Western RPGs Need to Get off the Tabletop: An Essay

Western RPGs Need to Get off the Tabletop: An Essay

Fans of Japanese and Western RPGs have been at each others’ throats for ages. JRPGs are currently the whipping boy of gaming culture, and admittedly, after Final Fantasy XIII, an unrestrained testimony to genre excess, it’s hard not to see the criticisms. Linearity of gameplay and storyline and a cast of largely predefined characters are…