Would tabletop RPGs suffer by being more mainstream?

[Amechra]

Eagle of Fire, you check out some of the indie titles? There have been several great indie adventure games/strategy games that have come out relatively recently.

But, well, I'm kinda torn about the OP's topic. If RPGs becoming mainstream would mean that 7th Sea would be reprinted with some mechanical fixing up (come on, everyone loves pirates! they should have brought it back when Pirates of the Caribbean came out!), and that there'd be a chance that we'd get an actually good RPG movie (seriously. Take a random recent superhero flick. Take the budget from that, and make an Eberron flick. Or a Planescape flick. Or a Dark Suns flick. Or a... no, Forgotten Realms would be a snuff film. Never mind.)

Hell, an Exalted film? Besides the fact that their budget would be too small, it would be so damn awesome.

Then, I'd be in support. It would also help in the "getting players" department.

But I personally believe that the RPG scene is starting to peak, and we're going to start the long fall back into obscurity soon enough (I'm a pessimist, what can I say?)

Actually, wait a sec: are there any big-name directors that are known fans of RPGs? I know that a buncha actors are...

[Risada]

(seriously. Take a random recent superhero flick. Take the budget from that, and make an Eberron flick. Or a Planescape flick. Or a Dark Suns flick. Or a... no, Forgotten Realms would be a snuff film. Never mind.)

This. If this happened (and the movie was actually good), I could die happy.

[veekie]

P.S.:  to the extent that 4E is bad in this regard, it would be due to an intentional choice on the designers to try and cater to the "mainstream," which as I already noted would be pernicious.  That's separate from the game just becoming more popular.  They didn't go back and revise the Song of Ice and Fire (any more than putting Sean Bean on the cover, I suppose) now that it's gotten totally mainstream.

Indeed, there is quite a big difference between the public deciding they want in on this, and an individual mover attempting to take it to the big times. The latter is costly and risky, the former is completely natural progression.

[Unbeliever]

You're joking, right?  We currently live in a golden age of video games.  It is, arguably, the greatest time for the medium/hobby/whatever you want to call it. 

No, not at all.

This is of course my personal opinion, but as a real gamer I've been completely let down by the gaming industry as a whole since the mid 2000. There is nothing really good anymore, everything seem to have been done. Rehashed a billion times. And since at that time the main goal was better graphics to the detriment of gameplay, I've considered that time to be particularly bad for the gaming industry.

For me, and at least for the PC game industry, the golden age was in the '90s and stopped in very early 2000. The simple fact that you would be practically unable to find a real strategy or adventure game nowaday is enough for me to take as major proof of that...

Guess what? Strategy is my main genre I like to play. Yeah, I've been boned since a loooong time now.

On the one hand it's fair to say there's not much in the way of strategy games, certainly not a ton of them.  Although there is Total War:  Shogun 2, Dawn of War 2, Civ 5 that recently got an expansion, and a few other smaller titles as others have alluded to.  And, I know of those and I'm not even all that into strategy.

But, it's quite a leap to go from there to "there is nothing really good anymore."  That's easily demonstrably false.  Oh yeah, I listed a bunch of fucking awesome games already, didn't I?  Games with interesting, engaging mechanics and storylines and a fusion between both.

And, what the hell is a "real gamer" anyway?  That sentiment may be the entire rub of this thread. 


P.S.:  I actually peripherally know the guy who did the treatment on the Rifts movie, way back when Michael Bay was interested.  I do think there won't be much more of an attempt to grab a wider audience, a la 4E, though we'll see the occasional HeroQuest style board game, often with a D&D name on it.

But, I think it's part of the public consciousness now, it comes up all over the place in little ways.  So, I don't know if D&D will ever be as obscure as it was when I was a kid.  Geekery in general is much more mainstream now -- Hollywood isn't about to go back on the whole comic book movie thing anytime soon.

[Eagle of Fire]

And, what the hell is a "real gamer" anyway?  That sentiment may be the entire rub of this thread. 

I usually use the term "hardcore gamer" but that term is not liked by many people. What I meant by a "real gamer" is exactly that: I'm a real gamer by it's true term and not by the retarded term the industry or the media tried or are trying to picture a gamer to be. Which mean someone who play practically exclusively FPS games. Yeah, that's a retarded way of categorizing people who play games... But you would be surprised by how deep this term is anchored deep inside people mind, even today.

