History of Western role-playing video games

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This article is about role-playing video games developed in the Western world. For a history of role-playing video games developed in East Asia, see History of Eastern role-playing video games.

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Western role-playing video games are

Interplay Productions and Blizzard Entertainment
, was developed over a longer time period and set new standards of production quality.

Computer role-playing games (CRPGs) are once again popular. Recent titles, such as

first-person graphical projections, and single-character or multi-character parties. Subgenres include action role-playing games, roguelikes and tactical role-playing games
.

Early American computer RPGs (mid-1970s–mid-1980s)

Mainframe computers (mid-1970s–early 1980s)

See also:
Chronology of roguelike video games
Screenshot of dnd.
Simple overhead monochrome graphics of [[dnd]] on the PLATO mainframe system.

The earliest

wargames such as Chainmail (1971), and sports games such as Strat-O-Matic.[12][Note 4]

Gary Gygax [co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons] was pivotal to the development of the gaming industry, and to my own career. (...) Millions upon millions of players around the world live and play in imaginary worlds built on the back of what Gary first conceived.

Richard Garriott, following Gygax's death in 2008[6]

The popular

Linley's Dungeon Crawl (1997).[15][16][17]

The keyboard was frequently the only input supported by these games, and their graphics were simple and often

quest completion, but it is possible to see the evolution of these features during this era and that which followed.[18]

Ultima and Wizardry (early–mid-1980s)

Blades of Exile
(1997).

Although simplified for use with the console gamepad, many innovations of the early Ultimas—in particular Ultima III: Exodus (1983) by developer Richard Garriott—became standard among later RPGs in both the personal computer and console markets. These ideas included the use of tiled graphics and party-based combat, a mix of fantasy and science-fiction elements, and time travel.[6][19][Note 6] The game's written narrative was an innovative feature that allowed it to convey a larger story than was found in the minimal plots common at the time. Most games, including Garriott's own Akalabeth, focused primarily on basic gameplay mechanics like combat, and paid little attention to story and narrative.[21]

Ultima III is considered by many to have been the first modern CRPG.[19] It was originally published for the Apple II, but was ported to many other platforms and influenced the development of later titles,[22] including such console RPGs as Excalibur (1983) and Dragon Quest (1986).[23]

Garriott introduced a system of chivalry and code of conduct in

Avatar tackles such problems as fundamentalism, racism and xenophobia, and based on his or her actions is tested periodically in ways that are sometimes obvious and sometimes unseen.[6][21] This code of conduct was in part a response to the efforts among some Christian groups to mitigate the rising popularity of Dungeons & Dragons.[21] Continuing until Ultima IX: Ascension (1999), it covered a range of virtues that included compassion, justice, humility and honor. This system of morals and ethics was unique at the time, as other video games allowed players to be lauded as "heroes" by the game worlds' denizens, no matter what the player's actions had been. In Ultima IV, on the other hand, players were forced to consider the moral consequences of their actions.[21] According to Garriott, Ultima was now "more than a mere fantasy escape. It provided a world with a framework of deeper meaning[,] a level of detail[, and] diversity of interaction[,] that is rarely attempted."[6] "I thought people might completely reject this game because some folks play just to kill, kill, kill. To succeed in this game, you had to radically change the way you'd ever played a game before."[21]

The Wizardry series was created for the Apple II at roughly the same time, in 1981. Wizardry featured a 3D, first-person view, an intuitive interface, party-based combat, and pre-constructed levels that encouraged players to draw their own maps.[19] It allowed players to import characters from previous games, albeit with reduced experience levels, and introduced a moral alignment feature that limited the areas players could visit.[19] The series was extremely difficult when compared to other RPGs of the time,[24][25] possibly because they were modeled after pen-and-paper role-playing games of similar difficulty.[13] Wizardry IV (1986) in particular is considered one of the most difficult CRPGs ever created.[25] It is unique in that the player controls the villain of the first game in an attempt to escape his prison dungeon and gain freedom in the above world.[6][25] Unlike Ultima, which evolved with each installment, the Wizardry series retained and refined the same style and core mechanics over time, and improved only its graphics and level design as the years progressed.[6]

