View From the Bottom #7

In the seventh “View From the Bottom” feature on RPG Vault, Spiderweb Software’s Jeff Vogel tells us why he hates fantasy role-playing games.

Fantasy role-playing games are unique among computer games in one thing: they are fundamentally about starting out weak and learning to be strong. And that learning process generally involves a lot of tedium.

Consider other sorts of games. In Doom or Quake, you start out weak. How do you get strong? You pick up a big gun, and suddenly, you’re hardcore. Sure. In Madden, you start out a good football team, and you play some football for an hour, and then you get on with your life. When you play Tetris, you don’t have to rotate the L-shaped pieces for three hours before you’re good enough to handle the straight ones.