Now I have a pretty good idea of what I’d like in a JRPG, but I was curious to see what others thought on the matter and so I posted the following question on my twitter account: “JRPG fans – what would your ultimate JRPG be like?” I got dozens of responses – many from individuals who work in the video game industry – and the results were interesting.

Below, I present to you the 5 most common elements I saw, in roughly their order of popularity.

1. Control of a Well Written Plot – This was by far the most common element I saw in the responses. Fans want a strong, well thought out plot, but they also want to have some say over what happens.

2. Turn-based battle system – There was a lot of variety in exactly what kind of battle system they wanted (the Grandia, Shin Megami Tensei, and Final Fantasy series were all brought up many times) but one thing was clear – many fans miss the days when turn-based combat was the norm and not the exception.

3. Complex, intricate LV-Up system – Job systems and skill systems were especially popular.

4. Exploration – Players wanted huge worlds with the freedom to explore. No wonder Xenoblade and popular Western sandbox RPGs like Fallout and Skyrim review so well!

5. More adult plots – Fans that grow up on JRPGs in the 80s, 90s, and beyond are now adults and want to be treated as such.

So taking this feedback and my opinions into consideration, here’s a rough premise I came up with.

World is a mix of fantasy & science fiction. Main city in the world is a dystopia ala Midgar that wouldn’t look out of place in Shadowrun. Outside the city, there’s a dangerous wilderness that’s mostly unknown to the civilized world. Main player is a computer that gained sentience and corporeal form (can choose to be either male or female). Main plot has various branches – do you side with those who would use your powers? Go on a quest of self discovery? Seek the quiet life that no one will let you have? There will also be various optional major plot lines ala the Elder Scrolls series guild quests.

Party composition and party member relationships would have an effect on dialogue, plot, available dungeons, etc. None of this “Chie has pledged her undying love to you but her dialogue and actions are still exactly the same in all major plot scenes” nonsense.

Combat will be turn-based and probably loosely based on the Grandia series. LV-Up system would be kind of like the Materia from FF7 except each character has one exclusive Materia that can not be unequipped and individual Materia can be customized ala the Sphere Grid from FF10.

Lots of exploration possibilities. To keep difficulty in control without removing the player’s feeling of progression, each area will have a possible LV range however the LV choosen will be based on things like the player’s progression when they first go to that area. For example, an early area might have a LV range of 1-10 so if you go there right at the beginning, enemies will be permanently locked into LV1 and would stay that way for the entire game. However if you didn’t go there until the end of the game, the enemies would be locked at LV10 (even if you’re say LV50 – still want to make the early area feel like an early area). Conversely, a late game area might have a LV range of 50-60 so if you went there early, it’d get locked into LV50 which might still be way more than you could handle.

2D pixel art and an awesome soundtrack. ’cause that’s just how we do things here.

And now for a quick Q&A:

Will this actually be made? Beats me. Keep in mind that we’re not going to be starting any new projects for a while (gotta finish what we’ve already begun first!) and I scrap ideas almost as quickly as I come up with them so there’s no guarantee this idea will ever turn into anything.

Why do you keep mentioning other games? Don’t you want to be original? This isn’t even at a design document state. Mentioning other games is a quick and easy way to give everyone a general idea. Once a game is further along, that’s when you can start talking details and how to make it more unique.

Aren’t you afraid someone else will steal your ideas? Not particularly. They’re just ideas. Taking these ideas and turning them into an actual high quality game would take a talented team years of work .Plus these ideas are just a starting point – if you gave these ideas to two talented designers and teams, you’d end up with two drastically different games in the end.

I present to you: Silver Screen Hero!

First order of business, congratulations to Bill Stiernberg of Zeboyd Games! He’s getting married this weekend, following which, he will be spending over a week in lovely Japan for his honeymoon. Be sure to wish him well!

I was considering starting the Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 3 development blog this month, but right now, I’m working on internal engine changes – important, but not particularly interesting to talk about – so we’ll hold off on that and start the blog later this year. We’re going to be working on gameplay prototypes in October so maybe I’ll be able to talk about those when the time comes.

