The inaugural post. I thought I'd break my blogging cherry by reflecting on what's evidently one of the hottest trends in gaming: building RPG mechanics into practically every other genre.

It began, as far as I can tell, with sports games. EA's annual titles all began including metrics for tracking player's physical characteristics: Strength, Speed, Stamina, etc. Sound familiar? Perhaps they'd be more recognizable dubbed Str, Dex, and Con. As these titles evolved, they even spawned modes where a player assumed the role of a single athlete and followed his career from high school to the pros. This, I suppose, is what happens when you put the development of sports games into the hands of nerdy programmers.

But now examples are legion: Dawn of War 2, Modern Warfare, Fallout 3, Borderlands. When I loaded up DiRT 2 I can't pretend surprise to learn that I'd be earning experience points to advance my level.

I couldn't be happier. I've always been a fan of RPGs in large part because of the way they let you benchmark a character's progress and expand his abilities. The reason I got into the EA titles and much of the reason that I have any interest in sports is because of games like Madden that let me manufacture superstars.

So cheers, developers. Perhaps one day these RPG systems will have fully supplanted the "unlocks" of yore, and what a golden world that will be.

-a