I used to be fairly active in TIG a couple years ago, around the time when Reviews became implemented into the site.  While reviews seem to have taken a dive from popularity (fewer people seem to be writing reviews now), TIG users still score and rate games.

It seems that TIG has a bent against RPGs when it comes to ratings.  Now, I'm not saying that games like The Linear RPG needs to have a high rating (and who really knows how the 'rating' of a game measures itself as), but I am curious why RPGs have a tougher road to climb than many platform games on this site (12 of the top 20 are platform games, while 2 are adventures, 2 are shooters, 2 are roguelikes (which I'm troubled to call a role-playing game as they lack stories, and only 1 is an RPG -- the other one is a 3D shooter).

Now, several questions prop up:

1. Are indie RPGs just plain *bad*?

2. Do indie gamers have baggage with RPGs? ...such as too many JRPGs already made must equal a bleak future for anyone who attempts to outdo Final Fantasy VI?

3. Or do TIGSource gamers/makers just not prefer RPGs?  I suppose the third is the easiest question to answer in the affirmative (and perhaps the 'I don't want to think any deeper about it' answer).  Still, it has been a constant thought over the years as I've checked back to see if any RPGs made any impression on the masses here.

4. True, many RPGs use traditional cliches that we've all come to know and love/hate.  But just as RPGs have the typical line of 'magical heroes battle the dark overlord' platformers also have the typical line of 'jump, run and shoot until you've beat the big bad boss'.  Even RPGs that have tried to be unique and trendsetting (A Blurred Line, Sunset Over Imdahl, Wilfred the Hero) have only really been panned as under-classed memories and pretty much ignored for their brave attempts to shift the genre.  It's not fair to ask the question 'is that fair?' so I won't ask it.  But the question of whether equal amounts of attention and thought are going into current RPGs remains to be answered.

Speaking from personal perspective of actually being on teams that have designed, planned and built RPGs in everything from RPGMaker to MUDs to MODs to original software, they are monstrous to create.  They take extraordinary amounts of time, thinking, and staff, and require hours, weeks, sometimes months of planning just to put together a storyline that uses likable characters and appeal.

Great idea, but it should be categorized.  Multiple pages, multiple categories, searchable, linkable (eg. ideas that have been done or finished could be linked).  Categories could be FPS, adventure, fighter, etc.  Furthermore, allow to link to other wiki pages which then have design specs, ideas, possible graphics, etc.  Turn it into an idea notebook that can be referred back to; people can create their own userpages and post links to all of their ideas.  Allow for the rating of ideas.  Allow for comments of ideas.

In other words, something of more value than that game ideas website referenced.  Something that could be used for a developer's notebook.  Of course the key is collaboration and input from the community.  With the prospect that eventually it will get done, someday.

I would gladly contribute to something like that, that actually has staying power.  The way it is now is interesting but overwhelming.

If anyone is looking for a writer (story, concept design, script, etc) I'd be happy to oblige.  I can't program or draw well, but I understand the basic principles.  I'd also be happy to talk with anyone who's got an idea and mash ideas around with them as well, fine-tune the concept and so on.

Email is [email protected]

Sounds a bit like the Journeyman Project, which was an awesome game, btw.  Very old school, but a sweet ride for the time.

[that were]

Pictures of cockpits

There have already been a lot of cool cockpit-style games made that didn't necessarily use the idea of a flight-sim so specifically.  There's a lot of potential here.

Cockpit-style games that were plain awesome:
Metroid Prime (Platformer)
The Journeyman Project (Adventure)
Noctis (Exploration)
Freelancer (Space sim)
Old-school American CRPGS (RPG)
Descent (FPS)

Of course, the goal would probably be to see where this idea could go outside of a flight sim.  Taking the idea of an interactive cockpit (rather than just a cockpit that registers what is happening in the game) allows the cockpit to be used for a lot more style of gaming.

