Castle Paradox

[Clamps]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_132/2801-Play-Like-a-3-Year-Old

Discuss!

[Joe Man]

Love Escapist, probably just about the best game journalism yer gonna find.

Unfortunately, the message of this article doesn't apply well to this community. It's simply the nature of Japanese-style RPGs, which are built upon the sort of tradition that this article is all about avoiding. To be fair, I spent a lot of time on Final Fantasy Legend II when I was little, so obviously it must have gotten something right, but in general what makes a Japanese-style RPG good isn't what makes a six-year-old have fun.
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"Everyone has 200,000 bad drawings in them, the sooner you get them out the better."
~Charles Martin Jones

Last edited by Joe Man on Fri Dec 13, 1957 1:21 am; edited 2,892 time in total

[Rya.Reisender]

^ That's why I complain and say that JRPGs need to change.
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

[Inferior Minion]

[Joe Man]

I feel the need to defend my honor, so to say the least, I didn't mean to be using my reaction to JRPGs when I was eight or so as a measure of quality. More of an indicator of funitude, a word I just now coined.

What I was trying to say, though, is that JRPGs are heavily designed off of what other people do. Basically, and this is especially true for O.H.R.RPG.C.E., you start with an RPG template and you add what you want. This is the given accepted standard, and our RPGers are so fond of this they refuse to admit that it is or could be flawed (for example, the battle system does little to sensibly reflect any real-world sense of strength or fighting ability, instead opting for silly numbers of little symbolic relevance, and the overworld is often almost completely lacking in interaction) because that's simply the way it is and always has been. That's not to say that there aren't good JRPGs. Though I hate to admit it, Nintendo's done a great job at getting the whole Fun thing in those, even if they usually are lacking in the plot and character departments, which is definitely a lamentable deficiency. Another common problem in RPGs is the insane amount of dialogue they often guilt you into reading or listening to, or in extremely pissy cases they even force you to read each individual text box or even wander around the village searching for some random pedestrian's important 'rumor' that is invariably a vital clue required for progressing in the game. You get the idea.

But don't think I hate JRPGs, I actually enjoy them, and it never ceases to amaze me that I do.
_________________
"Everyone has 200,000 bad drawings in them, the sooner you get them out the better."
~Charles Martin Jones

Last edited by Joe Man on Fri Dec 13, 1957 1:21 am; edited 2,892 time in total

[Newbie_Power]

@Joe Man

We need to avoid saying, "we have a problem borrowing from other games".

We need to start saying, "if we are going to borrow from our favorite games, we need to do it right and not half-arse it like most people do".
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[Rya.Reisender]

New good game ideas are always better than copied good game ideas, though.

On the other hand "It's better if you copy a good game idea properly than making up a really bad one".

Whether you should copy or make up gameplay ideas depends a lot on how much faith you have in your skill.
_________________
Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

[Newbie_Power]