http://extra-credits.net/episodes/western-japanese-rpgs-part-2/
I believe that my original rebuttal still addresses their argument. This is because, as I expected, the Extra Credits folk's argument is based on broad assumptions. Why they believe they know what "emotional reasons" everyone plays a title for is beyond my ability to rationalize as anything but arrogance. In particular, they make the claim that people play Fallout 3 because they like the first person perspective, but I can assure you the first person perspective is the thing I least like about Fallout 3 (hell, even in Elder Scrolls titles I dislike it but it's necessary to play in first person mode in order to effectively target enemies). And in contrast to myself I know there are many people who prefer the first person perspective in games. The argument the Extra Credits guys have made seems to have been formed in a bubble where discussion with hardcore fans of the games was absent.
So if you didn't get it before from my original post, the hard truth is that how players "feel" about a game and the specific reasons "why" they play are very diverse and based on taste which may or may not have any rational basis. When you make any product, you make it with the full knowledge that a significant portion of people are not going to see things your way, thus why you need to make a product for a target audience who will "get it".
I would think the Extra Credits guys would get that since they often take positions others strongly disagree with. It's impossible to even say people watch their show for the same reasons, let alone that people play Fallout 3 for the same reasons.
And oh yeah, also as expected they made the argument that "WRPGs" always give you a blank slate character and "JRPGs" do not. An argument that is factually incorrect by just looking at a recent title like Lord of the Rings: War in the North (as I pointed out in a different post).
But let's talk a little about the argument that "WRPGs" as a genre allow you to "become" the character in the world whereas "JRPGs" simply let you play as a character in that world.
The basis of the argument is that playing a silent protagonist lets you better feel like "you" are the hero, because they don't have any dialogue and characters seemingly talk directly to the player.
To this I say that Chrono Trigger (a JRPG) does the same thing, as do all the games in the Dragon Quest series. They feature a silent protagonist and NPCs address "you" most of the time.
I supposed some might argue that,
"Oh no, it's not the same thing because Chrono has a detailed backstory and a mother and a childhood friend and blah blah blah, he is his own character separate from the identity of the player!"
....and to this I will say,
"True, but so does every Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Fable and Fallout character you play; they have memories of that world you do not share. They were born in that world and had a life long before you came into it.
Therefore, "You" the player do not exist in that world. You simply use that character as an avatar to explore and interact with the world, the same way you use Cloud to explore and interact with the world in Final Fantasy 7."
I know that the goal of using silent protagonists in a game is to better allow immersion than a game where the protagonist has their own highly detailed personality. I don't agree that silent protagonists allow better immersion, because I think there is a specific level of immersion that the silent protagonist strategy attempts to reach but fails to obtain, because the player is awake in the real world and has their needs of food, and tiredness and needing to use the bathroom (have you ever tried to stay immersed when you need to take a leak? It's pretty impossible) that are separate from the character in videogame land. "Full immersion" is not possible, and the same level of "unawareness" of the real world can be reached in games where protagonists have their own personalities and dialogue. And on that note, the same level of immersion can be obtained by watching a movie or reading a book.
Discussions about "immersion" have become rather distorted in recent years; the discussions originally came about from the desire of writers, film-makers and game designers to improve the experience their entertainment provided, with the rational being that anything which broke immersion reduced the enjoyable experience the media was providing. The goal was to reduce the number of things in a design that caused immersion to break (for example, plot elements that make no sense, or frustrating game mechanics) and not to design a product that led to "full immersion", because that was acknowledge as impossible. Unfortunately the understanding of these discussions has been wholly misinterpreted by laymen gamers, including those who became game journalists and the discussion is now muddied into the kind of nonsense Extra Credits is talking about concerning silent protagonists vs "talkie" protagonists. Sadly even a few game designers have bought into the idea, logic be damned.
Basically, the argument of "silent protagonist" = "better immersion" isn't a rational one, but a subjective one. It seems to be rational rather than actually being so, because it relies on the assumption the player is living in a space that has nothing to keep them from remembering that the game is a separate world. The argument is based on the idea that only the videogame is capable of reminding the player that the real world exists and that just isn't true. The goal of good gameplay is a level of immersion, but it cannot be a deep one because deep immersion is impossible so long as the player remains aware of the "real world"-- and they always will be because we exist in the real world.
The best use of "silent protagonists" and "talkies" doesn't really have anything to do with immersion, it has to do with the kind of message you are intending to send to the player. I mentioned this in my review of Dragon Age: Origins, that the game's "moral system" is capable of delivering a higher message than may be obvious. For some types of messages, it may be best to use a talking character who doesn't have dialogue trees, and for other messages it may be best for dialogue trees. It has to be handled correctly, of course, but that is how the different narrative styles ought to be used. Not for immersion, because that is a pointless pursuit; both types of protagonists are just as good at it.
(EDIT: This article was written 10:03 am PST on 3/7/2012. At 6:40 pm one of my readers let me know that today at GDC Naughty Dog’s Rich Lemarchand also expressed similar sentiments at GDC. )
Also, I respond to the, "WRPGs let you change the look of your character and JRPGs do not because they have different immersion goals" with, "Originally it had to do with file size limitations of the media the games were on; a SNES cartridge has a lot less space than a game like Ultima 7 that could be released on several floppy disks. Images consume a lot of space; it's not always wise to dedicate crucial space to changing costume of the characters. These days it actually depends a lot more on if the game is using a lot of FMV sequences or not. FMV sequences require the characters clothing to be consistent in the movies as in gameplay, as FMVs are not a scripted event (like in Dragon Age) but a rendered movie file so the creators have more cinematic options."
Also some players of Elder Scrolls and Fallout might choose equipment based on how they want the character to look, but many players (such as myself) would wear a clown suit if it had the best stats in the game, and don't care that much about the look of characters- what we care about is efficiency. Whether I build an Elder Scrolls or a SaGa Frontier character, I'm not doing it to express myself as an individual but to play the game in the most optimal way I can think, so that I don't die left and right. Again, the guys at Extra Credits are focusing too much on why THEY play games without regard to the very real possibility that other people may approach the game differently-- I shouldn't say possibility, because people actually DO approach and play the games differently than the Extra Credit people do.
I just don't know why people persist in spreading these fallacies when they are so easily disproven. The whole problem here is that they don't think about how anyone might prove their beliefs incorrect. That is the difference between me and other reviewers; I actually think a great deal about the weaknesses of my arguments; to predict how others might prove them wrong. And that allows me to form strong opinions that can stand up to intelligent scrutiny, because I've already talked myself out of all the stupid stuff before I present my views to the world.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
Extra Credits and JRPGs (again)
I happened to come across the Youtube teaser for the Extra Credits episode I responded to in an earlier post. The comment section is, as expected, a cesspool of stupidity.
Here's a few choice comments that may help to illustrate why the average gamer has no business deciding what genre games should be,
"The difference between WRPGs and JRPGs is pretty much the difference between any western product and japanese product. The latter has low production value and setting/lore planning. The japanese like to mix in random elements together without thinking too much about having to make sense within the same game universe (which doesn't mean it needs to be realistc, there's a big difference here). Also, fanservice up the ass on almost every single opportunity. More often than not ruins the experience."
(My response: Every time I hear this kind of argument I'm reminded of that scene in Gremlins where Mr. Futterman rants to Billy about imported products being inferior to American ones http://www.anyclip.com/movies/gremlins/ry7M42nuhtmb/#!quotes/)
"Aha! THANK you! With the next two parts of this, I'll finally have an easy way to convince people that Metroid Prime is not an FPS.