In gaming news, I finally picked up a PS3 so expect to start seeing PS3 game reviews here. So far, I have Siren: Blood Curse and Demon’s Souls, both of which are excellent, as well as a few smaller downloadable titles like Wipeout HD.

Some of the games I plan on reviewing on the site soon include the new BloodRayne, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, OMG-Z, Fighting Fantasy, and a few others I’ve forgotten at the moment.

Looking over the upcoming big releases for the rest year, I find the gaming landscape relatively sparse with games I’m excited about. There’s Zelda: Skyward Sword and that’s about it. Not a fan of the Elder Scrolls series and though I like shooters, I can wait until stuff like Gears of War 3 drops into the bargain bins. Uncharted 3 & Dark Souls will probably be great, but there’s no way I’ll have finished their predecessors before they arrive so I might as well wait on them. After seeing my friend play his import copy of Xenoblade, I would have definitely picked that up, but unfortunately, Nintendo decided not to release it here and I don’t want to go to the hassle of modding my console to bypass the region lock. The 3DS remains mostly devoid of games I want (Star Fox is tempting but not for $40 when I already own the original on the Wii) which is a shame because I’d love an excuse to pick one up. On the other hand, I haven’t picked up Deus Ex: HR or Radiant Silvergun yet and now that I have a new PS3, there are plenty of cheap older exclusives that I can pick up for it so I’m not going to be hurting for things to play. Not to mention that I’m sure there will be some good indie and digital download games coming out later this year.

Now next year, that’s a year I can get behind. I’m a big PSP fan so I’m very excited about the PS Vita – my most anticipated game at the moment for any system is Gravity Rush which has an amazing art style, an excellent premise (3D Action/Adventure + Gravity control) and is being made by the original creator of Silent Hill and the Siren series. Other games I’m excited about for next year are Ni No Kuni (a PS3 RPG created by Level-5 and Studio Ghibli!), Diablo 3 (yeah, I don’t think it’s coming out in 2011), the new Bioshock game, the remakes/up-ports of Final Fantasy X & Persona 4 (two of my favorite games of all time), the Persona 4 fighting game, and Final Fantasy XIII-2 (I know, I know, I’m a sap but its got time travel in it! My one weakness!).

Now for the long answers. Let’s tackle the translation stuff first.

Even if someone just handed me a translation of all of the text in Cthulhu Saves the World or Breath of Death VII free of charge, it would still require a large amount of work on my part to actually add that language to the game. I would have to rewrite the code (the game code isn’t currently designed to handle multiple language) and I’d probably have to change the UI (words which fit nicely in English could prove to be too big in another language). All that would be annoying but doable. What wouldn’t be doable by me is testing and marketing the game in another language. We wouldn’t need a translator – we would need an entire localization company ala Carpe Fulgur. Now there are some options on this front – Playism looks promising as an option to release in Japanese – but even with a good partner, we’d still have to do a fair amount of work to create a translated version of our games, work that we think would be better spent on our upcoming games.

And that’s all assuming we found a capable translator in the first place. As someone who is bilingual himself (English & Mandarin Chinese), I understand there’s a big difference between being able to converse and understand a foreign language in a general context and being able to translate a specific text effectively. I think Cthulhu Saves the World would be an especially problematic text to translate for most people – it’s a comedy and it has extensive references to literature, video games, and other elements of pop culture.

And if we went to all the trouble to find a good partner who provided a high quality translation, testing, and marketing support, there’s no guarantee that we’d get a good return on the time invested. Would we make enough money with a Japanese or German translation (both languages attached to countries that seem to have more fans of RPGs than most)? Quite possibly. On a Swedish or Portuguese translation? Highly unlikely.

Now let’s talk about joining our actual development team.

We’re very happy about how well our game has been selling since it came out on the PC, but we don’t want to get arrogant. I’ve read the Phil Vischer (Veggie Tales creator) articles – growing too quickly is a common path to destruction for many small companies. Plus, Bill and I work well together so we want to be very careful that anyone that we do add to the team in the future has good chemistry with the rest of the team.

