Results for the 2013 Roguelike World Survey has been posted

[mushroom patch]

Identity of a genre is based on the connection and continuity between new work and prior work.

How is this connection and "continuity" granted from an external point of view if not by assessing the features of the game?

I don't know what you mean by "from an external point of view." Let me give some examples.

I'll shorten your definition to make it even more definite!"A roguelike game is a computer game derived from rogue. Go look it up and reconstruct the whole story of the genre if you want to know what I'm meaning."

Well, that's not my definition. Moria is a roguelike game, but it's not derived from rogue. It's part of a sort of conversation about an idea (the idea of rogue). A couple of guys at University of Oklahoma played rogue and they liked it, but they couldn't play it on the VMS machines they had around. Each had written a piece of code that could go into a game like rogue, so they decided to put the pieces together and flesh it out into a game. Their game shared the same general outline in terms of theme, interface, and features as rogue, but it had a somewhat larger scale, a town level, and more complex dungeon generation.

There's a story of how moria grew out of other work, how it relates to it, and what it contributes. That's the connection and continuity with other work. There's a story of angband and its outgrowth from moria, which is more direct and similarly with nethack and hack, but the relationship between rogue and moria is, to my mind, the right prototype to have in mind. I think you can trace a similar thread between nethack and crawl.

Responding to JeffLait's comment -- About Japanese roguelikes, roguelike games were surely present on computer systems at Japanese universities by the mid-80s (e.g. rogue was included in 4.2BSD, released in late 1983). Then of course there's Japanese Berkeley students. I doubt this is a case of convergent evolution.

I figured the name "Berlin interpretation" was chosen in parallel with the "Copenhagen interpretation." Pretty pretentious, imo. I'm surprised how thoroughly your post confirms my suspicions about the Berlin interpretation, e.g. its "progressive" stance on graphics versus criticism you expected to receive re: POWDER.

I liked the part about how one might "naively" expect rogue to the prototype for roguelikes. It seems the roguelike world could've been spared a certain amount of trouble had the Berlin interpretation been presented to the public with the candor it has been in this comment.

[JeffLait]

Responding to JeffLait's comment -- About Japanese roguelikes, roguelike games were surely present on computer systems at Japanese universities by the mid-80s (e.g. rogue was included in 4.2BSD, released in late 1983). Then of course there's Japanese Berkeley students. I doubt this is a case of convergent evolution.

I also doubt it is convergent.  I was responding to AgingMinotaur's suggestion that your social-evolution theory would have disenfranchised them.  However, I brought up JNethack because it shows that Nethack was most definitely played in Japan as of '93.  It seems clear that for a JNethack port to be made, it had to be played earlier than that as well, but I couldn't find any historical proof going farther back.  I do not agree with your claim that since 4.2BSD was present, all Japanese game designers must have played Rogue!  By this logic, every video game since '83 is a roguelike since every video game author had access to it.  The proof I think both of us would like would be for the authors of the various Japanese Roguelikes to have made statements that they were influenced by/reacting to rogue or a derivative of rogue.

On the other hand, isn't Spelunky very much a continued discussion on the game called Rogue?  It is very much written by someone who liked rogue, and is engaging in a conversation about the game?  And Diablo III is very clearly a roguelike, being the third iteration from what was admittedly an attempt to make a better Angband.  And circling back to the start of this thread, we lose any ability to tell an author that they aren't making a roguelike: if they claim they are part of the conversation,  how can we gainsay them?

Similarly, Beneath Apple Manor was *not* a conversation on Rogue, having predated it.  But it looks an awful lot like rogue!

When we seek to decide what we call a roguelike, it is helpful to know why we are trying to identify such things.  If your goal is to find games that were influenced by Rogue, then Spelunky is definitely a roguelike; and Beneath Apple Manor is not.  And Japanese Roguelikes live in limbo until we find evidence to put them one way or other.

Personally, I'm not interested in that as a metric.  I'm more interested in games that are "similar'" to rogue.  The advantage is you don't need to know where the game comes from to decide if it is a roguelike or not, it can be judged independently of its history.  It is also useful in trying to understand how these games work, as I'd say there is a much bigger difference between Diablo III and Rogue than there is between Beneath Apple Manor and Rogue!