Here's a few choice comments that may help to illustrate why the average gamer has no business deciding what genre games should be,
"The difference between WRPGs and JRPGs is pretty much the difference between any western product and japanese product. The latter has low production value and setting/lore planning. The japanese like to mix in random elements together without thinking too much about having to make sense within the same game universe (which doesn't mean it needs to be realistc, there's a big difference here). Also, fanservice up the ass on almost every single opportunity. More often than not ruins the experience."
(My response: Every time I hear this kind of argument I'm reminded of that scene in Gremlins where Mr. Futterman rants to Billy about imported products being inferior to American ones http://www.anyclip.com/movies/gremlins/ry7M42nuhtmb/#!quotes/)
"Aha! THANK you! With the next two parts of this, I'll finally have an easy way to convince people that Metroid Prime is not an FPS.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
A "Momentum" System for Radiant Fantasia
One of the commentators to the blog, Mildra the RPG Monk, shared with me his thoughts in a message on Youtube,
"Back when I played Warhammer Online, my favorite class was the Swordmaster, primarily its combo system that acted on an opener/builder/finisher setup. Thus my suggestion is having various 'tiers' of momentum, with abilities having an entry and exit requirement as its minimum. here's a rough example, a fighter could use "Steel Burst" as their first move, which has a momentum entry of 1 (the default minimum) and an exit of 2, allowing him to use an ability with a momentum of 2 or lower, and so on, with the strongest abilities having 'finisher' tags that reset the level of momentum they have.
In other words, instead of building up a kind of super meter to spend, they build up their combo piece by piece. In my opinion, this might allow it to be a bit more intuitive and have less in the way of micromanaging on the sheet."
It's certainly true that a system where you unlock the ability to use tiers of abilities by executing lower tier moves requires less updating and note-taking than one where you build up and spend points to use abilities.
However, I think a combination of the two might have merit.
Fortunately, all Spell and Weapon Techniques are already assembled into tiers. This was originally done to determine what level a technique can be learned at, but I'm now wanting to change things so the tiers instead determine the "momentum" needed to use them in battle. The highest tier abilities will probably have a level requirement to learn, because the strongest abilities are very powerful. I am thinking that to learn Grade B abilities you must be level 6, and to learn Grade A and S abilities you must be level 10.
For an example of what the tiers look like, let's look at the Sword Techniques in Radiant Fantasia,
Air Slash (Attack action)
Launch a stream of raw magical force from the sword blade to slash a target at a distance.
I mentioned earlier in this post I am thinking that to learn Grade B abilities you must be level 6, and to learn Grade A and S abilities you must be level 10. If I implement this, then until level 6, using a Grade C ability will reset Momentum and until level 10 using a Grade B ability will reset Momentum.
"Back when I played Warhammer Online, my favorite class was the Swordmaster, primarily its combo system that acted on an opener/builder/finisher setup. Thus my suggestion is having various 'tiers' of momentum, with abilities having an entry and exit requirement as its minimum. here's a rough example, a fighter could use "Steel Burst" as their first move, which has a momentum entry of 1 (the default minimum) and an exit of 2, allowing him to use an ability with a momentum of 2 or lower, and so on, with the strongest abilities having 'finisher' tags that reset the level of momentum they have.
In other words, instead of building up a kind of super meter to spend, they build up their combo piece by piece. In my opinion, this might allow it to be a bit more intuitive and have less in the way of micromanaging on the sheet."
It's certainly true that a system where you unlock the ability to use tiers of abilities by executing lower tier moves requires less updating and note-taking than one where you build up and spend points to use abilities.
However, I think a combination of the two might have merit.
Fortunately, all Spell and Weapon Techniques are already assembled into tiers. This was originally done to determine what level a technique can be learned at, but I'm now wanting to change things so the tiers instead determine the "momentum" needed to use them in battle. The highest tier abilities will probably have a level requirement to learn, because the strongest abilities are very powerful. I am thinking that to learn Grade B abilities you must be level 6, and to learn Grade A and S abilities you must be level 10.
For an example of what the tiers look like, let's look at the Sword Techniques in Radiant Fantasia,
Grade E: Air Slash, Double Cut, Hurl Sword
Grade D: Iron Cutter, Artery Thrust, Blade Rush
Grade C: Sword Stance, Demented Slash
Grade B: Million Cuts, No Moment
Grade A: Brave Buster
Grade S: Final Hour
An example of what one of these abilities looks like,
Launch a stream of raw magical force from the sword blade to slash a target at a distance.
Tech. Power: 1 Delay: 1 round At Will [icon]
Weapon, Sword Range: Medium Target: Single
Check: Skill check Vs. Magic Defense
Special: This projectile attack can be used to intercept another projectile spell, resulting in a Magical Clash.
Magic Point Cost: 4
Tech Grade: E
(For historical purposes and so you can see how much progress I've made in refining the technique, this is what Air Slash looked like during the first draft of Radiant Fantasia,
Air Slash (Attack action)
Tech. Power: 1
Tech. Power: 1
This technique launches a stream of raw magical force from the sword blade to slash a target at a distance.
Check: An Air Slash skill check plus the ranged attack bonus of the character sets the DC for the target‘s Magic Defense check. A successful save means the target does not take damage. Air Slash can hit only one target.
Dual Air Slash: If the character is dual wielding swords, at the cost of 10 Magic points Air Slash deals double damage to a single opponent. The weapon damage of the main hand determines the damage to be multiplied.
Air Slash has a delay of one round. After it has been used the character must wait one round to use it again.
Special: This projectile attack can be used to intercept another projectile spell, resulting in a Magical Clash.
Range: Medium; Single
Dual Air Slash: If the character is dual wielding swords, at the cost of 10 Magic points Air Slash deals double damage to a single opponent. The weapon damage of the main hand determines the damage to be multiplied.
Air Slash has a delay of one round. After it has been used the character must wait one round to use it again.
Special: This projectile attack can be used to intercept another projectile spell, resulting in a Magical Clash.
Range: Medium; Single
Time: Air Slash is an attack action; delay 1 round.
Spell Resistance: Yes
Magic Point Cost: 4 (single); 10 (dual)
Tech Grade: E
Uses: Infinite
The structure was very similar to a standard 3rd edition spell. Currently it resembles 4th edition a'bit more, and fits neater into a little statblock. )
Anyway, as for the incorporation of the "momentum tiers", this is what I'm thinking of.
Grade E to B are going to be tiers that build Momentum. Grade A and S are going to reset Momentum.
By default a character has 0 Momentum, and with no Momentum character can use Grade E abilities.
Using a Grade E ability builds 1 Momentum, and Grade D requires 1 Momentum to be able to use those skills.
In order to obtain 2 Momentum the character must use a Grade D ability, which allows the use of.
Grade C abilities
In order to obtain 3 Momentum the character must use a Grade C ability, which allows the use of Grade B abilities.
In order to obtain 4 Momentum the character must use a Grade B ability.
After reaching 4 Momentum, the character may use a Grade A or S ability, but after using one of these abilities the character will be left with 0 Momentum.
Grade S techs are the strongest techs available, and the biggest difference between Grade A and Grade S is that Grade S abilities require the character to be in a mode called Dying Will, which all characters can enter after they have suffered significant Wound point damage (but can otherwise be entered for a limited time by using special abilities; for example, Elemental Champions have an ability called Gift of the Chiefs that allows them to tap into the Elemental Roads to enter a super mode and gives them the benefit of Dying Will on command.
(Dying Will normally functions as a way for a character to make a "last stand", not unlike the final fight scene of The 13th Warrior. The name of the ability, of course, comes from the manga Katekyō Hitman Reborn!)
