Where Have All the Hammerdins Gone?

I have decided to take a small break from recounting my recent road trip across the country. I plan on getting back to it very shortly but right now I have something else fluttering about my mind and I don't think it will go away until I give it a voice.

The tune that has been incessantly blaring in my head of late is the slow death that the traditional RPG is dying today. WAIT! BEFORE YOU WALK AWAY LET ME ASSURE YOU THIS WILL NOT BE AN ELITIST RANT ON WHY HAND HOLDING SUCKS AND HOW MUCH I HATE PEOPLE! I SWEAR! HONEST!

Ok, now that a few of you sat back down, allow me to make some things clear about exactly what I mean when I say that the traditional RPG is dying a slow death. The key piece here is in how I define the term "traditional", as that is not a terribly specific, pre-defined industry term.


What is "Traditional"?

First off, I can tell you what I do not mean by the term "traditional". It is not a synonym for JRPG, single player RPG or fantasy RPG. Many games that could be described in these ways do not qualify, in the definition I will furnish, as a "traditional" RPG, though some do. I don't want anyone reading this and thinking I am about to evangelize the golden age Square JRPG's of the SNES era and claim that everything since has been bunk (but geez were they GREAT!) If anything, Square has been instrumental in poisoning the well.

Within the context of this article, "traditional" really means "adhering to the core gameplay philosophies of the genre". While I could bore dazzle you all with a detailed breakdown of said philosophies, I will instead summarize these ideas into one easy to understand one. The traditional RPG experience is about the systems of chance, experimentation, choice and consequence present in the game that the player interacts with in order to develop their character. It is the presence of these systems that typify "traditional" RPG gameplay. They need not be the entire sum of the gameplay, but they do need to be present and pervasive.

There was a time when every game within the RPG genre made these mechanics central. RPG's in the 80's and most of the 90's were judged largely upon two things. One was the quality of the narrative. The other was the depth, challenge, diversity and balance of the games' system for customizing and progressively empowering your character(s) over the course of your quest.

The idea here was pretty simple but compellingly unique: instead of dictating the capabilities of the hero from the start and having them remain static, let the player decide what the hero looks like, what they are good and bad at, what type of weapons and equipment they use and what kinds of amazing powers they will wield. Then give them some rules and a framework to work within, as well as a wide variety of challenges and obstacles and then let them figure it out.

The end result was an experience that rewarded creativity, planning, problem solving, resource management and out of the box thinking. Learning and mastering these systems and investing time and effort into a successful character capable of carving a unique path to the end of the game was a truly challenging and rewarding experience.


Things Take a Turn.....

I'm not really sure when or why these changes started to occur, but they did. Little by little, these systems have been made less and less sophisticated. RPG's today offer fewer choices, less depth and less player input in crafting their character than they ever have. Discerning the genesis of this shift is best left for message board flame wars. What I find more interesting, and more threatening, is that it happened right under the noses of the stalwart RPG faithful and seemingly with our consent. As a result, the few RPG developers with enough resources to produce a AAA product have decided that they no longer care to "make 'em like they used to". And the sad truth of it is: we deserve it because we just keep giving them our damn money.

I could fill a book with examples from the past 10 years, but I don't need to. For a perfect example of the good and bad of this phenomenon, one needs look no further than the progression of gameplay systems in the popular Blizzard property, Diablo.


Case in Point

WARNING - the following paragraphs may contain acronym-alicious terminology, math and/or multifarious other forms of nerdery. I will try to keep it readable for all, but you have been warned.

When Blizzard released Diablo 2 in 2000, it was a watershed moment for action RPG fans. The game expanded upon its predecessor in every imaginable way, setting new standards for replayability, combat, itemization and character building in the Action RPG (ARPG) genre. With it's clever mix of fast paced, visceral combat and cavernously deep character planning and customizing, Diablo 2 (D2) and it's subsequent expansion, Lord of Destruction, became enduring classics. 11 years later, people are still playing them while while eagerly awaiting the release of Diablo 3.

We stand now, days from the beginning of the closed beta test for Diablo 3 (D3). The development process has been quite a bit different from that of D2. Actually, that may not be entirely true. The process may be quite similar, but the way in which the fans experience the development process has changed radically. We have twitter feeds to follow, developer interviews to watch and tons of message boards to exchange info and insults on. Sure, we had the Internet back then but that was Web 1.0. Now we have Web 2.0 socially-connected-everythingness! Dev teams and fan sites have near constant contact and the result is a front row seat to major design decisions as they happen. Sometimes this is awesome for both the fans and the developers. And sometimes it isn't.....

