Kingdom Hearts II Sells A Million

Opposable Thumbs reports that Kingdom Hearts 2 has sold a million copies here in the states. From the article: "Squeenix deserved this home run, and it'll be interesting to see how well Final Fantasy XII does in America after its perfect score in Japan, but lukewarm reception of the demo in North America. Even with Final Fantasy there are no guarantees, and Squeenix has to be glad they have another high-performing franchise under their belt so that the big-haired emo kids of FF don't have the burden of the entire company on their shoulders." It really does get better after the first two hours.

Comments

Snobbery and RPGs

[medeii]

OK, so in the last story, people wondered why KH2 was selling so well. I responded that the sales were for two reasons:

1. There's been a dearth of other RPGs worth buying, for the past year
2. KH2 is a well-made game

Most of the people responding to that comment figured that I either was simply unaware of, or ignoring, so many other games. (I was ignoring them, since they didn't hold any interest for me; most of them were not high sellers, indicating that they didn't hold any interest for a lot of other people too.) Several posters took it upon themselves to bash the Kingdom Hearts series as "not [a] real RPG", claiming that despite battle systems, experience points, and a distinct leveling system -- nah, they don't qualify. Final Fantasy -- arguably one of the largest RPG franchises in the world -- was quickly brought up as the "RPG for wimps."

So here are my questions:

• Why are RPGers so snobbish about what games they'll call an RPG?
• Why are people like me, who prefer storyline, graphics, music, and "fun" gameplay over interminable level-grinding and cheap-move boss fights, so disdained?
• What unique qualities make an RPG different from other games?

Re:Snobbery and RPGs

[giorgiofr]

WTF! Are you on crack? You call Baldur's Gate (2) "boring, pointless wastes of time with little story and a complete lack of fun"? Did you even bother *playing* it? Sheesh... the heresy.

Re:Snobbery and RPGs

[drinkypoo]

Why are RPGers so snobbish about what games they'll call an RPG?

Because most of 'em have no life - who's got time for a life if they play RPGs? Of course, they have more of a life than simulation players... Beating your average RPG takes less than 24 hours of gameplay these days. I've had games of Alpha Centauri that took 36 or 48 hours, and that's just one game. (No, I didn't play it all at once.)

Why are people like me, who prefer storyline, graphics, music, and "fun" gameplay over interminable level-grinding and cheap-move boss fights, so disdained?

Because these people are insecure and have to make themselves feel special by berating you.

To put it into perspective: Why are people who just want to use their computer to get some shit done and thus use Windows so disdained by Linux nerds?

What unique qualities make an RPG different from other games?

Depends on what kind of RPG you're talking about. There's action RPGs, and turn-based RPGs, and so on and so forth.

Typically speaking, a game is considered to have RPG elements if it has an experience system, a storyline, and branching.

Re:Snobbery and RPGs

[Valdrax]

Why are RPGers so snobbish about what games they'll call an RPG?

Welcome to the world of geekdom, where people have screaming arguments over whether vi or emacs is a better editor, what sci-fi series is best, and how any product that you like that competes with a product they like is a clear sign of your moral and mental inferiority.

Gamers who like one type of game frequently disparage the other types because of same sort of stupid pride that leads to platform and editor flamewars. Rather than admit that we all like different games and that that's okay, they'd rather go off about how people who enjoy something they don't are idiots.

This is unfortunately human nature and is only curable with maturity.

There's a site called The Forge that's been wrestling with what is an RPG (for table-top gamers) for a while that's come up with a good broad three categories for game types: Narrativist, Simulationist, and Gamist.

Narrativist games focus on a story.
Simulationist games focus on exploration.
Gamist games focus on overcoming challenges.

The main emphasis of The Forge for table-top gamers is to point out that games (and gaming groups) that try to satisfy everyone tend to satisfy no one and to increase awareness of alternative playstyles for people stuck in games that they find disatisfying.

Eastern / console RPGs are narrativist games that focus primarily on the telling of a good story and in getting you emotionally involved in the plot. Western / PC RPGs are simulationist games that have an open-ended world to explore and let you shape a character into anything you want. The only purely gamist games with little emphasis on plot and exploration might be a few Strategy RPGs like Fire Emblem and Makai Kingdom and some action RPGs like Shining Tears. All RPGs have some element of all three play styles, but all workable RPGs tend to strongly reward one of the three player goals over the others.

