What is an RPG?

[Jumpin]

Mnementh said:

Jumpin said:

Cool, you can ignore that sentence then if you don’t like it. The rest of what you’re saying is just kinda re-articulating my point following that statement, so I don’t object to it. But, I’m basing it off of numerous conversations I’ve had on the topic of “what is an RPG?” And many (I’d even say most) weren’t aware of RPGs before Dragon Quest  - granted, it was years ago now, back from when people were calling Ocarina of Time an RPG, so that line may be out of date.

I think it is a generational thing. Gen Z probably is not aware of games you recognize as classics. DQ is still around, but some series aren't anymore. And yeah, some might not know much about RPGs and DQ is the oldest they heard about, but for other it actually may be Baldur's Gate the oldest. I for instance when I played Baldur's Gate I hadn't even heard about Dragon Quest. I knew about the existance of the Gold box RPGs and Ultima though. It might be down to the question if your gaming experience stems mostly from console or PC. As a kid and in my youth I was a PC gamer, console was this mythical space that somehow existed with worse inputs and graphics and lesser games and ideas. After the 90s though I fell somewhat off of gaming, and it was Wii and DS that pulled me back in, now from the console side of things.

So a gamer who started out on console might have heard about DQ, but not about Baldur's Gate or Gold Box, while a PC gamer might know these but never heard of DQ. And future generation might not know either.

It actually sounds like you have a similar situation to me growing up. I too was kinda re-introduced into the dedicated console side with DS and Wii after being mainly a PC gamer (probably from the late PSX era circa 2000).

To go off on a bit of a tangent: In the 1990s, my main early communities were places like Nintendojo, Squaresoft.net (.com? .org? The site run by Andrew Vestal that became RPGamer). And some of those discussions I was talking about occurred on those exact sites, I still remember the name of my main adversary, a guy called Milenko *shakes fist*.