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| Readers validated my preference. |
I waited until I didn't get a response for 24 hours to analyze the results. Overall, I got 615 responses, which is about half of the unique visitors per day, but about two-thirds of unique visitors who stay for more than two minutes. That's not a bad response rate. Shame on the rest of you.
Here are some top-level results:
Game of the Year
Betrayal at Krondor fans may have been vocal in the comments, but on the survey, it got fewer votes than "no opinion." The plurality went to Dark Sun, with 40% of total votes and 49% of those voting for one of the four nominees. The second-highest number of votes were from those who wanted me to award "Game of the Year" two years in a row to the Ultima Underworld series. I get the sentiment; the games are that ground-breaking.
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| Votes for "Game of the Year." |
There were impassioned write-ins for Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness, Lands of Lore, Perihelion, Ultima VII, Part Two, and Unlimited Adventures. I agree these were all good games, but I think I covered why I felt they were not GOTY-worthy.
In the end, I'm going to go with my original inclination to give the award to Dark Sun. It is what I like most in a role-playing game: Lots of statistics, tactical combat, inventory upgrades, dialogue options, meaningful encounters, and a setting that fires the imagination. To get a perfect 100, a game just needs to do more of these things.
Where You Come From
Okay, mea culpa: I should not have conflated "where do you live?" with "where are you from?" Nor should I have conflated "country" with "nation" (man, are some people sensitive about that).
There were some surprises here. I figured at least half of my readership was from the United States, but it's only 38%. The second-highest number of readers are from Germany (13%); that article in Der Spiegel really paid off. The expected succession of English-speaking countries follows, with Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia all between 3% and 5%. Finland, Poland, Spain Austria, Italy, Brazil, Sweden, and France all contributed between 10 and 20 readers and 1-3% each. There's a very long tail of countries with less than 10 readers and less than 2% of total readership. On the entire continent of Africa, I have one reader in South Africa. I also have very little readership in Asia, aside from four in Japan, one in Singapore, one in Malaysia, and perhaps one in Türkiye depending on where he is.
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| I need billboards along the silk road. |
Here's something that I thought was an oddity: Except for one reader from Peru who insisted on the grave [Ed. My error: the acute] over the "u," not a single reader rendered the name of their country in native form. That is, I didn't get a single Deutschland, Polska, or España, with or without the tilde. Now, I know that you all knew that you were responding to an American survey, but it makes me curious how often the natives of a country use exonyms even to themselves. In the United States, no American would ever think of his country as Los Estados Unidos unless he grew up speaking Spanish, nor would he say Les États-Unis in conversation with another American unless he was making some sort of affectation. I would bet that fewer than 5% of Americans are even aware of Měiguó, Yhdysvallat, or Bandaríkin, among many others. Is this the same in your country, or do Germans casually use "Germany" even to other Germans?
I remember saying this before in a random entry, but it has continually surprised me, in this era of personally-defined pronouns, person-first language, and land acknowledgements that some movement hasn't arisen to eliminate exonyms. Other than Türkiye, I've never even heard of a country that seems to care.
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| That's why I write my blog in Tennessee. |
In the United States, I have readers in all states except Arkansas, Connecticut, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Rhode Island. The totals mostly follow population trends, with Texas and California at the highest (which is impressive, as I forgot to add it to the selection list for the first 25% of results). None of our territories are represented except for one reader in American Samoa. I have only one respondent each from the two states that matter most to me, Maine and Louisiana.
Sex
Well, there's no avoiding it: the CRPG Addict may as well be a frat house. At least 92% of readers are men. I have fewer women than those who didn't want to give their gender at all. I have almost as many readers who identify as non-binary than I have women.
This imbalance raises two possibilities. One is that my readership is simply reflective of the overall RPG gamer population. I went searching for statistics on the issue and found various sources that estimated the overall computer gaming population at about 50% women but the population of RPG players specifically closer to 18-25%. (I put this aside to research more later; I'm declining to cite sources because I don't want to get into a long argument about validity right now.) Either way, that's a lot more than the 3% who responded to my survey.
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| However you look at it, this blog is a sausage party. |
I'd be interested in any follow-up comments (feel free to email directly) from women readers regarding their thoughts on the disparity. I feel like the commenting system successfully hides the commenter's sex (unless you're commenting with an account that includes your actual name), and in 16 years of doing this, I've never seen any gender-based comments between readers, certainly nothing that would rise to the level of harassment or "toxic masculinity" or whatever. I like to think my own writing is relatively free of anything that would turn away women specifically, but let me know if I'm fooling myself.
The relationship between player sex and chosen character is interesting. Of the 17 women who responded to my survey, 15 preferred to play a female character (one didn't care, and one preferred a male character). Male respondents, on the other hand, were 21% likely to prefer a female avatar, and another 34% were at least open to it (the remaining 44% preferred men). Non-binary respondents generally preferred "the opposite sex" (67%), which I don't quite know how to interpret. (The fault is mine, of course, for not leaving enough options on the question.)
Your Favorite RPGs
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| Your favorite games. |
The list is definitely biased towards older games; the only candidates in the last decade are Baldur's Gate 3 (10) and Disco Elysium (6). Having just finished Pillars of Eternity, I was surprised that I didn't get a single vote for it, although there is one for its sequel. I really enjoyed the first game, particularly the depth of its lore, its replayability, and its role-playing options. (I looked at a walkthrough when I was finished and discovered that I had missed three joinable NPCs.) I confess I didn't know half of what was happening in combat.
Other Findings
- The average (mean and median) age of readers is 45, which makes sense given my content. 87% are between the ages of 37 and 56. Only 13% are at or above my own age of 53. I have no readers under the age of 19 and only one over the age of 68. I would like to hear from that 81-year-old reader. You would have already been an adult when the first commercial RPGs were released; how did you get into what was, at the time, a young person's hobby?
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| Our heavily-clustered age distribution. |
- Most of my readers are long-time readers. Half of them started reading before 2015. The mode (71 readers) was 2012. 62 people (the third-highest total) have been with me since the first year. I gained only 14 new readers in 2024 and only 13 in 2025. I wonder if I should do something to ease new readers into the blog; comments are welcome there.
- Well over half of readers check in every 1-3 days, though they're divided by those who read everything (34%) and those who pick only the ones they care about (22%). I guess an awful lot of people are still getting the blog via RSS, which I should have asked about.