By June 1982, Temple of Apshai had sold 30,000 copies, Wizardry 24,000 copies, and Ultima 20,000.[26][27][28] Garriott even discussed collaborating with Wizardry's Andrew C. Greenberg on "the ultimate fantasy role-playing game".[29] The first Wizardry outsold (more than 200,000 copies sold in its first three years) the first Ultima and received better reviews, but over time Ultima became more popular by improving its technology and making games more friendly, while Wizardry required new players to play the first game before its first two sequels, and the very difficult Wizardry IV sold poorly.[27]

Telengard, a BASIC port of the earlier PDP-10 game DND,[30] and Dungeons of Daggorath, both released in 1982, introduced real-time gameplay.[19] Earlier dungeon crawl games had used turn-based movement, in which the enemies only moved when the adventuring party did.[31] Tunnels of Doom, produced the same year, introduced separate screens for exploration and combat.[19] Dragon Quest is most commonly claimed as the first role-playing video game produced for a console, though journalist Joe Fielder cites the earlier Dragonstomper.[32]

Golden Age (late 1980s–early 1990s)

Many early RPGs, including avatar, moria and Wizardry, used a primitive form of first-person perspective, and games like Dungeons of Daggorath and Dungeon Master also featured real-time gameplay. Pictured here is Damnation of Gods, a Dungeon Master clone.

The Might and Magic series, highly popular in the 1980s and onward, began with the 1986 release of Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum for the Apple II. It encompasses a total of ten games, the most recent of which was released in 2014, as well as the popular turn-based strategy series Heroes of Might and Magic. The series featured a mix of complex statistics, large numbers of weapons and spells, and enormous worlds in which to play.[33] It was among the longest-lived CRPG series, alongside Ultima and Wizardry,[34] It is also notable for making race and gender an important aspect of gameplay.[6][33]

America Online
from 1991 to 1997. As in the Wizardry series, characters could be imported from one game into another.

mod scene for games such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, RPG construction kits such as Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures
(FRUA) allowed users to create and share their own custom modules online. Pictured here is Dungeon Craft, a modern open source FRUA clone.

SSI had already published many RPGs based on original properties. Its "hardcore" RPG Wizard's Crown (1985) presaged the Gold Box games' design, with eight-character parties, a skill-based experience system, highly detailed combat mechanics, dozens of commands, injuries and bleeding, and strengths and weaknesses versus individual weapon classes.[38][39][28] The game did not, however, offer much in terms of role-playing or narrative beyond buying, selling and killing.[38] Wizard's Crown was followed by The Eternal Dagger in 1987, a similar game that removed some of its predecessor's more complicated elements.[39]

Interplay Productions developed a string of hits in the form of The Bard's Tale (1985) and its sequels under publisher Electronic Arts, originally for the Apple II and Commodore 64. The series became the first outside Wizardry to challenge Ultima's sales.[27] It combined colorful graphics with a clean interface and simple rules, and was one of the first CRPG series to reach a mainstream audience. It spawned a series of novels by authors such as Mercedes Lackey, something that arguably did not occur again until the release of Diablo in 1997.[6][24] The series allowed players to explore cities in detail, at a time when many games relegated them to simple menu screens with "buy"/"sell" options. A construction set released in 1991 allowed players to create their own games, and Interplay re-used the engine in its 1988 post-apocalyptic CRPG Wasteland.[24]

FTL Games' Dungeon Master (1987) for the Atari ST introduced several user-interface innovations, such as direct manipulation of objects and the environment using the mouse, and popularized mouse-driven interfaces for computer RPGs.[34] Unusually for the era, it features a real-time, first-person viewpoint, now common in first-person shooters and more recent games such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.[40] The game's real-time combat elements were akin to Active Time Battle.[41] The game's complex magic system used runes that could be combined in specific sequences to create magical spells. These sequences were not detailed in the game manual, instead players were required to discover them through trial and error. Sequels followed in 1989 and 1993. The game's first-person, real-time mechanics were copied in SSI's "Black Box" series, from Eye of the Beholder (1990) onward.[40] Dungeon Master sold 40,000 copies in its first year of release,[42] and became the best-selling Atari ST title.[43]

Chris Roberts and released by Origin Systems in 1988, introduced the action-adventure and action role-playing game formula of console titles such as The Legend of Zelda to the American computer RPG market.[44][45] Times of Lore and Dungeon Master went on to directly inspire several later Origin Systems titles, including Bad Blood (1990),[46] Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990)[47][48] and Ultima VII (1992).[49][50] Ultima VI made some major changes to the Ultima formula, including a constant-scale open world (replacing the unscaled overworld of earlier Ultima titles)[45] and a point & click interface.[48]

Ultima VII is still my favorite game. It's hard not to look at Oblivion and see the Ultima influence.