(Dying Will normally functions as a way for a character to make a "last stand", not unlike the final fight scene of The 13th Warrior. The name of the ability, of course, comes from the manga Katekyō Hitman Reborn!)
I mentioned earlier in this post I am thinking that to learn Grade B abilities you must be level 6, and to learn Grade A and S abilities you must be level 10. If I implement this, then until level 6, using a Grade C ability will reset Momentum and until level 10 using a Grade B ability will reset Momentum.
Lastly I want the Momentum tiers to not be tied to certain classes of Techniques; if you built 3 Momentum by using nothing but Sword Techniques, you can use any Grade B ability your character knows, not just Sword Techniques. This way a character who decides to specialize in dual-wielding two different types of weapons (such as Sword and Shield) or wants to be a "spell-blade" kind of character who uses both melee weapons and magic, can generate Momentum without needing to focus on just one kind of tech.
So, you could throw fireballs until you build up enough Momentum to unleash a powerful axe strike, or perform a chain of knife thrusts until you build up enough Momentum to bombard the enemy with a torrent of wind.
Note that using Spell Techniques will cost Magic points, as will certain Weapon Techniques that are enhanced by raw magic ability, such as Air Slash.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Musings on skill design in a tabletop system
So it turns out I wasn't the only one who was blogging about skills yesterday.
Over at Wizards of the Coast, Rodney Thompson (one of the designers working on D&D 5th edition) also made a post about skills. In that post he mentioned the design team is leaning toward most skill checks to just be an ability check, as in earlier editions of D&D.This likely means that you will no longer gain ranks in skills that add a bonus to the rolls you make.
I don't really like the ability check as the sole bonus to the roll. The reason I have a different opinion is because I likely don't view skills as being a very significant way to "customize" the character ( I view the package of abilities obtained from classes as more crucial to character customizing) . Instead I think skills are great for adding more depth by way of building sub-systems on top of them.
For example, if you have a skill like Athletics that covers the character's aptitude to swim, climb, and jump, you can then create items and talents which grant additional bonuses to the Athletics skill. You can also create other abilities that rely on the Athletics score to grant a modifier.
Let's say you want to implement rules for a character to learn some kind of martial art style, like Jiu-jitsu or something. You can make it so all the attack techniques they learn from that art get an Accuracy or Damage bonus from the skill level of the character's Athletics score.
Additionally you can have the character equip items that increase their Athletics score -- like say, a black belt -- so they gain a further bonus when they are doing that attack which incorporates the Athletics score into it.
Without having these general skills, the only way you could make bonuses apply to the Jiu-jitsu moves is if you have items that increase STR or directly add a bonus to Jiu-jitsu moves. The problem with this is that there becomes too little diversity in equipment; it will be obvious for characters to just stack STR items, which can have other unbalancing issues (since STR applies to ALL attacks, it's not just Jiu-jitsu moves which get the bonus -- STR is also tied into everything from how much weight a character can carry to other things like how many hit points they have) that aren't desirable in a game.
So when you have a skill system in a game, it's not just players who get more control over the way their characters are built; designers also get more systems to manipulate so the game can have greater depth and balance to it.
It is my belief that in D&D 3rd edition, the designers went a little crazy with the bonuses to skills. They ended up creating way too many splatbooks filled with feats and classes that had circumstantial bonuses to skills, like, "this character gets a +2 bonus to Climb checks but ONLY during a full moon!" or "The character gains +2 bonus against mental attacks from a vampire" and so forth. The skill system ended up incorporating tons and tons of circumstantial stuff that doesn't apply half the time or perhaps at any time, and doesn't fit neatly onto the character sheet; there is no extra space in the skill modifier for circumstantial stuff.
I've tried very hard to not design circumstantial things into my skill system, instead a bonus applies all the time or it doesn't. The exceptions are bonuses against certain races and elemental alignments, but to me these aren't so circumstantial since every enemy belongs to a race and many characters are elementally aligned.
What I have done is designed some attack techniques to rely on General Skills to obtain a bonus; for example, the Minstrel and Dancer Specializations have talents that gain bonuses from Perform and Acrobatics skill ranks.
I still feel that my skills system has a layer of complexity more than it needs, and am looking to trim the fat away, but one thing I am positive about is that there will be General Skills so that the game has the kind of depth I believe a modern tabletop RPG should have.
Over at Wizards of the Coast, Rodney Thompson (one of the designers working on D&D 5th edition) also made a post about skills. In that post he mentioned the design team is leaning toward most skill checks to just be an ability check, as in earlier editions of D&D.This likely means that you will no longer gain ranks in skills that add a bonus to the rolls you make.
I don't really like the ability check as the sole bonus to the roll. The reason I have a different opinion is because I likely don't view skills as being a very significant way to "customize" the character ( I view the package of abilities obtained from classes as more crucial to character customizing) . Instead I think skills are great for adding more depth by way of building sub-systems on top of them.
For example, if you have a skill like Athletics that covers the character's aptitude to swim, climb, and jump, you can then create items and talents which grant additional bonuses to the Athletics skill. You can also create other abilities that rely on the Athletics score to grant a modifier.
Let's say you want to implement rules for a character to learn some kind of martial art style, like Jiu-jitsu or something. You can make it so all the attack techniques they learn from that art get an Accuracy or Damage bonus from the skill level of the character's Athletics score.
Additionally you can have the character equip items that increase their Athletics score -- like say, a black belt -- so they gain a further bonus when they are doing that attack which incorporates the Athletics score into it.
Without having these general skills, the only way you could make bonuses apply to the Jiu-jitsu moves is if you have items that increase STR or directly add a bonus to Jiu-jitsu moves. The problem with this is that there becomes too little diversity in equipment; it will be obvious for characters to just stack STR items, which can have other unbalancing issues (since STR applies to ALL attacks, it's not just Jiu-jitsu moves which get the bonus -- STR is also tied into everything from how much weight a character can carry to other things like how many hit points they have) that aren't desirable in a game.
So when you have a skill system in a game, it's not just players who get more control over the way their characters are built; designers also get more systems to manipulate so the game can have greater depth and balance to it.
It is my belief that in D&D 3rd edition, the designers went a little crazy with the bonuses to skills. They ended up creating way too many splatbooks filled with feats and classes that had circumstantial bonuses to skills, like, "this character gets a +2 bonus to Climb checks but ONLY during a full moon!" or "The character gains +2 bonus against mental attacks from a vampire" and so forth. The skill system ended up incorporating tons and tons of circumstantial stuff that doesn't apply half the time or perhaps at any time, and doesn't fit neatly onto the character sheet; there is no extra space in the skill modifier for circumstantial stuff.
I've tried very hard to not design circumstantial things into my skill system, instead a bonus applies all the time or it doesn't. The exceptions are bonuses against certain races and elemental alignments, but to me these aren't so circumstantial since every enemy belongs to a race and many characters are elementally aligned.
What I have done is designed some attack techniques to rely on General Skills to obtain a bonus; for example, the Minstrel and Dancer Specializations have talents that gain bonuses from Perform and Acrobatics skill ranks.
I still feel that my skills system has a layer of complexity more than it needs, and am looking to trim the fat away, but one thing I am positive about is that there will be General Skills so that the game has the kind of depth I believe a modern tabletop RPG should have.
Simplifying Skill Purchasing
I've mentioned before that Radiant Fantasia is built from the OGL; 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons. I've made substantial changes to it, but one mechanic hasn't changed that much: the skills.
