RPG: The New Three-Letter Obscenity
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When you logged onto 1UP today, you might have noticed an eye-catching headline. I certainly noticed it; it prompted the blog entry you're reading right now. The headline, of course, is, "Final Fantasy XIII is Not an RPG."
Those aren't Jeremy's words, even though he was the one who put them in the headline. That line comes straight from the mouths of the developers. When I read it, the first thought that popped into my mind was, "So it's come to this. Even Square Enix won't own up to the term 'RPG'."
So what the hell is going on? Why has the term "RPG" suddenly become blacklisted from the vocabulary of the very people who have helped define it for the last decade or so? Jay Barnson of Rampant Coyote fame tries to figure it out in his latest blog entry, too:
I don't really know what the root cause might be. I don't know if this is even a trend or a bump in the road or just plain old developer ennui at having made the same kinds of games for years and wanting to do something different.
From my own perspective, I prefer the idea of the genre expanding rather than contracting. And I especially don't like the idea of the definition of RPG contracting around some "evolution" in a direction that is not inclusive of the classics of the genre. I tend to think the latter is pure marketing hype / crap ("our new game redefines RPG! Everyone will follow the trail be blaze!") that suckers some naive journalists into buying it.
Personally, I think it all comes down to one thing: money. What types of games have been selling millions of copies in recent years? Action-heavy shooters, primarily.
Everyone wants to hop on the Halo/Call of Duty/Gears of War/Uncharted/Left 4 Dead money train, and that includes RPG developers (especially when they're trying to hit absurd sales numbers). And after seeing how successful BioShock, Fallout 3, and Borderlands were, you don't have to connect many dots to understand why the traditional role-playing genre that we know and love is being cast aside for greener pastures.
Given the way things are going, I see a bright future for DOSBox.