I figured the name "Berlin interpretation" was chosen in parallel with the "Copenhagen interpretation." Pretty pretentious, imo.

Was it though?  (Embarrassingly, I had to look up pretentious.  I often see it as a generic throw-away insult, so was not sure of its precise meaning.)

At the time, I might have agreed with you... But probably because I feel the Copenhagen Interpretation is also a pretentious name.  (Hell, at least we wrote something down for people to complain about!)  But now?  I think it has very much lived up to the name.

Firstly, note it isn't the Berlin Definition, nor Berlin Solution or Berlin Answer.  The word Interpretation is there to reflect it is how we interpreted the meaning of Roguelikes.  Next, note the inclusion of "Berlin", thereby localizing it to one spot (and somewhat implicitly, time).  This implies there could be a Stockholm Interpretation to compete with it.  So, as to the words themselves, there is no great claim of value present.

So the next question, is it worthy of being associated with the Copenhagen Interpretation?  On an absolute scale, obviously not.  But that is pretty poor yardstick to judge anything to do with roguelikes by.  The question is, has the Berlin Intepretration had the same influence on Roguelikes as the Copenhagen Interpretation had on Quantum Mechanics?

Well, neither of them hopefully had influence: Shut up and calculate vs Shut up and code!  So let us say influence on the discussion of roguelikes.

So what influence did it have?

Prior to it, most "definitions" were just ad-hoc lists by random people on the internet.  Often copied randomly off each other.  I was always surprised to see my own random list used as an authoritative source!  We had these things, roguelikes, that were already taxonomically grouped largely by this "Discussions on Rogue", but no clear idea of what they were.  Well, that is untrue, I'd say there were lots of clear ideas of what they were, we just were unable to articulate any of our reasoning.

This example is rather different.  We actually got a fair number of the interested parties together face-to-face to try to figure something out from this muddle.  This achievement shouldn't be trivialized.  We then continued the conversation on-line afterwards to polish stuff a bit, and created the work that is seen there.  It didn't start from the thin air either, it very much built on all the discussion that had gone prior to it.  So I would claim it does represent a significant amount of work, effort, and dedication on the part of the authors.

And, judging by history so far, it has proven to have a lot of cultural value.  It provided what was entirely missing at that point: a standard to start the argument from.  You may disagree with it, but at least we have a standard point to say: "yes, but..." to.  Proof of this assertion follows simply from the fact it apparently is still being discussed.  More interestingly, when I read the other various definitions in this thread, I can't help but notice most of them are already there in that document.  Indeed, looking over it again I can definitely find a lot to quibble about, but there is nothing particularly wrong about it.

Your own idea of "roguelike means derived from rogue" is entirely missing, but not because we weren't aware of it.  IIRC, Sheep started the conversation asking whether we were trying to find games like rogue, or find games derived from rogue.  And our consensus was to do the former.  And, we did try to be clear about that:

"Roguelike" refers to a genre, not merely "like-Rogue".  The genre is
represented by its canon.  The canon for Roguelikes is ADOM, Angband,
Crawl, Nethack, and Rogue.

In some ways, if you favour a holotype definition, you can just stop there.  Do you agree with that canon or not?  Everything else is just trying to identify what separates the canon out in a useful manner.

I'm surprised how thoroughly your post confirms my suspicions about the Berlin interpretation, e.g. its "progressive" stance on graphics versus criticism you expected to receive re: POWDER.

Not sure what those suspicions are...?  And your example makes no sense  to me.  Its stance being "progressive" is entirely IMHO.  If you are suggesting it is aligned with my own views, well, of course.  The intent was to make something that would be mostly aligned with all participants views.  It should be clear it isn't entirely aligned with my views, however, as I wouldn't have included ASCII graphics at all.  Nor likely Turn-based or Grid-based - I'd argue both of those are part of Tactical Challenge that I'd want to move into a high value factor.... But that is the nature of committees.

I liked the part about how one might "naively" expect rogue to the prototype for roguelikes.