- Only 4 respondents use a translator to read the blog. For 52%, English is your first language, and for 47%, you read the blog in English anyway.
- Not a lot of duplication on favorite entries. The highest-voted was 6, for my winning entry on Ultima VII: The Black Gate; another four voted for the "Summary and Rating." Fate: Gates of Dawn showed up a lot, but for different entries.
- A third of respondents have never commented, and half commented only "very rarely." I enjoy my frequent visitors, but it's a sign of a healthy blog to have a diversity of comments. I encourage those of you who never or rarely post a comment to do so occasionally, if only to highlight something you agree with. No blogger can get enough of those.
- People overwhelmingly (74%) felt that my standard goal of one entry every 2.5 days was just fine. Part of me wants to hear more from the dozen or so respondents who think that goal is "far too little." You have time to read 2,500 words a day?
- Respondents were supportive of occasional guest entries, which corresponds well with my plan.
- Of respondents who even knew what I was talking about, 79% of them were perfectly okay with taking a filet mignon, putting it in a blender, and serving it as a shake. Well, technically, the question was about soft-serve ice cream, but it's basically the same thing. Here's a good article for you soft-serve lovers, by the way.
- 38% of my readers prefer sweat to sweaters.
- Among my readership, I have 44 game developers and 7 game producers or executives. I assume we're just waiting for the ink to dry on those consulting contracts.
- Most of my readers are non-religious of one type or another, to a far greater extent than population demographics would predict. I wonder if I've just scared away most of the believers with my ungodliness.
- I'm saving responses on virtue, ethics, and religion for a juicier posting later on.
- My default character is usually a paladin, which was the second-highest vote-getter among respondents (111). Mages were first (199); druids (23) and priests (24) were lowest. My apologies for not including a "ranger" option, though.
- Readers are well-adjusted when it comes to the amount of time they spend on games. 43% would like to spend more time gaming, and 38% are comfortable with the time they currently spend.
I'm still working on some of the more complex questions, but I thought I give this to you to chew on in the meantime.
I didn't quite finish the survey. :( I felt like I was only on disk 2 of 3.
ReplyDeleteYeah I lost steam too -- I did about half of the survey and then meant to come back to it later, but never did.
DeleteI really like the Pillars of Eternity series, It's lore is pretty fun though occasionally overwhelming. I know I was one of the original Baldurs Gate votes and that's largely because there is no game that is more likely to make me just one day be like, I need to play this again. I know it's sequel is probably the better game on a technical level but there is something about those early levels that feels more satisfying to me gain.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely loved the lore of PoE (Morrowind-quality) and how it intersect with its unique “Cipher” class, but the game is way too wordy for its own good, and its ruleset is really “we have D&D at home”. The last third of the game also force you to interact with Generic Elves that are even more logorrheic than the humans, so it was a huge letdown. The DLC was a bit more great lore and a lot more of repetitive combat.
DeleteIt ended up below my personal “recommended” threshold unlike, well, other cRPGs in your list or not in your list.
I played both Pillars games on easy difficulty in RTwP mode with a chanter PC as kind of isometric "hiking sims" - just exploring pretty locations and enjoying the intricate lore and letting the combat resolve itself. More recently, I decided to replay Pillars 2 properly - in TB and paying attention to mechanics. And dropped it after ~5 hours because of just how mind-numbingly boring those mechanics are.
Delete"way too wordy for its own good" lord I wish games were more cognizant of this problem. Unfortunately it seems to be getting worse.
DeleteA shame in my opinion that the 2nd part is a little forgotten. I will say though that combat was indeed a little boring EXCEPT for those special 4 optional encounters in PoE 2, that seemed impossible to me, or at least, I didn't want to rise to the skill level after waltzing through the main game at first.
DeleteThe Pillars games are both good but not great. I really liked the vibe of the universe and the overall narrative, but for me they're defined by a lack of restraint by the developers, both in the extreme wordiness pointed out above and in the systems, which are simply too complex and hard to understand even for experienced players. There was a real trend in indie games around the time the first Pillars came out of complexity for complexity's sake (Path of Exile, ironically also PoE, is another good example), as a response to the (in my opinion accurate) perception that AAA games were becoming streamlined and dumbed-down at the time. Avowed, the first-person game in the Pillars universe that came out last year, was criticized for being dumbed-down itself, but I found it to be a much more elegant design both in terms of the writing and the gameplay than either of the mainline Pillars games.
DeleteB: too wordy for their own good is something that in my very radical opinion it was already present in games like the overwritten for such pulp Betrayal at Krondor or the drowned under its own self importance Planescape Torment (and later Disco Elysium).
DeleteAnd yeah, I can read long books with long prose. I just think the authors of the text of these games think they are smarter, better, or more unique than they really are.
Having said that I hope you folks don't hate me too much, it is only, like, my opinion man.
Every CRPG wordier than Dungeon Master is too wordy.
Delete@Bitmap, if you want to really spark outrage, use Diablo instead.
DeleteDiablo is too wordy.
Deletehttps://www.mobygames.com/game/339/diablo/screenshots/windows/18610/
I played a lot of Pillars of Eternity, and never actually finished it. It is just so long, and I have to echo the "too wordy" also, it dumps a lot of lore on you in the opening hours too, which didn't endear me to it at first, it really felt like I had to push through until I was past the first town and it got better.
DeleteAlso turned down the difficulty because I had no clue what the combat was all about, credit to anyone who can deal with all the noise going on. Other RTwP games I've enjoyed have far simpler combat, so that makes it easier to deal with.
(also irked me that the game gave me a "super murderer" achievement, which is just killing whatever number of enemies. I hadn't even got two-thirds of the way through the game, if there's enough enemies for me to kill to get that, perhaps you have too many enemies in your game!)
I enjoyed the first Pillars game a lot, but never managed to finish it (an unlucky hard disk crash lost me most of my progress, and by the time I got that laptop running again, I had lost steam). I enjoyed a lot of the systems (tracking your reputation in multiple categories was fabulous, as opposed to the old "jerk/pushover" a lot of games lean into). I enjoyed the combat, though by the (near-) end, I found that much of the fancier stuff (status effects, etc.) didn't have as much of an effect as I would have liked, making managing them less worthwhile than simply trying to pulverize the opposition as quickly as possible. I think I actually purchased the second game, but planned to start it after finishing the first (which I never got around to).