Saying in a RL conversation that you are a gamer is usually a social faux-pas. Half the time people will look at you strangely, wondering if you're not the next psychopath who will go shoot people in a school... The other half will start babbling stuff about FPS until I tell them that I'm actually not into that genre at all and then they too give me a weird look.

A real gamer is someone who has games, in general, as an hobby. This usually describe people who are extremely competitive in everything they do. I play about any game genre which exist and I also include sports I like in that definition too.

Some people paint as an hobby. Some people collect coins or stamps... I game. I almost exclusively only do that with all my free time. That's what I like to do. Best example I can give you: me and my D&D group are gathering the 23rd, right before Christmas and while everybody probably should have better to do, to play the board game Axis and Allies. I'm really looking forward to that.

On the one hand it's fair to say there's not much in the way of strategy games, certainly not a ton of them.  Although there is Total War:  Shogun 2, Dawn of War 2, Civ 5 that recently got an expansion, and a few other smaller titles as others have alluded to.  And, I know of those and I'm not even all that into strategy.

Well, first you agree with me that there is not many strategy titles. With the heck ton of games we have right now it's already saying a lot... But, except for Civilization, I don't even know about those games. About Civ 5: Ever since Civ 4, the Civilization series took a heavy turn for the worse. Maybe someday the producers of strategy games will realize that better graphics for a strategy title is actually a bad thing. Sure, I can see the units move now. Everything is prettier. I can zoom on that dragoon and try to see if they do have boggers down their nose and stuff... But it doesn't help playing the game, it's even an hindrance! Stuff like having trouble picturing where a square start and stop? Constantly having to zoom in and out to get the real picture of the game? That's pretty much the basis of the game right there. Strategy games doesn't require fancy graphics, they require you to be able to easily assess the situation without distraction. Since graphics have been worked on primarily, improvement on real aspects of gameplay was pretty much thrown out of the window and extremely few actual improvements were done on that aspect, if at all. With all this, why would I want to move from Civ III if I consider Civ 4 or 5 actually inferior? Which is exactly how I see it.

For the other two titles... I did some research. Total War:  Shogun 2 is clearly not a strategy game but a wargame. Which is kind of a subgenre of strategy but it is clearly not the same thing. I happen to dislike this kind of game a lot because it require you to know more about every single units in the game and how to use them against what instead of requiring real strategy than anything else.

Dawn of War 2... About the same thing. It's an RTS. The first few RTS really had strategy going, but modern RTS could drop the S really... Not my cup of tea.

Anyways, instead of trying to turn the thread into my own argumentative playground, there is actually a point tightly related to this thread that I am trying to make here: I liked the way gaming was before, when it was an elistic group. Mainstream mean that you want to appeal to masses which know absolutely nothing about what you really want to do, and managing to do that mean that you really need to dumb down what you do and turn it into something which is several levels behind in term of quality and fun than what was produced before. It sure sell well, it might even be quite the nice thing for people who are not used to a genre and are looking for something simple to whet their appetite... But while I have no problem with that per se, I do have a heavy problem with the whole industry going that route because, supposedly, that's where the cash is...

The end result is that I get dumbed down games I don't like and which look, feel and play as very bad games when I compare them to what I used to look at, feel and play with in the 90's. And in my mind, things should evolve and get better with time, not the opposite like I've been experiencing since a little more than a decade now.

Eagle of Fire, you check out some of the indie titles? There have been several great indie adventure games/strategy games that have come out relatively recently.

Yes. Most of them are not even worth looking at. There is a few that I have great hopes for but recent experiences lead me to believe that you never actually know what you'll get until the game is actually finished. At the speed some indies are being completed then we might still have to wait a decade to see the end result...

Also, indies only mean that the game is being produced by a company which is not already mainstream (in the sense that it is not an already well established company). It doesn't mean much in itself to be frank. The big players are those you need to look at because great games will come out from those on a regular basis, not the indies.

[Amechra]

I was just mentioning Indie strategy games because I tend to get better luck finding "Indie" games that I like rather than mainstream games, simply because I have shitty reflexes and most recent offerings from big developers need good hand-eye coordination and reflexes to play properly.

Hell, I usually play RPGs, platformers (simple controls let me ignore my inability to, you know, line up a mouse to "shoot" someone a while away), and puzzle games, and, well, most RPGs released recently tend towards poor plotting and such.

Anyway, Eagle of Fire, I can see your argument; is it sort of along the lines of:

"While RPGs becoming mainstream may help the hobby as a whole, it probably will be to the detriment of the part of the hobby that is to my personal tastes."