In Radiant Fantasia the OGL skills are referred to as "General Skills", because they are skills all characters have access to. However, there are some differences than how they work in 3rd:
- The concept of "class skills" is scrapped. All skills cost 1 skill point to level up, regardless of what Job you are. Instead, some Jobs and Specializations get bonus ranks in skills (ex. +3 to Treat Injury checks) from their talents.
-Many skills have been combined together. For example, all the STR related skills (Jump, Climb, and Swim) are combined into one 'Athletics' skill, and several of the DEX skills have been consolidated (Balance, Escape, Sleight of Hand, and Tumble) as 'Acrobatics'.
- The numbers for difficulty checks has been adjusted to accommodate the use of 2d6 instead of d20.
Having made these changes early on in the design of Radiant Fantasia, I haven't done much to General Skills since. However, I've always felt the system may still be too cumbersome for novice players, and I get tempted to simplify it so that players don't spend skill points into General Skills, and their ranks are tied to the Job level and talent bonuses.
The reason I haven't done that is because I personally like being able to customize the General Skills by spending skill points into what you want to learn.
The compromise I'm thinking of making is to have "skill packages" where, for example, there is "Gym Training" and if you spend 1 skill point into it, you get +1 to Athletics and Acrobatics. So rather than spending 1 skill point into Athletics and 1 point into Acrobatics, you just put one point into "Gym Training".
With some clever thinking, that type of design would allow me to consolidate the existing 11 General Skills into about 5 "Training" options during the level up process.
I'm still musing on if this is better or not.
In Radiant Fantasia the OGL skills are referred to as "General Skills", because they are skills all characters have access to. However, there are some differences than how they work in 3rd:
- The concept of "class skills" is scrapped. All skills cost 1 skill point to level up, regardless of what Job you are. Instead, some Jobs and Specializations get bonus ranks in skills (ex. +3 to Treat Injury checks) from their talents.
-Many skills have been combined together. For example, all the STR related skills (Jump, Climb, and Swim) are combined into one 'Athletics' skill, and several of the DEX skills have been consolidated (Balance, Escape, Sleight of Hand, and Tumble) as 'Acrobatics'.
- The numbers for difficulty checks has been adjusted to accommodate the use of 2d6 instead of d20.
Having made these changes early on in the design of Radiant Fantasia, I haven't done much to General Skills since. However, I've always felt the system may still be too cumbersome for novice players, and I get tempted to simplify it so that players don't spend skill points into General Skills, and their ranks are tied to the Job level and talent bonuses.
The reason I haven't done that is because I personally like being able to customize the General Skills by spending skill points into what you want to learn.
The compromise I'm thinking of making is to have "skill packages" where, for example, there is "Gym Training" and if you spend 1 skill point into it, you get +1 to Athletics and Acrobatics. So rather than spending 1 skill point into Athletics and 1 point into Acrobatics, you just put one point into "Gym Training".
With some clever thinking, that type of design would allow me to consolidate the existing 11 General Skills into about 5 "Training" options during the level up process.
I'm still musing on if this is better or not.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
A Rebuttal to Extra Credits "JRPGs aren't RPGs" argument
I don't have time right now to make a video addressing this, but I want to comment on a recent video from the folks at Extra Credits titled "Western & Japanese RPGs (part 1)".
The video puts forth several ideas that I think are fundamentally flawed,
1) That "WRPGs" and "JRPGS" shouldn't belong to the family of "RPGs", but are actually two entirely different genres which developed independently of one another. This is because the folks at Extra Credits believe "JRPGs" descend from eroge visual novels (apparently because Wikipedia says so-- it's the only other place I've ever seen such an argument made-- but we'll get to this in a moment).
2) That game genres should not be defined by the game mechanics of the game, but by how players perceive the game (ie. the reasons they play the game and what they take away from the game).
I believe the folks at Extra Credits are wrong.
Here's why,
Addressing argument #1: Anyone who has any inkling of knowledge about videogame history can tell you visual novels descend from graphic adventure games, which themselves descend from text adventure games, a branch of interaction fiction games.
Interactive fiction games are legions more popular in Japan than in elsewhere in the world, but they are made all over the world, including the "West", even if they aren't called "visual novels". The only substantial difference between the gameplay of point and click adventure games like Gabriel Knights: Sins of the Father (which I played extensively when I was a kid) and a game like Fate/stay night is you can actually move your avatar across the screen in Gabriel Knight , rather than gameplay deciding solely on which story branches you pursue like in Fate/stay night. This is a mild difference and certainly not enough to suggest no common familial ties.
And many "Western" RPGs also descend from interactive fiction games, but we'll talk about that later.
As for the argument that companies like Enix, Square and Nihon Falcom made eroge and then infused those elements into their design, I cannot argue they dabbled in games with visual novel elements before making computer RPGs. However concerning Square, near as I can tell, did not make any eroge games before releasing Final Fantasy -- GameFAQs and Mobygames don't list any. Now, they did release Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School, a dating sim for the Famicom Disk System, but this game was released at the same time that Final Fantasy was released (both were released in December of 1987), so it seems to have been developed at the same time.
(Note that Wikipedia's article for eroge games currently claims Square and Enix made eroge games in their early days, but that claim is not sourced nor does it say what the names of those games are. Suspicious indeed, but it doesn't really matter if they did or not. You'll understand why as you read this article).
HOWEVER, if you look at the very early history of the computer RPG genre you find a lot of people trying to combine ZORK with the tabletop RPG Dungeons and Dragons, or at least the idea of a shared narrative space in an interactive fiction game . For example, MUD1 (the forefather of all things MMORPG) began its development with the intent to make a "Multi-User DUNGEN", with "DUNGEN" having been an unlicensed port of ZORK.
Now, while MUD1 did not use any of D&D, many other games descending from MUD1 did, such as DikuMUD, which is pretty much responsible for the creation of Everquest.
ZORK, for those who don't know, was a text adventure game-- an interactive fiction game! The same category of game that visual novels belong to!
ZORK itself was inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure (1975) also known as ADVENT, which had influence on a wide number of computer RPGs, including every rogue-like ever made (including the Mystery Dungeon series and games like Azure Dreams from Konami, which many would call a "JRPG").
But let me talk about a game from which every "JRPG" and every "WRPG" directly descends.
'dnd' for the PLATO was made in 1975 by Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood. I've talked about it's importance in videogame history in an episode of RPG(ology). I'm also preparing to interview the creators. I've been able to talk with them a little about the game, and the events surrounding it, and they shared with me they had played pedit5, which is regarded as the first computer RPG. It was eventually deleted from the PLATO system, which encouraged Gary and Ray to make their own version (other reasons being they wanted to improve on its design, which they successfully did).
'dnd' influenced Wizardry, which influenced The Black Onyx, which kick-started the Japanese computer RPG industry. Wizardry also influenced all the licensed D&D titles from Strategic Simulations, which eventually leads us to the games made by Black Isle, Bethesda and BioWare.
Furthermore, games like those in the Ultima series were ported over to Japan and influenced the design of Dragon Quest. Even Wizardry was translated and released in Japan, where the series became exceptionally popular, enough to warrant an anime OVA adaptation.
Furthermore, game companies in Japan make a diverse range of game products. They do not always use the same design mechanics. All of the major Japanese RPG companies produce many subgenres of RPGs. It is impossible to band them all together under the label of "JRPG", unless you are simply meaning "Computer RPGs made in Japan", which is the only way I believe the word should be used, since you can draw no conclusions about the mechanics of the game from that statement alone. Their industry is just too diverse.
Nippon Ichi has done many action RPGs, roguelikes and strategy RPGs.
