I think some others make the mistake of thinking the change is bad, and originality of a stronger knd is ridiculously dangerous risk-taking to be frowned upon very severely (hello Blizzard!). Seems to work out for them, I guess, but it saps the energy of the games involved, quite often.
The question I have is, why stick with the Tolkien/D&D tropes? (Much more the former) That's what's not been answered, for my money. You can hedge and hem and haw all you like about how it's "different enough", but why use them at all? What's the percentage? What's the upside? How does it enable, rather than limiting? In particular, it seems like there's a lot of use of LotR models (Dunedain-Gray Wardens, Darkspawn-Orc/Goblins, etc.), why is that? It seems like very worn territory given exactly how many imitators Tolkein spawned.
If enough people out there felt the same way that we could make money on a game targeting them, then we'd do that in a heartbeat. But aside from FF games, which sell because A) Japan loves them and B) there's name recognition 13 games long to help sell whatever the hell they decide to put on disk, no fantasy RPG has sold the kinds of numbers we'd need to make Dragon Age profitable.
The more you get away from traditional fantasy in a gaming setting, the more and more niche your audience becomes. The fact is, Joe Xbox isn't nearly as literate in or soured by traditional fantasy as a genre.
Trust me. The marketing research has been done on this, and we've been answering this exact same question since we first showed DA in 2004.
Quote:
I'm just really unconvinced that those pre-established notions help things, rather than simply muddying the waters. To be honest, DA:O is a perfect example of "cannibal halflings", moreso, actually, than Dark Sun, which twisted things further from the preconcieved notions of what D&D was about, than DA:O does with sub-Tolkeinian fantasy. Why have them be elves at all, rather than just a tribe/ethnic group of humans or whatever?
The process is thus: You say, "Elves!" This immediately places an image in a player's mind. Then you say, "But different!" Now that person thinks, "Okay, how different?" Hopefully, this gets them interested in these elves' plight. How did the elves change from immortal beings to slaves? What's different about this world that caused the elves to evolve this way? (By the way, that's all explained in a history thing I wrote, linked here on the Dragon Age wiki.)
The thing is, not everyone is as worn out and jaded about "Cannibal halflings" as we hardcore RPG players are. We can't play to the jaded. We have to play the world as it's written. The Elves in DA weren't created by saying, "How can we make our elves different?" Our elves evolved that way, and if you ever read the history of the elves, you'll see how.
Quote:
It's notable to me that you didn't really do the same thing with Mass Effect. It seemed to draw from a wider variety of SF sources, none of the aliens are particularly close analogues to any SF races I can think of (and believe, I've seen/read most of it!), and so on. So why is it with fantasy, you chose to live in the shadow of a particular author (or did you?), whereas with SF, you built your own universe? Maybe as the DA universe ages, it will come to be more distinct?
Name a sci-fi race with the kind of "brand recognition" that elves and dwarves have. I'll wait.
Vulcans? Space elves. Klingons? Go up to five random people on the street and ask them who the Klingons are, other than "The bad guys from Star Trek." Hutts, maybe?
Elves and dwarves are taken right out of human folklore, and thus have a lot stronger recognition in our culture. For sci-fi, you have to make up something new, or else you run into the TNG "Humans with bumpy noses" problem.
The goal with any of our games isn't to make something different to make the jaded gamers happy and show how impressive we are. It's to make fun, engaging games that will sell enough so we can keep making games. The very thing that allows people to riff on the fantasy genre is the thing that makes the genre so powerful at its core. You can't deconstruct something that isn't built up in the first place.
Last edited by Tar Markvar; 11-03-2009 at 12:44 PM..
I'm just really unconvinced that those pre-established notions help things, rather than simply muddying the waters. To be honest, DA:O is a perfect example of "cannibal halflings", moreso, actually, than Dark Sun, which twisted things further from the preconcieved notions of what D&D was about, than DA:O does with sub-Tolkeinian fantasy. Why have them be elves at all, rather than just a tribe/ethnic group of humans or whatever?
Because elves sell. People like elves and want them presented in their fantasy novels/RPGs/video games. Warhammer (and 40K) does it, WarCraft does it, Witcher does it, D&D (and probably most of it's settings) does it. Is it original? Not really, but it's profitable and in the end, that's what matters.
