opportunities for rolling dice as in "modern" games, the "roll-playing" ethos -- and its sub-game of "character builds" -- is not there breathing down necks at every turn.

It is, at least to me, not the rolling of dice itself that is a great distraction. Designs that draw attention to the abstract mathematical game are distracting from the role-playing game. If a GM says, "Roll two dice, please," glances at 'em and gets on with describing what my character perceives ... that's sweet.

If your "role-playing" game expects me to knuckle down to something that looks and feels more like Yahtzee, then you can keep it.