Pokemon, Sequels and Perception of Change

If you see discussions about video games online you likely have heard about a sentiment that Pokemon as a series is stale and unwilling to change. Looking at the “mainline”[1] games at a glance it is easy to see why: All of the games share a wide variety of tropes: The player begins the adventure in a small cozy town, chooses a starter between Fire/Water/Grass types, engages in many simplistic battles, has to defeat regional leaders that usually stick to a single type, gets the ability to make their Pokemon cut grass, swim and fly, cleanses their region from some type of evil team, faces the cover legendary Pokemon, reaches the credits by defeating the champion and entering the hall of fame and after this, is able to access a couple of side challenges, new areas, mini-games and of course, can complete the Pokedex by “catching them all”. Longtime followers of the series are not wrong about something feeling off, the series has several problems regarding its presentation and ability to satisfy the myriad of  desires of its huge and diverse fanbase. Stagnation is not one of them.

Flashy Changes

Pokemon games treat their features as disposable. Often these are tech gimmicks: Companion apps, peripherals, minigames to show off the console capabilities and make co-op more appealing. Sometimes certain features feel more experimental and don’t make the cut in sequels. Despite looking light on big changes, Black & White (2010) in particular are notable with the number of orphaned mechanics. Do you remember Triple Battles?  Some mechanics come and go between games. Heartgold & Soulsilver (2009) allow the player to walk around with their mon. If you have enjoyed that you can also see it again in Lets Go:Pikachu & Eevee (2018)… in a more limited form.  Some cuts are more brutal. Mega Evolutions were a highly advertised feature for 2 generations and then disappeared into the aether. Remember Battle Frontier? Press F to pay respects…

From this angle, Pokemon games certainly “innovate” a lot, too much perhaps. “Oh these aren’t real, just gimmicks” you might say. But they have real thought and effort behind them all the same. They don’t feel tangible in large part because they don’t stick around. This is a constant in game history: No matter how much players may speak of innovation, they always seek familiarity in sequels. And this creates a paradoxical response to Pokemon games, people think Pokemon is stale because it changes too much. One thing you might like in a game may disappear completely in the next. Sword & Shield (2019) gathered so much controversy because it showed that even the pocket monsters themselves aren’t safe from the cutting floor.

Is this merciless approach a good thing? You can argue that they make games more memorable in retrospect and it is admirable that Gamefreak commits so much to short-lived features. Many of the cutting decisions are justifiable in isolation. While there were many potential Mega Evolutions I would like to see, I still prefer regular evolutions and regional variants. I love Battle Frontier but it’s quite involved for a post-game attraction that most players don’t even attempt to complete. I also still stand in defense of the Dexit,[2] a limited, rotating roster can be potentially great for the series. Feature creep is also a real design problem, the designers can’t just continuously add and mix mechanics without risking oversaturation. Nevertheless, losing major features is never fun and especially so when they’re robbed from reaching full maturity. As much as people focus over the lightning-in-the-bottle achievements of pioneer games, most gameplay language and conveniences we take for granted today are the result of gradual perfection over multiple different series, development teams and even decades.

Gradual Changes

Thankfully, Pokemon made many gradual changes since the first sequels Gold & Silver (1999) and Crystal (2000) were released. It’s not a coincidence that the games which feel like a proper sequels the most are very well remembered among fans. Generation 2 games truly codified most of the big and small features Pokemon is known for today, from weather moves to being able to play as a girl. But really, every generation has made similar leaps. Gen 3 entries brought the familiar sprites to the games, added key mechanics like Natures and Double Battles. Gen 4 added many staple items, reworked how the damage was calculated and made many improvements that made battling with other players viable. I have stated that Gen 5 was full of experimental features, but the developers seem to have kept a lot of ideas around. Z Crystals in Gen 7 look like they have evolved from the abandoned Gem mechanic, they were then developed further into Dynamax feature. Pet interactions and Hidden Abilities from the Dream World feature were realized much better in subsequent games. These are still relatively big compared to the many subtle additions to the games. Quality of Life improvements, small adjustments in base Pokemon stats, updated mechanics, easier navigation of the world, more moves, more items…Not only that, these stuff aren’t just added for the sake of more content. In the last few gens in particular Gamefreak seems very interested in making mons more life-like and increasing the tactical depth of the games And of course, every new generation comes with a host of new and old but painted critters. When listing like this in conjunction with the big gimmicks added, tech migration and frantic-looking development cycle this is nothing short of impressive. Compared with other venerable game series, and I use this word rarely when talking about media, this assessment becomes objectively true. This is not really about whether the changes are good, or worth paying attention to, the right kind or unable to answer a core dissatisfaction. (ex. “battles should be real time!!!”) Imagine a new Shin Megami Tensei game with 100 previously unseen demons or an Elder Scrolls sequel with 30 new spells and 2 new spell categories. The level of change Pokemon games go through are usually only seen in reboots to old and dormant series.