Square has produced every kind of computer RPG, ranging from the crude dungeon crawler (Deep Dungeon series) to the MMORPG (Final Fantasy 11).
Atlus has internally developed dungeon crawls, strategy RPGs, action RPGs and many of their Megami Tensei games have non-linear narrative elements to them. Atlus also produces a wide range of different types of games, everything from shooters to platformers to puzzle games.
Many "JRPGs" have little in common with one another except a leveling system; for example, the Deep Dungeon series by Square has few of narrative structure and combat system design in common with Final Fantasy games. Many of the early Romancing SaGa games were essentially "Final Fantasy, if the narrative structure was non-linear". Any true student of the genre is going to know this stuff and recognize the differences.
I also know that Elder Scrolls: Oblivion had influence on the design of Final Fantasy XIII-2. I know this because in November 2011 I sat less than a foot away from Yoshinori Kitase, producer of the title, when he said that ES:O was one of the games the dev team had been playing a lot during the development phase of FF 13-2, when I was visiting the GotGame offices while he was there promoting an early build of the title.
There are no borders when it comes to game design, despite what the folks at Extra Credits assume. Japan has not been an isolated country for a long, long time. It is one of the United States most important trade partners and there is a lot of exchanging of ideas between our countries.
So the argument that"JRPGs" like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest shouldn't belong to the same family of games as ones like Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect is positively ridiculous. They share common ancestors, so of course they belong to the same family! And had the guys at Extra Credits went outside their bubble and actually talked to the designers of these games they would know this.
Also, the argument about Call of Duty can't be an RPG because it's primarily a shooter is flawed; who says a game need belong to just one genre? If films can be both a "romance" and a "comedy", why can't games be both a "shooter" and an "RPG"? Why pigeonhole designers into choosing just one set of game mechanics?
Lastly, the guys at Extra Credits have assumed the Japanese designers did not know what D&D was when they were making their games and focused primarily on the videogame RPGs. This is mistaken.
Despite what Wikipedia will tell you (currently the article is confusing adventure games with RPGs, and making the common but mistaken assumption that all fantasy videogames must be RPGs), the first "JRPG" was actually made by a non-Japanese person; Henk Rogers, in 1984. The Black Onyx came about due to Henk's love of AD&D and belief that a game like Wizardry would work in the Japanese computer game market. Before 1984 nobody had ever heard of an "RPG" before in Japan and he literally had to teach the game reviewers how to play it. But they caught on quick and it caused a sensation in the market.
After the success of The Black Onyx, there was a lot of interest in the tabletop RPG game that inspired it, Dungeons and Dragons. D&D then inspired Group SNE to develop the Sword World brand, (which most Americans are familiar with due to the anime and manga merchandise based off it, Record of Lodoss War), which became massively popular and spawned dozens of other tabletop RPGs, many of which have turned into manga and anime adaptions, like NIGHT WIZARD.
Sword World started in 1986 as a homebrew campaign setting for AD&D and the sessions were published in the magazine Comptiq, a popular Japanese computer game magazine.
This means AD&D was not just available in Japan, but very popular in Japan, BEFORE Final Fantasy (1987).
Sword World was developed over a period of years, and even tried to become an officially licensed AD&D campaign setting before the designers made their own rule systems and self-published in 1989 with wild success.
Even as computer RPGs kept being developed, "Western" tabletop RPGs remained popular in Japan: for example, a beautiful version of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Rules Cyclopedia was translated into Japanese and published in 1991.
It is no coincidence that Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy use many monsters taken directly from AD&D's Monster Manuals. Creatures like slimes, oozes, gelatinous cubes and mind flayers have NO precedence in Japanese media. Hell, they have NO precedence in games before D&D. Yet they, including the Mind Flayer, found their way into Final Fantasy.
So in conclusion, Extra Credits failed to do the research and since that flawed research is the basis for much of their argument on why "JRPGs" and "WRPGs" don't belong to the same family, "RPG" , their argument has very little weight. Both American and Japanese game designers find inspiration for their titles from the same game genres, and in many cases the same exact games.
Addressing point #2: Defining art primarily by how others perceive that art is fundamentally flawed because the audience is going to see things in the art that was not intended by the artist. This is why art, film and literature criticism strongly focus on the artist(s) who made the art, and what they intended to convey to the audience.
If we were to allow audiences to decide what genres media belong to, then Michael Bay films would probably be called "super awesome explosion" rather than action films-- but that is just a perception! Michael Bay gets a lot of crap for making popcorn movies but Michael Bay's films have a unique style to them, which is fairly consistent, even throughout the music videos from earlier in his career (which audiences are completely unaware of). I'm not a fan of all his movies, but I admit when you look at his work as a whole he has a consistent style in how he wants the story to be presented.
Secondly, let's look at literature: to millions of fans Harry Potter is a children's story that offers a great many life lessons and lectures at length about separating actions between, "That which is easy, and that which is hard". However, to an unfortunately sizable population of audiences, the book is interpreted to preach Satanism and much controversy has been had over those claims. Also, some people honestly believe Harry Potter is real and by acting out the steps in the book, they might be able to be Harry Potter.
So, if we actually allow audiences to define what a game is about based on how they "feel" about it, then we open the door to lending credibility to those who call first person shooters "murder simulators'.
You can't just say, "No, we only define by how the MAJORITY of audiences view it," because it is scientifically impossible to determine such a thing. We would have to insert Ender's Game-style scanners into the brains of everyone who plays Call of Duty and Super Mario Brothers to get an accurate reading of how the majority view those games and the particular reasons they play them. Making a broad assumption about something as complicated as a layman's perception of art, and then insisting that assumption to be dogma is not scientific, and has no place in any field of professional artistic criticism. Our genre labels must have consistency based in facts, not assumptions.
Game mechanics are facts. It is not open to interpretation whether something has a leveling system or not; a game either does or it does not. And that is why genre labels are determined by game mechanics, not feelings.
This is why real criticism is artist-centric. It focuses on what the ARTIST is trying to convey TO audiences, because what the artist intended tends to be very consistent, and is very easy to verify by simply asking them.
Granted, how audiences are emotionally impacted by the work is important, but the answer is only important for verifying how effective the artist was at delivering their message. That is why much criticism has been lobbied at Avatar; many critics feel the films environmental messages were too heavy handed and the line between who was "right" and "wrong" too black and white, which is interpreted as having the characters (especially the antagonists) be two-dimensional characters.
We know Harry Potter is a fictional children's story that intends to express the value of friendship, family and doing good in the world because the author, J.K. Rowling said so. We know it is effective at doing so based on the choices the heroes make compared to the ones the villains make, and how even though there is misfortune along the way, the heroes eventually prevail and protect their community.
We know Twilight is a fictional story aimed at young adults that seeks to express the value of friendship and making compromises in a relationship, and trying hard to be a great lover, because Stephenie Meyer has said so. We know it is not so effective at doing that because the story centers around the importance of having a boyfriend, even if he breaks into your house at night and stares at you while you sleep. The ideal lover is portrayed as a someone who can't decide if he wants to kiss her or kill her; a thought process most people would associate with a psychopath.
And....
....we know Final Fantasy 13-2 is a computer RPG because the fine folks at Square-Enix said so. We know it is effective as a computer RPG because players spend the overwhelming majority of their time manipulating the RPG mechanics, manually leveling up their character based on earned experience, and making decisions that alter the direction of the storyline toward one of the many possible endings.