Todd Howard, executive producer of the Elder Scrolls series[6]

The Ultima series went on to span over a dozen titles, including the spin-off series Worlds of Ultima (1990–1991) and Ultima Underworld (1992–1993), and the multiplayer online series,

NCsoft. He was involved with a number of NCsoft's MMORPGs, including Lineage (1998) and Tabula Rasa
(2007), before his 2009 departure.

The Wizardry series' most famous titles did not appear until years after its debut,[51] and installments were published as recently as 2001. Wizardry VII (1992) has been said to possess one of the best character class systems of any CRPG.[52]

Shadows of Darkness too difficult, and so inserted a fifth game, Wages of War, into the canon and renumbered the series.[53]

Legends of Valour (1992) provided an early example of open-world, non-linear gameplay in an RPG. It was cited as an influence on The Elder Scrolls series.

Sierra's

Midkemia setting. It featured turn-based, semi-tactical combat, a skill-based experience system, and a magic system similar to that of Dungeon Master,[40] but suffered due to outdated, polygonal graphics. Feist was heavily consulted during development, and later created his own novelization based upon the game. The sequel Betrayal in Antara (1997) re-used the first game's engine but—as Sierra had lost its license for Krondor—was set in a different universe. Return to Krondor (1998) used a new game engine, but returned to Feist's setting.[33]

Lands of Lore series (1993) featured a story-based approach to RPG design. It served as a stylistic "mirror" to Japanese RPGs of the time, with brightly colored, cheerful graphics, a simple combat system borrowed from Dungeon Master, and a semi-linear story. These elements contrasted with Western RPGs' stereotype as dark, gritty and rules-centric games.[54]

Decline (mid-1990s)

Probably one of the saddest sights over the last couple of years has been the rapid decline in computer role-playing games. [...] The emphasis [among newer CRPGs, such as Ultima VIII: Pagan] is on bigger on-screen characters with more realistic animation in a smaller game world. [...] This seems to be a part of a design philosophy which says that computer gamers don't want to play the big games any longer.

Computer Gaming World, March 1994[55]

There was this thought that maybe, like adventure games, RPGs were going to die out, too. [...] I wasn't the only developer that thought I'd coded myself into a corner.

Brenda Brathwaite, former Wizardry developer[6]

In the mid-1990s, developers of Western RPGs lost their ability to keep up with hardware advances; RPGs had previously been at or near the forefront of gaming technology, but the improved computer graphics and increased storage space facilitated by CD-ROM technology created expectations that developers struggled to meet.[56][57] This caused lengthy delays between releases, and closures among less popular franchises.[56] Scorpia in 1994 said that, "Nothing has come along to equal or exceed" Ultima IV ten years later. She wondered if "maybe nothing ever will. I hope that's not the case, though, because that would mean the CRPG has stagnated".[58] Computer Games later wrote that "[d]uring the now-infamous mid-nineties CRPG lull, the toughest dungeons were the bottomless pits of failed designs, and the fiercest beasts the deadly-dull CRPG releases".[59]

Increases in development budgets and team sizes meant that sequels took three or more years to be released, instead of the almost-yearly releases seen in SSI's Gold Box series.[56] The growth of development teams increased the likelihood that software bugs would appear, as code produced by programmers working in different teams was merged into a whole.[60][Note 7] A lack of technical standards among hardware manufacturers forced developers to support each manufacturer's implementation, or risk losing players.[60]

Further, competition arose from other genres. Players turned away from RPGs,

flight simulators and adventure games in favor of action-oriented titles, such as first-person shooters and real-time strategy games.[56] Later RPGs would draw influences from action genres,[56][Note 8] but would face new challenges in the form of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), a late-1990s trend that may have siphoned players away from single-player RPGs.[60] They also faced competition from Japanese console RPGs, which were becoming increasingly dominant around that time,[61] for reasons such as more accessible, faster-paced action-adventure-oriented gameplay,[54][62] and a stronger emphasis on storytelling and character interactions.[63]

