Are RPGs Getting More Complex?

By Kevin

There's some evidence that television is complex than it used to be. But to me, TV is still so passive; a more important question is whether any strand of gaming is becoming more complex, i.e. more intellectually challenging and absorbing. (Although I'm personally interested in the evolution of RPGs, if fighting games have become brain fodder, then that would be interesting too.)

I wanted to write a detailed post about this, but I stopped playing RPGs when my Commodore 64 broke, and I have little to no experience or information about the complexity of RPGs after the mid 1990s. Hence, I figure I'd ask you all if you've read or heard talk about this.

Old-time T&B readers know that, until late in high school, I was a happy underachiever in academics. Both the sophisticated culture of high society and the cutthroat barbarism of politics simply did not exist. Education was what you tried to minimize at school, and if necessary, you brought it home. My parents didn't pressure me at all, never presented me with a book, and basically left me alone to do as I please. And what I did was play video games, specifically Role Playing Games. All I needed to know, I learned from "Legacy of the Ancients". (Not quite).

Question: Has the time, individual mental effort, and/or social organization required to successfully play a computer-based RPG changed considerably since the early 1980s? Has it changed more or less than the complexity of TV?

Please help out the ignorant!

-- July 20, 2005 1:48 PM |

Comments

Jacqueline wrote:

"It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."

Yeah, I'd say they've gotten a bit more complex. :)

-- July 20, 2005 3:44 PM ∞

Jacqueline wrote:

Oh, and: "Jacqueline killed by a Bat on Level 1." :)

-- July 20, 2005 3:52 PM ∞

Shawn wrote:

As a former rabid Infocom text gamer and lover of role-playing computer games like Betrayal At Krondor (1995, I think) and strategic/economic ones like Civilization and SimCity, I think video game offerings have simply *expanded* in scope, not become more complex.

For every detailed Europa Universalis 2 (400-year sweep of geopolitics and global conquest, complete with a "casus belli" engine to require a pretext for going to war instead of being able to betray an alliance on a whim), there are relatively simple "platform" games that have lavish graphics, beautiful animation, Hollywood-level voice acting, etc. ("Viewtiful Joe" comes to mind). At their heart, though, the concept of today's platformer is not much different from Super Mario Brothers.

The most exciting source of complexity comes from the MMORPGS (Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs) like Everquest and online combat or adventure games like Counterstrike. Instead of a predictable artificial intelligence that can be beaten, or can only beat you because it "cheats" in terms of speed or resource management, you get to play against human beings with their unpredictable behavior, humor and emotion.

-- July 21, 2005 12:47 AM ∞

Stretch wrote:

I would consider the Infocom games to be the precursors to adventure games, not RPG's. That said, with the removal of the parser interface and the advent of point-and-click adventuring, I would say those games have continually become less complex. To be sure, there are major problems with a text parser, but it ultimately allows for much more freedom not only from a players perspective, but from the designers' as well. Even when one gets caught in the awful "guess the verb" game, there's a level of thought and exploration that just can't exist in a world easily navigated by a highlighted cursor.

As for real RPG's, I can only comment that they've largely become stagnant from a gameplay angle. Much more effort has gone into improving presentation and story-telling than any significant changes to the basic gameplay structure. Sadly, it seems the biggest choice a developer faces these days is whether or not to include random battles.

-- July 22, 2005 12:35 PM ∞

Coherent [TypeKey Profile Page] wrote:

LOLZ, you guys are actually the kind of people who think complexity = entertainment! You know nothing!

RPG's are evolving dramatically, yes. But they are not becoming more complex so much as they are doing the opposite, simplifying the arcane and presenting interface models that are more attractive to the average user. Note that you are NOT the average user.

There's a small market for arcane RPG's, yes, so a percentage will follow it. But there is a much larger market for mainstream RPG's, and the bulk of the traffic will probably head in that direction. In time, online RPG's will probably come to rival television as a mainstream day-to-day entertainment genre (I'm thinking 1/5 mindshare, possibly as much as 1/3), depending on the growth of alternatives.

I hate to say it, but old-school RPG players are not going to dominate in the mainstream RPG world. They'll be present, possibly even have a place of honor or an influential voice, but you and I are not mainstream, my friend. I do however think that more depth will be available as the field matures. Currently it's still in its infancy.

-- July 27, 2005 5:45 PM ∞

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