I think the guys at Extra Credits are trying a little too hard to be clever. I hope they will retract their argument before they dump more fuel onto the "JRPGs aren't real RPGs" argument that is flamed all over the internet, which is based entirely from ignorance of videogame history as well as ignorance of game design theory, as well as ignorance of art criticism. It is sad to see Extra Credits giving any kind of credibility to those thought patterns, because I thought them more educated than this.
Actually, I'm certain they are more educated than to give that argument credibility and they should know better.
The layman doesn't think "JRPGs" and "WRPGs" are different because they play them for different reasons. They think they are different because they assume all "JRPGs" are like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, and all "WRPGs" are like Fallout, because they have tunnel vision for the titles that are most heavily promoted at Gamestop and talked about in major game publications (which are generally the same games).
They also judge at face value, and assume "anime graphics" = the poorly translated version of Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh from 4Kids, which got advertised all over TV, much to their annoyance.
The JRPG vs WRPG "genre differences" arguments only hold water when you ignore the majority of Japanese made computer RPGs and the majority of American made computer RPGs. Let's just take one company as an example: Electronic Arts. They have produced many computer RPGs that have no non-linear elements to the narratives, such as LOTR: The Third Age and Darkspore.
Another American company, Snowblind Studios, recently responsible for the dialogue tree featured but very linear narratived LOTR: The War in the North also made other linear narrative RPGs, such as Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance & Champions of Norrath. And the aforementioned Wizardry and Ultima games are very linear experiences.
If you actually bother to spend time on GameFAQs you can easily see the majority of American made computer RPGs have linear narratives, and there is actually quite a lot of Japanese made computer RPGs that have non-linear elements to their narratives. So the whole "WRPG" and "JRPG" genre labels really are a bunch of nonsense. For a brief period of time back in the late 80s and early 90s, there was more of a focus among American developers to make RPGs that featured silent protagonists whose personality could be determined however the player wished and much of the game was focused on exploring the narrative space (Fallout and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura are examples) but that period was brief.
If there is any real design focus in the Japanese computer RPG industry it is in making complex systems that can be manipulated with a console controller, whereas American developers had historically made their interfaces to rely on utilizing keyboards, but this had more to do with what platforms they were publishing on. It just so happens to be the game console market has been dominated by Japanese manufacturers for nearly thirty years, and the personal computer market (Windows machines) is dominated by Americans.
In short, the average gamer is a poor judge, and in the past 10 years a lot of average gamers found work at game journalist magazines, and they brought their anti-intellectual viewpoints with them. They don't even use rational methods for rating games, instead giving arbitrary scores to games based on how they feel about the first couple hours of play, as if that is supposed to be of value to fans of the genre that game belongs to. They keep using the word "score" in their reviews as they issue a numerical value to the game, which they have pulled out of their ass. Their use of the word "score" reminds me of something Inigo Montoya once said in The Princess Bride, "you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
For example, a not so long ago review on IGN: "I've never played more than an hour of any Japanese RPG."
So naturally, you, the guy who doesn't play JRPGs, are the perfect guy for IGN to hire to review some Japanese RPGs that will be used by the audience who does play them to determine whether they should buy the game. Brilliant!
The videogame journalism industry is the only industry where you will see something that absurd. It would be like a food critic website hiring a vegan to review the food at a chain of BBQs, and expect them to actually produce a review of value for people who might want to eat there.
The labels "JRPG" and "WRPG" came about because the field of game journalism is in a terrible state of affairs. There is no other reason.
The average game player no better understands the design of games than the average car owner understands the design of their car. Both a car and a game are complex devices designed to be so user-friendly that the operator does not need to understand how it works, they just need to understand how to use it. But in the professional field of car reviewing and game reviewing, the only people who should be passing judgement are those who understand automobile mechanics and game mechanics, respectively. That this has not been happening for the field of game journalism is the real problem here, and leads to these kinds of silly debates that are given unwarranted credibility by game magazines with poor hiring standards.
The truth is that designers in both continents make a wide range of different types of RPGs, and they play the games made by one another to get inspiration. A true fan of the genre knows that.
(Edit: I've made another, much shorter post about this topic that covers a few things I left out.)
The video puts forth several ideas that I think are fundamentally flawed,
1) That "WRPGs" and "JRPGS" shouldn't belong to the family of "RPGs", but are actually two entirely different genres which developed independently of one another. This is because the folks at Extra Credits believe "JRPGs" descend from eroge visual novels (apparently because Wikipedia says so-- it's the only other place I've ever seen such an argument made-- but we'll get to this in a moment).
2) That game genres should not be defined by the game mechanics of the game, but by how players perceive the game (ie. the reasons they play the game and what they take away from the game).
I believe the folks at Extra Credits are wrong.
Here's why,
Addressing argument #1: Anyone who has any inkling of knowledge about videogame history can tell you visual novels descend from graphic adventure games, which themselves descend from text adventure games, a branch of interaction fiction games.
Interactive fiction games are legions more popular in Japan than in elsewhere in the world, but they are made all over the world, including the "West", even if they aren't called "visual novels". The only substantial difference between the gameplay of point and click adventure games like Gabriel Knights: Sins of the Father (which I played extensively when I was a kid) and a game like Fate/stay night is you can actually move your avatar across the screen in Gabriel Knight , rather than gameplay deciding solely on which story branches you pursue like in Fate/stay night. This is a mild difference and certainly not enough to suggest no common familial ties.
And many "Western" RPGs also descend from interactive fiction games, but we'll talk about that later.
As for the argument that companies like Enix, Square and Nihon Falcom made eroge and then infused those elements into their design, I cannot argue they dabbled in games with visual novel elements before making computer RPGs. However concerning Square, near as I can tell, did not make any eroge games before releasing Final Fantasy -- GameFAQs and Mobygames don't list any. Now, they did release Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School, a dating sim for the Famicom Disk System, but this game was released at the same time that Final Fantasy was released (both were released in December of 1987), so it seems to have been developed at the same time.
(Note that Wikipedia's article for eroge games currently claims Square and Enix made eroge games in their early days, but that claim is not sourced nor does it say what the names of those games are. Suspicious indeed, but it doesn't really matter if they did or not. You'll understand why as you read this article).
HOWEVER, if you look at the very early history of the computer RPG genre you find a lot of people trying to combine ZORK with the tabletop RPG Dungeons and Dragons, or at least the idea of a shared narrative space in an interactive fiction game . For example, MUD1 (the forefather of all things MMORPG) began its development with the intent to make a "Multi-User DUNGEN", with "DUNGEN" having been an unlicensed port of ZORK.
Now, while MUD1 did not use any of D&D, many other games descending from MUD1 did, such as DikuMUD, which is pretty much responsible for the creation of Everquest.
ZORK, for those who don't know, was a text adventure game-- an interactive fiction game! The same category of game that visual novels belong to!
ZORK itself was inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure (1975) also known as ADVENT, which had influence on a wide number of computer RPGs, including every rogue-like ever made (including the Mystery Dungeon series and games like Azure Dreams from Konami, which many would call a "JRPG").
But let me talk about a game from which every "JRPG" and every "WRPG" directly descends.
'dnd' for the PLATO was made in 1975 by Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood. I've talked about it's importance in videogame history in an episode of RPG(ology). I'm also preparing to interview the creators. I've been able to talk with them a little about the game, and the events surrounding it, and they shared with me they had played pedit5, which is regarded as the first computer RPG. It was eventually deleted from the PLATO system, which encouraged Gary and Ray to make their own version (other reasons being they wanted to improve on its design, which they successfully did).
