>___>

<___<

No. Probably not. Although…

The upshot is that this website fosters discussion between intelligent people, who are aware (when dealing with general rules) that exceptions exist. We don’t need to stop and smugly, pedantically point it out as if we have uncovered some great evil. The speaker is intelligent enough that he is aware, and we have faith that our audience are equally intelligent. This principle is what makes communication possible in the first place. We therefore adopt it as a conceit when performing our authorial work.

I get what you’re saying, and to many degrees that’s invariably true, but what do you get when a game made in RPG Maker uses all original assets and scripting? You get an original game that happened to be made with an RM engine. There are games being developed in that engine that are using all of their own original assets, they’re literally just using the engine as that…an engine. I’ve seen projects with their own original scripts, assets, etc. To me, it’s the same deal as Unity. Oh, and you can purchase a bunch of textures, objects, and models from the Unity store and…well you’ve got pre-made assets with an RPG Kit add-on that has all your event commands, three different battle systems and your database set up for you. Sounds akin to RPG Maker, doesn’t it?

My ultimate point though, is that there’s crap made with any engine out there. There are crap games made using Unreal and Unity, so why the animus toward RPG Maker? I know why, of course, it’s because for so long that series has been synonymous with crap games that some folks really don’t know that some amazing, original games with their own assets and scripting can be made that really pushes the engine. Again, look at To The Moon, Chronicles of a Dark Lord(especially the sequel the screenshots look amazing), and The Sacred Tears: True. I never look at the engine a game is made in, I look at the quality of the game itself. If it’s got a poor presentation, bad controls/gameplay, and whorific (yes I spelled it that way on purpose)music, then it’s a bad game.

Anyway, I do love this site but I’ll argue to the death (and win) when it comes to defending quality titles made in any engine (specifically RPG Maker in this case). Granted, the ones on Steam Greenlight (save for a select few) are pretty much crap in a can, but then there are also unique pieces of crap made with Unity and Unreal as well I’ve seen on there as well, that Mel unfortunately has had to look at.

Looking forward to your next article. :D

Does this mean that RPG Maker takes no skill? No, of course not. But, it takes considerably less skill than making one’s own game, including one’s own assets, and creating the system that will employ them. RPG Maker is a very limiting set of tools insofar as that kind of ingenuity and creativity is concerned.

Analogously, we praise a chef more if they make a cake from scratch, rather than if they make it from a box of mix. And, equally analogously, a chef who is willing to do more than make things from mix boxes and pre-made materials is going to have a lot more options for freedom and creativity than a chef who chooses only to use mix boxes.

Does that mean that the guy making a cake from a mix can’t be creative? Of course not. There is absolutely room for creativity there. But it’s a narrower set of options than he would have if he were to do the lot himself.

All this aside, you’re well to pick up on Bup’s tone. His editorials on Steam Greenlight titles are all a bit tongue-in-cheek. Nevertheless, I think we ought to be able to agree, if only in general, that RPG Maker titles probably aren’t the best use of the Steam Greenlight system.

And for a limited time:

But, seriously, thanks for the feedback.

And frankly, I don’t know much about RPG Maker so I guess my opinion of it is jaded by the consistent crap that seems to be associated with it. That might well be throwing a few babies out with the bathwater, I’ll admit.

So, I guess To The Moon (which was made in RPG Maker XP) and Chronicles of a Dark Lord (which was made in RPG Maker VX) is just a bunch of crap, right? Forget that they’re both highly praised, especially To The Moon which has been hailed as one of the best indie games of this generation.

Anyone can put together a game like those, right? I know this is a trollish/satirical kind of site, but I just couldn’t let those comments go. There are plenty of RPG Maker games that do suck a pie hole, but there are also some that break the mold and are genuinely pretty amazing games.

Lastly, I want to point out that many devs who use engines like Unity and Unreal, when they need to create a RPG they actually make a mini RPG Maker-like layout within the engine of their choice so that it makes development more streamlined. Check out the ORK RPG Kit for Unity if you want to see what I mean, it’s setup is so akin to RPG Maker it’s staggering. For the record, I tried using RPG Maker myself and I sucked so hard at it that I gave up on it. Just a few cents from me. I’ll be lurking around.

Someone will buy it.