There's no need to draw this out, the development team on D3, headed by the always quotable Jay Wilson, has made some very controversial decisions in the past few months and with each one, Mr. Wilson has done his best to explain why these crazy calls (each crazier than the last) are going to make D3 a better game. In another era, we wouldn't even be hearing about internal play testing and design decisions, but in this one, we can do a Google search and find 20 minute long interviews with the project lead discussing his thought process. Here are some of the monumental changes that Jay and his many supporters in the player base feel will evolve the Diablo franchise:

-Players will no longer be allowed to distribute their character's attribute points (strength, intelligence, et al). These will now be distributed by the game automatically.

-Players will no longer detail a specialization for their character on a skill tree. As you level, all skills will become available to you.

-Players will no longer assign differing numbers of skill points to different skills to decide how relatively powerful each of their skills are. All skills will level in a uniform manner as the player character does.

-Players will no longer decide upon a set of skills and stick with them. Instead the player may choose 6 skills to hot key and switch these out freely whenever they choose.

-An in-game, player-to-player auction house will be established where, for the first time legally, players will be able to use real world currency to purchase gear and items if they do not wish to take time to earn or find during normal gameplay.

If you know the first thing about RPG's, you are, at this moment, scratching your head. Unless your idea of an RPG is Final Fantasy XIII. In that case, you can probably stop reading about now.

You read correctly. Blizzard has entirely automated the lion's share of character development and differentiation (one of the cores of RPG gameplay) for their decade-in-the-making sequel to the most successful ARPG of all time.

Let's hear it for progress?


The Aftermath

The first thing you need to understand is that these decisions were not made and announced all at once. They were made gradually and trickled into the drip-drop information i.v. that the hardcore fiends keep themselves tapped into from dusk 'till dawn. This was certainly a good thing for Blizzard because each of these announcements incited mini-riots on fan sites all over the web once they were brought to light. But as many times as that happened, Jay Wilson stepped up to defend and explain his team's decision.

To his credit, Jay Wilson seems like the kind of guy I would have a beer and a game of Dominion with. He really looks and talks just a like a complete RPG nerd, and I mean that in an entirely complimentary way. Normally, that is exactly the kind of dude I would want designing my next RPG or D&D campaign. But despite the good will, I initially had trouble getting behind the spin he was putting on these decisions.

Essentially, the "Jay Wilson Defense" goes something like this: "Over the decade of people playing Diablo 2 it became clear that system "X" was broken or frustrating for the player. We tried to fix it for Diablo 3. After many iterations and redesigns we did extensive internal testing, during which we just couldn't find a solution we were happy with. Therefore, we decided to remove system "X" from the game entirely. We think the result is a better game."

Now, admittedly, what Jay says about D2 is true, but if you ask Jay how the player will influence the strengths and weaknesses of their character in light of all these changes, he will quickly remind you of the different gear and items you can equip.....the gear and items you could already equip before the removal of all these other methods of customization. So we are being told that the only remaining method of customization is suddenly a viable stand in for the all the methods of customization it used to work in tandem with? Hmmmmm.

When challenge them about how these changes may limit the amount of control the player has on how their character develops, Jay or his message board supporters respond by championing how free and nonrestrictive the new system is and that you can do anything with your character now. Meanwhile I'm thinking, "Yeah, everything except, you know, change their attributes, decide which skills they have access to at what point in the game and which skills are their strongest ones.

I try not to be a cynic but it has been hard to stave off the feeling that Jay and company are trying to sell me a car without the engine while calling it the next big thing. Common sense tells us that no sensible automobile enthusiast would swallow that line, but one trip to the official Diablo 3 community site says otherwise.

Believe it or not, the same people who mapped out character builds down to the last skill point for over a decade in Diablo 2 are mostly overjoyed about these changes. According to them, planning out a character build is "tedious". They find having to stick with their character decisions "punishing". They won't even debate with you whether or not the few character choices that remain have long term consequences. They flat out concede that they don't and they love it. That bears repeating:

There are no long term consequences to any of the decisions you make in developing your character in this Role Playing Game and the players think that's awesome.

Apparently, everything I know is wrong.


So Now What?