'dnd' influenced Wizardry, which influenced The Black Onyx, which kick-started the Japanese computer RPG industry. Wizardry also influenced all the licensed D&D titles from Strategic Simulations, which eventually leads us to the games made by Black Isle, Bethesda and BioWare.
Furthermore, games like those in the Ultima series were ported over to Japan and influenced the design of Dragon Quest. Even Wizardry was translated and released in Japan, where the series became exceptionally popular, enough to warrant an anime OVA adaptation.
Furthermore, game companies in Japan make a diverse range of game products. They do not always use the same design mechanics. All of the major Japanese RPG companies produce many subgenres of RPGs. It is impossible to band them all together under the label of "JRPG", unless you are simply meaning "Computer RPGs made in Japan", which is the only way I believe the word should be used, since you can draw no conclusions about the mechanics of the game from that statement alone. Their industry is just too diverse.
Nippon Ichi has done many action RPGs, roguelikes and strategy RPGs.
Square has produced every kind of computer RPG, ranging from the crude dungeon crawler (Deep Dungeon series) to the MMORPG (Final Fantasy 11).
Atlus has internally developed dungeon crawls, strategy RPGs, action RPGs and many of their Megami Tensei games have non-linear narrative elements to them. Atlus also produces a wide range of different types of games, everything from shooters to platformers to puzzle games.
Many "JRPGs" have little in common with one another except a leveling system; for example, the Deep Dungeon series by Square has few of narrative structure and combat system design in common with Final Fantasy games. Many of the early Romancing SaGa games were essentially "Final Fantasy, if the narrative structure was non-linear". Any true student of the genre is going to know this stuff and recognize the differences.
I also know that Elder Scrolls: Oblivion had influence on the design of Final Fantasy XIII-2. I know this because in November 2011 I sat less than a foot away from Yoshinori Kitase, producer of the title, when he said that ES:O was one of the games the dev team had been playing a lot during the development phase of FF 13-2, when I was visiting the GotGame offices while he was there promoting an early build of the title.
There are no borders when it comes to game design, despite what the folks at Extra Credits assume. Japan has not been an isolated country for a long, long time. It is one of the United States most important trade partners and there is a lot of exchanging of ideas between our countries.
So the argument that"JRPGs" like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest shouldn't belong to the same family of games as ones like Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect is positively ridiculous. They share common ancestors, so of course they belong to the same family! And had the guys at Extra Credits went outside their bubble and actually talked to the designers of these games they would know this.
Also, the argument about Call of Duty can't be an RPG because it's primarily a shooter is flawed; who says a game need belong to just one genre? If films can be both a "romance" and a "comedy", why can't games be both a "shooter" and an "RPG"? Why pigeonhole designers into choosing just one set of game mechanics?
Lastly, the guys at Extra Credits have assumed the Japanese designers did not know what D&D was when they were making their games and focused primarily on the videogame RPGs. This is mistaken.
Despite what Wikipedia will tell you (currently the article is confusing adventure games with RPGs, and making the common but mistaken assumption that all fantasy videogames must be RPGs), the first "JRPG" was actually made by a non-Japanese person; Henk Rogers, in 1984. The Black Onyx came about due to Henk's love of AD&D and belief that a game like Wizardry would work in the Japanese computer game market. Before 1984 nobody had ever heard of an "RPG" before in Japan and he literally had to teach the game reviewers how to play it. But they caught on quick and it caused a sensation in the market.
After the success of The Black Onyx, there was a lot of interest in the tabletop RPG game that inspired it, Dungeons and Dragons. D&D then inspired Group SNE to develop the Sword World brand, (which most Americans are familiar with due to the anime and manga merchandise based off it, Record of Lodoss War), which became massively popular and spawned dozens of other tabletop RPGs, many of which have turned into manga and anime adaptions, like NIGHT WIZARD.
Sword World started in 1986 as a homebrew campaign setting for AD&D and the sessions were published in the magazine Comptiq, a popular Japanese computer game magazine.
This means AD&D was not just available in Japan, but very popular in Japan, BEFORE Final Fantasy (1987).
Sword World was developed over a period of years, and even tried to become an officially licensed AD&D campaign setting before the designers made their own rule systems and self-published in 1989 with wild success.
Even as computer RPGs kept being developed, "Western" tabletop RPGs remained popular in Japan: for example, a beautiful version of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Rules Cyclopedia was translated into Japanese and published in 1991.
It is no coincidence that Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy use many monsters taken directly from AD&D's Monster Manuals. Creatures like slimes, oozes, gelatinous cubes and mind flayers have NO precedence in Japanese media. Hell, they have NO precedence in games before D&D. Yet they, including the Mind Flayer, found their way into Final Fantasy.
So in conclusion, Extra Credits failed to do the research and since that flawed research is the basis for much of their argument on why "JRPGs" and "WRPGs" don't belong to the same family, "RPG" , their argument has very little weight. Both American and Japanese game designers find inspiration for their titles from the same game genres, and in many cases the same exact games.
Addressing point #2: Defining art primarily by how others perceive that art is fundamentally flawed because the audience is going to see things in the art that was not intended by the artist. This is why art, film and literature criticism strongly focus on the artist(s) who made the art, and what they intended to convey to the audience.
If we were to allow audiences to decide what genres media belong to, then Michael Bay films would probably be called "super awesome explosion" rather than action films-- but that is just a perception! Michael Bay gets a lot of crap for making popcorn movies but Michael Bay's films have a unique style to them, which is fairly consistent, even throughout the music videos from earlier in his career (which audiences are completely unaware of). I'm not a fan of all his movies, but I admit when you look at his work as a whole he has a consistent style in how he wants the story to be presented.
Secondly, let's look at literature: to millions of fans Harry Potter is a children's story that offers a great many life lessons and lectures at length about separating actions between, "That which is easy, and that which is hard". However, to an unfortunately sizable population of audiences, the book is interpreted to preach Satanism and much controversy has been had over those claims. Also, some people honestly believe Harry Potter is real and by acting out the steps in the book, they might be able to be Harry Potter.
So, if we actually allow audiences to define what a game is about based on how they "feel" about it, then we open the door to lending credibility to those who call first person shooters "murder simulators'.
You can't just say, "No, we only define by how the MAJORITY of audiences view it," because it is scientifically impossible to determine such a thing. We would have to insert Ender's Game-style scanners into the brains of everyone who plays Call of Duty and Super Mario Brothers to get an accurate reading of how the majority view those games and the particular reasons they play them. Making a broad assumption about something as complicated as a layman's perception of art, and then insisting that assumption to be dogma is not scientific, and has no place in any field of professional artistic criticism. Our genre labels must have consistency based in facts, not assumptions.
Game mechanics are facts. It is not open to interpretation whether something has a leveling system or not; a game either does or it does not. And that is why genre labels are determined by game mechanics, not feelings.
This is why real criticism is artist-centric. It focuses on what the ARTIST is trying to convey TO audiences, because what the artist intended tends to be very consistent, and is very easy to verify by simply asking them.
Granted, how audiences are emotionally impacted by the work is important, but the answer is only important for verifying how effective the artist was at delivering their message. That is why much criticism has been lobbied at Avatar; many critics feel the films environmental messages were too heavy handed and the line between who was "right" and "wrong" too black and white, which is interpreted as having the characters (especially the antagonists) be two-dimensional characters.
We know Harry Potter is a fictional children's story that intends to express the value of friendship, family and doing good in the world because the author, J.K. Rowling said so. We know it is effective at doing so based on the choices the heroes make compared to the ones the villains make, and how even though there is misfortune along the way, the heroes eventually prevail and protect their community.