The changes are impactful too. Some object to this by claiming that mechanical changes are mostly relevant to the competitive scene. In truth, the metagame always finds its way one way or another, but even minor changes make the older games feel weird. Despite replaying the games over the years again and again, today I cannot return to the games older than Diamond & Pearl (2006). Sure, when you pick the Water starter and go through battles by choosing the strongest Water attack available, they are not that different. But when I put any amount of thought into the mechanics, I cannot just get through the incredibly sparse distribution of level up moves, not having future evolutions around, so many mons being impossibly grating to level up or near useless in battles. After playing B & W  I instinctively expected TMs [3] to be reusable. But even those games feel a little strange with the absence of the Fairy type. And I am not alone in such feelings. S & S sparked a controversy by a decision to have a previously optional item that gives passive mons in the trainer’s party experience always switched on. Many thought that it made the game too easy, which is another fascinating topic related to fan perception, but even this minor change clearly mattered. 

This is why it is ignorant to criticize the series as being stagnant. This applies to most other series too. People often discuss every minor difference in Souls games in meticulous detail but to onlookers like me, it’s just an armored person rolling around and hitting big weepy monsters with a broadsword. In some sense, both observations are equally correct. When two things have many similarities the differences only become more visible on a close look. And it is fine to be ignorant about the details of a game, but it is not fine to pass the ignorance as insightful criticism. Pokemon is unlikely to be affected by some loud voices in social media, but higher standards for game criticism can only improve the way people perceive games. Players owe themselves and the creators the chance to think more seriously about games and at least should be critical enough to not want groundbreaking changes and still expect the games to evoke childhood nostalgia at the same time. 

That Which Remains the Same

Having written all this, there are notables cases where people are justified to feel a stagnant air in the series:

The visuals have been… underwhelming. But before that point, let’s address a common type of argument: Attributing clear creative decisions to laziness or pure irrationality is plainly bad criticism. Pokemon’s visuals are like that in part because there is a faithful commitment to minimalism and consistency.  It isn’t that helpful to compare mainline games’ visuals to games like Pokemon Stadium(1999). Those games were designed with spectacle in mind. Mainline games give brief and unimpressive animations to basic, low damage, early game moves like Tackle or Scratch because battles are intended to be reasonably fast. But Stadium-like games don’t have such concerns, they can take their sweet time in long wind-ups and reactions. Minimalist visuals also fit handheld screens better, for example flashing screens can become overwhelming. [4] Minimalism also makes consistency easier. Majority of the moves in the games share animations throughout the series. [5] Environments, rooms, and human NPC designs are generally unmistakably “Pokemon”. Even the monsters themselves avoid overly busy designs and are able to carry a level of consistency between a ball with eyes and a mythical dragon while also avoiding mons blending into one another. And this direction has paid off: At its worst the visuals have still kept a level of charm despite whatever limitations they have been under. At their best they burst with life and emotion. And yet... 

I have always had this uneasy feeling that the visuals have been a little low-balled. Not true for the first two generations, in fact they have tested the limits of their platforms, Gen 3 has a serviceable “this is a Pokemon game” look but not much more, Gen 4 is crisp and colorful enough to serve as a baseline for the visual quality of the series but even less experimental than Gen 3. Gen 5 looks admirable in spades but is let down by the hardware somewhat, Gen 6 has a lot of ideas but experienced the ever-painful switch to 3D, Gen 7 is better at realizing these ideas but lacks the passive benefits of a platform upgrade. Gen 8 without a doubt occasionally has the best looks of any Pokemon game so far, at the same time Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl (2021) uses funko-pop looking characters in the overworld. The series’ visuals became brighter, sharper, more colorful, jumped to 3D, improved upon that, but as the years passed and hardware became more and more powerful, the expectation of a true breakthrough grew larger and larger and so far, it has yet to be fulfilled. Even now; there are no expressive human faces, no consistently fluid animation, no true collusion or particle physics, no real lightning, no detailed textures, nothing to show people that these are AAA console games from the current period. The series doesn't have to implement all or any of these features to look satisfyingly beautiful, and it should be stressed that battles being turn-based or aiming for a particular kind of stylized graphics is not the problem, but it needs to do something to make people say “Wow! This looks slick and new!” but for the moment, no matter how beautiful the visuals can be in places, they can’t hide the scars of troubled development. When discussing the graphics, the players might have unreasonable expectations, focus on the wrong things or make asinine assumptions about how game development works but the disappointment they feel is not cynical.

Another factor that doesn’t bring any favors is that the games don’t really require that much thought to play. Players don’t really have to engage with the big features and subtle changes on a deep level. Players often come to see the promised new content and then move on. When a game is presented as an amusement park, players treat it like one. You may design the attractions as intricately as you can, but if someone comes for a simple merry-go-round ride, they will not pay too much attention. And the problem isn’t easily solved by a difficulty-mode damage modifier, higher enemy levels or adding action gimmicks to battles. The games’ easy battles are not some kind of destructive flaw either, the series owes part of its charm to being able to be so non-threatening and non-demanding no matter what kind of player someone is, what their mood is, how busy they seem to be. You can always open up a game, lose yourself in a whimsical world and enjoy hanging out with dangerous pets for a couple of hours. Being challenging enough to demand dedication or create frustration at any level creates a mental filter for a lot of players. The solution is not obvious here. I have a lot of ideas for a Pokemon game that would cater to me the most but are they reasonable to ask for without compromising anything from the friendliness of the series? Hard to say. But perhaps fine-tuning flashy features like Mega Evolutions or Dynamax instead of throwing them away would go a long way towards an impression of progress in the eyes of returning players.

