I recently had a long conversation with former Dragon Age writing lead David Gaider about what's in an RPG, his history at BioWare, and especially his new RPG-tinged roguelike deckbuilder Malys, which has become the "last hope" to keep studio Summerfall alive. The topic of fandom mentality came up, with Gaider lamenting the outrage, manufactured or just plain needless, stoked by people leashing their identity to games and other things they love, which can be especially fierce in the realm of RPGs.
"The RPG audience doesn't really agree with itself as to what an RPG requires," Gaider says. "And they could get very loud. The difficulty is if, suddenly, you end up with anti-fans. Then they turn from what you want, fans who would go out and spread word of your game and get people interested. But if you get anti-fans, they sort of do the opposite. They're very determined, suddenly, to see your game fail as sort of a lesson to others who would make games of the same type, right? And that, honestly, these days, there's some element of that present in almost all fandoms, but it's always sort of been there for RPGs in particular."