Possible weird ideas that no one need bother with:

• A D&D DM-cockpit leading adventurers to their doom
  
• Using God-like powers to destroy stuff first-person, by clicking buttons on a module and aiming and getting combos and cheers (using a physics engine)
• Taking control of a non-racing boat where you complete various tasks in a storyline (a druglord boat, piloting a boat through a storm, etc.)
  
• A robot-sim where you operate everything through a hud
• Build-your-own airplane and cockpit and try to fly it
  
• Heck, just using the mouse to try and even use a cockpit would be a game in itself (see cockpit pictures)
• Smashing a cockpit while in mid-air to see how amazing your crash would be
  

There's for you programmers.  God save those who are full of ideas but can't code a whack of C.  At least we can give ideas and hope to inspire somebody.

[revitalization]

There's a lack of original RPGs out there right now that are actually really good.  I vote for a compo about this.  Yes, there are commercial RPGs out there, but nothing indie has been done for awhile it seems. 

The genre needs a revitalization /re-imagining away from Bethesda, Squaresoft, and the blah of MMORPGs.  I'm sure you guys, if you cracked your heads together, could come up with some amazing and creative ideas about how to change the genre.

Ok, so I'll go first.

Game Concept: An offline, story-driven or pure hack and slash mud.
Why: Because I love to hack and slash, I love to get more powerful, and I hate dying.  Hello RECALL.

The Good: Huge world, lots of secrets, unadulterated fun and power-building.  Possibly have a way to share amazing things found online.

The Bad: Could be too big a project.

The Ugly: Should be evilly hard.  Make the players sweat to even make a kill.  Hard-core, but no roguelike death.  Focus on exploration and becoming a god.

Notes: Not a roguelike, because you don't die and lose everything and start over.  Not a mud, because there is just you.  Not interactive fiction, because there isn't a beginning and an end and a difficult interface of verbs and linearity.

Cool aspects: The worlds the limit.  After all, it's text.

[awesomer game ideas]

Hi there,

(<--There is the unfinished thread), but it didn't have quite what I wanted so I create this thread, which is basically a place to put your awesomer game ideas so that everyone can see how awesome you are.  Also, for designers and programmers who are fishing dry, they can see what awesome ideas there are in one place.  Also, just because I want an excuse to post some cool ideas and not have a thread that _disappears into the infernal mists of time.

Got the idea after what's his face from before had a blog of 100 cool game ideas that was really popular awhile back.  The net needs more repository centers for cool ideas.

Seriously amazing.  Every compo refuses to let the steam up and increases not only the amount of games but the quality.  You guys could take over the world if you wanted to.