Diablo 3 is only the most recent example of how developers are removing/ommiting large chunks of character building and other core gameplay elements from their RPG's. The Mass Effect series, Dragon Age 2 and Final Fantasy XIII are also part of the new "less is more" school of RPG design. There have even been talks of the ever-hardcore Elder Scrolls series getting streamlined for the fifth game in the series, Skyrim, which hits stores this November. The easy conclusion to draw would be that companies have decided to dumb down their products in exchange for the opportunity to to sell to the masses. But as averse as I am to this growing trend of "streamlining", I think evil CEO's and shareholders are just convenient scapegoats, not the real issue.

The real issue is that RPG gameplay conventions suck.

Ok, let me rephrase. The execution and implementation of traditional RPG gameplay elements has not improved in any significant way during the last 2 decades. If you go back and look at many of the great traditional RPG's and ARPG's made in the last 20 years I am sure you can find a gameplay element in each that was either imbalanced or not fun. Maybe it was equipment management, currency, character building or the exploration of dungeons/towns, etc.

Without mentioning exact games, I can say that I have made equipment choices that had next to no bearing on the outcome of combat and I have wandered around boring, generic villages for hours exchanging pleasantries with retired fishermen and belly dancers alike, until I finally find the one person who I need to speak with to trigger the next event. I have often spent more time in menu screens contemplating character skill decisions than I have actually using those skills, only to have those choices be nearly inconsequential to my party's success. If I could convert all the gil/munny/G/rupees I have pointlessly stockpiled by the end of all the RPG's I have played into dollars, I would make Warren Buffett look like Antoine Dodson (pre-Bed Intruder).

But was any of that fun? Well of course it was.....to ME! I'm a crotchety old RPG player who hates myself! But as it turns out, most people don't hate themselves nearly enough to pay $60 for 30-100 hours of self-induced torture. Go figure. And here I thought masochism was "in" this season!

It isn't to say that traditional RPG gameplay is inherently bad. Quite the contrary actually, at least in my opinion. The problem is that it hasn't gotten any better since MC Hammer. No one has been trying to figure out how to make exploring a town as engaging as fighting a dragon. No one stepped in after Final Fantasy VII and said, "Hey, maybe letting players turn all their characters into gods who can cast/do anything isn't as cool as it seemed on paper." No concerted effort has been made to make in-game currency have value to the player. As a result, these gameplay elements have festered over the years, becoming the very things players hate about RPG's rather than the reason to play them.

Average Joe gamers, and even hardcore RPG gamers are kind of over dealing with broken systems and they have dealt with so many that very few them have the desire to sink countless hours into another one only to find out its as broken, imbalanced and inconsequential as all the ones before it. Which brings me full circle to Diablo 3.

People have had 11 years of practice for Diablo 3. If Blizzard were to release a game with systems anything like Diablo 2's or its many clones, and it wasn't both revolutionary and flawless, players would have the system's loopholes figured out inside of a week. With the character development decisions trivialized, the game would devolve into yet another workman-like slog through RPG tedium. Fully aware of this possibility, the team chose, as so many other dev teams have, to stop trying to fix the "Old Yeller" that RPG character creation has become and just put it out of its misery. They decided to sacrifice many of my favorite RPG elements upon the altar of fun. While it's difficult for me to admit it, I think it's for the better.

That said, in my ideal world, developers would have been searching for ways to truly improve and tighten these gameplay elements all along, so that this eventuality could have been avoided. Truthfully, they weren't given much of an incentive. After all, we did keep forking over our money. We kept buying the same games, with the same flaws. Then a game like Mass Effect comes along and says, "to hell with these antiquated battle systems and let's make this a shooter/RPG!" and the crowd goes wild. Is it a "traditional" RPG? Heck if I know, but it's a damn great game. Who knew?

I think Diablo 3 will be a great game too. For better or worse, it won't be a thing like Diablo 2, or even its spiritual successors, Torchlight and Titan Quest. In the end, Jay Wilson isn't trying to sell us a car with no engine so much as he's selling us a Dodge Viper with an automatic transmission and launch assist. While I still hope someone out there can figure out how to bring the tried and true RPG elements of yesteryear into the 21st century without marginalizing them, for now I'm more than happy to settle for just having fun.

Death to the Hammerdin! Long live fun!

EVO Roadtrip Day 2 - Chicago, IL

Day 2 of my country spanning trip to Las Vegas and Evo 2011 was, in many ways, the true beginning of my journey. Sure, driving from New York to Philadelphia and then Pittsburgh is a pretty substantial amount of travel but due to planned stops for sight-seeing, food and gaming, I never had to really buckle down and go into all out "road trip mode". But my route from Pittsburgh to Chicago was far less meandering. No famous restaurants, no arcade stop-overs just 8+ hours of driving interrupted only by a quick refuel. Day 1 felt like something of a field trip. Day 2 was going to feel like a sojourn.