Also, just out of curiosity, have you looked at Battle for Wesnoth or the DRoD series? DRoD isn't a strategy game, per se, but is a puzzle game heavily oriented around strategic movement.

[Unbeliever]

Anyway, Eagle of Fire, I can see your argument; is it sort of along the lines of:

"While RPGs becoming mainstream may help the hobby as a whole, it probably will be to the detriment of the part of the hobby that is to my personal tastes."

And, my point was that either those preferences are so bizarrely idiosyncratic as to have a population of one (notably Eagle of Fire), or ultimately not based on anything.

For example, virtually everyone thinks Civ 5 was improvement over Civ 4.  And, furthermore, there's no actual argument in that massive wall of text.  I can name a dozen good games, and the only response is a childish drumbeat of "the games are being dumbed down."  That's not even a judgment, as its unsupported by any evidence except to quibble about the categorization. 

The reason I have bothered to continue this line of argument, and my point in this post is this: 
This elitist notion, that games (of virtually any sort) were better before the masses got their hands on them seems to me to be chimerical.  As of this post, no one has presented any evidence for it as a general rule.  Does anyone have any actual examples or arguments to back this up?

[Lars]

Anyway, Eagle of Fire, I can see your argument; is it sort of along the lines of:

"While RPGs becoming mainstream may help the hobby as a whole, it probably will be to the detriment of the part of the hobby that is to my personal tastes."

And, my point was that either those preferences are so bizarrely idiosyncratic as to have a population of one (notably Eagle of Fire), or ultimately not based on anything.

For example, virtually everyone thinks Civ 5 was improvement over Civ 4.  And, furthermore, there's no actual argument in that massive wall of text.  I can name a dozen good games, and the only response is a childish drumbeat of "the games are being dumbed down."  That's not even a judgment, as its unsupported by any evidence except to quibble about the categorization. 

Not true, imo and experience. Civ 5 was a horrible mess that just got worse. Waiting for a game to be patched and patched again. Look around civfanatics, It was a bad reception of the game.  And a bad game. It solved stacks of dooms, ill give it that.

Rpgs wont suffer from mainstream, but your enjoyment might suffer depending on what kind of games you enjoy.
That a better way to say it?

[sirpercival]

Also, just out of curiosity, have you looked at Battle for Wesnoth or the DRoD series? DRoD isn't a strategy game, per se, but is a puzzle game heavily oriented around strategic movement.

I love that game.

[oslecamo]

I can name a dozen good games, and the only response is a childish drumbeat of "the games are being dumbed down."  That's not even a judgment, as its unsupported by any evidence except to quibble about the categorization. 

Dunno much about the other games, but I can provide you the evidence for dow II being dumbed down:
-Lots and lots and lots of shiny random effects that make luck take a role much greater than it should be. Like melee commanders randomly deciding to start performing special attacks DISCO FEVER, allowing the enemy units to simply walk away and do their stuff. Or attacks like the ork rok that can just as easily obliterate an army or just dirty your enemmy's uniforms, regardless of how said opponent reacts.
-Pretty much every area effect has massive warning lights flashing in the field to warn your opponent you're going to throw said area effect. Because clearly seeing the avatar of Khaine dramatically raise his sword wasn't good enough sign to get out of the way.
-Retreat button NINJA MODE that makes your units suddenly able to effortesly move trough enemy units and take 80% less ranged damage, but just in the direction of your base. Because clearly ordering your units to move back to base when things look bad, or risk being surrounded, it too complex for nowaday players.
-Seriously, dow 2 multiplayer has degenerated into a bunch of cookie-cutter builds for each commander-race combination, and things get decided by what player got more lucky with the highly random factors.
-And that's not to mention the extremely limited quantity of units you actually can get out of the field, because gods forbid you need to control more than 6 separate units at a time in a strategy game. In the grimdarkness of the future, there's just minor skirmishes!
-Meanwhile the single player campaign for the latest expansion consists of the exact same dozen or so maps for each race, and the enemies only seem to notice what faction you are in the first and last mission. Which at least is an improvement over base dow II, where you had to play the exact same mission with the same faction over and over again to advance the campaign.


If you need further proof, allow me to point out how the company that produced dow 2 and multiple other titles on the same vein is currently going trough dire financial problems.

EDIT:

Also, just out of curiosity, have you looked at Battle for Wesnoth or the DRoD series? DRoD isn't a strategy game, per se, but is a puzzle game heavily oriented around strategic movement.

I love that game.

