What's up, RMers?

[Kain Nobel]

It's sad to say, but RPG Maker just isn't cool anymore.

Recently had a private discussion with somebody I personally know IRL who uses RPG Maker XP and VX Ace, whom downloaded Unite and didn't like it. What she had told me is the developer / publisher has lost sight of what made people passionate about the brand in the first place and that, like everything else in life, it has become an over commercialized clap trap designed to milk money out of people. Just like all the ills and pitfalls of modern gaming, their releases seem premature and rushed, with a lack of proper QA and testing, and are oft times bugged which makes her think they no longer care like they used to. She told me some of the basic control operations in Unite are unresponsive and may occasionally cause a hangup, which is a huge turn off for a much more expensive software, and the UI itself is not very sleek. She was disappointed in the lack of new features, and further frustrated that none of the mapping systems have been quite as attractive as the classic XP maps were. Overall, she sounded quite upset with what it has become, and would like something different and is holding out for something better.

RPG Maker Unite really gave the brand a nasty black eye and is going to result in net negative growth for the company, and the communities, for the foreseeable future. This won't change until something new and improved comes out. Unite was neither new or an improvement - it was an unmitigated disaster. They seemed to forget their target audience appreciates a visually stimulating UI, with a great organizational workflow, and are hungry for something better. IMO, nothing has changed since VX. As for the new features? People have been self-implementing those "new" features since the XP days. They're not new at all.

I tend to disagree with some of her statements, but overall sentiment is the same. We agree more than we disagree.

What I do like is the fact that mapping tile sizes can be changed (16, 32, 48 if I recall.) Anticipating the future of gaming, I personally am starting to make things more suited for 4k resolutions, but this is nothing more than an experiment. However, I've got a new homebrew engine going and have fallen away from the brand altogether. They'll have to move mountains to sell to me again. Hopefully they don't read this and think "Oh, 4k? We'll do that" - that's great, but you'd have to do something else to gain my interest back, and I'm not even sure if there is a big market for 4k or not. I don't think there is.

Maybe they need to do an RPG Maker XP Ace. Yeah, that would probably double their sales. Not only would it double their sales, I would probably drop my engine in a heartbeat to use it. I shouldn't have to make something like this, they should be on top of their game! They're a company after all, aren't they interested in making money? I'd like them to make money. I'd like them to make a better product. They need to start hiring directly from the community and stop bothering with recruiting from LinkedIn. You're not going to find the talent you're looking for on LinkedIn.

In other words, if nobody is paying attention to your scripts, it's probably because they've split the community with their silly business decisions. Their biggest selling point was ease of entry, and Ruby scripts are the elephant in the room. My biggest disappointment is them ditching Ruby, as this is still a very viable language and is constantly getting better with age. It's very user friendly, and easy to learn, and I have no idea why they'd use anything else. If they want to grow their brand, and attract new users, they're going to have to go back to Ruby because nobody needs to take college classes just to be able to learn it proper.

Anybody who uses Java is probably somebody that went to college, and works professionally on enterprise software or even commercial 3D games - I doubt these professionals are the people that would be interested in RPG Maker. Also, people who play RPG Maker games are unlikely to be playing them on a mobile platform, so that shouldn't even be a priority. Games on phones are more for casuals, nobody is ever going to make a serious game for that platform, it's physically impossible.

RPG Maker Unite is the new Action Game Maker. Anybody remember that debacle? Yeah, it's best left in the past. They should've called it RPG Maker Bifurication, as it once again has the community going in different directions. This is a surefire strategy for destroying any semblance of brand loyalty.

I think this is the biggest reason Hironobu Sakaguchi hasn't been able to find success after departing Square Enix. His games have targeted mobile platforms, and consumers don't take mobile seriously. It's all about PC and consoles. Games like Terra Battle and Fantasian are the perfect example of this, whereas The Last Story and Lost Odyssey had much better successes since they were released on console.