On the Ungainliness of CRPG Development

Rampant Games’ Jay Barnson editorializes on CRPG development on his blog, taking the chance to use the infamous Grimoire as an example of how it’s impossible to make a CRPG really “perfect”. Here’s a sampling:

Steve Taylor, president of Wahoo Studios / NinjaBee, has a favorite quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince: (Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.) At least that’s one variation of the quote. I put that up on my wall in my home office.

Apparently it doesn’t do me any good.

I keep hearing mainstream game developers harping on this principle stripping the RPG down to its barest principles (and, too often I fear, beyond that). But for me, the thrill of this genre is often in its vast scope the breadth of possibility space. It is in that illusion that the world is alive and complex and full of possibilities, where the exceptions are the rule. To me, the heart of CRPGs is the opposite of streamlined and simple, though as a player I want it to be packaged that way. I want it to be ridiculously easy to learn and get into, yet unfold into marvelous detail and scope as I play.

As a developer, I still don’t have my head around what it really takes to make this happen. All those layers and systems that interact with each other tangle and coil with each other in a Gordian Knot of a game system. I really do understand the desires of many mainstream guys to simply hack it to pieces with a sword. RPG systems are often inherently fragile. A powerful weapon with an incorrect price or two skills that somehow form an unbeatable combo that slipped through testing can throw your entire carefully balanced gameplay out the window.