Not played the game yet but based on what I've read. I think it's important that they're Elves. Their Elves are pretty much standard Elves. That then got beaten up by Humans and enslaved. That's what makes it interesting for me. If they were a new races or humans it would lack the traditional Elf weight.
If enough people out there felt the same way that we could make money on a game targeting them, then we'd do that in a heartbeat. But aside from FF games, which sell because A) Japan loves them and B) there's name recognition 13 games long to help sell whatever the hell they decide to put on disk, no fantasy RPG has sold the kinds of numbers we'd need to make Dragon Age profitable.
The more you get away from traditional fantasy in a gaming setting, the more and more niche your audience becomes. The fact is, Joe Xbox isn't nearly as literate in or soured by traditional fantasy as a genre.
Trust me. The marketing research has been done on this, and we've been answering this exact same question since we first showed DA in 2004.
That's really interesting actually, because it's never been answered publically that I'm aware of. It's not like most game "journalists" (and I use the term advisedly, as we say in Britain) would ask something as esoteric or genre-related anyway. Seriously, I wondered and looked for such an answer previously, and I've only seen tangential questions or utter softballs.
What's gladdening to me, in a strange way, is that you at least did do market research on it, and considered it on some level, rather than launching into a sub-Tolkien model simply because "that's the way it always is" in a less thoughtful way (as I know some companies have).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tar Markvar
The process is thus: You say, "Elves!" This immediately places an image in a player's mind. Then you say, "But different!" Now that person thinks, "Okay, how different?" Hopefully, this gets them interested in these elves' plight. How did the elves change from immortal beings to slaves? What's different about this world that caused the elves to evolve this way? (By the way, that's all explained in a history thing I wrote, linked here on the Dragon Age wiki.)
I see that, I'm not sure what the value you're getting from the "Elves!" part of it is though. What's the value that has, that having a human tribe with a similar history/culture wouldn't have? Your elves are not immortal (or even seemingly long-lived), for example. They have (legends? facts?) that say they were immortal once, but so do dozens of historic human cultures (including our own). I mean, to me it seems like the exact same story but with a group of different humans, rather than elves, would actually have more resonance (or at least extremely extremely similar resonance), but perhaps I'm missing something. Probably I am.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tar Markvar
The thing is, not everyone is as worn out and jaded about "Cannibal halflings" as we hardcore RPG players are. We can't play to the jaded. We have to play the world as it's written. The Elves in DA weren't created by saying, "How can we make our elves different?" Our elves evolved that way, and if you ever read the history of the elves, you'll see how.
I actually reject this "worn out and jaded hardcore" deal outright and with good reason. It's illogical to claim this is a matter of us being "worn out" and "jaded". By that token, every single modern fantasy author who isn't writing sub-Tolkien stuff is "appealing to a hardcore jaded fantasy audience", because that's the only reason or logic you're allowing for. Yet the fantasy authors who aren't sub-Tolkienian, are, for the most part, the most popular. Almost all fantasy authors owe Tolkien a debt in one regard - worldbuilding - almost no successful fantasy authors write books with elves, dwarves, orcs and/or close analogues.
Are they just trying to appeal to a "jaded hardcore" audience? If so, why are they much MORE successful than those who do write sub-Tolkien stuff? It seems to land them on the NY Times bestsellers list, this non-Tolkienian fantasy.
So, why is it in gaming, and only gaming, people consistently revert back to the sub-Tolkien stuff? (If you don't want to answer that, don't! You're not responsible for the whole of the gaming industry, far from it!) It seems to me like the "people aren't jaded and worn out by it!" argument is untrue, and it's in fact something more like "We're completely unsure whether gamers would like something that didn't have elves, so we're not going to risk it". Certainly dozens of dead or failing games which are sub-Tolkien show that it's not a sure path to success. I understand the need to not fail, but I don't think you've explained to me how Elves = not failing. Maybe you can't. Fair enough if so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tar Markvar
Name a sci-fi race with the kind of "brand recognition" that elves and dwarves have. I'll wait.
