RPGs in Indie Gaming

A while ago Twenty Sided added some questions to an Xfire debate on independent development in general. The first question was “RPGs seem really over-represented in indie games. (Or, you could say they are under-represented in mainstream games.) Why do you think indie developers favor RPGs so much?” It has been pointed out to the author, Shamus, that this is not the case, but Rampant Coyote Jay’s answer on indie RPGs is still interesting.

This one took me by surprise. Because they… uh, aren’t, unless you consider the dearth of mainstream RPGs these days to be “well represented.” Short answer. Long answer:

Looking at The Great Games Experiment, as of a few minutes ago, there were a total of 936 games tagged “indie,” and only 95 of these were tagged “RPG” (and some of those might be considered more, “games with RPG elements” and really stretch the definition of RPG. But we’ll roll with it). So — that’s a hair over 10% of the indie games. Actually, if one out of 10 indie games were RPGs, I’d be a heck of a lot busier than I already am. But we’ll look closer.

Subtract out all the titles that are tagged “in development”, and we find that over 1 in 3 of those RPGs (36) are in that often never-ending vaporware state, as compared to under 1 in 4 of the other indie genres (224). So the number of completed indie games falls down to about 8%.

I think, however, that those numbers are a little skewed based on the community over at GGE, and that casual games (most of which are indie) don’t have the indie flag like they should. There’s over 1900 of ’em, and only 400 are tagged “indie.” So if you assume only 2 / 3 of the remainder are actually indie games that just aren’t tagged as such, the indie RPG count drops in half. Naturally, some RPGs (and other indie games) may also be missing the tag, so this is all just conjecture. But hey, you know what they say about statistics.

I personally would be thrilled to believe that 5% of completed indie games are RPGs. I personally think its closer to about 1%, but even at the above 8%, I wouldn’t consider them overrepresented.

As is Corvus’ answer:

As many people have pointed out to Shamus, RPGs aren’t actually well represented in the indie scene if you take a look at the big picture. But I think what Shamus is trying to get at here is that on average, there are more indie RPGs than AAA RPGs in any given year. That assumption, of course, means ignoring all the JRPGs, the MMOs and the Sword and Sorcery dungeon crawlers (many of which are being released on the DS (woohoo!)). But if we narrow our definition of RPG to mean western style, AD&D-descended stat-based games with plenty of delivery quests and little to no need for any manual dexterity. he’s got a point.

Many of the comments on Shamus’s post pointed out that RPGs don’t need top notch graphics and are therefore easier and cheaper to develop. to which I reply, (HA! Are you MAD?!) Listen, I (that’s the theoretic ‘˜I’) could download any number of open source engines and cobble together a nice looking FPS for you. Seriously. While attaining the polygon-pushing power of the Unreal Engine is outside an indie engine’s grasp, OGRE, Crystal Space and Sauerbraten all provide increasingly impressive visuals with every release. Not to mention, I could use the HL2 engine, or the Unreal engine, and via extensive modding, create entirely new games with those engines level of graphics fidelity.

The fact is, RPG development is expensive. It requires a lot of time, a lot of talent and a lot of patience. The underlying mechanics of a FPS are pretty simple, even if it’s an innovative approach like Portal. The mechanics underlying a RPG are complex! Trust me, even designing the combat mechanics for a pen and paper RPG can be an extensive process of balancing and refining. The reason indie devs are willing to tackle this niche RPG market is that not only do we have the passion to make this sort of game, but we don’t have an accounting department to answer to. Publishers want to maximize return on investment. Spend as little as possible on development, sell as many copies as possible. That means that sprawling RPGs simply don’t get funded much anymore. The vast majority of people who buy them don’t experience a vast majority of the content, so a publisher looks at a spreadsheet (or four) and asks, (Why pay to build the content?)

Indie devs are not only able to follow their bliss and we get by on much smaller profit margins. Many of us work an extra job, or work under contract for other games, or both in order to pay the bills. This allows us the luxury of taking our time and making exactly the game we want to play and hoping another fifty or a hundred people will want to play it too.