North American computer RPGs (late 1990s)

Diablo and action RPGs

See also: Action role-playing game

The dark fantasy-themed RPG Diablo was released by

action RPGs".[67]

Action RPGs typically give each player real-time control of a single character. Combat and action are emphasized, while plot and character interaction are kept to a minimum, a formula referred to as "the Fight, Loot, and Level cycle".[68][69] The inclusion of any content beyond leveling up and killing enemies becomes a challenge in these "hack and slash" games, because the sheer number of items, locations and monsters makes it difficult to design an encounter that is unique and works regardless of how a character has been customized.[68] On the other hand, a game that omits technical depth can seem overly streamlined.[68] The result in either case is a repetitive experience that does not feel tailored to the player.[68]

RPGs can suffer in the area of exploration. Traditional RPGs encourage exploration of every detail of the game world, and provide for a more organic experience in which NPCs are distributed according to the internal logic of the game world or plot.[70] Action games reward players for quick movement from location to location, and tend to ensure that no obstacles occur along the way.[70] Games such as Mass Effect streamline the player's movements across the game world by indicating which NPCs can be interacted with, and by making it easier for players to find locations and shopkeepers who can exchange items for money or goods.[70][Note 10] Some of the best characteristics of RPGs can be lost when these road blocks are eliminated in the name of streamlining the player's experience.[70]

One action RPG which overcame these limitations was the FPS/RPG hybrid Deus Ex (2000), designed by Warren Spector. This cyberpunk spy thriller offered multiple solutions to problems through intricately-layered dialogue choices, a deep skill tree, and hand-crafted environments.[68] Players were challenged to act in-character through dialog choices appropriate to his or her chosen role, and by intelligent use of the surrounding environment. This produced a unique experience that was tailored to each player.[68] According to Spector, the game's dialogue choices were inspired by the console role-playing game, Suikoden (1995).[74]

Diablo was followed by the

NPD Group's top 10 PC games sales list as recently as 2010.[75] A third game, Diablo III, was announced on June 28, 2008, and released on May 15, 2012.[76][77] Examples of "Diablo clones" include Fate (2005), Sacred (2004), Torchlight (2009), Din's Curse (2011), Hellgate: London (2007) and Path of Exile (2013).[78][Note 11] Like Diablo and Rogue before them, Torchlight, Din's Curse, Hellgate: London, Fate and Path of Exile used procedural generation to create new game levels dynamically.[80][81][82][83][84]

Interplay, BioWare and Black Isle Studios

Blizzard Entertainment and Interplay Entertainment helped popularize the use of an overhead, isometric view in their CRPGs during the mid-to-late 1990s and onward. Pictured here is the open source isometric fantasy RPG Tales of Trolls & Treasures.

Interplay, now known as Interplay Entertainment and a publisher in its own right, produced several late 1990s RPG titles through two new developers,

14 Degrees East
.

BioWare's

Baldur's Gate series was no less important, being the most significant D&D series to be released since the Gold Box era.[88] The games created the most accurate and in-depth D&D simulation to date, and featured support for up to six players in cooperative mode.[89] Baldur's Gate (1998) provided an epic story with NPC followers and written dialogue that continued through both titles and two expansion packs.[6] Black Isle produced a more combat-oriented series, Icewind Dale, using the same engine soon afterwards;[90] and followed it up with 1999's Planescape: Torment. The critically acclaimed D&D title became known for its moody, artistic air and extensive writing and player choices.[6] Together, Interplay's Fallout, Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate series are considered by critics to be some of the finest CRPGs ever made.[12][91]

I think there are a few reasons for Fallout's success. It gave you tremendous freedom to let you wander wherever you chose. This freedom—to take whatever quests you want and solve them however you choose—is what an RPG was always supposed to be about.

Chris Avellone, co-designer of Fallout 2 and lead designer of Planescape: Torment[6]

Black Isle's games during this time period often shared engines to cut down on development time and costs, and most feature an overhead

SPECIAL system introduced by Fallout.[96]

Resurgence (2000s–present)

3D graphics accelerators, real-time first- and third-person polygonal graphics became commonplace in CRPGs. Pictured here is Sintel The Game
.