It does seem strange to argue that Rogue isn't a roguelike.  To clarify, I don't argue that way.  I'm in the naive camp, and like to use "hacklike" to qualify the sub-genre that enshrines complexity.

It seems the roguelike world could've been spared a certain amount of trouble had the Berlin interpretation been presented to the public with the candor it has been in this comment.

The nature of the internet is you can't control how things are presented to the public.  It was presented with frankness and sincerity, and naturally triggered a surprisingly civil discussion about all of its immediate failings.  That apparently people then went around bashing each other over the head in Roguelike Wars by slavishly following it?  Well, I'm actually not too sorry to hear that.  Pedants will always exist.  And the fact that, as imperfect as it is, it remains a go-to definition, certainly means we did something right?

[AgingMinotaur]

Regarding JRLs, I read/heard somewhere that Wizardry was an explicit influence for early Mystery Dungeon games. But I haven't played Wizardy, and the only "Mystery Dungeon-like" I played much, Shiren, draws obvious inspiration from Nethack.

As always,
Minotauros

[getter77]

I can easily see that given Wizardry---helps that the OVA was awesome.

Also, quite likely there's a thread of RPG wranglings to be had via the whole uncanny situation with The Black Onyx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Onyx

Early Ultima'ish wranglings also shaped Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy 1 was D&D with the serial numbers filed off and some flavor thrown in to handwave away the gaps, etc.


Also, Labyrinths & Legends goes back to 1993 at least it seems for the eternally delicious Sharp X68000 as per the UpdateHistory.

http://lnl.sourceforge.jp/en/

[Slash]

Just to clear up some misconceptions, shroompatch: Slash had no hand in creating the Berlin Interpretation; it was conceived at IRDC in 2008 and put up on this website after that.

It should also be clear that Berlin Interpretation is not the same as the "What is a Roguelike" page over roguetemple.com

http://www.roguetemple.com/roguelike-definition/

http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Berlin_Interpretation

[mushroom patch]

In response to JeffLait, I think I should say my post from last night was a bit too strongly worded (late, drinking, etc.). Regarding POWDER, obviously Jeff thought it fit into a particular strain of roguelike game (Japanese console roguelikes) and counts Nethack as a strong influence. This sounds like a good story to me and should have satisfied critics, considering other clear points of continuity in terms of idioms and mechanics.

Responding to JeffLait's comment -- About Japanese roguelikes, roguelike games were surely present on computer systems at Japanese universities by the mid-80s (e.g. rogue was included in 4.2BSD, released in late 1983). Then of course there's Japanese Berkeley students. I doubt this is a case of convergent evolution.

I also doubt it is convergent.  I was responding to AgingMinotaur's suggestion that your social-evolution theory would have disenfranchised them.  However, I brought up JNethack because it shows that Nethack was most definitely played in Japan as of '93.  It seems clear that for a JNethack port to be made, it had to be played earlier than that as well, but I couldn't find any historical proof going farther back.  I do not agree with your claim that since 4.2BSD was present, all Japanese game designers must have played Rogue!  By this logic, every video game since '83 is a roguelike since every video game author had access to it.  The proof I think both of us would like would be for the authors of the various Japanese Roguelikes to have made statements that they were influenced by/reacting to rogue or a derivative of rogue.

I'm not sure what logic you mean when you say "by that logic." My point was not that every Japanese game designer had played rogue. Rather, it is that rogue would have been widely available in the formative years of Japanese programmers who would go on to create the console games of the late 80s, the 90s, and 00s. Where you see a clear influence, it is therefore reasonable to surmise it is direct influence, not coincidence. As you say, that's not proof. It would be an interesting thing to get one of these designers to do an interview and go on the record about this matter.

On the other hand, isn't Spelunky very much a continued discussion on the game called Rogue?  It is very much written by someone who liked rogue, and is engaging in a conversation about the game?  And Diablo III is very clearly a roguelike, being the third iteration from what was admittedly an attempt to make a better Angband.  And circling back to the start of this thread, we lose any ability to tell an author that they aren't making a roguelike: if they claim they are part of the conversation,  how can we gainsay them?

