Why the Game Industry is crashing, and why I can't wait for it to happen.

This is ridiculous.

I just ended a prophetic conversation with a good friend of mine, and we've both agreed on something. The game industry is a sinking ship, and soon, it's gonna explode.

Now, I for one, definitely DO NOT condone half of the actions taken by the internet, especially since it dilutes the main message of what everyone is trying to say. STOP dumbing down games. STOP catering to casual gamers.

Think about it for a second, games industry. Would casual gamers spend their time and money going to conventions? Would they trawl the internet, spend time on forums, lovingly think about games like non-casual gamers do? I know you're getting a lot of money out of this - and fine, I know as a profit-maximizing company, this is preferred. But do you realize you're alienating you're most fanatical fanbase? The amount of rage and hate generated by the comments on removing the gameplay from games is testament to the passion actual gamers have for the whole industry, and the whole ideal of games.

This is the fanbase that are willing to spend hours upon hours stuck in games, maximizing each character, losing part of their lives for imaginary creations. These are the people that love games so much that they sacrifice a portion of themselves so that they can play games. And this fanbase is now being ignored in exchange for people who only play games on mobile devices because they don't want to give anything in return to the games they play, or play Farmville while waiting for more important things to happen in their social lives in Facebook.

Bioware, we want to have innumerable options in our games. We want to have complicated and intricate gameplay. This is like the movie industry, all over again. Yes, Michael Bay movies cater to more people and generate more money. But how many truly good, truly beautiful movies have been thrown to the side in order to churn out more cash cow movies? You want to make a good story-game? Look at Bioshock. It is lauded as the best story in any game, ever, and why? Because it merged the story and gameplay perfectly. Not tell a narrative where the player basically watches one long cinematic.

One last thing - Mrs Hepler, I'm sorry for the abuse you endured, welcome to the internet, in a sense. What we did was not right, and I apologize for that portion of us. But, I do want to ask, as you said yourself, you worked in and loved pen and paper RPGs. I love them too. But what would happen if you took away the gameplay, took away the rules in these RPGs? You'll have a bunch of people telling a story around a table, which is not necessarily bad, but it's no longer a game. There's no longer a reason for some people to play it. Not only that, but also you dilute the beauty of the story somewhat, in that there's no effort made anymore, there's no immersion of yourself into the story. There's no feeling of rolling the dice and being your character. That's why it's a ROLE-playing game, see? I know you had good intentions, but please, please save the games industry if you can. I'm sorry that you had to take the brunt of it, but the hate you feel is mostly due to the fact that we've been ignored for so long, our protests unanswered. Sometimes, you have to do something drastic, just to be heard.

But if you can't, if the games industry keeps catering to what brings them money instead of their actual fans, then I'll wait.

I'll wait for the crash, and glorious it will be. Hopefully then, after it rises from the ashes, hopefully, we'll see golden days. But right now, except for a few games that push against the tide, the slow slide into casual gaming and general apathy is incredibly depressing.

Warhammer 40000 Dark Heresy Role-playing Game – Review Part I

This review is going to be biased.

Three reasons.

One, my already-immense love for all things Warhammer. That is why I have I have spent the past five years considering whether giving my soul to Games Workshop in return for a lifetime supply of miniatures is a worthy investment (that’s still under consideration). Two, the history I share with it. Yes, I’m one of the few who didn’t with the donning of leather armour and spelunking my way through dungeons in DnD. Instead, I donned guard flak armour (which is arguably worse), and armed with my trusty flashlight, spelunked my way through abandoned space hulks, teeming hive worlds, and alien planets. It was also the first RPG I ever DMed, although the usage of the term at that point may be an insult to all my fellow dungeon masters. Perhaps it was more akin to hurling orks at my PCs and giggling at the pretty (imaginary) explosions.

Three, the game itself. This is essentially the immense richness of the setting and the absolute intensity of the gameplay, combined with the myriad options for character development both in terms of role-playing, and in terms of in-game player progression. And it is the third which has spurred me today to write this review. Yes, this may sound a bit like an advertisement, and if it does, I’m sorry. I can’t help it. If you want me to write a scathing review about a certain RPG, then someone request for DND 4e (Let the hate-mail begin!) or if someone wants me to write a confused jumble ending with alcohol, then someone request for Nobilis (God, that game was mind-bendingly convoluted). I promise, I’ll mention the downsides to the system and the setting, but please, let me have this one.