Deletecompletely get the bias for classic games, I love them too. Disco Elysium has the best writing and narrative of any game I've ever played, though.
ReplyDeleteI like the microwave popcorn method of determining when the survey was done.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how I feel about being the only respondent from Louisiana, so I have chosen to feel special.
ReplyDeleteI'm *from* Louisiana (BTR) but currently live in North Carolina, so had to pick one when I filled out the form. But you should still feel special. I went home for a month for the holidays, and part of that length of time is just so I can eat like a pig.
DeleteI can't remember if I said Pillars 2 or Fallout 2. It's hard to just pick one. I adore Pillars 2 though.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of getting new readers, I can't think of what you could do other than to figure out a way to talk about more modern/"new" games. I think that would be cool but not if it got in the way of the bread and butter.
I'm one of those long-time readers who rarely comments. Will try to do so more often. Sometimes I can't leave a comment on mobile (which is how I usually read new entries) so I just give up.
I only read on mobile, and yes, commenting is very hit or miss. I usually go for name/url, but then I don't know if anyone replies ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
DeleteI think the bias towards older CRPGs for favourite is natural, depending on what it is you like best about CRPGs. As someone who enjoys RPGs mostly as books I can play, story and characters remain most important to me. Baldur's Gate 2 nearly hit the peak of what that can be in video in 2000. While Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous took the same basic formula 2021 and improved slightly on combat and overall story, the characters can't match BGII's. I won't be quoting anyone from Wrath of the Righteous in 20 years like I still do Minsc or Tiax.
ReplyDeleteI feel that it's like that for a lot of aspects of CRPGs. Few games have world-building like Fallout, but the ones that do like Pillars of Eternity, can't quite match it in other aspects, like character building. The games that can match the classics on their finest attributes are often being made by smaller teams or solo devs these days and it means they often can only focus on one aspect of what made the classic they're emulating great.
I think it also is largely dependant on why you play games. I use video games as escapism from a world outside that is often horrible. I want to play an RPG where the good guys win and the day is saved. I don't want to play an RPG where my character is a depressed alcoholic who may kill himself if things go wrong, despite how amazing the characters and writing in Disco Elysium are.
It probably doesn't hurt that classic games are from a time when the world didn't seem like it sucked so much, so there are less negative outisde memories associated. Not to mention as someone who was in his teens when Baldur's Gate 2 came out, I couldn't buy a lot of games so Baldur's Gate 2 defined a year of my life. Older and with disposable income, Wrath of the Righteous was a large part of my life for the month I took to beat it, then I started the next game I owned and it immediately was replaced as my focus.
I wholeheartedly agree with this the main thrust of this comment. For context, I voted for PS: T on the questionnaire. And it's not like I don't enjoy later CRPGs, I truly do. But while both BG3 and Disco Elysium are truly great games, as are others that didn't even make it onto the list, like KoTOR 1 and 2, Bloodlines, NWN2, Tyranny, and the Pathfinder series, none of them are quite as finely balanced in their virtues as the classic Black Isle and BioWare gems. I'm pretty certain that's not just irrational nostalgia, as I beat the original BG for the first time just a few years ago, and while I did go through PS: T shortly after it came out, I came back to it several times years and decades later, and it was as good, if not better, as it was back in my youth.
DeleteIncidentally, your GoTY '93 still ranks surprisingly high on my personal list of games I enjoy to this day. I loved it when I played it back in the nineties, but I also appreciate how it presaged in many ways the masterpieces that came out a few years later.
I mean, it's a blog about older RPGs. Why would you read a blog about older RPGs if you prefer newer ones.
DeleteIf anything, I'm surprised that the vast majority of the games that make the top are so recent.
I dropped 'Baldur's Gate 3' after about an hour, when I realized they didn't implement 'Delay Action' and 'Ready Action' for their turn-based(!) combat... amateurs!
DeleteI have to confess that I was disappointed by BG2 and couldn't finish it when it came out because the whole experience was very linear after some point, heavily scripted, and very heavy on character dialogue some of which I found torturous. If I had to chose a defining game from "around 2002", it would be Arcanum, even if BG2 had clearly superior combat.
DeleteBy comparison to Arcanum, BG2 felt claustrophobic, at least to me.
that does make sense... personally, as I've grown older and dedicated more time to reading and have less time for games, I've become the opposite way, preferring games that are fun to play above all else, because even the best written game can't touch the greats of literature... which is why I love Baldur's Gate 3, the tactical combat is just so satisfying and fun, while I've bounced off most older CRPG's with clunky combat... basically at this point in my life, if I'm playing a game, I want it to be fun as a game, otherwise I'd just go back to reading
DeleteI'm from CT but I didn't know about or was too busy to do the poll. One of those. Early 50s and my favorite cRPG is.. probably either Pool of Radiance, Ultima 5, or Fallout 2. Been reading for years but rarely comment to the point I don't really even log into my Google account.
ReplyDeleteI am really puzzled about your question on country-naming. When you are talking French, I surmise you say “Je viens des Etats Unis”, not “Je viens des United States”. Similarly, when speaking English I say “France”, and when speaking French I say “France”
ReplyDelete… wait, it does not work. Anyway, I say France, Franța, Francia and Frankrike as circumstances require.
- And where are you from?
Delete- 中華民國
- I see
I would naturally say I'm from "soy de Los Estados Unidos" if I were speaking Spanish, even if it was to another American. I don't know anyone who wouldn't.
DeleteThe United States is a bad example (and I should have left it out) because the name is made up of translatable, common words. Sweden isn't "translating" Sverige so much as substituting a different name entirely.
DeleteThe way a native English speaker with no training in Swedish would pronounce "Sverige" would make an exonym out of it anyway.
DeleteLearning Swedish as a French:
Delete- Grammar: English grammar exactly except words have a gender and that thing when you point the blue house that is not a random blue house,
- Order of the words: Basically German,
- Vocabulary: A mix of English, German and French. You should be fine.
- Pronunciation: Ok, first: close your eyes, they’ll decrive you. Forget the letters, they’re just here to occupy the space. Now, try to remember the last time your heard a Swede pronounce that, hope the Swede was not from Scania and go for it!