We know Twilight is a fictional story aimed at young adults that seeks to express the value of friendship and making compromises in a relationship, and trying hard to be a great lover, because Stephenie Meyer has said so. We know it is not so effective at doing that because the story centers around the importance of having a boyfriend, even if he breaks into your house at night and stares at you while you sleep. The ideal lover is portrayed as a someone who can't decide if he wants to kiss her or kill her; a thought process most people would associate with a psychopath.
And....
....we know Final Fantasy 13-2 is a computer RPG because the fine folks at Square-Enix said so. We know it is effective as a computer RPG because players spend the overwhelming majority of their time manipulating the RPG mechanics, manually leveling up their character based on earned experience, and making decisions that alter the direction of the storyline toward one of the many possible endings.
I think the guys at Extra Credits are trying a little too hard to be clever. I hope they will retract their argument before they dump more fuel onto the "JRPGs aren't real RPGs" argument that is flamed all over the internet, which is based entirely from ignorance of videogame history as well as ignorance of game design theory, as well as ignorance of art criticism. It is sad to see Extra Credits giving any kind of credibility to those thought patterns, because I thought them more educated than this.
Actually, I'm certain they are more educated than to give that argument credibility and they should know better.
The layman doesn't think "JRPGs" and "WRPGs" are different because they play them for different reasons. They think they are different because they assume all "JRPGs" are like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, and all "WRPGs" are like Fallout, because they have tunnel vision for the titles that are most heavily promoted at Gamestop and talked about in major game publications (which are generally the same games).
They also judge at face value, and assume "anime graphics" = the poorly translated version of Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh from 4Kids, which got advertised all over TV, much to their annoyance.
The JRPG vs WRPG "genre differences" arguments only hold water when you ignore the majority of Japanese made computer RPGs and the majority of American made computer RPGs. Let's just take one company as an example: Electronic Arts. They have produced many computer RPGs that have no non-linear elements to the narratives, such as LOTR: The Third Age and Darkspore.
Another American company, Snowblind Studios, recently responsible for the dialogue tree featured but very linear narratived LOTR: The War in the North also made other linear narrative RPGs, such as Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance & Champions of Norrath. And the aforementioned Wizardry and Ultima games are very linear experiences.
If you actually bother to spend time on GameFAQs you can easily see the majority of American made computer RPGs have linear narratives, and there is actually quite a lot of Japanese made computer RPGs that have non-linear elements to their narratives. So the whole "WRPG" and "JRPG" genre labels really are a bunch of nonsense. For a brief period of time back in the late 80s and early 90s, there was more of a focus among American developers to make RPGs that featured silent protagonists whose personality could be determined however the player wished and much of the game was focused on exploring the narrative space (Fallout and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura are examples) but that period was brief.
If there is any real design focus in the Japanese computer RPG industry it is in making complex systems that can be manipulated with a console controller, whereas American developers had historically made their interfaces to rely on utilizing keyboards, but this had more to do with what platforms they were publishing on. It just so happens to be the game console market has been dominated by Japanese manufacturers for nearly thirty years, and the personal computer market (Windows machines) is dominated by Americans.
In short, the average gamer is a poor judge, and in the past 10 years a lot of average gamers found work at game journalist magazines, and they brought their anti-intellectual viewpoints with them. They don't even use rational methods for rating games, instead giving arbitrary scores to games based on how they feel about the first couple hours of play, as if that is supposed to be of value to fans of the genre that game belongs to. They keep using the word "score" in their reviews as they issue a numerical value to the game, which they have pulled out of their ass. Their use of the word "score" reminds me of something Inigo Montoya once said in The Princess Bride, "you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
For example, a not so long ago review on IGN: "I've never played more than an hour of any Japanese RPG."
So naturally, you, the guy who doesn't play JRPGs, are the perfect guy for IGN to hire to review some Japanese RPGs that will be used by the audience who does play them to determine whether they should buy the game. Brilliant!
The videogame journalism industry is the only industry where you will see something that absurd. It would be like a food critic website hiring a vegan to review the food at a chain of BBQs, and expect them to actually produce a review of value for people who might want to eat there.
The labels "JRPG" and "WRPG" came about because the field of game journalism is in a terrible state of affairs. There is no other reason.
The average game player no better understands the design of games than the average car owner understands the design of their car. Both a car and a game are complex devices designed to be so user-friendly that the operator does not need to understand how it works, they just need to understand how to use it. But in the professional field of car reviewing and game reviewing, the only people who should be passing judgement are those who understand automobile mechanics and game mechanics, respectively. That this has not been happening for the field of game journalism is the real problem here, and leads to these kinds of silly debates that are given unwarranted credibility by game magazines with poor hiring standards.
The truth is that designers in both continents make a wide range of different types of RPGs, and they play the games made by one another to get inspiration. A true fan of the genre knows that.
(Edit: I've made another, much shorter post about this topic that covers a few things I left out.)
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You play Super Metroid to explore an alien world.
I think it's clear which one Prime shares more with."
(My response: Metroid Prime is a first person shooter, the same way Mass Effect is a first person shooter. Just because it has an open world doesn't mean it can't be a first person shooter. Many first person shooters focus on multi-player modes these days but there is nothing inherent about the genre that means every level has to be self-contained. And lastly, a game is capable of having elements from more than one game genre; it doesn't need to be forced into just one kind of genre)
" I keep feeling that the main different between JRPGs and WRPGs are the overall tone and writing, because they can still differ in terms of subject matter.
(My response: And there is your problem. You haven't played many of these games. BioWare and Bethesda aren't the only American companies making RPGs)
It's Q&D, but I've always heard the rule of thumb as "If you create the role, it's a CRPG, if you're given the role, it's a JRPG".
(My response: FYI, with that logic Shin Megami Tensei 3 isn't a "JRPG", nor is Final Fantasy 13-2. Or Final Fantasy 12. Or Final Fantasy 8. Or Final Fantasy 7. Or Final Fantasy 6. Or Final Fantasy 5. Or any game in the Disgaea series. Or, hell, any Japanese produced game where you can decide the party role of the character)
"@TheDuck1234 While Demon Souls and Dark Souls were made by a Japanese company, it is more of a WRPG than a JRPG if you go by their attributes. The colours are muted, the character design and aesthatic is for most part restrained, the story takes a backseat to gameplay and so on."
(My response: World of Warcraft has bright colors, an almost "manga-ish" aesthetic to its world and the story is kind of hard to avoid. Does that mean it's not a "WRPG"?)
Every time I hear people try to articulate why "JRPGs" and "WRPGs" are so, so different, I always have the same thought,
"Play. More. Games."
Because many gamer reviewers have selective memory (i.e. they crap over any game that doesn't fit neatly into their ideas of what "JRPGs" and "WRPGs" are supposed to be), here are a few you can start with,
Lord of the Rings: The Third Age - linear narrative "Final Fantasy"-like "WRPG"
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance - linear narrative "WRPG"
Champions of Norrath - linear narrative "WRPG"
Forgotten Realms: Demonstone - linear narrative "WRPG"
Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes- linear narrative "WRPG"
Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale - linear narrative "WRPG"
King's Bounty: The Legend - linear narrative "WRPG"
Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song - "non-linear "JRPG" with huge emphasis on character customization based on behavior of the character, similar to Elder Scrolls
For similar non-linear gameplay and deep character customization gameplay, check out SaGa Frontier and SaGa Frontier 2
Radiata Stories - non-linear "JRPG"
Chrono Trigger - from the middle onward, the game is completely non-linear, to the point the protagonist may even remain dead. "JRPG"
That's just a handful of games that break the stereotypes. There's hundreds more.