Vulcans. You want to dismiss them as "Space Elves" though, which is, with respect, completely untrue. Like really really untrue. It's utterly a-historical. That's like calling Batman "Goth Spiderman in a cape", it really is. Vulcans pre-date the popularity of LotR, don't similar personalities to elves (who are traditionally naughty and capricious - the polar opposite of rigorously logical Vulcans, or even passionate Vulcans - Elves are flighty or distant/jaded, not passionate, again, even in Tolkien), don't have a similar background or habitat, or attitudes, or behaviours in general. The only similarities are pointy ears and long life (and iirc, Vulcans got pointy ears from the bloody DEVIL, not from Elves).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tar Markvar
Vulcans? Space elves. Klingons? Go up to five random people on the street and ask them who the Klingons are, other than "The bad guys from Star Trek." Hutts, maybe?
Do you think you'd do better with dwarves and elves? Because I really don't think that you would. I think if you went up to "five random people on the street" and asked who elves were beyond "That blonde guy in Lord of the Rings" or "the guys on the front of Rice Crispies boxes", you'd find about the same percentage of them able to answer you as with Vulcans, and people would be able to give good answers regarding dwarves about as often as Klingons. I don't think most people even know Hutts are a race, despite more than one of them appearing in Star Wars.
But this is a misleading thing.
If you look JUST a gamers and geeks in general, rather than the population as a whole, the picture changes - Star Trek isn't as well-known as it was. Maybe 3/5 geeks and gamers can explain Vulcans, but I agree, 5/5 can explain elves. Sure, they'll contradict each other, but they'll have some kind of idea (pointy ears, uppity, long-lived or immortal, live in the forest, use bows, have magic). So if we look at the target audience, I agree, that there's some validity - if your intention is to use those concepts. I'm just not seeing them very strongly in the DA:O elves. Maybe that'll change once I get to play it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tar Markvar
Elves and dwarves are taken right out of human folklore, and thus have a lot stronger recognition in our culture. For sci-fi, you have to make up something new, or else you run into the TNG "Humans with bumpy noses" problem.
Human folklore? The elves that we're discussing? The post-Tolkien elves with bows who live in the forest? No. They don't resemble the elves, sidhe and spirit folk and similar of world folklore. Those guys are always flighty, individualistic, capricious, often malicious, usually live in another world to ours which only connects loosely with it, and time is often a slippery concept with them.
Dwarves don't have an equivalent in most human folklore (unless we believe Norse and Norse-settled-area folklore is representative of "human folklore") - not the "fantasy" Dwarves, who love, traditionally, ale, gold, axes and beards and so on. That's pop culture derived largely from The Hobbit and D&D, not folklore. In folklore, dwarves are what D&D players might call gnomes or like, evil greedy gnomes or something, or they're the tiny hairy forest people. I'm not saying this to start a fight but I think it's misleading to appeal to folklore when what you're working from is post-Tolkien pop culture versions of things, not the folklore versions of things.
It's like someone writing a vampire game that relied on your understanding and understanding the subversion of tropes specific to Anne Rice's slightly weird vampires, then appealing to the fact vampires appear in folklore (despite the fact folklore vampires are virtually zombies in most cases) to suggest that they're merely deriving from folklore.
What confuses me is that there's nothing actually *wrong* with being sub-Tolkien (other than that it disappoints ME, but honestly to hell with me!), but seems like you're kind of denying that it's the case like as if there was. Which seems, well, nonsensical. Are you denying it? Am I misunderstanding?
I agree about the humans with bumpy noses problem, though. And if you ripped off Vulcans or Klingons, people would say you did and make a fuss. By the way Warhammer 40K Eldar? Those are "Space Elves" in a very trad sense. And they very very very different from the Vulcans.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tar Markvar
The goal with any of our games isn't to make something different to make the jaded gamers happy and show how impressive we are. It's to make fun, engaging games that will sell enough so we can keep making games. The very thing that allows people to riff on the fantasy genre is the thing that makes the genre so powerful at its core. You can't deconstruct something that isn't built up in the first place.
But as I've demonstrated, it is built up. Your dwarves are not folklore dwarves. They are subverted Tolkien dwarves. That's very clear. Your elves are not folklore elves, they are subverted (very subverted) Tolkien elves. That's not uncool, but if you look at something like The Steel Remains (hate to keep mentioning the same thing but it's worth referencing, imho), the elves in that ARE what you're saying - they're the folklore elves - capricious, flighty, otherworldy etc. - they're not the Tolkien elves (live in a forest in the real world, bows, immortal, etc.).