Oh, now that's a pretty nice one! Simple, yet quite deep and the potential to escalate. And free to boot!

[Unbeliever]

At the expense of stating the OBVIOUS, I was not hinging my entire argument on the superiority of Dawn of War 2 v. Dawn of War 1.  I happen to prefer DoW 1, though I respect the sequel's attempt to innovate the RTS genre.  I was responding to: 

...
This is of course my personal opinion, but as a real gamer I've been completely let down by the gaming industry as a whole since the mid 2000. There is nothing really good anymore, everything seem to have been done. Rehashed a billion times. And since at that time the main goal was better graphics to the detriment of gameplay, I've considered that time to be particularly bad for the gaming industry.

For me, and at least for the PC game industry, the golden age was in the '90s and stopped in very early 2000.

Even DoW 1 would be too modern by that measure.  But, regardless, as I am getting sort of annoyed by this entire line of conversation, and so I'm not really going to bother with it, I'm just going to reiterate that I listed a number of universally-acclaimed games that have come out in the past few years.  And, I am sure there are others.  I think that's sufficient evidence for the argument.  And, dumbing down isn't necessarily bad.  The Witcher 2, from what I understand, streamlines a lot of the its predecessor, and it was easily one of the greatest games to come out in the past few years.   

...
Rpgs wont suffer from mainstream, but your enjoyment might suffer depending on what kind of games you enjoy.
That a better way to say it?

Only if there is a shred of evidence for it, which I haven't seen.  A single game, Civ, that makes a new game once a decade isn't much of a trend.  And, it's not like Civ's popularity has fluctuated much, as a share of the market, in the past 20 years.  What you'd need to find is a trend where some games no longer exist that was caused due to something becoming more popular.  And, I'm finding that causal link very hard to establish.

[Arturick]

As someone who got into gaming and CRPGs about 22 years ago, I have to admit that a certain style of game has disappeared from the market.  I love the AD&D Gold Box games, and play through a few of them every few years.  I was excited about Pools of Radiance:  Ruins of Myth Drannor and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, but discovered that both were glitchy messes.  It kind of felt like the designers of the games didn't feel like they were making a game that people wanted to play, or that gaming execs had interfered with the process.  A friend with more patience than I made it pretty far into RttToEE, and the fights there didn't even seem playtested.

Another favorite of mine was Arcanum:  Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.  The game has a "live action" mode and a turn-based mode.  The turn-based mode is fantastic, but the live action mode is nearly unplayable.  Troika programmers later confessed that the live action mode was clumsily hammered on at the demand of execs who insisted that turn-based wouldn't sell games.

So, I like turn-based RPGs/strategy games where you get to see the numbers you're working with, but it seems like the effort to appeal to the mainstream has made high end developers ignore that sort of thing.

This isn't to say that the sort of games I like have fully disappeared, or that I don't like any new games.  I like the Mass Effect series (though I preferred the clunkier, more classical RPG, aspects of the first game to the later parts).  I do enjoy FPS's.  I might have to pick up Dishonored.  I also found the indie game Knights of the Chalice to be pretty good, if hampered by a bare bones stories and some mechanical decisions reflective of the designer's odd grasp of character tier (he worries about Fighters, which you can finish the game without, being overpowered).

I don't blame game companies for failing to focus heavily on a niche market of middle aged nerds, though.  Given that a large chunk of my contemporaries have enthusiastically embraced the "fuck your intellectual property" attitude that gave birth to Napster and Pirate Bay, I figure I'm part of a shitty market anyway.

[Eagle of Fire]

I'm just going to reiterate that I listed a number of universally-acclaimed games that have come out in the past few years.

If you really believe that good sales equal a good game then there is very little worth even discussing this with you at all. Ten years ago I started stopping purchasing game magazine exactly because they were getting shittier and shittier reviews which they were obviously paid to get out. Most of the time they were simply praising games for the sake of having something to say.

Hype is just as important than the game itself nowaday. And while I agree that an unknown game simply never will become a blockbuster, over hyping a game also usually achieve good sales but at the same time by alienating their end user base...

What you'd need to find is a trend where some games no longer exist that was caused due to something becoming more popular.  And, I'm finding that causal link very hard to establish.