There's a limit to what can be called continuity. Is Spelunky a game that implements roleplaying game mechanics and content, following the tradition and idioms of rogue, moria, hack, and larn? No, obviously not. It shares one idiom with these canonical games: Random level generation, monster placement, and item placement. It's a platformer, it's quite linear. It differs fundamentally in mechanics, theme, style, you name it, and in a way that has no precedent within the genre -- you can't point to a continuous lineage that would show incremental progress toward Spelunky and which might place it in a subgenre. It's a thing unto itself, with a roguelike influence at most.

Similarly, Beneath Apple Manor was *not* a conversation on Rogue, having predated it.  But it looks an awful lot like rogue!

I don't have enough information on hand to evaluate the claim that this game is a roguelike. My inclination is to say no, because I don't believe in a Platonic notion of roguelikeness the way some here seem to.

When we seek to decide what we call a roguelike, it is helpful to know why we are trying to identify such things.  If your goal is to find games that were influenced by Rogue, then Spelunky is definitely a roguelike; and Beneath Apple Manor is not.  And Japanese Roguelikes live in limbo until we find evidence to put them one way or other.

Personally, I'm not interested in that as a metric.  I'm more interested in games that are "similar'" to rogue.  The advantage is you don't need to know where the game comes from to decide if it is a roguelike or not, it can be judged independently of its history.  It is also useful in trying to understand how these games work, as I'd say there is a much bigger difference between Diablo III and Rogue than there is between Beneath Apple Manor and Rogue!

This notion becomes problematic without reference to history and influence. You could plausibly argue that Dungeons and Dragons is the original roguelike. The idea of random content generation comes directly from Dungeons and Dragons. It has all the theme and mechanical aspects, it's just not implemented in software.

Again, it seems crazy to me to presume there was no influence of rogue on Japanese console roguelikes until there is proof one way or another. The standard of evidence usually applied in this kind of situation is one of plausibility more than proof. When material is available to someone and they produce a work that appears to share crucial, nontrivial features with this material, the conclusion is usually that there is a direct influence.

I figured the name "Berlin interpretation" was chosen in parallel with the "Copenhagen interpretation." Pretty pretentious, imo.

Was it though?  [...]

At the time, I might have agreed with you... But probably because I feel the Copenhagen Interpretation is also a pretentious name.  (Hell, at least we wrote something down for people to complain about!)  But now?  I think it has very much lived up to the name.

I don't think the "Copenhagen Interpretation" is a pretentious name. It's a name chosen to assign credit in a diffuse way to fundamental scientific work by some of the great minds of the 20th century.

A power point presentation style specification for roguelike games doesn't quite match the scale of achievement there.

Firstly, note it isn't the Berlin Definition, nor Berlin Solution or Berlin Answer.

I agree that the "Berlin solution" or the "Berlin answer" would have been far more problematic names.

  We actually got a fair number of the interested parties together face-to-face to try to figure something out from this muddle.  This achievement shouldn't be trivialized.  We then continued the conversation on-line afterwards to polish stuff a bit, and created the work that is seen there.  It didn't start from the thin air either, it very much built on all the discussion that had gone prior to it.  So I would claim it does represent a significant amount of work, effort, and dedication on the part of the authors.

And, judging by history so far, it has proven to have a lot of cultural value.  It provided what was entirely missing at that point: a standard to start the argument from.  You may disagree with it, but at least we have a standard point to say: "yes, but..." to.  Proof of this assertion follows simply from the fact it apparently is still being discussed.  More interestingly, when I read the other various definitions in this thread, I can't help but notice most of them are already there in that document.  Indeed, looking over it again I can definitely find a lot to quibble about, but there is nothing particularly wrong about it.

I think it's been influential, I just don't think the influence has been good. I agree it shows a fair amount of work and thought on the part of those involved. But it cuts out games that are obviously roguelike (multiplayer angband variants) representing a branch that predates the "interpretation" by more than ten years and could use a lot of work. It downplays the importance of tradition. Its weighted average/requirement-oriented specification nature turns discussion into a garbled mess of trying to figure out how to weight what. Its lack of reference to history and influence mean that literally any game is up for evaluation -- see surprisingly frequent reference to the Civilization series in these discussions.