This task certainly would be much easier, unnecessary even, if the story played a heavier part. Here, Final Fantasy series is a good point of comparison. Like Pokemon, FF loves throwing away major game mechanics in each new installment and like Pokemon, many features across FF titles fall behind their true potential. Some of the games even gained notoriety for their design choices. But the series have never garnered a reputation for growing stale in huge part because the games all promise a completely new epic story in a unique setting. On Gamefreak’s part hand, they have always been keen on experimentation. For example, I am quite impressed with how B & W is able to characterize “N” by leaving most of it to the player's observation. A lot of games and even movies or books are not confident enough in their writing or the audience to do so. Even G & S gives a character profile for your rival deeper than anyone has ever asked for a Gameboy Color game. There is a actually lot to appreciate in the settings of Pokemon game, but you need to have an eye for fine details.  But no matter how high they aim for their writing, it cannot overshadow the primary adventure people seek in the series. The main loop of the mainline games are heavily player-driven. The most memorable moments come from Shiny encounters, fainting a legendary mon on accident, a random battle that is surprisingly difficult, becoming champion with the guys you have been attached to or navigating self-imposed rules, not rising moments of tension or a punching line from a character. The real story of any mainline Pokemon game is the player’s journey to prove themselves as a trainer. A heavily guided tale that wants attention to dialogue is fundamentally different and likely gravely incompatible. For many players such a shift would be unpleasant not only because it distracts from the parts they care about but similar to a noticeable increase in complexity, it turns playing the game into an emotional investment. Not only would this make “just picking up” the game more difficult, if the investment isn’t rewarded satisfactorily it becomes actively hostile to future re-runs. In particular, it might bore children rather easily.

Conclusion

Pokemon games have experimented and evolved a lot in each sequel. In fact a good part of loud complaints come from disliking the changes, such as the switch to the 3D graphics, gradual embrace of the open world gameplay, removed features, discarding updated releases in favor of DLCs, the perceived downgrade in game’s difficulty and more. [6] But with a series as old as Pokemon, it is almost inevitable to feel a certain degree of weariness or  develop unfulfilled expectations at some point, and certain key design choices don't help with the impression. This matters not for the success of the games. The core appeal alone is strong enough to draw a lot of people. Even if the games truly became low-effort advertisements for merchandise, short of stopping creating new pocket monsters altogether, the series will not stop raking in cash. This matters because it gives insight about us. We are not great at perceiving change when it’s slow but also similarly bad at it when it’s fast enough to seem temporary. Inversely we often mistake the changes in ourselves for the change of the world around us. This is a weakness we need to overcome to be able to critique media, and sequels in particular without limiting ourselves but our expectations. It is relevant for the creators on how to approach their fanbases and future sequels. Sequels, expansions, DLCs and alike are useful for building on the good ideas and testing their limits, like changing a particular variable in a controlled environment. But if the sequels cannot walk in synth with the players, they can sow the seeds for a paradoxical desire for orthodoxy and reform at the same time. Players often can feel something is wrong but will often misidentify the issues. An important challenge for any developer is to look at the criticism and determine what’s actually causing the problem. Those who are dedicated to games critique have the power and responsibility to direct the discourse into a productive place. My tiny blog doesn’t matter at all at such a scale of course, but video creators and journalists with large audiences definitely influence how people discuss and perceive games. At least we should be able to see through the fog of hype and outrage.

Some ideas and franchises can be too big to extinguish but they can certainly burn their creators away. Pokemon itself has nearly become an example. While this is chiefly corporations’ fault, on our end, we can at least not be so sensitive about change (either in favor or against it) to take personal offense at creative decisions.

In any case Pocket Monsters provides us boundless ideas to ponder and gives us the chance to explore the human condition. Well, at least mine, it has claimed part of my brain for itself.

This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons, namely: Effy, Laura Watson,  Makkovar, Morgan, Olympia, Otakundead, Sasha. Also thanks to Alex(@punishedgenetic on Twitter) for his perfect editing work.

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[1] A designation that groups every game that adds a new generation of monsters with remakes and remasters of these games.

[2] The decision to not include a fairly big number of Pokemon in S & S in any shape of form. A lot of more were added with DLCs later but as of writing this 234 of them are still unavailable. This shocked the fans because it was completely unprecedented for a mainline Pokemon game, you could always theoretically obtain all the monsters in any of the previous games up to the game’s generation. Also the statements from the devs did not exactly help.

[3] Items that teach moves to Pokemon.

[4] In the first season of Pokemon anime, an episode titled “Electric Soldier Pokemon” caused episodes of epilepsy among viewers, some of them became hospitalized. It is not far-fetched to assume that from then on any decision about Pokemon products has kept this in mind.