1.   1D supercade deluxe
2.   50% ßiological Longevity
3.   AngelHat
4.   Anty Falcon's Amateur Rollerboarder 5
5.   Axion 52 - $199 Multi-cart for the Belico and Smartvision Game Consoles
6.   Ball Explosion Awesome
7.   Barf™ - Now featuring Blast Processing!™
8.   Beckoning of Yyxnzx: Shady Edges of the Planet
9.   Beijing Summer Game 2008
10.   Black And White Plane Game
11.   Blood Moon - Farm Simulator
12.   Bootleg Bash
13.   Buddy Base II
14.   Classic Novel Demake
15.   Commandolls: Behind Enemy Walls
16.   Corner's Shiny
17.   Creature Days
18.   Daemon Blood Forever 33
19.   Dance Of The Slightly Misplaced
20.   Deadly Cops
21.   Deep Insect Kings
22.   Discrete Bald Contractor
23.   Dysaster
24.   Dystrum
25.   Eternal Sea
26.   Fighting Prison Brawl
27.   flu1d
28.   Furry Path
29.   Gang Garrison II
30.   General Shermans Redemption
31.   GlooM
32.   Hyper Solar-System Plumber
33.   Katamarian vs Dalmatian Giraffe
34.   Killer's System of Religious Belief
35.   KRIME SPREE 88
36.   Kriziz
37.   Kurasuta Shinzui
38.   Lady Million
39.   Large-Scale Vehicular Stealing
40.   Legend of Violence Future: The Gears for the MegaDrive
41.   Lethe's Yarn
42.   Macarena of the Missing
43.   Malevolent Occupant
44.   Medal of Duty [SNESish]
45.   Midnight Shooter
46.   Morning of Failed Diplomacy
47.   No Light Guns
48.   No More Pixels
49.   Noiseless mound (Amiga ish)
50.   Oki Doki Marioki Panic Racing
51.   Our Globe
52.   Overseers
53.   PACperson: The Textual Adventure
54.   PerennialOdyssey 2 - A MMORPG for mobile phones
55.   PING
56.   Plebian Evil - NES Castlevania-esque
57.   Popular Music Group(Mockup) LFG
58.   Protection of the Old Ones
59.   Prototype 01
60.   Requirement for Velocity
61.   Right 2 Be Dead
62.   Royalty:the Magic Country Sim
63.   Rupture
64.   S H A D E
65.   S.T.A.C.K.E.R.
66.   Seed
67.   Sexy Seaside Beachball!
68.   Shadow of the Bossus
69.   Shinobi Side Story
70.   Silhouette of the Titans
71.   Smaze
72.   Soundless Mountain II [NES]
73.   Space Effort
74.   SpaceVessel: Legion Campaign
75.   Speedo
76.   Substantial War Machines - Stealth adventure tactics - Compact Adder's Adventure
77.   SUPER 3D PORTALS 6
78.   the interweb
79.   The last fantastic tactic which advances
80.   The Space-Dingo Team
81.   Theoretical Model Of A Rotored Heavier-Than-Air-Craft
82.   Thieving Raccoon
83.   Trouble In Euclidea
84.   Untitled Zelda-like Demake for 1987-era PC
85.   VipeÜt Vectrex
86.   War64
87.   WARNING! Zombie Mall
88.   Whitener (Anime/Manga demake)
89.   wolfSD
90.   ZX-81 Tower Defense

Hey, that's cool.

1. I've submitted two games already, and the one thing I've needed for both is a Comment box on the submission screen that allows me to explain how to find the game in a given website.  A lot of freeware games are hard to find inside a website, because they are so old and out of date.  Or the Comment box could equally serve as a disclaimer in case I'm not sure about something.

2. It would be cool if in our user profiles could be listed the games we submitted which were accepted.  On a purely selfish note. 

Somebody needs to make a list of these compo ideas and write out a little description for game designers.  There are too many ideas for any single competition, but if designers had a list of these ideas it would be a great resource.

Mujakwi was an awesome game, if a bit monotonous.  Given a bit more variety, some quests, and a structured story that follows through the procedurally generated content (as well as being able to customize your ship, buy new weapons, and keep revisiting generated planets again) would make it a fantastic game, not just an interesting one.

I really like the amount of creativity in terms of kinds of games that could be created that people are suggestion in this forum.  I kind of wish this kind of useful creativity could be drawn from for other art forms today.

Wow, the "Missing Element" is a fantastic idea.

You could have a multiplayer game where none of the players actually do anything but just watch each other automatically do things (similar to Progress Quest, but you actually get visual representations of the characters going about their lives and you have no choice in their actions and watch as they either live or die - like the Sims, except no control whatsoever).

Or a fighting game where the goal is not to fight, or a puzzle game where you are missing all the pieces.

The interpretation could get a little fuzzy, but the idea opportunities are amazing.

[Gutenberg compo:]

Some ideas:

1. Gutenberg compo:
Random story chosen from Project Gutenberg, turned into a game.  This means you could take classic novels, poems, myths, or non-fiction books and somehow turn them into games.  With no worry of copyright.

2. Fractal compo:
Somehow in your game, using fractals.

3. Social compo:
Deals with a current social issue.

4. Performative play compo:
"The notion of the performative offers one way to understand such actions. In these cases, things a player does when playing take on a meaning in the game, but they also literally do something in the world beyond the game and its players." see Gamasutra

5. Sandbox compo:
The idea of putting the player in a world with no objectives, free to do as they will.  GTA is a Sandbox game.

