Jan Lechner was asked to write some words for RPGVault's latest RPG Roundtable,  topic "They don't make RPGs like they used to". His piece of the article:

RPGs have changed, for sure. Technical capabilities, gameplay and game mechanics have changed and emerged. In the earlier years, technical limits forced developers to deal with a certain way of abstraction that came up in loads of charts and indexes in RPGs. Only some elements of the information these charts gave could be displayed graphically. For meant only hardcore gamers played CRPGs for a long time. At the same time, the focus was set as to the essential element of RPGs, the storyline. All elements of storytelling - characters, leveling, the relationships between characters, the RPG universe, and of course, the story outline were given their appropriate attention.

Today, when developing a CRPG, we have much greater capabilities. And we have to realize this. But this has also moved the focus. A lot of CRPGs currently in development are trying to take as much as advantage of technology as they can - but obviously, the developers forget that RPGs are extremely influenced by non-visible aspects like storytelling and characters, and also the implementation of the player himself as well as his own imagination. Of course you can't trivialize - there have always been good and not so good games, and there always will be. And maybe, it's just the high number of releases today makes players feel like there was more quality in the earlier years of the industry.  [...]

The whole thing @ RPGVault

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