The new century saw an increasing number of multi-platform releases. The move to 3D game engines, along with constant improvements in graphic quality, led to progressively more detailed and realistic game worlds.[97][98][99]

BioWare produced

d20 system with the Star Wars franchise;[61] as well as the original Jade Empire (2005), Mass Effect (2007–2012) and Dragon Age (2009–2014) series, all which were released for multiple platforms.[101][102] With the Mass Effect and the Dragon Age titles, Bioware also utilized a save import system where decisions in the earlier games impact the story in the later games.[103][104]

During the production of Fallout 2, several of Black Isle's key members left the studio to form

White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade. All three games received positive reviews—as well as cult followings—[106] but were criticized for shipping with numerous bugs.[105] Troika's reputation became "Great Ideas. Never Enough Testing", and by 2005 the studio was in financial trouble, no longer able to secure funding for additional titles.[105][107] Most of the developers left for other studios.[105][106]

When Black Isle closed down, several employees formed

Microsoft Studios.[113]

Bethesda

Bethesda Softworks has developed RPGs since 1994, in its

sandbox gameplay, which gives the player wide choices of free-roaming activities unrelated to the game's main storyline.[6][114] The Elder Scrolls series was seen as an alternative to the "highly linear, story-based games" that dominated the computer RPG genre at the time,[114] and the series' freedom of play inspired comparisons to Grand Theft Auto III.[115][116] According to Todd Howard, "I think [Daggerfall is] one of those games that people can 'project' themselves on. It does so many things and allows [for] so many play styles that people can easily imagine what type of person they'd like to be in-game."[6]

The series' popularity exploded with the release of

micro transactions, an emerging trend among Western RPG makers.[117] Two expansion packs, Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine, were developed, as were several smaller downloadable packages, each costing between $1–3. Oblivion's immediate successor, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, was released to wide critical acclaim[118] on November 11, 2011 and remains one of the bestselling video games to date,[119] with over 30 million sold copies.[120]

Interplay's decision to scrap plans for Fallout 3 and Bethesda's subsequent acquisition of the

five "content packs" and several additional sequels and spin-offs. Fallout: New Vegas (2010), created by Obsidian Entertainment and using the same engine as Fallout 3, was released to generally favorable reviews[124][125] but would later go on to become a cult classic.[126][127] Fallout 4, released in 2015, featured improved graphics and gunplay, and for the first time in the series a "voiced" protagonist.[128] Fallout 76, released in 2018, featured online-only multiplayer modes and survival crafting mechanics.[129]

Video game consoles and "accessibility"

The Microsoft Xbox sixth-generation gaming console.

Multi-platform releases were common in the early days of RPGs, but there was a period during the 1990s when this was not generally the case.

sixth generation of home gaming consoles led many game developers to resume this practice, and some opted to develop primarily or exclusively for consoles.[99] The combination of the Xbox and DirectX technologies proved especially popular due to the two systems' architectural similarities, as well as their common set of development tools.[99][131] Multimedia and art assets, which account for a greater proportion of a game's development budget today than in the past, are also easily transferable between multiple platforms.[99]

Development for multiple platforms is profitable, but difficult. Optimizations needed for one platform architecture do not necessarily translate well to others. Legacy platforms such as the Sega Genesis and PlayStation 3 were seen as difficult to develop for compared to their competitors, and even today developers are still not yet fully comfortable with new technologies such as multi-core processors and hyper-threading.[99] Multi-platform releases are increasingly common, but not all similarities between game editions can be fully explained by game design alone. Rather, they can often be attributed to developers' lack of willingness to support all the optimizations needed to expose a single platform's full potential.[99]

There remain franchise stalwarts that exist solely on one system, however.[99] Developers for handheld and mobile systems in particular are seen as being able to get away with more since they are not forced to operate under the pressures of $20 million budgets and scrutiny from publishers' marketing departments to the same degree as other console game developers.[97] Nintendo, credited with popularizing the handheld console concept with the release of the Game Boy in 1989,[132] has recently combined its TV and handheld consoles into a single device, however.