And so it did. I had pulled out of the hotel parking lot in Pittsburgh at around a quarter to ten and by the time I was standing in the next hotel parking lot in Chicago it was a quarter to seven. Aside from a delicious breakfast pastry I scored from the Potomac Bakery in Pittsburgh before departing, I had only had water, some nori waffers and a granola bar to eat and I was starting to feel like it. After checking in to my hotel room, I literally dropped my bags just inside the door and hopped right back in my Jeep to go find sustenance at a place called The Honkey Tonk BBQ. Their Memphis styled barbecue fare was exactly what I needed after 9 hours of nothing but driving and snacking.

After a much needed dinner of beef brisket chili and ribs had been washed down with a few glasses of whiskey, I was finally ready to get down to business. After hearing that it had one of the largest cabinet collections in North America, I could hardly wait to get a look at Galloping Ghost Arcade (GGA) in the neighboring town of Brookfield, IL.

While I did have an awesome experience at University Pinball, I had been surprised by how small it was compared to the arcades I had frequented growing up. The four linked AE cabs were the most impressive setup of their kind that I had ever seen in person but the rest of their collection, while wonderfully kept up, wasn't really my particular cup of boba. Certainly if you love pinball, shooting and racing games, University Pinball has higher quality cabs than say a Tilt or Dave and Busters or any other chain amusement center for that matter. But I was in search of a true arcade Shangri-La where I could relive the halcyon days of the American arcade as remembered from my youth.

I feel the need to tell you right now, that if you crave the same, stop reading this, hop in a plane/train/teleportation device and get to 9415 Ogden Avenue in Brookfield, IL to see what you have been missing.

Welcome home.

Walking in the front door of Galloping Ghost Arcade, the place doesn't so much welcome you as it consumes you. A black tile walkway leads you straight to the concession/merchandise counter. The railways flanking the walkway are clearly there to ensure people go to the counter first before losing themselves in the wild forest of 80's and 90's arcade cabinets that dominate the rather substantial floor space of GGA.

Railways, barricades or no, I did not require restraining. All I could manage to do was stand there, slack-jawed, just inside the entrance as sights and sounds I had not experienced in nearly two decades flooded my eyes and ears.

"Hi, have you come in before?"

I avert my gaze from the sea of cabinets and back to the counter, where a tallish young man stands, smiling.

"Uhh, umm, no." I sputtered back.

"Ok, well it's fifteen dollars and then you just play as much as you like until we close which is usually around 2am."

My name is Vincent Lorenzo Ingenito and I am 8. I have just been informed that apparently, I have won an unlimited amount of chocolate ice cream which will never make me feel full or make me fat. I can eat as much as I like for the next 5 hours. Then I will die from happiness. The End.

I couldn't give the nice man my $15 fast enough. Until this moment, the last time I had seen a Shinobi cab like the one now staring at me from just a short distance from the counter, I was begging my father for quarters after tearing through the $5 he had already given me (yes, I was terrible at the game, sue me! I was 9. Jerk.) This was like Dad dropping me off at the arcade with an AMEX black card (which is clearly accepted at arcades) and saying he'd be back by the end of the day.

But before I submerged myself in all that golden-age goodness, likely never to resurface, I decided to check out what was on the OTHER side of the walkway, a smaller area with a row of homemade cabinets housing all of today's most popular modern fighters. While many home built setups like these tend to look really...well...home built, these jobs were really snazzy looking. Sharp, game relevant artwork and title cards adorned many of them, and all of them featured very solid construction and pitch perfect sticks.

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core, BlazBlue: CS, MvC3 and Tekken 6 were all present and lined up in addition to two really nice looking MK9 cabinets and the (hopefully) soon to be smash hit, King of Fighters XIII. Oddly, Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition was mixed in with all the legacy SF games a bit deeper into the arcade proper. This seemed odd at first, but looking at the small group of people huddled around the MK9 machines, it started to make sense. While 6 or 7 people huddled around the two cabinets waiting to get some casuals in, not a soul was at any of the other cabs.