Swedish is actually relatively straightforward to pronounce compared to Danish. More importantly, when you hear Swedes speak, you can actually discern what they are saying. Not so with Danes. There are actual scientific studies on how Danes manage to understand each other. The main conclusion: they don't. They just get really good at inferring meaning from context.
DeleteYeah, age and sex stats track with surveys our company occasionally puts out. I think your readership is a bit more male than our players, because old RPGs (and games in general) before Baldur's Gate were mostly men's domain. Once RPGs with romance options began to show up, gender ratio changed a little :)
ReplyDeleteQuite a strong result for Ultima V as a favorite RPG for people. Not bad for an 1988 game. :)
ReplyDeleteThe 1-2 punch of Ultima IV and V is still among the most interesting and well fleshed out CRPGs. Taking everything that was important about IV and turning it on its head was genius. I can’t think of any other duology of CRPGs that left such a strong combined impact. Sure, Baldur’s Gate 1&2 or Fallout 1&2 are individually better games, but their sequels are “just” better versions of the prior game, not really something that makes me re-interpret the first one. Curious if there are any other two games like that?
DeleteUltima V is so much better because Ultima IV exists.
Surprisingly, this punch also works if you play Ultima 6 first (which has the virtues nicely displayed in the eight cities) and then Ultima 5 (with its blatant "follow the virtues Or Else" philosophy).
DeleteU4 was my vote there. Glad to see I was joined by 11 others. I'm sorry that so many other folks were just plain wrong. ;) More seriously, yeah - the U4+U5 combo was and is a strong one, although the non-combat ending of U4 still resonates with me today.
DeleteI'm with you guys, I could've easily voted for both as well. The whole series from 4 up to 7 has a special place in my heart that's why 8 back then felt so...well..brutal for the lack of a better word.
DeleteWell, it's been 15 years and Ultima V still leads the scoreboard in ranking.
DeleteI think Ultima V is genuinely a brilliant game, and I say that as a person who started playing games in the Baldur's Gate era. There are some ideas in Ultima V that are still so unique: the whole outlaw angle, that towns can be even more dangerous than wilderness, the already quite elaborate npc schedules... and what later Ultima's lost - the world feels big.
Delete@Joshua, all those advantages that you describe have been appropriated by other genres that utilize either "sandbox" or "metroidvania" formulas.
Deletethat era of Ultima from U5 to U7 really made me a big fan. They make for really great sequels too, as mentioned above, adding new perspectives each time.
DeleteI always read your reviews. I never saw the poll. Clearly you snuck it in for paid subscribers. That's hardly representative of your viewership.
ReplyDeleteIt was in the 1993/1994 posting on January 9.
DeleteGlad to see at least a couple console games ended up in the list even if there are better Final Fantasies
ReplyDeleteAs for the sex question, technically I lied by saying I'm female, but only because I'm trans and see sex and gender as seperate things. It's possible that's related, but it's also just as possible that it's because the blog covers games from an era where gaming in general was primarily seen as being for the boys, and the reader age distribution makes me think most of them are here to remember the games of their youth which means that's gonna be heavier on the guys.
Meanwhile, I'm one of the readers in their late 20s, and I'm here because I like retro games in general, and computer games have always been a bit of a blind spot for me. I grew up on consoles and for the most part the computer was the thing I used the internet for, and the games were stuff like Rollercoaster Tycoon or SimCity 4. Even after I got a CRPG around the time Skyrim came out (Morrowind specifically) it was a few years before any of them actually clicked with me, and even then I still jive better with consoles over PC. Unfortunately I prefer Nintendo and that results in things like it being extremely unlikely I'll ever end up playing Baldur's Gate 3... although at least I'll finally be able to try Cyberpunk
Well, Divinity: Original Sin II got a Switch release and a Switch 2 update - it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that Switch 2 will get Baldur's Gate 3 in the near-to-moderate future.
DeleteUnfortunately Larian's already come out and said they aren't porting it
DeleteA long time reader, first time poster, I found picking a favourite game almost impossible. I’ve probably played through Baldurs Gate more than any, but did I love it more than MM3, 5, 6 or 7 or more than either Fallout? Or Curse of the Azure Bonds? Let alone both Pillars , Neverwinter Nights, Ultima Underworld or U5 or U7 or gosh, the Divinities or Planescape or Dragon Age and on and on - does Mass Effect count? That’s the beauty of the genre, that’s there’s so much diversity and while a lot of utter trash, so many gems and to this day so many rewards, although it’s fair to say my wife tends to differ.
ReplyDeleteThe median/mean age is a year OLDER than me! Cripes.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading about these old crpgs, partly for nostalgia, but mostly because I don't have the time (or sometimes patience) to play them anymore. I also didn't have a PC, so couldn't play most of these (went from Atari ST to obsolete PC (only for music making) to Mac, so I've missed out on most of the games Chet plays.
ReplyDelete"I should not have conflated "where do you live?" with "where are you from?" [...] (man, are some people sensitive about that)"
ReplyDeleteI was going for gleefully pedantic rather than sensitive. But yeah, being an immigrant, it's kinda hard not to have strong feelings about those things.
"Is this the same in your country, or do Germans casually use 'Germany' even to other Germans?"
When speaking *English*? Yes, absolutely, why wouldn't they? You use the name of the country in the language you're currently speaking. That's also why the whole Turkey debacle is so ridiculous.
US-style enthusiastic patriotism is also a bit of a mauvais ton on this continent - for obvious historical reasons. Nor is identity politics as big of a thing, for better or worse.
Oh, and this: "You have time to read 2,500 words a day?" - I don't see why not, that's, like, a 15 minutes read. I usually do that over a meal.
DeleteThough I admire your ability to write that much. For me, writing 2500 words takes two full 8-hour working days.
The "sensitive" part was about the difference between "country" and "nation," not the difference between "where are you from?" and "where do you live?"
DeleteI just never thought of "Germany" as particularly "English" instead of an exonym. There's no reason we couldn't say "Deutschland" in English. It's not "translating" anything. But anyway, I guess I have my answer: no one else thinks it's weird.
Well, "Germany" is a specifically English exonym - in Danish, for example, it's "Tyskland"; in French, "Allemagne".