You're the one who's joking right now, right? The only reason, IMHO, that you actually believe that it is not the case is because game developers started to "rehash" some of their old titles with totally new games simply to boost sales. The best recent example of a complete failure with an old school name stamped on it: Xcom. Which of course is stealing its name from one of the greatest strategy classic of all time: X-com (or Ufo: Enemy unknown depending of where you live). Xcom is so dumbed down in comparison to the original that it's totally a farce gone wrong. Simply go at any place where old players still praise the old game (because yes there is still a lot of praise for an almost 20 years old game which was never equaled or had a worthy sequel since) and you'll find endless threads of old gamers arguing feverishly with new gamers of the new game who think it's not that bad of a game. Of course it's true that it's not that bad of a game, but the whole issue is with the name itself... Why take the name of an old 20 years old game if you're not even interested in making a similar game? The answer is obvious, of course... It boost sales.

The reason I have bothered to continue this line of argument, and my point in this post is this:
This elitist notion, that games (of virtually any sort) were better before the masses got their hands on them seems to me to be chimerical.  As of this post, no one has presented any evidence for it as a general rule.  Does anyone have any actual examples or arguments to back this up?

Again, very easy to prove. Sid Meir's. You know that guy? He's the guy behind Civilization and a few other extremely good strategy games. His name, of course, is stamped all over the new games too... But he's not working on those games at all, or at the very least extremely vaguely so it doesn't matter anyways. But then, back in the days when there was one game going out every few years by the same company because yes it's what it took back then to get a game out, that name was a beacon for a heap of strategy gamers. What? This game is made by Sid Meir's? Heck, I need to try it! What? BullFrog Studios got a game out? How much? Strategy First got a game out again? Have my baby!

Of course I exaggerate slightly, but that's how it was back then. A single person who had that touch of genius working on a single project was way, way more often than not a guaranteed hit for you if you actually liked the previous work of that man/group/company. It made the whole difference between having a great game with attention to details in comparison to yet another random game like we are being served continuously nowaday.

I realize that, yes, my argument is that I prefer the way it was before as an elitist market rather than having dumbed down games a la mainstream. I also realize that it's where the big bucks are for the big companies... But the question is either or not going mainstream would harm the market for RPGs and my answer is an obvious yes. I also think it would be harmful for any kind of market anyways, mind you. It been proved countless times in about anything before if you only have the eyes, the mind and the experience to look at it correctly.

Also, just out of curiosity, have you looked at Battle for Wesnoth or the DRoD series? DRoD isn't a strategy game, per se, but is a puzzle game heavily oriented around strategic movement.

About BfW, yes of course. Years ago. Must be at least 5 or 6 years now that I first started playing BfW and it's a very nice game indeed. Another wargame though but nice enough to blend it with other genres for me. The thing is though, since the first time I played that game extremely few real improvements have been made on this game (if any). Many tweaks, especially graphically (the game didn't use to lag that much when I first started to play it on the freaking same computer -_-) but the game is exactly the same as before.

That's pretty much a great example of why I said you can't really rely on indies. When I started playing BfW, it was near perfect for me. But then, as time passed, the game started to lag more and more on my computer and it actually started to lose points in my book. Right now I'd hardly rate it more than 6 on 10 because it lags so much it gets on my nerves when I play...

I don't think I recognize the name of DRoD. Could you please tell me a little more about this game?

[Amechra]

DRoD.

Deadly Rooms of Death.

It's made by Caravel Games.

It's a strategy game in a very, very loose sense.

Essentially, you play a "Smitemaster" named Beethro, who, as part of his job, has to progress through a long, long set of floors, killing pretty much all the pesky critters that are around with his sword.

The entire thing is "Roguelike" turn-based, where each time you move, all the enemies on the board get a move.

The AI for the enemies is very simple, ranging from "move towards Beethro one step at a time, favoring vertical movement over horizontal movement" to "just move around in a predefined track, thank you very much."

Each room is a puzzle based around hitting switches, moving in just the right way to not die, and all that. It gets really quite challenging.

Here's a video of someone running through a room.

[Unbeliever]

I'm just going to reiterate that I listed a number of universally-acclaimed games that have come out in the past few years.

If you really believe that good sales equal a good game then there is very little worth even discussing this with you at all.

Eagle, you love reading what you think I write rather than what I actually write.  You also seem to have never heard of the principal of charity.  It's fun, really, I mean, it's not annoying at all. 

At no point did my usage of acclaim indicate only what metacritic or something similar says.  I posted a number of games I had actually played.  You'll notice a distinct lack of, e.g., Call of Duty on my list.  Or Halo.  Games that have sold tons and had great reviews, but which I didn't actually play much of and might actually fit your model.   

