RADNEN'S PROFILE

author=Nightblade

Games don't benefit from complex villains.

Why not? How is there no benefit? Explain.

I think he separated game from story and then started treating them... As mutually exclusive counterparts? Bad idea. Games are defacto stories.

author=KingArthur
I actually don't find any interest (or the sense of proximity, as you put it) at all in any of the games featured on RMN. Whether the cause is the games themselves or the way they're presented is something I am uncertain of. Also the primary reason why I won't be participating in this endeavor.

Your problem. :/ What I was saying is that they are hosted on the same site with a forum, not that you have an interest in the games.

As for TV tropes:

I could imagine adding this trope:

"Made by RM"
- Games that merit this trope are usually cookie cutter RPG's that use the RTP of the engine it was made on. They typically have turn based combat and try to mimic FF games in some way. They are usually created like a JRPG and focus more on character development via cutscenes and writing rather than graphics or sound.

I use Anvil Studio to create my songs in midi and then use a program called MuseScore to mix and render the midi into a "professional sounding" .ogg file. If your game engine can't play .ogg or .mp3 files, it could still just save it as raw midi.

MuseScore can also directly create midi's but its way harder than Anvil Studio which is the easiest since it has a very "kindergarten" like approach by telling you the notes you are inputting on a visible keyboard. I like this setup a lot!

author=The_Ghostman
To pull out the Philosophy 101 card when we're talking about game villains and/or character development in a 20 or less hour home-made game is somewhat ridiculous.This is about games. I don't play games with very interestingly complex villain/hero relationships, and that's probably because you don't require complex villain/hero relationships to establish an interesting game or plot. Mario and Bowser have more charm than most villains or heroes in games, and their relationship is based off of extremely simple terms.

Hey you are absolutely right, but this is a forum, I just want some discussion. Not all games here are made in 20 hours. Some other topic here I made says that quite a few of you guys here took years on some projects. But time is irrelevant, I just want to see more than the usual "good vs. evil" type of story arcs. They get old fast. Especially for games that do take more than 20 hours. Because let's face it, a simple game deserves a simple story, but not all games here are/were simple.

I think RPG's of almost any kind kind beg for "novelistic" stories and ideas (when it comes to the characters). The "game" part however throws a wrench into the mix by introducing "gameplay", which must be interesting. This is why traditional good and evil tropes are used, it makes it really easy to gauge progress and define the tone. But really it just benefits simple writers who read too much Tolkein. :P

A "person" antagonist must be diametrically opposed to the ideals the protagonist stands up for. In that regard it doesn't matter how much "face time" the villain gets, the more the better. A good villain is someone who has justifiable intentions that are diametrically opposed to the player. If they are all so similar then there's no villain there.

Philosophy 101:
Do not speak of villains in terms of good vs. evil. Villains are not evil. There has been no single villain ever at any point in human history; nor in any book I've ever read that stood up for "evil" intentions. "Evilness" and "goodness" are constructs of society that engineer a binary reference scale we call "morality", it's no different than race or gender. You may use them as categorical terms, but not as a means to an end. This is due in large part to the notion that evilness and goodness change depending on who you are (the reference point or perspective on the matter).