DeletePersonally I've always though "Marc Anthony" sounds silly. What's wrong with "Marcus Antonius"?
DeleteNow it's my time to get pedantic ;) because while 'Germany' indeed is an English exonym, it refers back to 'Germanien' which is just an older and more archaic name for the same region. I do believe that exonyms are formed when the pronunciation gets difficult, as English neither uses the -eu- nor -sch- sounds found in 'Deutschland'.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany
DeleteThey pronounce "dutch" just fine, they just use it for the wrong country ;)
DeleteGermania would still be an exonym as it was coined by the romans.
"as English neither uses the -eu- nor -sch- sounds found in 'Deutschland'."
DeleteThis seems a strange statement to me. German "eu" is essentially the same sound as English "oi" or "oy", and German "tsch" is essentially the same sound as English "ch". To the extent that there are differences between them, there is vastly more variation within different English or German pronunciations of the sounds than there is between the two languages. That it, this is about spelling/orthography, not about the actual sounds produced.
Right, George, that was sloppily put together on my part, try this: The exonym exists because English speakers would stumble over the -eu- part, which just translates to 'you' (as in 'Europe'), and then again over the -sch- part, which translates to 'sk' (as in 'scheme'). So it is more about the spelling than the articulation, I stand corrected. But it's still the main reason why exonyms exist: we're all having trouble with foreign names, so we make up our own...
DeleteIronically (or not?), that would sound very close to how Tyskland is pronounced.
DeleteDidn't follow the 'Turkey' -> 'Türkiye' matter closely, just saw the headline about the international name change back then, but I remember thinking at the time that the Turks - who apparently take their national pride very seriously - were probably just fed up with their country name being conflated with the popular Thanksgiving dinner in the form of a bulky bird.
DeletePlus, the term also being used in English for something that has failed badly... .
@BESTIEunlmtd: it‘s even more complicated; Latin Germania is far larger than modern Germany or any pf its earlier predecessor states. Germani lived as far to the east as modern Poland and Romania.
DeleteAnyway, as a cotizen of that stae, I am proud to say, I read this blog here before Der Spiegel wrote about it (though this was first class PR).
"Except for one reader from Peru who insisted on the grave over the "u," not a single reader rendered the name of their country in native form."
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean? I rendered both my country of origin (Venezuela) and the country I'm at (Chile) in its native form — and I'm pretty sure the other commenter from Chile did the same.
Ha. Fair enough. "New World" nations don't have the same endonym/exonym problem.
DeleteThey do, but to a lesser extent.
DeleteI.e. Canada and Mexico in German become "Kanada" and "Mexiko" respectively, "Mexico" is "Mexique" in French, Brazil (which is Brasil in Portuguese) becomes "Brasilien" in German, and let's not even talk about Falkland Islands :)
When reading this part, I was briefly confused about the "grave", then realized it had nothing to with a tomb, but referred to a diacritic.
DeleteBut since you mention it, isn't the accent on "Peru" the one pointing in the other direction? Looking it up, it seems that one's called "acute accent". Never heard that English word before either.
"Most of my readers are non-religious of one type or another, to a far greater extent than population demographics would predict. I wonder if I've just scared away most of the believers with my ungodliness."
ReplyDeleteAs someone who had a very religious upbringing, but then broke off to atheism in adulthood, RPGs were very taboo in the childhood world I came from (satanic panic, etc.). The adults around me believed that supernatural forces were real, and play acting this stuff was dangerous, or at the least not edifying.
I'm sure there's more to it than this. I'd guess that other religions weren't nearly so hostile as mine. And it's probably not a coincidence that I was the rare kid in that community that secretly was into this stuff anyway and also moved on from religion as an adult. There's probably some psychological trait that contributed to both.
I'd love to comment more, but the choices for non-anonymous posting are somewhat sparse: Google Account (I really don't want to use that) and Name/URL (don't have a website nowadays).
ReplyDeleteYou can leave the URL space blank and just enter a name.
DeleteBut what would the Avatar say? Is it ... virtuous?
DeleteIt's as virtuous as anything else, but definitely more tedious.
DeleteI get fed these posts from an RSS reader (feedly.com, in fact). It's actually hard to imagine NOT using a feed reader in some way to keep up with blogs. I know for a fact that I'd never take the time to individually check on all the blogs I'm interested in. This is pretty much the only one where I'm interested (and participate) in the COMMENTS as well. Even where it may not be intentional, it's very hard to break into some blogosphere communities for some of us (within the blog itself or Discord). However, the Addictsphere is a good place with good people, or so it feels to me, who are passionate about this topic.
ReplyDeleteThe skew to older men isn't surprising at all, given the narrow topic, although it would be good to at least see the numbers get closer to the industry averages. Sadly, I can't speak to any reasons: it doesn't feel like a sausagefest in the comments, except again in the topic itself, but we're the worst ones to make that judgment. (My wife doesn't get computer gaming OR role playing gaming in the first place, much less both combined, so she'd be the last person I'd get a valid response from on reasons.)
I'm happy to see Dark Sun win GOTY, even though I voted for UU2. It's been a long time since I played DS (vs. a replay of UU2 four years ago), but I recall it being a very good game. It's in my GOG library awaiting its first re-play since it came out.
I was just about to comment saying I think I'm the only one using RSS, and I was starting to feel like the 81 year old reader we me!
DeleteI've never used an RSS reader, I have this blog bookmarked and check it regularly!
DeleteI also use RSS, through Thunderbird
DeleteI combine both methods. The RSS informs me about new posts, but in between I mostly just check the blog anyway, since there are usually new recent comments and those are often interesting as well (if there is also an RSS feed for new comments, like on other blogs, I've missed it so far)
DeleteI don't think there's an RSS just for comments. I just make sure to make a comment and select "Notify Me" for anything I'm interested in following.
DeleteUs Germans, we "get" you, I'd say.
ReplyDeleteThough I wonder, if you realise that the blog naturally attracts middle-aged people, and so requires an historically grown RPG community, so that Germany is simply the 2nd biggest market.
I'd assume that Brazil is a relative newcomer, that Japan is naturally more focused on their own home-grown RPG culture, and other bigger countries have other reasons for not featuring quite THAT much.
But yeah, Germany was pretty quick on the RPG train, and developed their own alterantives to D&D, as you can see with the game you play right now.