You say you’ll work for free? No thanks. We make games and then we sell them. If you’re reliable, skilled, and do good work for us, then you should get paid for it. And if you aren’t, then we don’t want to babysit you. Besides, making video games is hard work. Someone who isn’t getting paid for their work is much more likely to flake out when the fun part of game development is done and the work part has begun.

Now, we might be willing to take someone promising on as a non-paid intern for a month or two with the expectation that they would become a full-paid full-time member of the team if we feel they’d make a valuable addition (aka a probationary period). But even something like that is still a ways away. Simply put, we’re not adding any new team members until we finish the big project that we’re working on.

Even though we’re not hiring anyone at the moment, I would like to give some advice about applying to work with us or any other indie developer.

1 – The smaller the company, the more important each hire is. This is even more important for companies where everyone works from home. Zeboyd Games is a two-man operation (plus a couple other individuals like Gordon McNeil and Alex Mauer that have worked with us as contractors). That means that if and when we do decide that we want to increase our company size, we’re going to be as strict as possible with the hiring process. A hastily typed email with half a dozen typos isn’t going to cut it. A well written cover letter, resume, references, and portfolio of previous projects are all absolutely required.

2 – Saying “I have a bunch of great game ideas” is the worst possible thing you could say if you want to get hired. Indie game companies are never looking for lead designers. Why? Because generally the reason an indie game company was formed in the first place was because a designer wanted to make their own games. Why on earth would I want to hire someone so that they could take away the most enjoyable part of my own job? Not to mention the fact that during the course of making just one game, we inevitably come up with dozens of great ideas for other games. The last thing we need is more ideas – we don’t have enough time to take advantage of the ideas we already have!

If you have great ideas and want to turn those ideas into actual games, you have two options – create your own indie company or rise up through the ranks of an existing company. Unless you’ve got insane luck, nobody is going to hire you as a designer right off the bat.

3 – Indie companies aren’t looking for writers. A lot of the big companies with hundreds of employees don’t even bother to hire a writer. Do you think an indie game company with only a couple of people can afford to devote an entire person just to writing? The simple truth of the matter is that unless you’re making a visual novel, writing dialogue and plot is a relatively small amount of the workload in making a game. That’s not to say writing isn’t important (it’s crucial to most RPGs), just to say that it doesn’t require a dedicated person in most cases (hopefully, one of your programmers or artists is also good at writing).

4 – Graphics and code are the core elements needed in just about every video game. As a result, skilled artists and programmers are generally what companies (both indie and otherwise) are most looking for.

Now with all that said, I just want to reemphasize that we are NOT looking for interns or new staff members at this time. If you apply to us right now, it doesn’t matter how good your application is or how qualified you are, you’re not getting the job because it doesn’t exist at the moment. However, we could very well be looking for a new artist or programmer next year so stay tuned.

Breath of Death VII:
DEM
SARA

Cthulhu Saves the World:
Box Art
Cthulhu
Umi
October
Ember
Dacre

Enjoy!

My GMail email address is rdespair at gmail dot com. Alternatively, my skype address is rainbowdespair.

I’ve created a shared folder on Dropbox that contains the code for Breath of Death VII along with some of the Zeboyd/BoDVII Steam files. If you’re a developer who has gotten an XNA game working on Steam and are willing to help me figure out what I’m doing wrong, please send me (Robert Boyd) an email at rdespair at gmail dot com and I’ll give you access to the folder. I would be eternally grateful – I’m going out of my mind trying to get these games to work ASAP so that we can start a steady stream of income to support our families and so that we can focus on our next game (which is very exciting).

Oh and note, I’m not trying to do anything fancy at this point like adding Steamworks features – I’m just trying to get our games so that they will properly install and run on Steam.

Progress on the game is going well. By the end of the week, I’m hoping to have most of the game done, along with the trailer. As for the Indie Games Winter Uprising that I’ve been helping to organize, the early response has been very positive. We’ve already had articles at several big websites and I’ve received emails from writers from a number of popular websites hoping to interview, cover, or otherwise review the games in the promotion. Hopefully, this is just the boost in visibility that the service needs.