I’ll assume everybody reading this knows the basics of a role-playing system, so I won’t go much into that (If you don’t, it’s basically a bunch of people gathering together and rolling imaginary dice in order to pretend they can fight). Instead, a brief outline of Dark Heresy. For those who have had experience with other Big-Name RPGs, it can be described simply as a cross between the frenetic combat and madness of Call of Cthulhu (indeed it takes much inspiration from the CoC game-system), and the structured classes/skills/talents etc. of Dungeons and Dragons. For those who have no idea what the words you’ve just read meant, then imagine a freeform game where combat is lethal, plots are deep enough that lack of investigation would kill you, and add into it a huge variety of various items, equipment, talents, skills, and backgrounds.

Breaking the game into its component portions, we then find four main sections that define it (note that I’m only taking into account the main rulebook, of course the supplements will be covered at later dates).

1. Character Creation and Progression

2. Gameplay Mechanics

3. Items/Equipment/Monsters etc. (Supplementary Material for DMs)

4. Background Fluff Provided

Each will be taken into consideration, and I promise that I will try my best to be objective about each (HA!), and that I will not go into a rant about how the Calixian Conclave is essentially much too comprehensively structured for a sub-sector of its size… unless its built in order to hide or even contain something, which would then assume the completion of a certain new Ordos that has been tasked with bu-….

Anyway, starting with Character Creation and Progression.

Character creation is quite a complicated process, so I won’t go into it in detail, but suffice to say, options are numerous. One can opt to be the zealous Cleric to the Emperor, the crazy Judge (based slightly on Judge Dredd most likely, although I’m not too sure about that), the stealthy Assassin, the Cannon-Fodder Guardsman, the Techpriest (who’s bound to betray you eventually in order to augment his body with more HERESY), the crazy Psyker (OHGODOHGODOHGOD) and the all-important… Adept, who as useless as he sounds, actually is important, as you always need someone who knows that the symbol above the cave you’re walking into demarcates that of a Necron Tomb-complex. Oh, and the Scum, but nobody really cares about that bugger (My party’s scum stole so much stuff from me I can’t be bothered to list it down here).

Each class is chock full of character, brought to life through expansive back-stories and fluff provided for in the book, allowing for interesting role-playing as according to the guidelines given in the descriptions of the classes, but also allowing space for player interpretation as to the intricacies of the class itself. For example, the assassin class may be played as a stone-cold sniper slowly picking off targets one by one, or he/she could be played as a crazed killer bathing in the (green? Blue?) blood of his fallen foes. All of these provide for a much-appreciated departure from the classic norms of the Warrior Rogue Wizard archetypes that are found throughout generic RPGs at this day and age.

Character progression is dealt with simple two or three tiered trees, with various options for each rank (level) allowed to be taken in different sub-classes relevant to the character class (essentially multiclassing in a single level of another, more specific class). Confusing as it sounds, I can safely say that throughout the past four years I have been playing this game, I have not yet met two characters with the same career choices once past the fifth rank. Experience points gained is spent upon various advances that allow for increased proficiency in certain skills, and upon specialized talents that assist the players in specific manners or give them interesting new powers to play around with, and the allowance for the spending of experience upon the various advances between levels ensure that the players constantly have access to new content from the game-system.

Creating characters is a blast, but unfortunately, the downside to this is that getting a group of characters to work together is not an easy task. In my eyes, this adds to the fun of the game, a whole layer of challenge that is essentially the players and the DM against the system itself as they attempt to beat the lethality of the gameplay. However, for players who prefer their groups to work like a well-oiled machine, much discussion would have to be had beforehand, as character roles blur to a much higher degree within this game than in any other, leaving characters as essentially true jack-of-all-trades or specialized to the point of uselessness (my group of players currently has a psyker who has ONE trick, turning his hands into huge hammers and growing four arms in order to squash people like bugs ala Mr. Fantastic).

Still, if you can stomach the math involved, and handle reading through the vast supplements and resources you would need to in order to optimize the character you have created (and trust me, taking into account the difficulty of the game you probably would need to), then character creation is ultimately an intricately exhilarating process that would leave you itching to play the game.

[Next – Dark Heresy: Playing the Game]