The History of CRPGs Part 2

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(Originally posted by Mollusken)

Part 2 of GameSpy's discussion on the history of CRPGs has been released.

The mid-nineties saw the RPG genre collapse. Fewer titles came out and the public didn't seem to have an appetite for them anymore. There seem to be many reasons for the "drought," as it came to be called in the game press.

"In a word: Quake. Or DOOM if you prefer," says Mike Wolf, blaming the technological and gameplay revolution that occurred at roughly the same time as the RPG decline. "As technology improved, games focused on more action-oriented games. This drew in more of the mass-market buyer -- people who could sit down in front of a computer for the first time and dive into a game, without having to read a 50+ page manual."

3D-shooters certainly are more accessible to a mainstream audience. But Mike also thinks publishers naturally gravitated toward shooters because they were easier, and cheaper to make. "[Publishers] wouldn't sign off on something as time consuming, expensive, and potentially unrewarding as a computer role-playing game. Of all the games, CRPGs probably require some of the most time from the most people possible (although I'm sure some developers might disagree with that)." Todd Howard concurs "RPGs still are the most time consuming and expensive games you can make." "The companies decided that they wouldn't sell. So they didn't work hard on making a good one," adds Jeff Vogel. "The ones which came out were bad and [also] didn't sell. Corporate group-think is a tricky force to overcome."

Read everything here.