[5] I don’t mean sharing actual animation rigs or meshes of course

[6] This is a topic fascinating enough to have an article on its own.

Jrpg Is A Bad Name For A Genre

 

The term “JRPG” as a video game genre annoys me. Long-time readers of this blog might remember that I have written about this before, but this topic is worth re-visiting because it continues to create annoying discourse. That old post doesn’t quite hold up to my current standards, and also it is more of a general discussion about what the term “RPG” means. So a revisit is in order: 

Why does the discussions around the word “JRPG” tend to attract terrible takes? Here, I argue that it is because the term itself is a pit of unexamined and outdated generalizations, based on these points: 

• It is a misleading name, superficially about game having Japanese producers, in truth it is used for a set of unrelated, arbitrary qualities which is seen fit to be called “Japanese” or “Eastern” 

• These set of arbitrary qualities don’t build up a true shared identity or tradition of design 

• The games that are called “JRPG” don’t have unified traits which neatly separate them from “non-Japanese” RPGs 

• “JRPG” is unintuitively used to imply both an “rpg-ishness” but also a place of exclusion from “true” RPGs, a term which is subjected to a great degree historical revisionism that people insist on the most when talking about “JRPGs” 

• The label is awkwardly loaded to carry over the legacy of “the console RPG”, a distinction which was itself never quite correct and definitely not relevant today 

• “JRPG” inherently centers a western centric viewpoint, specifically an audience who is being advertised “an exotic product”, it is no surprise that the discourse around these games have racist undertones. 

• People who make hot takes about “JRPG” never explain what they mean by the term, instead instinctively drawing on lazy assumptions they have absorbed by cultural osmosis, breeding bad discourse

• The label actually obfuscates the set of shared design traditions we can use to connect games with.

Building upon the last point, I will present my personal approach to classification. My goal is not to evangelize a new naming convention, but to make you think about assumptions we make and hopefully, to make media critique a little healthier. If nothing else, classifying things greatly pleases me. 

 I want to stress here that vague terminology is a natural part of everyday speech, and the ideas behind the words are more important than words themselves but game critique examines our relationship towards games and our choice of words when describing games is absolutely a part of that. Also, all good media critique is a little pedantic.

1. “JRPG” does not mean “Japanese RPG”

Dark Souls is a JRPG. Made by Japanese developers, it is literally a “Japanese RPG”. And yet, I have seen no publication calling it such. Wikipedia includes it among “Eastern RPGs”, but it also doesn’t use “JRPG” as a distinct identifier.  

Why? More bafflingly, I imagine there are many who respond to this with a surprised look: “Well duh, Dark Souls is obviously not a JRPG?” There is nothing obvious about this. The clear thing here is that JRPG is something different from Japanese RPG, even though that’s what the acronym stands for and most people would use the two terms interchangeably but they would only exclude games like Dark Souls. What’s more, sometimes non-Japanese games are called JRPGs as well, and you can see why people do that some of the time. It almost makes sense, but it should not. This is opaque and unintuitive.

Other genre names have some unintuitiveness, as well. First person shooters are commonly understood as involving movement in a 3D space, 2D arcade first-person shooters don’t count. Similarly, in English discourse, “fighting game” is likely to exclude beat’em ups, despite the fact that they almost always involve  nothing but melee fights. In this case, it is very easy to understand why: On-rail shooters and beat’em ups aren’t very prolific anymore, people don’t immediately think about them when we say “FPS” or “fighting games”, respectively. This is not a conscious exclusion, while there are contrarians about everything, I am confident that most people would not seriously object if you said “Double Dragon is a fighting game.” 

Terms like “action” and “adventure” might be confusing to people who don’t really play a lot of games, considering that apart from a couple distinct genres such as puzzles, most video games involve some kind of action and adventure. But, they become less unintuitive when we think about their sources: “Action” clearly takes its name from action movies. Action movies live by their combat scenes, so an action game makes the player directly engage in real time combat. Pew pew, stab stab, pretty easy to understand. “Adventure” is somewhat more tricky: It refers to games defined by a lack of combat and a focus on exploring an environment or unraveling a mystery. “Adventure” does not describe a core mechanic, it describes a lineage: This game is like Colossal Cave Adventure (1986), or simply, Adventure. And there is a very clear need to identify games with deliberate focus away from combat. So really, “adventure” is as good of a one-word phrase as anything else.

More importantly, none of the terms mentioned above are deceptive. “JRPG” is a deceptive term. It draws you a coherent enough picture that we can go and say “Oh? JRPGs, you know? We just know how those games are…”

No. I don’t know. You don’t know either. No one knows.

2. “JRPG” defines a lot and nothing at the same time

“JRPG” can mean so many things:

• Japanese developers

• The game has “Japanese-ness”

• “Anime” look

• “Turn-based” combat

• Random encounters

• Combat transition screen

• Dungeon areas separated from non combat zones

• World map where characters are represented gigantically

• Fantasy setting, may or may not have futuristic elements

• Elaborate, spectacular boss fights

• Long plots, lots of dialogue, often with a lot of cutscenes

• Story does not offer branching paths or moral choices

• Linear story and environmental progression. If there are any “side quests”, they are minimal.

