"STURGEON'S LAW, TASTE AND RPG MAKER"

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Having been exposed to so many RM games I gotta say, yeah, there's a lot of crossover with ideas and designs but even the worst games that came out are interesting and different in their own ways. There's something about people creating their own stories (even if those stories are retreads of the same ones that have been seen before) that is incredibly interesting.

When doing the IGMC judging, for instance, I don't get bored by having to play 100+ games in short time. Sure, there are some that are really bad, but even they bring something new to the table (so to speak). And there's been a lot of games that didn't make it through to later rounds of judging due to bugs, but were interesting and fresh in their approach to not just telling the stories within, but presenting those stories and the gameplay with them.

You'd think that with the same actual battle system available to everyone, you'd be bored of the same options, but some games just turn it all on it's head despite the engine not having changed in the basic battle mechanics for over 15 years. And even when we were restricted by lack of scripting options, people made their own systems to either replicate what was already available in commercial games of the time, or showcase new ideas (Power Trip was one I easily remember, for example).

People who write off RPG Maker as 'baby's first FF simulator' really don't understand how details can make all the difference in the world. Besides, fanfiction is awesome and not something to be ashamed of - there's a LOT of great writers out there who started with fanfic (and yeah, some bad ones too, for sure). And hell, there's something fun about seeing the same characters/world/etc put into new positions and having to adapt to the changes in their lives - no matter in games or fiction.
Im probably alone in this but all my favorite RPG maker games were made by people who come from unrelated backgrounds like animation, comics, or just using other engines and just said " ah fuck it, this shits easy enough for anyone to use, im going to use it to tell one of my stories".

I do feel like RPG Maker can be a powerful tool, but ironically I think its a lot more powerful in the hands of people who dont want to make what most people would consider to be a JRPG.
It's too late for me to have thoughts on this that mean anything. But, I found it immensely funny that Cherry Princess was on the list missing a lot of context (and possibly reading too deep into it).
author=bicfarmer
I see RMN as a public library, and each game is a book. When I pull a book from the shelf (download a game), I got little to no idea what kinda game I'll be getting. It's like opening a lootbox, I could get some babby's first RTP gam, or an obscure 20 hour extensive RPG. Well I do use the game page and images to weed out games that don't meet my mandatory preferences, but still. I don't know why so few ppl on this site dont play the thousands of games on here, it's a goldmine.

There's an interesting subset of games that kind of fit the mould of like, not the best writing or visuals, but just a lot of quantity and content. Games like Legend of Illarion, Legacies of Dondoran, Lakria Legends, Legionwood, etc. that have this pattern of getting very high download counts and constant comments once in awhile asking for help on a section. They're not personally my thing, but I can see the appeal of just long ass indie RPGs being made for people with crappy lappys to just fill the time. Because really there were a lot of console RPGs back in the day that were just as average if not worse despite having production values.

I do see games like Three the Hard Way, Sword and the Fish, and some other one I can't remember the name of. That are just amatuerish all around, but like, there's enough content and personality to make it feel like a real adventure and I ended up really enjoying. It's hard to describe but deep within those games there are moments that feel like a dream where you're just doing shit to go along with it. Difficult to elaborate on, but it's an interesting feeling I think can only be achieved in games like this.
author=Gourd_Clae
It's too late for me to have thoughts on this that mean anything. But, I found it immensely funny that Cherry Princess was on the list missing a lot of context (and possibly reading too deep into it).


Yes! The hilarious thing about that is that it was a personal joke referencing how I used to showcase a certain nsfw image of a genderswapped character to newbies (usually) on a personal chat channel and how silly it was. It was NOT supposed to be statement piece, that's for sure. XDDD
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
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author=visitorsfromdreams
Im probably alone in this but all my favorite RPG maker games were made by people who come from unrelated backgrounds like animation, comics, or just using other engines and just said " ah fuck it, this shits easy enough for anyone to use, im going to use it to tell one of my stories".

I do feel like RPG Maker can be a powerful tool, but ironically I think its a lot more powerful in the hands of people who dont want to make what most people would consider to be a JRPG.


Same. I struggle a lot with the impostor syndrome thing of "Bah, you're just using an engine that makes things EASY, REAL devs learn code!" but I feel like there's a lot of great new games that're happening now because people don't HAVE to learn code, so people who don't think like programmers are more able to bring in their own ideas on how a video game can work.

(Also I am so bad at code you guys. So bad.)

Lowering the barrier to entry is, in my view, always going to be a good thing in terms of adding variety to the ecosystem. The downside is that, by making it easy to mak gam, you're allowing a lot of people who just aren't good at it to mak gam, which will up the volume of crap, but that's fairly simple to work around with word of mouth and the ability to curate lists.

