RPG Vault Focus: Action RPGs

[GameBanshee News]

RPG Vault has put together a new article in which Flagship Studios' Max Schaefer and Gas Powered Games' Steve Bauman give their take on what defines the action RPG.

Action RPGs also have simpler rules, though the irony is that every game, no matter how simple, has a complex underlying system of rules and numbers that dictate the results of every action. Action RPGs tend either to hide them from players or to reduce them to interesting but inessential information.

But, action RPGs tend to face a problem when adding the RPG bit. It creates a rigid set of expectations and features that, if not met, runs you the risk of having your game dismissed outright if you don't fit into that RPG box. Flame wars have been fought on message boards across the lands, from RPG Codex to No Mutants Allowed to this very site, arguing about what makes an RPG an RPG, with more digital ink being spilled on this topic than on the future of healthcare in America. While coming up with a precise definition of an RPG - or any genre, for that matter - can be a fun exercise, getting too worked up over it seems needlessly reductionist. Games are more than their component bits.

And the reality is that those bits are everywhere. RPG fans don't want to hear things like, "classic turn-based RPGs aren't financially viable," and neither do developers. So everyone sneaks RPG elements into almost every game in every genre. There's a fundamental understanding that players want to play roles in a game, take ownership of a character, and tweak and customize things to their liking.

At Gas Powered Games, we have Space Siege coming out this fall. It borrows a lot of RPG bits from our earlier Dungeon Siege games. While you're running around shooting aliens, you can upgrade your armor and weapons to reduce (and increase) damage and increase your chance of critical hits. There are special abilities (spells), buffs and debuffs, etc. In some ways, it's as much of an RPG as any classic one, but it's really more of an action game.

Consider other games that aren't considered RPGs, action or otherwise. Like, say, The Sims. It's the purest role-playing experience in gaming, assuming you think an RPG has something to do with playing a role in a virtual world, and not just a strict adherence to rules-based systems for resolving combat. It has character development, NPC interaction, and plenty of loot, but no combat... unless you count injuring someone when throwing your PC across the room when trying to manage the needs of both a party full of guests and your own bladder.