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Sorry for taking so long to reply... I appreciate your clarification of the design of the first two games. I more or less have to yield to all points made in regard to those. As for the relationship between Fallout/GURPS and writing/design: I'm inclined to point out that rules in RPGs are...

Agreed, I am talking outside of my own experience with the first two games and judging based on user impressions and the dialog trees that I've seen. My argument in that regard is that design challenges seemed to come from the writing, rather than writing arising from design challenges...

I know, I wrote it clearly. My point isn't that it is fundamentally confusing, but that it can be made to be confusing. I was simply saying that it might be valuable to use terminology that can't be as easily compromised by semantics. It's not a terribly relevant point, as Brother None...

Keep in mind, I am approaching that from the standpoint of someone primarily interested in the writing of video games.

I would argue that in the relatively fledgling discussion of video game theory (those discussions pertaining to the games themselves and not necessarily where games intersect with other disciplines) that now would be the time, if ever, to establish or amend the language of the discourse. Off...

Technically, GTA is third-person, but neither here nor there. You're absolutely right, insofar as the market is concerned. I'm more interested in discussing games academically. From an academic standpoint misleading or false terminology should be eliminated and replaced with more exact...

It only becomes confusing when you start to deconstruct what it means. When you parse the words out you get something very broad. Which is why, in different communities, you'd get different definitions of what a role playing game is. For example, someone performing psychological observation on...

I wasn't sure what your intent was there, so I figured I'd shoot the idea out there.

I would argue that there really should be no distinction between CRPGs and console RPGs. Consoles are just computers devoted to gaming. There are factors born of standardization, stagnation and issues of uniformity, but when it boils down to it a console is a computer gaming platform that gets...

Well, quest writing is part of the problem. Here are three of the biggest problems with video game writing: One, quests are designed and then written. So developers create a structure, or scaffolding on which they then hang the writing. At the core of the story... there is no story, only an...

Maybe the problem is that the term "Role Playing Game" is a complete misnomer?

I think you're talking about what RPGs do rather than what RPGs are. That's a fine line really. My point wasn't that GTA:4 was an RPG, but rather that it does many of the things we associate with RPGs better than Fallout 3 does. Taken to a much broader conclusion any game in which you...

In Oblivion you get skill ranks for doing things. Its an organic advancement. For example, you can max out stealth in Oblivion by walking against a wall near a creature that doesn't see you. Does that make it not an RPG or does it make it broken? If I designed a game where stats existed but...

You can max all stats in Oblivion too. EDIT: Not that Oblivion is a shining example of storytelling.

An excellent point with the San Andreas thing. There is physical specialization as well as role play. I don't recall if there were moral decisions made.

Those are all excellent points that can be applied to a number of games. However, I would ask, mechanically speaking how a skill progression or a stat choice is any different than choosing a weapon in GTA. The net effect of choosing to do more damage with pistols and choosing to wield a...

Completely correct. Fallout 3, mechanically speaking, has more of the markers of an RPG, but when it comes down to doing the actual job of immersing yourself into the role of the main character, I think GTA does more to insert the player into the environment. I think my primary concern when...

And that actually gets into the topic of another essay that I wrote last month, sort of.

Thanks.

I mean, at this point there are no concrete genres in video games because the technology and conventions are constantly developing, so what does and does not constitute a particular type of game is something that can be continuously questioned and considered to be evolving. In the case of...