• Characters have pre-defined personalities and appearance with little room for player expression

• Characters level up

• Leveling up happens frequently

• Low customization, no stat allocation on level up

• Engaging in combat specifically to level up or collect resources (i.e. grinding)

• Little or no limitation on inventory

• And so on…

There are many ways to classify games. But not all of them are very illuminating for game critique. Sure, “anime” look, “turn-based” games or colorful bosses are things I enjoy and seek in games, but does that mean that they are meaningful for identifying genres? Is “JRPG” a pointer for a set of narrowly-defined design ethos, or an umbrella term for a myriad of games that share a nucleus? If it's the former, it becomes doubly awkward to call the genre “Japanese RPG”. If it's the latter, it doesn’t make sense to have so much gameplay and setting requirements, especially when some of those requirements are nonsensical in of themselves. Genre names are usually defined minimally around a core element (action) or elaborately around detailed expectations (roguelike). JRPG sits in an awkward spot where it clearly evokes tropes from certain games but those evocations don’t trail back to a shared identity between those games.

3. “JRPG” points to no unified identity

If “JRPG” points at a unified identity, it should be easy to determine which set of qualities make a RPG “Japanese”. Unfortunately as it turns out, having Japanese producers is not enough.

Is it having “anime” looks? What does it mean to have “anime” graphics?  Better yet, what is “anime” in the first place? Outside of Japanese, it usually is a loan word to describe Japanese animation. The bad terminology starts right here, I have heard “anime” being referred to as a genre worryingly often. Yes, a country’s cultural output shows a shared history. The shared history can reveal many design traditions. “Ottoman poetry” or “Soviet cinema” are valid areas of study. No, this doesn’t make them genres. Otherwise this implies that an entire country has the cultural width of a movement of only several artists, which is quite othering. Anime offers widely different artistic directions, saying a game looks like “anime” or “cartoon” only says that it doesn’t look “realistic”.

It’s gravely frustrating that the dictionary of gaming media contains so many pure marketing terms. People don’t think about how weird it is to talk about, say, “animated cutscenes”. On the whole, only a minority of games use any live-action footage, most games are entirely animated. There is no “make the game look naturalistic” button. Lighting, meshes, shades, colors are all conscious decisions by the designers. One can just say “non-engine cutscenes” but we don’t, because game graphics must be discussed in the limited window of realism. Final Fantasy 10 (2000) has well-detailed, well-proportioned creatures and buildings presented in an environment with exquisite attention to color and flow of water, managing to look both whimsical and lifelike at the same time. It’s a true visual marvel. Another popular game from the same year, Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind looks like a decayed horror puppet show. Yet the gaming press have pledged eternal servitude to the 3D acceleration gods, so the former looks like “anime”, the latter looks “realistic”. This feels so disrespectful to the craft. Trails in the Sky(2004) uses 3D models on a 2D plane, giving it a very distinguished toy-like look. Dragon Quest 11: Echoes of An Elusive Age (2017) gives a sharply drawn Pixar movie vibe. Shin Megami Tensei/Persona games had many different directions but they all have the unique blend of brightness and weariness that makes the environments feel both otherworldly and mundane at the same time. Looking past the fidelity hype, “realistic” games also make wildly varied choices. Modern horror games use hyperrealism to disgust and unnerve the player. Many open world games have a very pastoral direction, sometimes to the point of making the human feel out of place. FPS and racing games clearly masturbate to guns and cars, respectively. Gaming critique would immensely improve if it stopped hatched on lazy terms so much.

Even beyond using obstructive terms, does it even make sense to put graphics as the basis of a genre? Perhaps, but it is strange to do so selectively. For the most part, game genres are almost entirely defined by gameplay concepts. Visuals immensely affect the character of a game but would Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim (2011) have fundamentally split from other “Western RPGs” if it had looked like Trails of Cold Steel (2013)? Especially when its predecessor: Oblivion (2006) looks like a saturated, darkened Shrek movie most of the time. It all feels bizarre to me, because the logic clearly comes from preconceived notions of how Western titles look rather than thinking about how visuals affect the design of the games.

The other commonly seen definition of “JRPG” is having a collection of several gameplay concepts, most importantly having a separate screen for battles and “turn-based” combat. It should be noted here that “turn-based” actually refers to controlling characters with a menu, whether battles actually happen by taking turns or spending time slots is not that relevant, so it should be really called “having a combat menu UI”. Is performing combat through menus a genre-defining property? It does affect the general design of the game quite a bit after all. But it doesn’t really separate a game from “Western” RPGs. The WRPG label doesn’t seem to have such restrictions. Anything from full tactical gameplay to almost pure action is OK. And really, would Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) be so fundamentally different if it had combat transition screens? Or, in a purely structural sense, how much is it different from a Tales entry? If anything, the latter is more fast paced and combo oriented compared to most Western action RPGs. The only way this makes sense is to conclude that “JRPG” lacks a coherent set of qualities, because it is defined by exclusion, by looking too “anime”. Anything about game mechanics is a backwards justification, not a point of serious analysis. 

