Fallout co-creator Tim Cain has revealed why so many RPGs, even long-established franchises, have become more action-oriented. And, if you’re wondering why every RPG protagonist now needs a spell in one hand and a sword in the other, it’s all down to cold, hard, cash.
Speaking over on his YouTube channel (via Eurogamer) Cain explains that so many RPGs now treat combat as the default option of dealing with problems because that’s what sells. “This is obvious. If you have a company and it’s trying to make money and there’s one game type that sells millions of copies and another one that sells a hundred thousand, which one are you going to do if they both take just as much time and money to develop? This is why I tell people to vote with their dollars,” Cain said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAbrZtmDQfM/
“Action genres tend to sell very well, and by that I mean, action RPGs kinda outsell classic RPGs, even though both of them are violent. It’s also easier to market those sorts of games. When you watch a trailer and you see people actually doing things – jumping, climbing, shooting, punching – it looks like: ‘Whoa! Look at all the things you can do in that game’ […] It’s hard to show the other things.”
Things like meaningful dialogue choices, a great story, brilliant character-building mechanics, they’re harder to show in a trailer, according to Cain. We have seen more and more people take up voting with their wallets in the past couple of years, and while a select few choose to do this only when “DEI” is involved in a game, voting with your wallet is a great way to protest anything you don’t like in gaming, from microtransactions to mechanics.