I have been thinking about the state of role playing games and I have come to the conclusion that role playing is at odds with the control of the player. While the term role playing game has come to mean any game that has stats, levels, or unlocks, I think there is a bit more to it. I define a role playing game as a game where the player character interacts with the game world in a level beyond the immediate game play goals. In Mario, you jump on platforms and enemies; you do not ponder who Mario is and why. Of course, some plays may ask this question of Mario which comes to the second part of my definition; the player is the arbiter of the game’s status as a role playing game.

Now that I have wasted a good paragraph on a subjective definition I would like to dive a bit deeper into what I mean by role playing being at odds with the control of the player. As I defined a role playing game above it is necessary to explain my definition of role playing. Role playing is the extent to which actions of the character are consistent with that character and their experience. At its heart, it is a character behaving like themselves. In a role playing game, the player is ultimately choosing the actions of a character which makes it the burden of the player to be consistent with the character.

After another paragraph spent on definitions, I can finally get to what I mean by the phrase “at odds”. First, an example. In the game Fallout 4, I played several different characters through the first couple hours of the game: I played a retired soldier with a knack for talking to people and using computers, I played a house wife who lost her child and a desire to kill everything in the wasteland with a tire iron till the pain stopped or something stopped her, I played an Old West star who only used pistols with no need for armor, and I played a women who could have stared in 80’s actions movies that had a love of big guns and explosions. The weird part was that all four of these characters were just as good at aiming any weapon as any other. Fallout 4 has the player aim with no skills, stats, or other character influences. None of my characters were aiming a gun, I was.

This finally brings me to my point. The more space a game devotes to the control of the player, the less the character matters. Role playing is not only choosing an option from a dialogue list, it is how a character exists in their world and interacts with it. This is not a value judgment against a player having more control in a game. There are many times where I wish I had more control. Trying to hit a mud crab in Marrowwind comes to mind. Here, I am showing you that there is a cost for more player control.