Devs Talk about Future at 1UP

chevalier · Sat, 7th Nov '09, 10:38am

At 1UP, four developers (Bill Roper from Cryptic, Alan Miranda from Ossian, Marcin Iwiński from CD Projekt and Feargus Urquhart from Obsidian) met up for a conversation about the future of single-player RPGs. Here's all four talking about indie games:

1UP: How does the indie scene fit in the single-player RPG market?

BR: I really believe [the indie scene has a role], as I hinted at in the last question. The biggest issue speaking against an indie RPG is that players have the highest expectations in terms of time to play and differentiation of content with an RPG. An indie approach to this would be to create a smaller, extensible system that features either episodic content (campaigns and dungeons) or user-generated content to feed the beast.

FU: I'd love to be in it in a lot of ways. But more seriously, the indie scene is important for games, just like indie movies are important to the film industry. We old guys can get stuck in our ways and think that we can only entertain someone if we have $20 million to make the game. The indie scene proves that you can make great games with only a small percentage of that money.

MI: I haven't spotted any RPG equivalents to World of Goo or Audiosurf, but there are a lot of good mods that tell great stories utilizing, for example, the Neverwinter Nights engine.

AM: I think the indie-RPG scene can fill in the "old school" RPG niche, where you won't be expected to have full VO, and hence have as much dialogue as you want; where you can have that 100-plus hours of gameplay; or where you don't need to pay for a bleeding-edge graphical engine to ensure maximum cinematic effect. You can still have fun without those things. For example, I tried out the Eschalon: Book 1 demo a while back and had fun with it. It had good exploration and world interactivity.

Also, as an indie developer, you aren't constrained by what a publisher's marketing department dictates is a viable RPG product for the market. History is filled with examples of games or movies that execs/marketing said shouldn't be done -- or if had already been completed were considered garbage -- but which turned out to be megahits and all-time favorites. Indie RPGs may never be able to compete head-to-head with big-budget RPGs in the mainstream commercial marketplace, but they don't have to if they can excel at giving gamers what the big RPGs can't.

Read the whole thing at 1UP.

Sat, 7th Nov '09, 10:38am	#1
chevalier SPS Account Holder Senior News Editor Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: I wish I were in the land of coffee... Age: 26 Posts: 16,519 Rep Power: 25	Devs Talk about Future at 1UP At 1UP, four developers (Bill Roper from Cryptic, Alan Miranda from Ossian, Marcin Iwiński from CD Projekt and Feargus Urquhart from Obsidian) met up for a conversation about the future of single-player RPGs. Here's all four talking about indie games: 1UP: How does the indie scene fit in the single-player RPG market? BR: I really believe [the indie scene has a role], as I hinted at in the last question. The biggest issue speaking against an indie RPG is that players have the highest expectations in terms of time to play and differentiation of content with an RPG. An indie approach to this would be to create a smaller, extensible system that features either episodic content (campaigns and dungeons) or user-generated content to feed the beast. FU: I'd love to be in it in a lot of ways. But more seriously, the indie scene is important for games, just like indie movies are important to the film industry. We old guys can get stuck in our ways and think that we can only entertain someone if we have $20 million to make the game. The indie scene proves that you can make great games with only a small percentage of that money. MI: I haven't spotted any RPG equivalents to World of Goo or Audiosurf, but there are a lot of good mods that tell great stories utilizing, for example, the Neverwinter Nights engine. AM: I think the indie-RPG scene can fill in the "old school" RPG niche, where you won't be expected to have full VO, and hence have as much dialogue as you want; where you can have that 100-plus hours of gameplay; or where you don't need to pay for a bleeding-edge graphical engine to ensure maximum cinematic effect. You can still have fun without those things. For example, I tried out the Eschalon: Book 1 demo a while back and had fun with it. It had good exploration and world interactivity. Also, as an indie developer, you aren't constrained by what a publisher's marketing department dictates is a viable RPG product for the market. History is filled with examples of games or movies that execs/marketing said shouldn't be done -- or if had already been completed were considered garbage -- but which turned out to be megahits and all-time favorites. Indie RPGs may never be able to compete head-to-head with big-budget RPGs in the mainstream commercial marketplace, but they don't have to if they can excel at giving gamers what the big RPGs can't. Read the whole thing at 1UP.