RED_NOVA'S PROFILE

https://www.inverse.com/gaming/jrpg-meaning-offensive-naoki-yoshida

A bit late to the party, but for those that aren't aware: Naoki Yoshida (producer of Final Fantasy XVI), made a statement that the term "JRPG" was used as a derogatory word:

“For us as developers , the first time we heard it, it was like a discriminatory term,” explained Yoshida. “It’s as though we were being made fun of for creating these games. So for some developers, the term JRPG can be something that will maybe trigger bad feelings because of what it was in the past.”

I'm conflicted on what to do about this. On one hand, the wishes of the group originally targeted by the term should be heard and respected. Categorizing an entire genre of games based on the country it came from does have a slight segregationist smell to it.

On the other hand, language changes with time, and the term simply doesn't have the negative connotation that it used to (quite the opposite, actually!) in the wider world. I know of similar situations where terms that were once used as derogatory are now used normally or even as a sign of respect. Also, I wouldn't know what we would replace it with if we were to retire the term.

So what do you think? Should the term JRPG be phased out? If so, what should it be replaced with?

I'm so focused on gameplay and mechanics that I haven't really figured out a story or a villain in any way.

If your primary focus was gameplay and mechanics, then start by constructing a villain that would provide a hearty challenge using those mechanics and build your lore from there.

A simple trick you can use is to remove the label "vampire" entirely from your game and build up the monster as its own thing. Vampires have had so many iterations over the course of pop culture that the label itself is going to invoke a wide variety of images in a player's head, including those you may not want. You can replace the label "vampire" with something else if you want, but the intent here is to keep players from assuming what they know about vampires and assuming what their weaknesses could be. This frees you, the designer, up to give your notVampires abilities that could defy player's expectations as to what a vampire is supposed to do.

author=Strak
And that begs the second question, if mechanics and gameplay are original, how much originality is necessary for a story to have?

*resisting violet urge to rant about story/gameplay synergy*

This question is built on two very flawed assumptions:

1) That there is some objective measure of "originality" that must be met in order to quality as "good." I can invent a type of vampire that farts gold dust and pisses honey from 4 different reproductive organs on each of its limbs. While that certainly counts as original, that doesn't mean that would make for a particularly threatening vampire-like enemy. A basic story can still be engaging if it's told well with likeable characters and/or story beats that take advantage of the gameplay mechanics you're creating.

2) That originality for originality's sake is, in any way, a good approach to storytelling. The questions you should be asking instead are "what kind of story do I want to tell? What are the themes I want to work with? What kind of emotions do I want to invoke in the player? What are some key plot moments I'd like to see realized?" and others that put the onus on your desires as a creator and not on some nebulous goal of "originality." Whatever you end up with, that's your story, regardless of how "original" it may be.

If you're struggling to come up with a story to justify your gameplay, then start from the gameplay mechanics and build your characters and villains around them first. Not every story has to be a grand, 80 hour epic spanning across multiple continents with complex character development and branching paths with multiple endings. A simple story told well is perfectly acceptable regardless of how "original" anything else is.

Thanks for the fixes, Roden! That looks so much better than what I was trying to do. His pose is so much more natural while still keeping the original idea of defined limbs.

Following up: Bringing the arms in means there are a bunch of solid black pixels touching each other:


In general, I like to keep solid black pixels to the outline to pop it out from the background, so seeing all those black pixels that don't touch the background looks a little jarring to me. Admittedly, it might not be a problem once I add clothes, and it's not even that noticeable in 2x or 1x resolution as it is now.

What I'm trying to ask here is: do you even think this needs fixing? All my attempts at reducing the amount of black pixels just end up putting the sprite right back to the original Popeye limbs jutting out, and it makes me wonder if I'm just overthinking it?

1x:


Been trying to come up with a half decent sprite body base for my next game. Any of these stand out as being the least bad?

Whether it's done by a human or a tool doesn't change what the process is: plagiarism. There is a MASSIVE difference between taking inspiration from other works and copy/pasting pieces of said works into your own, and I'm kinda baffled that simply slapping "AI" over the process legitimizes it to some people. We don't live in the Mass Effect universe where AI can have "soul" of their own. When you take the "soul" out of an art piece, you have to replace it with something. AIs replace it with algorithms. No filter. No voice.

RMN allows people to submit games with ripped assets under most circumstances. However, doing so while claiming all assets are their own original creation would make you a liar and a thief. And yet, if the exact same thing was done by an AI, suddenly we're supposed to just act like it's okay? No, it's not. The process hasn't changed, and the "it's only a tool" argument is just shifting the blame in an attempt at weaseling out of the ethical swamp that they willingly chose to dive into themselves.

I don't think there's anything tricky about this subject at all. If the images fed into the AI are done so without the original artist's consent (a fact that creators of these programs proudly flaunt), then using it is unethical. When someone finds an AI art model trained only through works in the public domain and submitted willingly by artists, then I'd be all for it. As it is now, whatever benefits it can bring should be kept out of the final product.

All of this is kinda moot, though. The Pandora's Box has been opened now, and the accessibility and ease of use means it's not going away anytime soon. Use it if you're gonna use it. Just don't pretend that it's anything other than a collage of works already made by other people. You are no more an artist for your use of prompts than I am a porn star whenever I go on pornhub.