6. Open-world compo:
Related to Sandbox, but slightly varied, in the sense that the ideal is not freedom of movement, but open-space and detailed locations.

7. Player-generated compo:
Based on a number of options in the beginning, the player generates what will happen in the game, and then it happens.

8. Board game compo:
Take a board game and remake it in your own image.  Ideas from this could be taking the idea of Chess and expanding it past the simple board and creating an RTS, or taking the concept of Backgammon and putting a story into it.  Etc.

9. Cross-genre compo:
Taking two or more different genres of games (puzzle/FPS/RPG/adventure/etc) and combining them.

10. Vector compo:
Make a game composed entirely of vectors.

Just some initial ideas.  I'm not a programmer, so forgive me if those sound wacked out difficult.


I like the ideas of non-violent and narrative.  Generates a lot of ludological arguments that would be interesting to see played out.

Everyone Loves Active 2 - Really classy and smooth.  Feels a bit like a Kenta Cho number.
Legend of the Tomb of Fate - I'm a sucker for a dungeon crawl.
MMORPG Tycoon - Professional and well-made.
Dyson - Really crisp.  If I can use such a descriptor.
Rescue: The Beagles - The best of the bunch, in my opinion.  Feels like a commercial game.
dropTD - A tower game with infinite possibilities?  How cool is that!

I seem to be in the minority here, but I happen to enjoy grinding.  I also happen to enjoy MMORPGs, replaying (and grinding) old NES games (including the original Final Fantasy II, and others that required an insane amount of grinding), and stuff like DragonFable and other mindnumbing RPGs that require you to fight the same battles over and over again to get any progress.  It's my opinion that the system was designed not only as a reward system for working hard (or long), but also as a sort of philosophical statement about the nature of cultivating one's talents.

The level-up system I believe works really well in JRPGs, because it provides a simple strategy to a simple reward.  However, the fact that most JRPGs require the hero character to kill thousands of monsters does seem a bit off to me.  If I were actually out in the wilderness killing thousands of monsters, that would change my psyche.

I'm designing a game (this is not an advert, but just an explanation of how I think  this system can be improved) where there are three ways to level-up: either through exploration of the world (like Planescape), or in battle.  In battle, you can either beat the enemy into submission, or force them to surrender through methods of subduing.  Whether you interact with the world, kill enemies, or subdue enemies, will in affect, change the skills you receive at level-up (observation skills, violent skills, or non-violent skills).  It's not a perfect system and still mostly operates on a symbolic level (as most games do), but it alleviates a lot of the problems I see currently.

I still absolutely love the JRPG forumula though.  It's very mythic and distant, but keeps the player involved through the special rewards they get for their work.  It's a slower game, one that provides more attention to story and allows for a tighter relationship between the player and the hero, with more integration of what the hero is doing and what the player is doing.

Really cool idea.  It kind of got repetitive though.  Didn't seem like I could make much progress after a certain point.  Seemed very business-driven.  Stuff like this works if it's like the other Tycoon games, where you can somewhat join in the experience, after all the work of setting something up is done.  Some suggestions (which you are free to absolutely ignore):

Add a wiz mode - where you can actually go down into the world as a wiz (or a gamemaster) and do things like fry characters, start wars, etc, to try and improve the game rating.  Players often react to how the imps treat them.

Maybe tag some of the areas and such with different colors: so you could make mountainous regions, water regions.  I know it won't much different with the concept you are trying to put together, but it will make it more interesting for the player to actually know they are constructing a landscape.  Maybe there is a way for you to tie it into the gameplay mechanics.

Offer the option to be able to visit the other games you are in competition with, to spy on how they are progressing.  Otherwise, it's just a blind number, but in the MMORPG world, you can easily visit your competition.

All for now.

Who knows why?  But I can't play it.  Maybe your server is blocked in China (where I live).