Seconded, and we should acknowledge that 'Das Schwarze Auge' played a big part in popularizing rpg's around here.
DeleteAt least around where I live by the late 80s early 90s American P&P systems like D&D and Shadowrun where equally if not more popular and available in specialized shops. It's the same time the first German CRPGs appear. To my personal taste and perception DSA was always a side note after D&D.
DeleteWe Germans don't use use the English name for our country when talking among ourselves. We only do that when talking in English.
ReplyDeleteWhen talking among ourselves, we don't say "Deutschland", rather I'm from "Hessen" or "Bayern". Never call yourself a "Deutschländer" (TM) because these are wieners (sausages) ;)
Delete"in 16 years of doing this, I've never seen any gender-based comments between readers, certainly nothing that would rise to the level of harassment or "toxic masculinity" or whatever."
ReplyDeleteI remember some loser asking a female commenter if she wants some moorcock. Don't have a clue what entry it was though.
Ah yes, the name Moorcock will always bring out the punster in simpletons.
DeleteDidn't recall that at all, but yes, indeed.
DeleteThe female commenter in question was Amy K. - talking about your few female readers, she used to comment quite a bit. Wonder if she's still around.
Haven's seen her around since that cock-up (oops!).
DeleteI'm not only a Christian, I'm also a teacher of religious education (regular school subject here), and your ungodliness has yet to drive me away. And your defaulting to a paladin tells me that deep down, you are a virtuous man. Or you just like to smite undead.
ReplyDeleteI'm also a Christian zealot, and quite happy to keep reading your blog!
DeleteI typically have about 10 hours a night at work when I can be reading your blog. So get cracking. J/K. At this point I have almost read every post. I will say this, doing it on mobile feels like being a bastard step-child
ReplyDeleteGame idea: Factorio, but instead of an industry you must organize researchers, ghost-writers and other little hands to churn articles as fast as possible.
DeleteGiven that your readership skews older, I would have been interested to see how many of your women readers are transgender. Off the top of my head, I can think of two besides myself that I've seen in comments over the years.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I bring this up is that given how heavily the industry skewed towards men back in the day, chances are fair that a woman in the industry was trans, and I'm curious if that translated across to players as well.
I mentioned it in my comment, but I'm one of those trans readers!
DeleteI didn't fill in the survey but I am in RI! I'll do it next year so you can get better coverage.
ReplyDeleteI'm here because of the Spiegel article: https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/games/computerspiel-blog-chester-bolingbroke-spielt-alle-rollenspiele-a-924304.html
ReplyDeleteThat was more than 10 years ago and I will keep reading everything. My favourite moment was beating Chaos Strikes Back, probably because I could fully understand the mix of frustration and reflief this game provides.
Thanks for the link! I was unaware of the Spiegel article before this posting, and was dreading having to figure out the correct google terms to track it down (though, ironically, I actually read the print edition of Der Spiegel semi-regularly at the time the article was published---the library where I worked had a subscription, and I used it as a way to brush up on my high school-college German).
DeleteFor anyone curious about publications mentioning this blog, the 'Index of Special Topics Postings' (found through the dropdown menu at the top in mobile view or the upper right sidebar in desktop / 'web' view) has a list of links at its bottom to blog entries referencing corresponding interviews / articles and podcasts.
DeleteIt includes the full English interview texts of both the Spiegel (including link) and the Pelit articles in the (September 2013) entry named 'Recent Interviews in European Publications'. The survey results sound like it would now be time for an interview with a (pan-)African or Asian publication! ;-)
Seriously, though, I could imagine your blog maybe gaining a few readers in Eastern Europe in the coming years, given that it is getting into a period where - I understand, readers from those countries or more familiar with that subject might correct me - people in the former communist countries there got better access to a variety of 'Western' CRPGs (and computer games in general) following the fall of the Wall and the disbanding of the Warsaw pact etc.
Just to chime in with my own 2 cents.
ReplyDeleteJapanese people rarely call their own country Japan, unless they're talking to foreigners, in which case they call it Japan. As for your low number of Japanese readers, well, I spent a few years in Japan in the late 00s, and western RPGs are basically non-existent in the market. There were translations of games by Origin Systems, Electronic Arts, and some games by SSI, and that's it. Probably only a handful of Western RPGs were ever translated to Japanese, and these were a niche market at best.
Also, I suspect you'll find a lot more German readers with the mastery of the English language necessary to enjoy your blog than you'll find in Japan.
Finally, I've been collecting physical copies of Japanese translations of Western 80s/90s adventure/RPGs for the last 10-15 years. I have about 50, which are probably the most common ones on the market. I can send you a list if you're curious.
Oh, Sir-Tech and New World Computing, too.
DeleteSir-Tech definitely had an impact, though, as Japan really took to Wizardry.
DeleteYeah, Wizardry still has a dedicated following in Japan, and has had a huge number of Japan-exclusive spinoffs. And if you look at the early personal computer market in Japan, there were a lot of Wizardry clones on the market, though they started to lose dominance after Dragon Quest III took the Famicom world by storm. Even in the 90s, there were still plenty of high-profile Wizardry/MM-style games on Japanese PCs, though most of them tended to get JRPG-ified when ported to other platforms (e.g. Laplace no Ma).
DeleteSince you mention it, there was/is a September 2020 guest post on this blog titled 'The Long Life of the Original "Wizardry" in Japan' talking about those Japan-exclusive Wizardry games.
DeleteNot to mention that there have been a number of Japanese RPG series that have their roots in Wizardry. The Megami Tensei series might be the best known in the West (by way of the Persona spin-off series, although both series have long since shed the overt Wizardry trappings), although there are others, including a number of more recent releases—several titles by Experience Inc. (Stranger of Sword City, etc.), the Elminage titles (two of which were localized in English, the Etrian Odyssey titles (which I'm sure other commenters have mentioned already)... too many to name here. I just wish more of them had taken a few pages from Wizardry VI and VII; it seems like the bulk of the influence is from the first five titles, for better or for worse.
DeleteI didn't finish the survey because I didn't want to give out so much information about my personal opinions, preferences etc. I've been enjoying your blog for around 13 years and wanted to participate, but just didn't feel comfortable about it. I think you weren't being serious with the "Shame on you", but it comes across as a bit aggressive, if that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteI don't think any Germans call their country "Germany" amongst themselves, that would feel very off. I imagine this applies to most nations. The survey was in English, so I would've used "Germany" naturally.