Your own idea of "roguelike means derived from rogue" is entirely missing,

I don't say "derived," but yes, reference to a canon is essential in my view.

[chooseusername]

It does not help that when each individual built their own definition, they did it with a different corpus of games.  For example, when I started on POWDER I was a bit concerned people would declare it Not A Roguelike, so added my own definition to the page.  My definition included this interesting item:

There's a difference between having one's own definition and deciding that a public definition should reflect one's own opinion, and just going on and putting it in there.  I'm looking forward to side-scrolling roguelike person adding "* It does got to scrolls sidewaysz.  Thatz the real rougelikez stuffs right there."

[Krice]

side-scrolling roguelike

Which is not a roguelike, so that question is irrelevant.

[AgingMinotaur]

Responding to JeffLait's comment -- About Japanese roguelikes, roguelike games were surely present on computer systems at Japanese universities by the mid-80s (e.g. rogue was included in 4.2BSD, released in late 1983). Then of course there's Japanese Berkeley students. I doubt this is a case of convergent evolution.

I also doubt it is convergent.  I was responding to AgingMinotaur's suggestion that your social-evolution theory would have disenfranchised them.

Which in turn, to specify, responded to mushroom patch's more or less implied stance that a RL should be playable in a terminal to stay true to its roots. So my point was, well what about RLs for the console? In all fairness, making something for the NES or Gameboy might seem like an acceptable reason to leave out terminal support, even by the "mushroom gold standard" However, it would be pretty arbitrary to accept Powder as a RL, just catering to a different audience than your usual posix-compliant suspects, and then go on to shame something like Dungeons of Dredmor for its way of catering to yet another audience.

By the way, re: Spelunky: It has much more direct references to the genre than just random levels, eg. Nethacklike shops – which doesn't make it a RL in my opinion, but someone with a more flexible definition of RLs (incidentally something like: a RL is a game directly inspired by earlier RLs) might just "point to a continuous lineage" from Rogue and Nethack through a variety of realtime and other experimental "RLs" such as Diablo, and end up with Spelunky.

Personally, I'm just waiting for the definition to get diluted enough that I can launch my procedural jump'n'run infant feeding simulator, "Motherhood RL"

As always,
Minotauros

[JeffLait]

It does not help that when each individual built their own definition, they did it with a different corpus of games.  For example, when I started on POWDER I was a bit concerned people would declare it Not A Roguelike, so added my own definition to the page.  My definition included this interesting item:

There's a difference between having one's own definition and deciding that a public definition should reflect one's own opinion, and just going on and putting it in there.  I'm looking forward to side-scrolling roguelike person adding "* It does got to scrolls sidewaysz.  Thatz the real rougelikez stuffs right there."

At the time I wrote the definition on zincland, I wasn't sufficiently aware of the *band community to realize that some roguelikes didn't scroll sideways.

Which is what is nice about getting together a diverse group of people to try and build a consensus; the result can better reflect the variety of opinions.

[JeffLait]

In response to JeffLait, I think I should say my post from last night was a bit too strongly worded (late, drinking, etc.)

Thank you.  Similarly, if my post seemed too defensive, do not fear if it was out of being offended.  I very much respect the civility with which this discourse is running, and hope to keep it that way!

Regarding POWDER, obviously Jeff thought it fit into a particular strain of roguelike game (Japanese console roguelikes) and counts Nethack as a strong influence. This sounds like a good story to me and should have satisfied critics, considering other clear points of continuity in terms of idioms and mechanics.

Except....  This is why I don't like a definition which requires knowledge of intent/history.

You are quite right to suspect POWDER to be based on Japanese console roguelikes.  After all, the author obviously had access to a GBA and a Flash card, so presumably would have no limits as to exposure to them.  Embarrassingly, however, I have not played any Japanese roguelikes.  I did not even know about them until Sheep started pointing them out to the community, which was after I already had gone a long way in making POWDER.  So, historically, there was no transfer from Japanese Roguelikes to POWDER.  It was almost entirely from Nethack to POWDER.  Later on, Crawl snuck in (but mostly through a layer of indirection as I never could get into playing it, but I did liberally borrow many cool ideas), but the Shiren the Wanderer remains independent paths.