Please understand that I say all this with respect for your work, because I think BioWare has done an ASTOUNDINGLY good job (and I don't know your part in it, but I know I enjoyed very much reading the history you linked to, which is by you). I'm not trying to get you down, or insult your game, I'm just trying to understand this, and also I think there's some misunderstandings on your part, perhaps?
I understand that you're not trying to make me happy personally I don't understand the weird allegations about people being "jaded" (I think fantasy lit. shows that's not the case) or the stuff about folklore as opposed to Tolkien, or back on my main question, precisely what value is derived from "Elves!" as you put it.
I understand if you don't want to answer my questions, I did ask a lot of them and I probably seem like kind of a jerk, so thank you for answering those that you did.
__________________
Where people do awful things to them ALL THE TIME for NO REASON and DIGNITY DOES NOT EXIST.
Last edited by Eurhetemec; 11-03-2009 at 02:10 PM..
Because elves sell. People like elves and want them presented in their fantasy novels/RPGs/video games. Warhammer (and 40K) does it, WarCraft does it, Witcher does it, D&D (and probably most of it's settings) does it. Is it original? Not really, but it's profitable and in the end, that's what matters.
It's like vampires and horror.
Ok pet peeve, ranting here, sorry:
Why do you put "fantasy novels" in that list? Elves or close equivalents aren't in most well-selling fantasy novels that aren't actually written by J.R.R. Tolkien.
I do wonder if people who say that even read fantasy novels. It's like insisting that all detective fiction has blazing gunfights in it or something.
Elves or elf-likes in most of those? Not really. Can you name any? Dresden has a badguy Sidhe-style elf or three in it sometimes, I guess.
Ahem, rant over. I'm neutral on elves myself. I think they're less specific than Tolkein-esque dwarves, for example, so they don't damage or aid my enjoyment of something. But they rarely appear in popular fantasy novels, whatever the sub-genre.
__________________
Where people do awful things to them ALL THE TIME for NO REASON and DIGNITY DOES NOT EXIST.
Last edited by Eurhetemec; 11-03-2009 at 02:04 PM..
Why do you put "fantasy novels" in that list? Elves or close equivalents aren't in most well-selling fantasy novels that aren't actually written by J.R.R. Tolkien.
I do wonder if people who say that even read fantasy novels. It's like insisting that all detective fiction has blazing gunfights in it or something.
Okay, I might have been wrong there. I'll admit I'm not too well aware of what fantasy literature is selling currently.
Still the fantasy novel crowd (which people like you are a part of) is very different from the video game crowd (which contains people who have seen the LotR movies, maybe). The game is probably more aimed at the video game crowd.
The two handed weapons clip through both her legs when running/walking, and shields float in the air about a foot behind her back.
Daaaamn. Somehow, you'd think they'd have gotten the hang of it by now. Clipping making certain combinations (most often female ones) unusable is just dumb.
Daaaamn. Somehow, you'd think they'd have gotten the hang of it by now. Clipping making certain combinations (most often female ones) unusable is just dumb.
Yeah, I'm really confused by this myself, because in older games, this sort of thing was less prevalent. You look at, say, Dark Age of Camelot from 2001, which has a number of races with different sizes and shapes, and different animations for both genders, and does stuff clip through stuff?
Um, no. Not really. Like, why would it?
So when we see modern, well-designed games with big budgets doing it, it's just mystifying. It's like, didn't you test the animation with gear before you said "DONE!"?
__________________
Where people do awful things to them ALL THE TIME for NO REASON and DIGNITY DOES NOT EXIST.
Now this gets curious. Apparently, while PS3 does have better textures (finally finding use for the extra storage space), people are saying 360 has a smoother framerate. With a HD install the load times are equal, without it PS3 wins on that.
That'd be an icky choice if one had to choose which console to get it for.
I don't understand the weird allegations about people being "jaded" (I think fantasy lit. shows that's not the case) or the stuff about folklore as opposed to Tolkien, or back on my main question, precisely what value is derived from "Elves!" as you put it.
Linear Mode