Thanks for your blog, Chet!
I'm sorry that was your take-away. I deliberately made it so most of the questions were skippable, but I probably should have told people in the header that any data was better than none.
DeleteI'm not the most avid reader and I missed the survey, so here's a couple of notes:
ReplyDelete- I subscribe via RSS, as I do with 95% of my content. Been this way since the turn of the millenium. Even Youtube and Reddit (the closest I can call 'my socials') I get content this way. 'The Algorithm' is still a mysterious to me and I prefer to keep it that way.
- I'm a new reader (less than 2 years) and I just occasionally read when I find the game interesting. I prefer the last post, with scores and closing comments. Very rarely do I read the 'middle' entries but I often give it a quick scroll and peruse the comments (which I always like and also read their blogs). I almost always also read the opening post on a new game entry. I guess I prefer the commentary to the game itself? :\ I don't know how this affects the time-counter but I prefer to use reading mode or even send the post link to Instapaper and later read it in my e-reader.
I guess the stats apply to me but on the topic above I'm probably an outlier.
Cheers from Portugal ('The Portugal', in US american) :P
Getting new readers is more about marketing, but in terms of the blog itself, I think the biggest challenge would logically be that most of the time, the top post is the middle of a stream of discussion on a particular game. The best answer would be to have links at the beginning and end of each post that let you navigate the series on that game. However, I would imagine that would be terribly annoying to set up and maintain since you’d have to keep editing old posts. If the software had an automatic “series links” feature, that would be ideal, but I’ve never seen that option before.
ReplyDeleteI agree with that. Even when (especially when) going back through older game posts, having the ability to easily navigate to the previous/next post for the same game, instead of needing to keep the index up, would be a useful feature.
DeleteIt came up the other day - someone got stuck in Legends of Valour in the CRPG subreddit. I had to link the first post in the series, and say that the rest could be found via the sidebar.
DeleteTo the extent entries for a specific game are tagged/labelled, you can easily find them all, listed in inverse chronological order - example: Dungeon Master.
DeleteHowever, I seem to recall our host saying he did not keep that up consistently, so checking and updating those might be a similarly big effort as creating series links (The Digital Antiquarian recently started doing the latter, given that he has entries further apart dealing with a common theme, e.g. several articles over the years talking about a certain period of the history of a company or genre).
Not sure if there is an easy way to do that. Plus for the tags/labels I assume you'd have to know the format for the search including the exact label? For Legends of Valour I couldn't make it work, the entries might not be labelled or I did not spell the search format correctly.
The alternative is indeed to go to the 'Index of Games Played by Title' (or Year) which lists / links all entries for each one.
I haven't used tags since probably the first year. Why is it not convenient enough to link to the alphabetical list?
DeleteOh, never mind--Scott said it. Hoo. I honestly don't know how to code that. I'd have to manually add the links to the post footers, I think.
Deletelol so I'm your only Oklahoma reader. Nice.
ReplyDeleteGreetings, from one of your five neighboring readers up here in Kansas. We should all organize a reunion.
DeleteFlyover country representing!
DeleteI´ve been reading your blog since it was featured in the article in Finnish Pelit-magazine, so it must have been at least 10 years although I can´t put a finger on exact year. I still check the blog almost every day and read majority of the stuff, comments included, but I´ve propably commented only a few times during all these years. Guess you could say I have lurker tendencies (happens elsewhere as well) but usually it´s more like by the time I get reading, someone has already said what I was about to say and I don´t see much point in repeating same stuff.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I´m 49 male (turning 50 soon), longtime reader from Finland. I had most of the survey filled already, but then failed to actually send it because first I started to ponder about some stuff too much and then I forgot it for too long. I would say, though, that my taste in games goes pretty much hand in hand with the majority here anyway and I wouldn´t have made a big effect on median scores.
I should have mentioned the Pelit article. I have no doubt my (relatively) large Finnish readership goes back to it.
DeleteSo are you going to play every game on that list of favorite games? :D
ReplyDeleteAlso, it occurs to me to ask that since Final Fantasy VII had a contemporary PC release, and you have a policy of playing all of a game's notable predecessors before you play given game- are you going to play FFII-VI in their relevant years, or immediately before playing FFVII?
DeleteSure, I'll eventually play them all. As to playing the predecessors, that's very much a cross-the-bridge-when-we-come-to-it situation. But it's hard to imagine playing five games just to experience one.
DeleteAs someone who enjoyed Baldur's Gate much more than its sequel, I'm happy to see that my vote was decisive (as everyone else's, of course). Otherwise I find myself a little too much “median reader”. Well, at least I put the famous post with the Ultima VII victory only at place 2.
ReplyDeleteAs for the toponyms, naming is a delicate question. When speaking about countries I'd find very odd to use the original form instead of the foreign language - appropriate one. With cities instead it's less clear: when speaking Italian I say "New York" and not "Nuova York" lest I seem someone out of the 19th century, but I cringe when some of my countrymates says "London" instead of "Londra". On the English Wikipedia there was a long discussion on whether to use "Torino" or "Turin", since the 2006 Olympic communication campaign used the former style even for the international communication campaign.
I really wanted to enjoy Pillars of Eternity, but was turned off by the combat system. I prefer turn-based, and am looking forward to the sequel which apparently allows that as an option.
ReplyDeleteThey recently published a beta with turn-based combat for the first game!
DeleteI am from canaru island, and your blog is a MUST HAVE ... You have the power
ReplyDeleteI'm curious how many votes the various Fate: Gates of Dawn entries got in total for favourite entry.
ReplyDeleteIt felt a little silly to me that the question required a specific entry - as who has such perfect recall as to accurately answer that over years of reading - but the Fate playthrough as a whole was probably the one I found the most fascinating (...as far as I can recall).
That was the reason I didn't pick a favourite entry. I know I've loved either the Fate: Gates of Dawn or Might & Magic III entries the most as a whole, but have no recollection if there was some random entry for a different game that I enjoyed more than the specific entries in those series.
DeleteThere were 11 votes for assorted Fate entries. I guess you're right: I should have asked for an entire game rather than a single entry.