4. “JRPG” is a label to demote a game from being “true” RPGs.

“Roleplaying” in video games is not just playing as a soldier, an adventurer, a cook etc. but being that person with a past and personality, making decisions and having the world react to you back, to create the experience of a tabletop role playing game. This is facilitated by rich dialogue trees, morality systems, factional alignments, player actions snowballing into unpredictable future events, customization options for appearance, character builds, obstacles designed to be solvable in different approaches and creating as many opportunities to let players express a personality as possible. A fairly common argument is that a roleplaying video game is a game that has such mechanics and that it should try to approximate a tabletop experience as much as possible. This is quite understandable, given that the idea that the computer simulating a Dungeon Master [1] is perhaps old as using the word “RPG” for video games.

Unfortunately, this is an ahistorical definition. Computer [2] RPGs have always been called as such because they are mathematically simulating a tabletop game: Character sheets, level progression, combat calculations, inventories, maps etc. Things like story, characters with personalities, lore, non-transactional dialogue came quite later. It’s all good to say “JRPGs aren’t real RPGs” but then this argument extends to declare that nearly two decades of games designed, marketed and accepted as RPGs have not been RPGs all along. It is also weird because Japanese RPGs were quite instrumental for the push from math-intensive dungeon dwelling to games centered around strongly realized narratives, worlds and the feel of RPG adventure, and in fact, ahead of serious attempts by Western RPGs. They are built upon tabletop RPGs as well. Reserving the word RPG for around a handful of franchises designed to imitate a tabletop experience opens more holes than it closes. It’s usually easier to widen a definition than to narrow it down.

More importantly, the fundamental difference between video game roleplaying and tabletop roleplaying needs to be addressed. All video games except the most abstract ones attempt to simulate an experience. Racing games want to make you feel fast. A football game wants you to give the thrill of playing football. Games with a protagonist make you, to a certain degree, feel like that person. Tabletop systems have the same goal, the difference lies in methodology. They create an environment to make the player imagine scenarios, whereas video games create scenarios players can see and hear to capture the player’s imagination. Moreover, tabletop and video games are both necessarily unfaithful simulations. Tabletop games are a medium of mats, dice, pens, papers. Video games are a medium of buttons, sticks and  --nowadays-- VR headsets. The difference in physical experience gives another dimension of difference in two roleplaying systems. But this layer of difference goes beyond the specifics of the play items. If a tabletop game was conducted in an electronic  medium, if the player communicated exclusively with chat systems, all calculations and decisions were mediated with a computer, the layer would not disappear. Because the physical experience is still used to give space to player-made scenarios, not a pre-made or generated one.

The most important difference however, a tabletop game is a social experience, whereas video games have a social dimension built on top of them. Roleplaying in a tabletop game is a fundamentally collective experience, a scenario is enacted by the clash and harmony of multiple brains. In a multiplayer game, players still primarily interact with the computer individually and use the channels the computer gives to interact with other players. The roleplay experience happens separately. Anything more needs to be done outside of the computer’s supervision, meaning, outside of the game.

Then, what do exactly dialogue trees, factions, classes etc. add to a video game? Of course they enhance the ability to roleplay in various ways, but at its core, we are still no closer to the tabletop experience than a figure of  level progression values or controlling a virtual avatar to swing a sword around. Roleplaying in a video game is a unique experience, but it is not limited to “roleplaying games”, let alone only ones with very specific design goals among them.

5. The problems of “JRPG” don’t vanish with “Console RPG”

A fairly common term in RPG discourse is “Computer RPG”. Originally just referring to the platform, the terms seems to have been crystallized to RPGs which have long dialogue,branching paths etc. and to specifically contrast with “console RPG”. This is nearly identical to “WRPG vs JRPG” dichotomy and while it bypasses the weird implications, it is still problematic: Because for the most part, “Computer RPG” is still implied to be the true RPGs but also because, “the console vs the computer” is a misleading framing. PC game development in Japan was quite active in the 80s and stayed somewhat relevant until the 2000s and many RPGs, including famous ones like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, either had ports or were developed first for the PC. Also, quite a bit of Western RPGs made their way  to the consoles. Most charitably, the console vs computer RPG divide existed maybe a few years in 2000s before games being released on more than one platform, however late, began to emerge as the new norm. Today, “JRPG” is still somewhat used with “console RPG” interchangeably, and it is still awkward. 

6. “JRPG” is Western-centric

No need to beat around the bush: The Western discourse and attitudes on East Asian cultural outputs have been, and sometimes still are, plainly cringeworthy. On the video game front however, things are a little more complex.

The Japanese impact on video games is undeniable. So much so that, discourse often dodged the usual Orientalism, it was simply a fact that you were playing Japanese games on Japanese consoles. Consider that for the PS1 and PS2 eras, Final Fantasy games were the biggest AAA titles of their release years. It is somewhat difficult to speak of these games in an othering tone when they ruled the scene. For this reason I don’t actually find it surprising that “JRPG” or even “Japanese RPG” doesn’t really appear in the 1990s or even much of the 2000s. [3] It just wasn’t thought of as separate from Western games.   

