1136: Thoughts on RPG Maker

I read this piece by Robert Boyd of Zeboyd Games earlier. Now, I normally agree with Mr. Werezompire on a lot of things, but I take issue with a few things he says about RPG Maker in this article, which was posted shortly after the latest version RPG Maker VX Ace hit the Steam store a while back.

Boyd is quite right to note that this is the first time a piece of software such as RPG Maker has hit a mainstream digital download storefront for PC — past iterations of the software were sold directly by the publisher via a rather cumbersome e-commerce solution, so to get it on Steam is a big step forward in both accessibility and visibility. Boyd is also right to note that lowering the barrier of entry to creating games through tools such as RPG Maker also encourages everyone to want to have a go — and that this can result in a glut of “incomplete, buggy, generic, or downright awful games”. (It also results in people who are otherwise unable to get their heads around programming becoming empowered to realise their own digital dreams and creativity.)

What I take a certain degree of umbrage to is his assertion that it is a “general RPG maker” and thus ill-suited to producing anything more than the most generic JRPG possible. While it is true that the default art assets and music provided with the game are aimed at people who want to get a fairly generic JRPG up and running quickly, the very nature of the software is that it is completely customisable depending on how much “individuality” you want to give your project. You can have something fairly convincing up and running in a matter of minutes using the default assets… but with a bit of time and artistic talent (or at least creativity), you can completely revamp the default “look” to anything you please. Not only that, but by using its built-in Ruby-based scripting language, you can completely overhaul the way the game works — battle system, menus, method of moving around the game world, anything can be modified or added if you know what you’re doing. And even if you don’t, there’s a lively and active community out there that has put together plenty of free scripts for anyone to make use of.

This isn’t “trying to modify RPG Maker to do things it wasn’t really intended to do,” as Boyd asserts. This is, in fact, using RPG Maker in the manner in which it was intended for power users — and it also aptly demonstrates one of the most admirable things about the application: the fact that it is simple and accessible enough for beginners to use, yet powerful and flexible enough for more advanced users to take complete control of. You only have to look at examples like To The Moon and Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, both of which were created in RPG Maker XP (two versions previous to the current edition) to see what is possible — and to be fair to Boyd, he does at least mention these titles in his post.

Boyd makes some fair points in the article, but what I don’t like much is the underlying tone that “if you’re using RPG Maker rather than programming it yourself, you’re doing it wrong.” While it is undoubtedly more satisfying to program your own engine from scratch and see a complete game come together from literally nothing, not everyone has the time, ability and/or C#-speaking friends to be able to do that. Plus if there’s a perfectly good tool already out there to realise what you want to do… why shouldn’t you use it?