This kind of thing happens of course. Different communities latch on to different games for a multitude of different reasons. It was just surprising to see the FGC's red-headed stepchild getting all the love while the rest of the kids get no one to play with and Street Fighter, usually the class president, gets asked to stand in the corner. Curious, I decide to approach the MK9 cab for a closer look.

I'm only there a minute before I am reminded how much I love watching people play fighting games. The ebb and flow of a good match is part of it and that is something you can get from watching streams and YouTube vids. But being there, in the presence of the competitors, hearing the button slaps, watching their expressions, seeing the urgency, intensity, finesse and dexterity of their hands across the sticks and buttons and feeling the energy between them and the small crowd of spectators watching them is very powerful for me. I believe that, in it's purest form, it becomes about mastering oneself to master the mind of another. This mixture of inner and outer conflict results in a level of mental engagement that is totally unique, both in the gaming world and even in the world beyond gaming. It's one of the best reasons for arcades to exist.

Oh that, and because playing games face to face with friends is just a damn good time.

Here is a little footage that I think illustrates a lot of these points nicely. It isn't the highest level play, nor is it the most intense example of what I am speaking about but all the elements that make playing and watching fighting games in person something special are here:

A tale of souls and sticks, eternally retold.....

The rest of my evening at GGA is something of a blur. Maybe it was all the whiskey or maybe it was the warm, fuzzy glow of nostalgia that creeps into your belly once you start walking the endless rows of classic arcade cabinets. One thing that really stuck out, was that even though I messed around on 20 or more different cabinets, I never had to contend with a broken button or a bum stick. Upon talking to the gentleman at the counter again, I discovered why: they take maintenance extremely seriously at GGA.

The owner of the place, whom was referred to by patrons and employees alike as "The Professor" (repeated attempts at getting an actual name were thwarted, not even kidding) was fully trained in cabinet maintenance and he also trained 2 other employees with his knowledge. According to the man at the counter they replace the sticks on the most popular games every 6 weeks, whether they are broken or not, to keep them in perfect working order. Even now as I was playing at 1 in the morning, a maintenance man was working on an NBA Jam cabinet in the corner. Further inspection of the facility revealed a large workshop in the back where tons of cabinets sat, in various stages of assembly, with parts and tools strewn everywhere. This is an approach I wish more arcades would take but sadly, few can afford to.

Before I left, I decided to take another stroll through GGA's extensive old fighting game section. As I did, I found many fond memories returning, not so much about the games themselves as the times in my life they marked and the relationships I formed while playing them.

Killer Instinct wasn't a great game per se, but I will never forget meeting my first real girlfriend at an ice skating rink I used to frequent to play it. That same girl would later stand by me in arcades and brag to her friends about how good she thought I was at Mortal Kombat 3. Not a small thing to a guy who, to that point in his life, had never felt terribly brag-worthy.

Around that same time I met a boy from my neighborhood who liked fighting games too. We were really into Marvel Super Heroes at the time. We would walk a couple of miles to our local arcade instead of spending money on a taxi or a bus so we could have that many more quarters to play with when we got there. We spent a whole summer doing that together. He ended up being the best man at my wedding and to this day, one of my very dearest friends. It all started with Maximum Spiders, Weapon X's and Magnetic Shockwaves.

As I finished my trip down memory lane, it was approaching 2 am and the other arcade I had hoped to visit was certainly closed. After leaving GGA behind, I decided to at least locate the other place and maybe check it out in the morning before hitting the road to St. Louis. The name of the place was Black Hole Arcade Pizzeria and from the pics on the web, it looked a lot like the arcade I haunted when I was a kid, which was why I wanted to see it.

Upon reaching the address I was having trouble finding it. I figured, "It's late, I'm still a bit tipsy, I'm probably just missing it." It took three trips around the block for the cold reality to sink in. Like so many other arcades in our country, Black Hole was no more. At some point, kids like the kid I used to be dragged their Dads there and met girlfriends there and made friends there, but the realities of the modern gaming scene and the economy proved too harsh to weather. For every story like Galloping Ghost or University Pinball there are ten Blackholes, Arcade Infinities and Chinatown Fairs. I knew all of this of course. Chalk it up to too much whiskey, or the nostalgia of GGA or the memories of my childhood arcade, but I found myself just a little choked up as I drove back to my hotel.

These places we still have are truly magical, but if we don't support them, they can only last for so long. If you take anything away from my story, let it be this: if you love games and you love the way gaming can bring people together, find a local arcade, spend some time and money there and tell ten of your friends to do the same. The day we stop doing that is the day the magic dies.