People just need to recognize that tastes differ and quit falling back on the "no true Scotsman" argument.

Re:Snobbery and RPGs

[ADRA]

RPG's as a word simply means different things to different people. I've had it described as eastern vs. western games in the past. In the one extreme, you have the japanimation crowd who've come from the manga/anime world and like to be a part of a story.

There's the other group of RP'ers that've played the D&Ds or played out in the back yards doing this or that playing make believe. They more enjoy being someone of focus and allowing the story to flow around them.

You have two groups of people who've experienced fantasy in completely different ways. Often people that enjoy one form of it hate the other. Now that video games can 'become' as open as playing in your back yard, the second audience can get their fill from video games as the before-mentioned group has for the past 20 years.

Both camps have the same right to like/hate each other's 'version' of RPG becasue they're both uniquely different in how the games work. So, how do we 'fix' this obviously flawed interpretation of RPG? We call both seperate genres seperately. Maybe:

Story driven role - The story drives the direction/purpose with the character there to experience it
Role driven story - The character creates the story by their actions

Done! =)

Re:Snobbery and RPGs

[Adam Whisnant]

Not one I'd buy... but its definitely an RPG.

Have you played KH? I feel the same way about the FF series as you do, and was loathe to even touch the thing, but I bought it for my girlfriend and finally picked it up after listening to her sing its praises nonstop.

Even with all my preconceptions of "oh God, weapons-grade cuteness," it sucked me in. It deserves the praise and the sales. The story is engrossing and the play is addictive; it's the first game in a long, long time in which I found myself running around picking fights, because combat was actually enjoyable. And if there was any exposure to Disney in your childhood (and how could there not be?), these games will find that part of you and joyfully exploit it. Really, the only thing that bugs me about it is the cheap FF 7/8/10 fanservice that doesn't really fit, but that's kept mercifully in check.

And while we're on the subject of "Is this an RPG?" and FF, your opinion of Zelda's RPGness is a good gauge of how you'll feel about KH's RPGness. It's the same style of play, except that you always have a menu to pick spells from the menu rather than pausing, equipping your item of choice, unpausing, and casting. And, if I'm remembering correctly (been a year since I played the original and haven't pried the sequel from girlfriend yet), even that part is simplified; you can map 3 spells for L1 + Square/Triangle/Circle for your most-used ones. I'd say it's about 10% FF-esque menu-usage and 90% Zelda. The KH story is a good deal more in-depth than Zelda, though.

Re:Snobbery and RPGs

[Jerf]

What unique qualities make an RPG different from other games?

Call me an RPG fundamentalist. A Role-Playing Game is a game where the primary focus is on you playing the role of some kind of human-type thing. It is not a binary distinction, it is a continuum.

On the far non-RPG end, we have things like puzzle games. Tetris is not an RPG. Quake is not an RPG, because it's about blowing things up. Something like Half-Life gets a little RPG-ness; I've never played it so I don't know how much but I get the impression it's mostly a shooter. Old-school adventure games are not RPGs, they're about the puzzles, not the role.

On the far RPG end, we have things like Planescape: Torment where you play a very open-ended character with many distinct decisions to be made.

(The hypothetical perfect RPG would be simply an alternate world with no particular storyline, merely potential storylines. This doesn't exist right now, really, although Second Life probably comes closest.)

The reason I give a bit of an advantage to the RPGs where you can choose the roles is you get more Role per Game, but there is nothing "wrong" with something like FFX, it just has one "Role", which certainly qualifies as a Role-Playing Game.

Combat mechanics are certainly extremely common, but ultimately unnecessary; you can have RPGs that have no traditional combat, or have FPS-style combat, or other things.

Hypocritical

[DoctaWatson]

You claim that that your previous statement that there's a "dearth of RPG's worth buying".

People disagreed, citing many wonderful games that have come out recently.

You respond, saying that they don't hold any interest for you... ...and then you have the nerve call the people who did play them snobs!