The other day I was asked why I had decided to make a 2d RPG and not a 3d one. Because for some reason most hardcore players think that 3d is somehow inherently superior - It is an additional dimension after all…

Note: This hasn’t go anything to do with the tired old argument of 2d vs 3d. I’m not anti-3d in any way. I like a lot of 3d games I have even made one 3d allows you to do a whole lot of things that 2d simply cannot do. And I’ll probably re-visit 3d in the future. But for now I thought I’d share my reasons on why my RPG project going to be 2d.

1: Technology

In the fast paced world that is the technological rat race we have encountered a rare phenomenon. There have been pretty much no advances in 2d graphics in the last 5 years. Anti-Aliasing, Real-time Lighting, Alpha Blending, Stretching, Scaling and Rotation combined with 24-Bit colour images and high resolution is a pretty strong arsenal for the 2d artist / level designer. And many of those technologies have been around since the days of the SNES.

It’s my prediction that 2d is now a fixed medium (much like oil painting) where the technology no longer matters, all that matters now is the skill of artist.

2: Timelessness

I get annoyed with some indie developers who display messages on their websites about how they’re all about the gameplay and you don’t need good graphics to enjoy a good game anyway. That’s rubbish, style never goes out of style - sure you don’t need the latest wizz-bang shader push-the-polygons-to-their-limit technology, but you do need to have a good sense of design and aesthetics because that’s all part of the player feedback and reward system.

3d graphics currently date really quickly. In a podcast interview, Ron Gilbert (of Monkey Island fame) shared a vision that one day, maybe in 15 or 20 years time, game graphics technology will lock-down and become a fixed medium (similar to the way film is today.) and anybody with the appropriate mixture of skill, determination and business acumen will be able to create a computer game.

And I am claiming that is true today. Provided you want to use 2d of course.

The neat thing about RPGs is that they are essentially stories about characters (Ok, I admit - not all, but lets just pretend this is the case ok.) Good stories about good characters are timeless. If the graphics technology is essentially timeless and the art timeless and the story timeless. Then there’s no real reason why it isn’t possible to create a timeless computer game. Imagine creating a game that will sell for 10 years or even 20! Jane Austin novels have been around for a long time, why can’t a computer game enjoy that same kind of shelf life?

3: Branding

The end goal for computer graphics technology at the moment seems to be Photo-realism. Once we reach that advancement the problem is going to become a major branding issue. Imagine flicking through a computer magazine and seeing a few images of the latest photo-realistic games on offer, what? can’t tell them apart, sure they look amazing, but because they’re all photo-realistic they’re all going to look the same. Character design and Art direction are going to become increasingly important to give games a visual point of difference in the future. I can brand my games as Retro 2d RPGs - Someone will be able to take one look at a screen shot and see exactly what type of game it is.

4: Totally sub-saturated market

Almost all the big players, Bio-ware, Bethesda, Square, Blizzard, etc have either moved to 3d RPGs or massively multiplayer RPGs. Mainly because that’s where the big money is, but when they all left, no one really filled their places, there are a couple of contenders of course, Spiderweb Software and Amaranth Games, but there is room for a whole lot more players in the game.

Additional Reading

Ron Gilbert Podcast Interview
Future Proofing Game Graphics - At LostGarden.com