Instead, I wrote about games I had actually played.  Often for many, many hours (or what accounts for it in the amount of time I'm able to devote).  Again, I'd appreciate it if you responded to me, if you're going to bother at all, rather than some misshapen version that says what you assume I say. 

And, how are you even an informed consumer?  You admit to having not been into new games in years, having no interest in them.  You also admit to being into the vast majority of games. Go find someone, other than me b/c obviously you don't enjoy actually reading what I write but prefer to go on about how much you love Sid Meier, who has played something like Witcher 2 or Arkham Asylum or Uncharted 2 or Dragon Age:Origins if that's more your style.  Or, hell, spend $10 and play one of them yourself (they are all quite cheap now).  Then, maybe you can speak intelligently about them. 

Maybe if your preferences are that narrow, then maybe mainstreaming might hurt.  That's idiosyncratic, though, and it's a crap shoot whether any game, mainstream or not, would ever satisfy them. 

[oslecamo]

At the expense of stating the OBVIOUS, I was not hinging my entire argument on the superiority of Dawn of War 2 v. Dawn of War 1.  I happen to prefer DoW 1, though I respect the sequel's attempt to innovate the RTS genre.  I was responding to: 

...
This is of course my personal opinion, but as a real gamer I've been completely let down by the gaming industry as a whole since the mid 2000. There is nothing really good anymore, everything seem to have been done. Rehashed a billion times. And since at that time the main goal was better graphics to the detriment of gameplay, I've considered that time to be particularly bad for the gaming industry.

For me, and at least for the PC game industry, the golden age was in the '90s and stopped in very early 2000.

Even DoW 1 would be too modern by that measure.  But, regardless, as I am getting sort of annoyed by this entire line of conversation, and so I'm not really going to bother with it, I'm just going to reiterate that I listed a number of universally-acclaimed over-hyped games that have come out in the past few years.  And, I am sure there are others.  I think that's sufficient evidence for the argument.  And, dumbing down isn't necessarily bad.  The Witcher 2, from what I understand, streamlines a lot of the its predecessor, and it was easily one of the greatest games to come out in the past few years.   

Fixed that for you.

Companies that produce actual universally aclaimed products simply do not file for bankrupcy.

Dawn of War and CoH got a lot of hype because one drawed in 40k fans that over-hype everything and the other was extra-patriotic and both were ultra-shiny, but in the end they weren't that good on the actual gameplay department (at least not whitout extensive modding, some pretty impressive stuff for those titles out there). But alas said mods remained somewhat obscure and THQ insisted on keeping to dumb things down more and more, and now the result is obvious.

[Vasja]

Companies that produce actual universally aclaimed products simply do not file for bankrupcy.

To be fair, THQ has been a publisher and not a developer for several years now, and their bankruptcy doesn't mean the quality of the games they published is low. Ion Storm failed horribly, but I don't know anyone who would say Deus Ex wasn't a solid (or amazing) game.

I don't agree with the over-hyped correction. Witcher 2, Portal 1, Saints Row: the Third, and Civilization 5 either weren't hyped at all or were only recognized by small parts of the community, while they later achieved greater acclaim.

Honestly, though, it just sounds like there's a metric fuck-ton of grognarding in this thread. I'm just waiting for people to start complaining about how Adventure games died because gaming went mainstream. If you don't like the games that are coming out now, that's a shame. I have yet to see anyone give any qualitative analysis on why games today are any worse.

Random counter-example to the 'games today are crap' - Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Fantastic game, fitting of the Rogue line. Pretty universal acclaim amongst the Roguelike crowd. No-one is saying 'fuck this, Rogue was better.' But this is mostly just me being a dick. Also, edits.

[veekie]

The lens of nostalgia and more impressionable days is hard to beat really.  Mainstreaming just means more content, good and bad. The old market(that is, the former core players) is still there, and still open to be tapped.

What it does is mostly offer change, and people don't seem to like that.

[Vasja]

I think people also underestimate how they've changed in the intervening years. I think it's much more likely that the combination of nostalgia and change in taste leads people to dislike games today. Not the fact that there has been a qualitatively negative change as games became mainstream. Seriously, games from the 90's are approaching two decades in age. Do you guys honestly think your tastes are exactly the same as they were back then?

[Eagle of Fire]

@Unbeleiver: As far as I am concerned, I addressed you and your points (just as many others on this thread too). If you're not happy about it or how I did it then please tell me how I'm supposed to do it or what you actually think I didn't address. Otherwise you're only trolling me right now. I'm not impressed.

@Amechra: Thanks for the link. I'll check it out later when I have time.