DeleteWell, I guess, time to play that Dark Sun.
ReplyDeleteI’m from Asia, but since I am studying in the US, my response got eaten. I’m a little surprised no one else from my country reads this blog, but I do not know many people who play old games, let alone CRPGs.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the gender divide, it's definitely related to the niche content. I know several woman who love CRPGs, one being my wife who is playing both Baldur's Gate 3 and Tiny Bookshop... But she has zero nostalgia for CRPGs from before 2015 (i.e., Witcher 3), and so has no desire to read this or other similar blogs... no matter how much I've rambled on about Ultima this or Fallout that. I really don't think it's worth fretting over, as it's a symptom of a past gender issue rather than a (major?) current problem.
ReplyDeleteI am aware of two women who have ever commented on Data Driven Gamer, and one of them is my wife.
DeleteFYI: I'm a woman, I read your blog religiously, and I tried to comment, but Blogger was giving me issues with my Google account signing in, so I gave up.
DeleteCould you elaborate? Were you deterred because Blogger wanted you to sign in, and you didn't want to? Or because you wanted to sign in but it wasn't working?
DeleteDiese Kommentarsektion ist jetzt Eigentum der BRD GmbH.
ReplyDeleteGermany shows up surprisingly often as second or third largest country for weird niche things like this. I've never heard of the Spiegel article you're mentioning and yet I'm here. And what came first? The Germans liking the weird niche thing or the Spiegel article writing about it?
I'm sure I had German readers before the article, but it definitely increased the number coming from that country. Back when Google Analytics was working right, I could have given you real numbers.
DeleteThat age distribution, wow. It's rare that I feel *young* on the Internet nowadays :o
ReplyDeleteI think that Pillars of Eternity and Dragon Age didn't make the list for similar reasons: pretty much everyone here played BG1/2/PS:T, and the two titles don't do enough to distinguish themselves from or eclipse the previous titles for those who played them *first*.
ReplyDeleteFun thought: if Dark Sun wins the vote, but BaK leads in comments, then it means that BaK is for people who like to write for fun and Dark Sun is for those who don't :)
ReplyDeleteI am a German reader and did not discover your blog via the spiegel article. I stumbled upon a link in an obscure blog about roguelikes which name I have long forgotten.
ReplyDelete"I really enjoyed the first game, particularly the depth of its lore, its replayability, and its role-playing options. (I looked at a walkthrough when I was finished and discovered that I had missed three joinable NPCs.) I confess I didn't know half of what was happening in combat. "
ReplyDeleteSame here. It had the plot of a good rpg, but the mechanics just did not do it for me. Character stats felt different from DnD just to be different, not because it added anything to the player experience. Nothing felt intuitive, and I felt like I was screwing up every single level-up and gear assignment.
To be fair to D&D and PoE, I had *exactly* the same feeling when playing Temple of Elemental Evil: it was a *different* D&D that the *proper* D&D - because *proper* D&D was BG1/2/PS:T, and this *different* D&D felt like a bunch of changes for the sake of changes. Yes, and that same feeling of screwing level-ups.
DeleteI wouldn't read too much into the "which sex do you play relative to your own". Not to belittle the opinion of the 17 of course, but it is a small sample size and I'm not sure the proportions would stay the same if you had a couple hundred respondents. It would be interesting, if this has been polled on a larger scale (and not just CRPGs) if this is indeed true though.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember what I answered regarding where I'm from vs where I live (I didn't even remember the questions were conflated). As someone who immigrated decades ago, as an adult, for reasons much more complex than "I got a better job offer", I can't even tell you where I stand with this. When asked "where are you from?" I've answered both countries depending on my mood at the time, and probably some mental variable that I cannot even identify. It's complicated.
As for exonyms, I almost always refer to names (of places, or things unique to there) in my home language instead of the exonym. I don't even do it on purpose, it's just what I've always been used to, and it would sound weird to say the English exonym.
I won't speak for the women because I'm not one, but as far as scaring people away there are at least 3 criteria that could apply in my case, and I've never felt any unwelcoming attitude from your or comments that I read. If anything I like that you keep overt sociopolitical commentary out of what's ultimately a gaming blog for fun. Sure these things will always seep a little through our writing, but IMO you've done a great job creating a "come as you are" community, and more importantly one where I feel I don't have to care what someone else's race/gender/religion/whatever is.
A whole wall of text and I don't even comment on the game -_-
DeleteI'm happy to see Dark Sun win. It's one of my favourite games ever, and one I have loved ever since I played it some time in the late 90s. I love UW2 but the first was tighter and more original. I love BaK, and it's difficult to choose between it and DS, I would've been equally happy had either won.
I have liked soft-served ice cream until today; that link is very convincing. You can change my vote in the poll.
ReplyDeleteNo change in opinion on soft serve here. We take at a minimum a half-dozen major risks of bacterial issues (occasionally many more) every single time we consume food at any public food source. Worrying about it terribly much is a slippery slope to only eating food you've carefully prepared with your own (gloved) hands in your own sterile kitchen. If the restaurant looks reasonably well-maintained (granted, can't always see the kitchen, but counter and dining area cleanliness give a lot of clues), I'm up for the rest of the risk. All that said, I still PREFER regular ice cream over soft serve. But it's not because of bacterial worries.
DeleteThe argument it makes is very similar to "all meat should be cooked to well done to avoid any possibility of bacterial contamination".
DeleteMy microbiome to soft-serve ice cream: "we will add your biological distinctiveness to our own"
DeleteIt depends on the quality of the ice-cream you use to make it soft serve, good quality cream base ice that you whip air into yourself is something completely different to mass produced Frankenstein formula in large unclean containers.
DeleteI guess I'm the only one from Balkans (except that Greek one).
ReplyDeleteI too visit exclusively from RSS. I'm not sure how else would you visit all blogs and webcomics.
I'm really glad so many people voted for Gothic 2. I can't wait for your review in about 30 years.
ReplyDeleteI must say the results aren't *too* surprising - they more or less line up with what I'd expect for the niche the blog belongs to. I am a bit surprised at how low the reader numbers are for Canada though - did CRPGs pass Canada by? The very home of Bioware?
ReplyDeleteI'm very interested however in the stuff coming up in Part 2.