Several major PC RPG titles have been affected by multi-platform releases, mostly due to

exclusive,[133] and did not receive a Windows version until Jade Empire – Special Edition (which included bonus content) in 2007.[citation needed] Obsidian's KOTOR sequel was released in December 2004 for the Xbox, followed by a PC version in February 2005;[citation needed] and Fable (2004) by Lionhead Studios did not receive a PC port until its reissue as a Platinum Hit in 2005.[citation needed] Fable II (2008) and Fable III (2010) were platform exclusives when they were released, as well.[134]

Sequels to many of the titles previously mentioned in this article have also been developed for next-gen console systems. The Fallout and Baldur's Gate series of PC RPGs spawned console-friendly, Diablo-style action titles for the PS2 and Xbox as their respective PC series ended.[Note 12] Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released simultaneously for console and PC, but was considered a major launch title for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.[135][136] BioWare continued to produce launch-exclusive RPG titles for the Xbox 360, such as Mass Effect (2007).[137] They also produced the multi-platform Dragon Age series starting in 2009.

[Console gamers] don’t have the patience to wade through the introduction of [new] systems. [...] [Y]ou need to ease them in a bit more [...] [But] once they’re into the game, the console guys want just as deep of an experience as the PC guys.

Ken Levine and Todd Howard in a 2010 interview[138]

This change in focus away from the PC platform to console systems has met with criticism, due to the concessions required to adapt games to the altered interfaces and control systems, as well as a perceived need to make games "accessible" to a wider demographic.

Japanese-style character interactions".[144]

There have been other less subtle shifts away from the core influences of Dungeons & Dragons that existed in the 1980s and 1990s, as well.[145] Games that were originally closely tied to the system's basic mechanics such as dice rolls and turn-based tactical combat, have begun moving in the direction of real-time modes, simplified mechanics and skill-based interfaces.[Note 13] Some argue Dungeons & Dragons itself has diverged from its table-top roots, with the 4th Edition D&D rules being compared to video games such as World of Warcraft and Fire Emblem.[145][146][Note 14] Other people have even accused certain real-time RPGs (within the contexts of their respective franchises and genres) and board games of being "dumbed-down" by their creators.[147][148] Nevertheless, even as non-role-playing game genres have adopted more and more RPG elements, developers and publishers continue to be concerned that the term "role-playing game" and its association with complicated pen-and-paper rules systems such as D&D may alienate a significant number of players.[145]

"Indie" and European game studios

Screenshot of Legend of Grimrock. In the center of image, a monster stands behind the metal bars of a dungeon. On the right, the inventory of a party member.
An in-game screenshot of Legend of Grimrock, a real-time, first person view, tile-based dungeon crawler in the style of Dungeon Master.[149]

The technical sophistication required to make modern video games and the high expectations of players (at least, in terms of the number and quality of voice-overs and increasing graphical fidelity) make it difficult for independent developers to impress audiences to the same degree that large game makers with extensive budgets and development teams are able to.

independent") video game scene plays a crucial role in formulating new ideas and concepts that mainstream publishers and marketing departments, stuck in their rigid antiquated ways, might deem too unworkable or radical, but later adopt.[97] There are many examples of movies that never gained approval within a corporate framework that ended up being financially successful and/or iconic among filmgoers.[97] Likewise, "indie" video game developers are able to be successful by putting development time and effort into aspects of a game larger corporate enterprises might ignore.[97] Lastly, independent developers can be successful by focusing on smaller niche markets.[97] European countries, and Germany in particular, remain more receptive to PC-exclusives and, to older, more "hardcore" design decisions, in general.[64][97]

The new millennium saw a number of independently-published RPGs for the PC, as well as a number of CRPGs developed in Europe and points farther east, leading some to call Eastern Europe a "hotbed" of RPG development in recent years.

TaleWorlds' hybrid series of RPG/medieval combat simulators, starting with Mount & Blade (2008);[160][161] and Toby Fox's very-hard-to-describe console game-inspired RPG, Undertale (2015).[citation needed
]

The critically acclaimed Gothic series, by German developer

JoWood Productions in 2007, due to a contract dispute between the two companies. JoWooD retained the rights to the Gothic name and to current and future games released under that trademark.[166] Piranha Bytes have since gone on to develop the Risen series (2009-2014) with publisher Deep Silver, and ELEX (2017) with publisher THQ Nordic. A fourth, "casual" installment of the Gothic series, this time by developer Spellbound Entertainment, was published by JoWood in 2010.[167] This was followed by an expansion in 2011. The rights to the Gothic series may have reverted to Piranha Bytes following the release of Risen II in 2012.[168]

