Are RPG Video Games Boring?
The Popularity of RPG Video Games in the Recent History of Video Games
The role-playing game (RPG) genre is one of the oldest genres of video games, and also one of the most famous, with many different video games available to play belonging to this genre. In the past, the RPG genre was considered a niche interest. Indeed, during the 1980s, if you went to play arcade video games, you would most often find beat 'em up games and other action games, and not so often would you find RPG video games in these machines. At the same time, during that time period, there were groups of people who would meet to play tabletop role-playing games (not video games), often using pen and paper. In this sense, the genre of role-playing game, especially tabletop RPGs, was quite popular, although it was not as present in arcade machines. Moreover, during the 1980s, multiple RPG video games were released, including franchises such as Dungeons & Dragons, Might and Magic, The Legend of Zelda, Ultima, Wizardry, among others.
In the following decade, during the 1990s, genres such as fighting video games and first-person shooter (FPS) video games saw an increase in popularity, and RPG video games saw a gradual decline in popularity throughout the decade. This is perhaps due to the fact that at this time, players were increasingly amazed with the advancement of gameplay in action video games, with many fighting video game classics and FPS video game classics being released at this time. While action video games kept increasing in popularity with new technology and new gameplay possibilities, RPGs in general mostly retained their traditional gameplay style, which could be one of the reasons for the decline in popularity of RPG video games during the 1990s.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, RPGs saw an increase again in popularity, especially because many RPG video game franchises started adopting elements of action games into their gameplay, effectively starting new RPG video game sub-genres such as action RPGs, hack and slash RPGs, among others. RPG video games started featuring third-person camera perspective, which was mostly previously seen in action-adventure games, and other elements of action games as well. Along with new technologies that allow greater visual immersion, these new elements could explain the surge in popularity that RPGs saw in the early 2000s. Some of the franchises that adopted these action elements into their RPGs during either the late 1990s or the early 2000s are Diablo and Mass Effect.
Are RPG Video Games Boring?
RPG video games are not boring in general, but RPG video games could be boring to players who prefer action-focused gameplay without much story, or to players who do not enjoy video games with character progression. Some RPG video games may be boring to some people, and some RPG video games may captivate the attention and interest of players for a long time. RPG video games most often than not are story-driven games, which means that these games are focused on telling certain stories or immersing players in a video game world that is presented through dialogues, cutscenes, world-building and lore. This is in contrast to traditional action video games, especially classic beat 'em up games and FPS games of the 1980s and 1990s, in which the backstory of the video game was often presented as a context for gameplay, but not as the focus of the gameplay. In RPG video games, quite often, the story is much more than the context, it is the focus of the gameplay. While this may not be the case for all video games, it is the case for many different RPG video games.
An RPG video game could be boring to a certain player depending on the preferes of the player for video games. For example, players who enjoy story-rich games will certainly enjoy many different RPG video games. On the other hand, players who prefer action-focused gameplay will prefer specific types of RPG video games, such as action RPGs. There are players who prefer open world gameplay, and these will prefer open world RPGs, and so on. The RPG video game genre is quite ample, and there are many different video games that belong to this genre that also provide quite unique and distinct experiences. In some instances, the player not enjoying an RPG video game is more connected to the preferences of the player than to the game itself.
The Variety of RPG Video Game Gameplay
Over the course of the evolution of the video games industry, the RPG video game genre greatly expanded, spawning multiple sub-genres, including action RPGs, open world RPGs, sandbox RPGs, among the classic sub-genres such as dungeon crawler RPGs and cRPGs (computer role-playing game). These different sub-genres of RPG video game coexist and provide different and unique experiences to players. While all of these RPGs share elements that tie them together in the genre, their gameplay experience can effectively be vastly different. For example, The Elder Scrolls video games, which are open world RPGs, provide vast open world in which players can adventure through their game characters, and for this reason, while these are definitely RPG video games, The Elder Scrolls video games are often compared to classic open world video games such as Grand Theft Auto. Likewise, Dark Souls video games, which are action RPGs, are often compared to classic action video games. These comparisons reflect the extent of the variety of gameplay that RPG video games present.
The Expectations of Playing RPG Video Games
Perhaps one of the reasons why some players believe that playing an RPG video game could be a boring experience to them is because they have certain expectations and predefined concepts about what an RPG video game is. Moreover, these expectations and concepts are often connected to specific RPG video game sub-genres, and not to the overall RPG video game genre. For example, there are players who prefer real-time combat in video games, and sometimes when these players think of RPG video games, they think about turn-based RPGs. In the RPG video game genre, there are real-time RPGs, and there are turn-based RPGs, and there are other types of RPGs as well. These types of misconceptions become crystalline when considering that fact that there are many players who enjoy the experience provided by video games such as Dark Souls and Mass Effect, and who will at the same time say they do not enjoy RPGs, because these players consider that they are playing an action hack-and-slash game when playing Dark Souls, and playing a third-person shooter when playing Mass Effect, when, indeed, these are also RPG video games. This reflects the fact that there is a misconception, or perhaps a very narrow definition, of what an RPG video game is for most people.
What Is an RPG Video Game?
While there are many possible definitions for the RPG video game, perhaps a possible general definition is of a video game in which the player controls one or more video game characters, in which these characters can be developed in numerically-relevant ways and in which the player is immersed in the game world through world-building and lore. There are many ways for this world-building immersion to be achieved, and most often this is achieved through dialogues and cutscenes, but it could also be achieved through in-game journal entries, logs, and other elements of immersion. These aspects of immersion are relevant because RPG video games are, above all else, role-playing video games, in which one of the intended experiences is to cause the player to role-play their character in the game world.
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