To me, the key part of your definition would be the "continuity of idoms and mechanics".  Which then raises the spectre of "What are these idioms and mechanics?"  Which leads us into the danger of people treating our musings as checklists...

For example, there are MANY ways of implementing a pen & paper D&D experience on the computer.  The best dichotomy is probably the DND vs Rogue one.  DND is room based encounters with party of adventurers with a sort of JRPG fight screen.  This matches D&D played without figurines.  Contrasting, we have Rogue, which uses a top-down grid, matching D&D with figurines.

I'm not sure what logic you mean when you say "by that logic." My point was not that every Japanese game designer had played rogue. Rather, it is that rogue would have been widely available in the formative years of Japanese programmers who would go on to create the console games of the late 80s, the 90s, and 00s. Where you see a clear influence, it is therefore reasonable to surmise it is direct influence, not coincidence. As you say, that's not proof. It would be an interesting thing to get one of these designers to do an interview and go on the record about this matter.

True, I just don't see any clear influences listed.  I wouldn't call top-down grid based combat with procedurally generated levels and permadeath a clear influence either.  As that we know can be independently discovered.  There is no need for us to look for such influence, however, as I'm willing to accept either answer.

On the other hand, isn't Spelunky very much a continued discussion on the game called Rogue?  It is very much written by someone who liked rogue, and is engaging in a conversation about the game?  And Diablo III is very clearly a roguelike, being the third iteration from what was admittedly an attempt to make a better Angband.  And circling back to the start of this thread, we lose any ability to tell an author that they aren't making a roguelike: if they claim they are part of the conversation,  how can we gainsay them?

There's a limit to what can be called continuity. Is Spelunky a game that implements roleplaying game mechanics and content, following the tradition and idioms of rogue, moria, hack, and larn? No, obviously not. It shares one idiom with these canonical games: Random level generation, monster placement, and item placement. It's a platformer, it's quite linear. It differs fundamentally in mechanics, theme, style, you name it, and in a way that has no precedent within the genre -- you can't point to a continuous lineage that would show incremental progress toward Spelunky and which might place it in a subgenre. It's a thing unto itself, with a roguelike influence at most.

And this is why I am favour of trying to write down what some of these essential idioms and traditions are, so we know when we cross them.

To be clear, I do agree with you that Spelunky is outside of "Roguelike".  But I do not agree with your claim we can just look at the broken continuity and declare it separate.  If we were to erase Diablo I and II from the record, suddenly Diablo III looks like a sudden departure from the roguelike genre.  Yet with them there, we have a strong line of continuity.  Similarly, there could be a series of games we are unaware of that link the two smoothly.

We also have the problem that games are no organisms (or if they are, are more like bacteria...) as they really don't care about straight lines of descent.  Nor do I want them to!  The last thing I want is anyone changing their game to match a genre!

In any case, because of this we have the problem of back-crosses.  Rogue Legacy can be seen as a continued discussion of Spelunky, but it pulls in so many of the idioms and traditions of roguelikes that it almost becomes the cross-over game needed to establish continuity for Spelunky!  The only problem is the temporal issue, but, again, I'm very suspicious of a definition that relies on history...

Similarly, Beneath Apple Manor was *not* a conversation on Rogue, having predated it.  But it looks an awful lot like rogue!

I don't have enough information on hand to evaluate the claim that this game is a roguelike. My inclination is to say no, because I don't believe in a Platonic notion of roguelikeness the way some here seem to.

Why do you need information though?  Don't you just need the date?  It was written before rogue.  Therefore it cannot have been influenced by rogue.  Therefore it cannot be a roguelike.

This notion becomes problematic without reference to history and influence. You could plausibly argue that Dungeons and Dragons is the original roguelike. The idea of random content generation comes directly from Dungeons and Dragons. It has all the theme and mechanical aspects, it's just not implemented in software.

To come full circle, the D&D board game Wrath of Ashardalon is extraordinary close to being a roguelike in physical form.

Again, it seems crazy to me to presume there was no influence of rogue on Japanese console roguelikes until there is proof one way or another. The standard of evidence usually applied in this kind of situation is one of plausibility more than proof. When material is available to someone and they produce a work that appears to share crucial, nontrivial features with this material, the conclusion is usually that there is a direct influence.