Then, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, something happened. In much of the gaming press, a “decline” narrative took foothold. JRPGs, they said, were “stagnating”, “anime”, “outdated”,”cliche”. Of course, they were still often praising the new Japanese releases, yet they needed to “innovate”. [4] Even the old games they hailed as “core role-playing experiences” for years and decades were not spared from scolding. They were “slow”, “overly complex” and “stiff”. Now that big-boy Western games like Oblivion and Dragon Age were here, it was a problem that “JRPGs” were too “stale”, probably needed to be a bit like them, not “too Japanese”. As soon as Western press could turn up their noses without losing clout, they did, and “the Japanese-ness” became a problem. The same attitudes have always existed for niche localized titles, especially visual novels, and in hindsight it was inevitable that it eventually hit RPGs too, doubly so in an age where long-time Japan-only games were slowly being localized.  

No wonder that “JRPG” feels so awkward. It wasn’t really around until an arbitrary list of features people have some grievances genre-ivied around what Westerns decide as “Japanese”. When people invoke a cultural association heavily in a negative context, the discourse inevitably gets loaded with racist undertones.   

7. “JRPG” enables bad critique 

Regardless of whether someone cares about game reviews or not, the discourse still flows downstream into the general public. We are discussing games with the vocabulary the gaming press and the marketing teams create. It’s irresponsible to write thinkpieces and list hot takes about Japanese games if you don’t know what you mean when you say “JRPG”. It’s really not merely my love of taxonomy, I just want to know the base assumptions the author is making. When I read something like “JRPGs are clunky”, I truly think “Damn, that’s crazy. I wish I knew which games you are referencing here...”

This goes hand in hand with a second issue. In the absence of a common understanding of a genre, the writers entirely rely upon their pool of personal references, which, I can say with great confidence, is usually very shallow. Perhaps some Square games in Super Famicom, perhaps Final Fantasy games from the PS1 era, often a collection of popular hits like Pokemon and Persona. Usually a stand-in for “turn-based” games, you would be quite lucky to find any reference to action games that are not FF 15. Even luckier if you never encounter the word “anime”. If the author talks about a game without an English version, you’re basically witnessing a miracle! 

A good critique avoids uniformed generalizations. Starting the discourse with balloon concepts like “JRPG” encourages them. Even otherwise reputable writers time and time again fell into it’s magic. At least, with something like “Computer RPG”, we can be reasonably confident that the person is talking with some coherent design goals in mind. “JRPG”, on the other hand, can be anything you want it to be. A lightning rod for childhood nostalgia, a pinch of exoticism for a newly localized title, or a nice boogeyman of every video game trope you think of as “Japanese” thus bad. Just bad games writing all the way down.

8. It blocks us from better ways to think about games

Perhaps one reason the word “outdated” comes up with “JRPG” is because, in a sense, “JRPG” is outdated. You can never see innovation in something if you repeat arguments that already decided it as backward a long time ago. There will never be a fresh take about “JRPGs”, only reviews gushing how a new popular RPG “revitalizes the genre”, “gives a fresh spin on classics”, “shows that JRPGs can be [insert good thing]” for the umpteenth time. So then, let’s think of alternatives!

First, what is a “genre” when it comes to video games? In the past, it was quite simple: Are you shooting, jumping or moving things around like chess pieces? Simplicity is certainly useful sometimes. But contemporary thinking bends towards focusing on specific features without making judgments on the game as a whole. For example, “Metroidvania '' points to certain ideas on level design. It doesn’t make assumptions about combat or game spaces. You can have a 2D shooter Metroidvania or 3D turn-based Metroidvania. This makes it easy to talk about games with mixed and creative design ideas without awkwardly collapsing them into broad categories.

So, should “RPG” be an umbrella name pointing to a simple interaction, or a particular pattern that can appear in wildly different games? For a long time, they have distinguished themselves as being centered around a strong sense of progression. But today, that’s a little shaky; most games have embraced “RPG elements” in one way or another. They favor empowering the player bit by bit and want us to play the game for a long time. Is every game that has a skill tree an RPG, or does the game need to obsess over character statistics a little more?

Perhaps big modern games, with their desire to be a little bit of everything for everyone, are making us lose the forest for the trees. I have already mentioned that old RPGs are called so because they imitated tabletop RPGs. But, this by itself does not mean a lot in terms of game design. Instead, we should ask this: How did they approach their goal? Time and time again, we see three answers:

• A game like Wizardry: Proving Grounds of Mad Overlord (1981) says: “RPG means numbers. Lists of numbers. All the numbers please”

• A game like Legend of Zelda (1986) or Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished (1987) says: “No, what’s important about RPGs is the feeling of being in a well-realized fantasy world, the moments of exploration and triumph.” [5]

• A game like Dragon Quest (1986) says “I can have both the numbers and the fantasy world”

The first approach aims for delayed satisfaction. These games want you to plan, manage resources and gradually train the player characters to mastery. They are very reminiscent of strategy games in some key ways, no wonder many “RPG-strategy” hybrids fit this model. 