The Finnish independent development studio Almost Human released Legend of Grimrock, a Dungeon Master-inspired game, in 2012.[149] A reboot of the long-abandoned tile-based dungeon-crawler sub-genre, it was a commercial success that reached the top of Steam's "Top Sellers list" in April of that year.[169] The Estonian development house ZA/UM released Disco Elysium to wide critical acclaim in 2019. Set in a large city still recovering from a war decades prior to the game's start, it features players taking the role of an amnesic detective charged with solving a murder mystery, who comes to recall events about his own past as well as current forces trying to affect the city. It won numerous awards, including "Best Narrative", "Best Independent Game", "Best Role-Playing Game" and "Fresh Indie Game" at The Game Awards 2019 held in Los Angeles.[170]

Examples exist of developers leaving larger studios to form their own, independent development houses, as well. For instance, in 2009, a pair of developers left Obsidian Entertainment to form DoubleBear Productions, and began development of the post-apocalyptic zombie tactical RPG, Dead State (2014), using Iron Tower Studios' The Age of Decadence (2015) game engine.[171][172][173] Three employees left BioWare in 2012 to form Stoic Studio and develop the tactical RPG The Banner Saga (2014) and its sequels. Dead State and The Banner Saga were both supported in part by the public through the crowdfunding website Kickstarter, a recent trend among independent video game developers.[174][175] Other examples of crowdfunded tactical RPGs include inXile Entertainment's Wasteland sequels (2014, 2020); and Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun Returns (2013-2015) and BattleTech (2018) series.

Iron Tower Studios later went on to create

Dungeon Rats (2016), a tactical RPG spin-off to The Age of Decadence. Their latest title, Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game, a Fallout homage was released for early access on 6 April 2021 and is currently still in development.[176]

CD Projekt Red

Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop game system, for which it opened a new division in Wrocław.[181]

Much-anticipated after a several-years-long wait, Cyberpunk 2077 received considerable praise for its narrative, setting, and graphics,

class-action lawsuits for their perceived attempts in downplaying the severity of the game's technical issues prior to its release.[197][198]

Footnotes

  1. ^ The file "m199h" was quickly deleted by PLATO administrators, so no copy of its source code survives.[1][2]
  2. ^ Pedit5 was later deleted and lost to history.[3]
  3. ^ Note the lower-case letters, as the PLATO mainframe's file system was case-insensitive.
  4. ^ Chainmail was the official combat handbook for the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons.[13]
  5. ^ Certain games, such as avatar, moria, and oubliette experimented with a first-person view, while others, such as orthanc and Rogue, featured an overhead view with branching corridors more reminiscent of table-top RPGs.[7]
  6. ^ Some of these elements were inspired by Wizardry, specifically the party-based system.[20]
  7. ^ Several titles were affected by this, ruining what might have otherwise been impressive efforts.[60]
  8. ^ For instance, Baldur's Gate's Warcraft-like interface, and The Elder Scrolls' first-person perspective.[56]
  9. ^ Diablo was originally conceived of as a turn-based game more in line with its roguelike predecessors. Other series experiencing similar pressures at about this time, such as Ultima, also abandoned the "core principles" (e.g. dice rolls, turn-based battles, multi-character parties) of table-top RPGs in favor of real-time action.[64] Ultima IX, unlike Diablo, failed to win over many fans, however.[66]
  10. ^ There is debate as to whether games like BioWare's Mass Effect (2007) constitute action RPGs as opposed to more traditional RPGs,[68][71] or whether they can be considered RPGs at all due to the amount of streamlining.[72][73] The sequels in particular pushed more in the direction of action games.[72]
  11. ^ Hellgate: London was developed by a team headed by former Blizzard employees, some of whom had participated in the development of the Diablo series.[67][79]
  12. ^ Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004), and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (2001), namely.
  13. ^ Examples include Mass Effect 2's lack of inventory system and Alpha Protocol's Dialogue Effect System.[145]
  14. ^ E.g., whereas pen-and-paper RPGs previously would influence their video game counterparts, the reverse according to some people appears to be occurring today.[145]
  15. ^ Though managed development environments such as Microsoft's XNA platform and GarageGames' Torque engine are meant to make this easier.[150][151]
  16. ^ Russia also happens to be Europe's largest video games market,[152] though the country ranks behind the UK and Germany in total video games sales.[153]

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Bibliography

External links

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