| One of the ideas, I have found, which is most treasured by members of the RPG-playing community is that we in general are smarter than your typical, garden-variety video game player. While many of us don't consider the difference to be a huge one, there is nonetheless an assumption among the vast majority of RPG players that, on average, we're just a squick more intelligent than your typical Mortal Kombat fan. After all, we play games for the plot, right? And for the strategy, right? Not just because we want to blow stuff up, right? And we appreciate the deep, intellectual themes and obscure religious references, right? I mean, after all, no one who isn't at least halfway intellectual could really appreciate a game like Xenogears, right? The problem with this assumption is that it, like 98% of all assumptions in the history of the human race, is COMPLETELY WRONG. Yet many RPG players (I absolutely refuse to use the term RPGamer) seem to exhibit a weird sort of blind, fanatical patriotism to their chosen genre, occasionally even to the point of boasting that they only play RPGs and hate all other types of games. And of course, because they play RPGs exclusively, this naturally infers that they are superior human beings in every sense of the word, while devotees of all those other genres are somewhere near the evolutionary level of silverfish. I suppose if I had to make a guess, I'd say that RPG-fascism dates back to the time when RPGs were a niche genre and we were lucky to get one or two a year in English. I guess a lot of people ended up justifying their interest in such a relatively unpopular genre by concluding, "Well, those idiots just can't appreciate the beauty of it." Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, FF7 proved wrong the assumption that RPGs HAVE to be a niche market, and demonstrated that people will buy anything that's attained the status of "cool." There's another attitude among RPG fascists that I hate, and this is that players who were brought to RPGs by FF7 are somehow inferior RPG fans-- inferior to those who have been playing since the first Dragon Warrior, that is. It doesn't matter how deep a level you now appreciate the games on, how much you delve into the symbolism and higher meaning, or how many RPGs you've played since then. You are not Old-School, and therefore you are not k3wl and l33t. I speak, incidentally, from the standpoint of a person who DID start playing RPGs with the first Dragon Warrior, and consider my status as an Elite Old-School Player to be a highly dubious honor, at best. As for the argument that pre-FF7, Old-School Players are a more intelligent lot, all I can say is that when my brother and I posted a Chrono Trigger FWAK to an AOL messageboard back when we first got online, we received not one but /several/ angry letters from people demanding to know why our "secret tricks" wouldn't work for them (mostly in barely comprehensible language). However, the number of stupid people has increased proportionally as the number of RPG players increases overall, and hence they're much louder these days. Now, my problem with the "RPG Players Are The Superior Race" mentality is twofold. Firstly, the lines between genres have become blurred enough lately that the status of RPG isn't necessarily a clear-cut thing. Was Vagrant Story, for example, an adventure game or an RPG? It had the status and level system, as well as the emphasis on plot and character development, of a traditional RPG, but many of the battles in the game did, in fact, rely on fast button-pushing. My second quibble with RPG elitism is that the whole idea of RPG players being, intellectually, a cut above other varieties of gamers is blatantly and utterly untrue. I'm sure we've all seen some moron ranting on a message board or mailing list about "how do u ressurrect aries i kant do it". Put fairly simply, most people are pretty stupid. I think this applies to any human group on earth save perhaps the members of MENSA, and probably not even them if you include common sense in the scope of intelligence. While we're on the subject of stupidity, in addition to the entire Aeris Resurrection fiasco, there was also the Leo Resurrection rumor and the vast numbers of people who believed it, the Orphanage Bathroom rumor and the vast number of people who believed that, the players who thought FFT was intended as an affront to the Catholic Church, the endless debate over FF7's ending, the debate over the supposed similarities between Evangelion and Xenogears... I could go on and on. RPG players have hardly proven themselves to be a level-headed and rational bunch, either; I saw more flamewars on alt.games.final-fantasy than on any other Usenet group I've ever been to. Let's also not forget, since it hits very close to home for me, the infamous incident in which then-staffer Fritz Fraundorf reviewed Xenogears on RPGamer and gave it 8 out of 10, then subsequently received so many flames over his failure to give it a perfect score that he was forced to take down the review. Mr. Fraundorf has apparently declared a sort of unofficial vendetta against all Xenogears fans since then, poking fun at them on messageboards and on his website, and a few others subsequently joined him in his crusade. While I can't condone his reaction to the entire fiasco, I'm afraid I must reserve harsher words for those who originally flamed Mr. Fraundorf over his Xenogears review in the first place. Thank you so much, you shitheads. I do NOT appreciate having my reputation, as a Xenogears player and devoted fan, shat upon before I ever had a chance to finish the damn game. Guess who gets to take the kicks for your stupidity now that you're over your "xeenogears is the best d00d!" phase? Yeah, you got it-- it's people like ME, who do NOT AT ALL APPRECIATE being dismissed as irrational fanatics before we even open our mouths, when we want to have a damned RATIONAL conversation about the game. And while I'm at it, I might as well add that I would give Xenogears a 10/10 for story and a 5/10 for gameplay, which, when averaged out, actually results in a lower score than Mr. Fraundorf's 8/10. Gosh, I wonder if I'm going to get flamed now. If you need yet further proof of the fact that RPG players are not, on the average, particularly smarter than your typical gamer, just go to any search engine and type in the words "final fantasy." Chances are that 90% of what your search will pull up will be things like "this is bobs ff7 page. i dont got much stuff here now just the caractor profiles but keep checking its gonna be the best page ever made!!!!" Or, if you prefer, substitute Xenogears, Suikoden, or whatever your series of choice may be; I guarantee you that the results will be little different. The sad part is that many of these people DO appreciate the story of the game, in their limited, hindbrain sort of way. The story of Xenogears may be complex, but it's not too difficult to grasp the basic meaning and themes. Just because they don't appreciate it on the same level as an Intellectual Hard-Core Self-Professed Otaku doesn't mean that they can't appreciate it at all. Hell, I'd guess that most of the people who attend Shakespeare plays have no idea what's going on or any concept of the underlying deeper meaning. This doesn't stop them from having some appreciation of the thing in most cases, however shallow. So, let's see... simply playing RPGs is not a good indicator of intellectual superiority. Appreciating the story is not a good indicator of intellectual superiority. In fact, the many idiots who call themselves RPG fans are so prevalent that it's very difficult not to encounter them every once in a while. So how, in the face of all of this, do so many people manage to maintain their illusion of supremacy? I suppose it's a case of selective vision-- we see what we want to see, or we dismiss and write off what doesn't fit. I suppose that a fair number of people do derive some sort of ego boost from the conviction that being an RPG player sets them above the masses. Unfortunately, I really can't bring myself to believe that after braving the horrors of what Usenet and the Web have to offer. And that's about all I have to say about that. |