The second approach takes its strength from other video game designs. These games are about the moment-to-moment fantasies that RPGs can offer. Finding hidden items, beating impressive bosses, solving puzzles, successfully talking your way out of something, expressing your character visually and textually more than with statistics. These games simplify and often outright remove numerical representation whenever they see it as a crutch for the feel of the game.

The third approach unites the first two approaches. This is not a really middle-of-the-road approach, rather it wants to achieve both in-depth planning and a fully immersive world, only cribbing from them to achieve the integration better.

Finally we have a coherent picture of a genre and I can provide my answer.: A computer RPG is a game that tries to be an RPG in a computer. This is recursive, but, RPG is really a feeling like “horror” or “romance” more than a neat collection of gameplay elements. Every RPG is a spiritual successor of previous RPGs, the spirit is what connects them the most, more than any particular design idea. It might not look quite descriptive at first but it is actually not that vague. Think of Grand Theft Auto games: They simulate a lot of things, and the next installment can add progression bars or skill trees all it wants but RPG-ness needs a deeper textural feel that needs to be in every fiber of the game. A game similarly doesn’t become horror if it just puts random, out-of-context jump scares isn’t it. It should want to be a RPG.

I find this is a satisfactory answer for a couple of reasons: First, it encompasses most games that someone could think of as RPGs and some games that aren’t called so but have clear links to the former. Second, it relies on a specific interpretation of “roleplaying” in video games. Third, it doesn’t make assumptions about a game’s features such as linearity, speed of combat, the weight of the plot or even any online features; clearly RPGs show a rich variety across all these. Lastly, it highlights similarities between games that are usually neglected within the discourse.

Now, onto the subcategories! I will call RPGs that are in love with numbers as a Bookkeeping RPG. These games essentially make us have fun while maintaining databases and making numbers go up. It covers very old-school games with various tactics or strategy hybrids. We can also use the term “classic-type RPG”, but “classic” is a fairly overused term in media critique so I am avoiding it, plus “bookkeeping” is funnier.

The second type can be called a Journey RPG. These games are mainly interested in making us travel to a different world. Numerical systems are not necessarily shallow but they are clearly not the main attraction. Modern AAA behemoth games are clear examples of these, despite their many, many design goals. So are most 3D Final Fantasy games, they are very clearly drama and spectacle centered, even if they include side bosses to account for the power players. In fact, not only were they the biggest games of their times, they set the blueprint for today's all-encompassing design approach.  

The third type can be called Growth RPG. These games are about multi-faceted changes of the main characters; statistical, visual, story-wise and everything else. Many old and new RPGs, Western and Eastern alike, fall into this category. [6] Yes, games like Final Fantasy 6 (1994) and Baldur’s Gate (1998) are similar in many ways. They both have extensive combat systems alongside rich story content. The differences in execution matter, but they can be expressed with further categories or qualifiers in ways that do not swallow the connections.

Once again, I don’t claim that my method is the only good way to classify RPGs, in fact it is very accommodating to many potential taxonomies. This is also not a complete work, we can deepen our taxonomy a lot more, but this article is already too long. Besides I put almost no thought for online RPGs because I basically know nothing about them. One could say that their design concerns are different from single player RPGs and require a different approach. However, at least when it comes to single-player games, taxonomy is a topic that’s certainly worth visiting again, because it is quite fun. I hope it was for you too!

Notes:

[1] A person that can be considered as an overseer of a tabletop RPG game. They create the scenarios, write NPCs for the players to interact, respond to the player actions, manage various disputes that might arise etc. “Dungeon Master” (DM) is originally used in Dungeons & Dragons but DM made its way into general tabletop game terminology.   

[2] In the sense of a “Von Neumann machine”, not just personal computers. “RPG video game” is redundant, Video-RPG is not entirely true because there are text-based ones. So, “computer” is the best next thing. But no worries, it won’t be confused with “CRPG”s, which mentioned later

[3] I don’t claim that my research is extraordinarily extensive but I did research quite a bit. I did not write this much to make up guys to get mad about.

[4] Just food for thought, this was the golden era of modern military shooters, brown graphics and dudes in armor. Games like Bioshock Infinite and Heavy Rain were “redefining” storytelling. You couldn’t just get more excited at the sheer level of innovation happening. 

[5] Yes, LoZ has a strong RPG heritage. There are no meaningful differences between it and a game like Ys. To call one the former “action-adventure” and the other RPG. Like a lot of its kind, Zelda is a very clear response to originator games like Dragon Slayer (1984) and Hydlide (1984).

[6] Western RPGs have a historical attachment to complex game systems. Even action combat tended to be complicated and janky. Their Japanese contemporaries often have more streamlined systems, yet only they are constantly called “clunky” and “slow”, really makes you think!

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This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons, namely: Effy, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Morgan, Olympia, Otakundead, Sasha. Also thanks to Alex(@jyhadscientist on Twitter) for his perfect editing work