Like there's nothing wrong with a good old meat and potatoes JRPG (and I certainly support a bunch of new ones!), but having the really weird experiments around is just generally good news, because it gets everyone thinking and playing and it can lead to some great new mechanics and genres.
I think the game making culture has been pretty receptive to lowering the bar recently. Especially at local events/places and whatnot. I remember a major contention back in LudumDare 2010 was about whether or not game maker submissions should be counted. As the natural inclination was to see how you could make a game "from scratch", it was shot down pretty quick with the realization that yeah it's kind of hard to define what that even means when we could go as low level as building your computer with homemade silicon, developing your own OS, then coding language then game engine etc. Keep in mind Game Maker was very much a "programmers engine" assuming you use GML. Even if you do get into the cool kids club of understanding ifelse jokes there's still going to be another elitist club above you regardless.

While I do think engines like Unity and RPGMaker are stigmatized by the grander audience that is the gaming playerbase. It's usually comments made by people who don't really know what they're talking about and like to make videos on how this one kickstarter project was a bad idea from the start and the WARNING SIGNS WERE THERE ALL ALONG THEY USED UNITY OR UNREAL DONT YOU SEE. But a game is always a hard project to make no matter what you use, it's always harder then you think it will be. It's amazing games get made at all given how compromised and duct taped they really are under the hood. But most non-game makers will rarely understand.
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
I absolutely love what RPG Maker can transform a person's raw ideas into, since it doesn't require worrying about the technical side of things unless the person really wants to. For example, I legitimately enjoy most Yume Nikki fangames I've played, even though they have pretty much zero quality control. They are, in a way, a window into another person's mind and thoughts that wouldn't be possible on a non-interactive medium where you can't explore by yourself and discover things on your own accord.

I think everyone should take a jab at making a surreal exploration-based RPG Maker game in that vein one day or another, if only to "let out" whatever comes out of one's imagination without worrying about structure or consistency. I'm fascinated by that kind of stuff. It's the kind of stuff that has exactly zero commercial value, and it may be appealing only to a very, very niche audience, but damn, do I enjoy this kind of thing. Send them my way if you know of any underappreciated ones (or made one yourself), thanks.

Now, that doesn't mean I don't enjoy some more well designed RPG Maker games as well. RPG Maker has a little bit of everything, from crazy works of unstructured imagination, to adorable atmospheric adventure games that stand on their story and art, to carefully made games with very fun gameplay and mechanics, and all of them are valuable. There are also many "personal games" in RPG Maker, revolving around communities, couples, groups of friends and even the developer themselves. These games were never meant to be out to a wide anonymous audience, but that doesn't mean they don't have value for the small group they were made for. I myself made my GF a simple RTP adventure for our 3 year anniversary.

If a project idea fits perfectly on an already-made engine, no matter how "for babies" said engine is in the eyes of the public, what do you have to prove by coding an engine by yourself from scratch, other than pleasing the saddest group of elitist curmudgeons of the gaming community? If your game idea works fine with grid-based 2D movement and text-based dialogs, why would you code an engine from scratch instead of just using RPG Maker/Game Maker? Coding your own engine, when it's intended for something that these tools already do, is unnecessary. If you want to do it, do it for the challenge or for your own personal realization, not to please elitists.

Now, I'm not knocking on people who code their own engines. If they want to do it for the challenge of it, or to improve as programmers, then they can feel free to go ahead and do just that. What saddens me is that games made on pre-existing engines are somehow seen as "less valuable".
I don't think a lot of people realize how much AAA games still rely on middleware and/or pre-existing engine code from other projects

author=Darken
It's usually comments made by people who don't really know what they're talking about and like to make videos on how this one kickstarter project was a bad idea from the start and the WARNING SIGNS WERE THERE ALL ALONG THEY USED UNITY OR UNREAL DONT YOU SEE.
wow do people hate on Unreal, too? That's hilarious. Imagine actually snubbing your nose at an industry-leading engine hahahaha

Darken's post reminds me of when people were mad that the personal version of Unity forced the "Made with Unity" splash screen since they felt it would contribute further to Unity's stigmatization. At least, I think that's what happened?
Well actually for a long time AAA Japanese developers would remake their engines for each generation or game even. It's only recently you see a lot of japanese devs picking up Unreal (Capcom, BandaiNamco, even Nintendo!) because the industry came to the realization that "from scratch" is not really the way to go anymore especially with GTAV style games. Read an interview with the EpicGames JP guy. It pretty much details exactly how it came about and why it took awhile.

Excerpt:
JS: But before this, why do you feel developers did not want to use third-party engines? Was there a problem with documentation?

TK: That's part of it. Documentation was in English, and support was provided only through English, and another thing is, they used to misunderstand and think that game engines could be a silver bullet. "If you use a game engine, it solves all problems." You know, you won't have any difficulty to develop games. Some early adopters tried game engines, in the very early days, back in 2004 or 2005, and Lost Odyssey was one of these. But of course game engines cannot be a silver bullet. It has bugs, you need to customise the engine for your games. So a game engine is just a tool to make a game, so people didn't understand it during the early days of game engines.* Too much expectation led to disappointment about game engines. But after we set up our Japanese office and started to support it in Japanese, and people could meet me in person, and speak in Japanese, they started to understand what a game engine is and what they can expect in reality or actuality. I think a more accurate understanding of what a game engine can provide, helps them understand and helps change their mind.

Also the book this interview came from is good stuff, highly recommended.
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