I have seen too much convergent evolution in the world to be so ready to conclude direct influence.  Further, I'd say non-trivial features are not indicative of direct influence.  Non-trivial, necessary, features are those most likely to be there because of convergent evolution.  Like fins on a whale, they will keep showing up whenever people try and solve the same problem.  Using @ for the character, by contrast, is a trivial feature that is a pretty good sign of a direct descent.  Indeed, glyph choice is probably the strongest sign what games the developer was influenced by.

I don't think the "Copenhagen Interpretation" is a pretentious name. It's a name chosen to assign credit in a diffuse way to fundamental scientific work by some of the great minds of the 20th century.

A power point presentation style specification for roguelike games doesn't quite match the scale of achievement there.

Er...  The fact that nothing involving roguelikes will match the achievements of Quantum Mechanics is moot, isn't it? 

The Berlin Interpretation is a name chosen to assign credit in a diffuse way to a fundamental work on the research of roguelikes.

I think it's been influential, I just don't think the influence has been good. I agree it shows a fair amount of work and thought on the part of those involved. But it cuts out games that are obviously roguelike (multiplayer angband variants) representing a branch that predates the "interpretation" by more than ten years and could use a lot of work. It downplays the importance of tradition. Its weighted average/requirement-oriented specification nature turns discussion into a garbled mess of trying to figure out how to weight what. Its lack of reference to history and influence mean that literally any game is up for evaluation -- see surprisingly frequent reference to the Civilization series in these discussions.

I don't know if any bad influence is a result of the document itself.  Looking at it again, how does it downplay tradition when the very first general principle is:

"Roguelike" refers to a genre, not merely "like-Rogue". The genre is represented by its canon. The canon for Roguelikes is ADOM, Angband, Crawl, Nethack, and Rogue.

There are your holotypes!

It doesn't cut out multiplayer angband variants.  It intentionally states it isn't meant to cut out anything.

Missing some points does not mean the game is not a roguelike.

(Though, I am a bit curious which one of its criteria cuts out the multiplayer *bands....  Unless you mean Diablo, which does fall a foul of Turn-based.  But some people would define Action-RPG for the Diablo franchise and branch it off Roguelike, so it does seem reasonable that any definition of roguelike shouldn't precisely match Diablo....)

I'd agree that the line This list can be used to determine how roguelike a game is. is problematic.  I am unapologetic about trying to create a list of concrete idioms and traditions for people to identify & debate over, however.  And I'm pretty confident that even if we had said This list cannot be used to determine how roguelike a game is. people still would have used it to bludgeon each other over the head in checklist style approaches.

The fact Civilization keeps showing up is probably because there is surprisingly little work to change a Civilization Game Engine into a Roguelike.  This is why I, personally, would move Single Player Character and Tactical Challenge up into high value factors.  Permadeath, also, is depressingly absent from Civilization as it often encourages a save & restore gameplay.  (In my mind, Permadeath refers to consequences - you can't rewind time and try again.)  I think Civilization would keep showing up whether or not the Berlin Interpretation was ever written.

[mushroom patch]

While this discussion doesn't change my view of the Berlin interpretation that much, I've got to hand it to JeffLait who, as a guilty party, showed up to explain himself and take whatever abuse was waiting for him -- and he's done it with impressive equanimity at that. Kudos.

[His most recent comment came after I wrote this as a short post, so the response to the new post follows.]

re: JeffLait's never played a Japanese roguelike, this is a case of what happens when I assume. I think this Japanese roguelike stuff provides a nice angle for situating your work in a broader context after the fact, but sure, it's not exactly influence or continuity. Nethack's a pretty solid source to draw on in any case and developing for a console might be a reasonable excuse not to target the vt100.

About the "idioms and mechanics" part leading to feature/non-feature lists, I think maybe my definition would be improved by saying "rogue, moria, hack, and/or larn" instead of "rogue, moria, hack, and larn" and by emphasizing the chain-like nature of this way of looking at a genre.

For example, suppose you, like most people, take omega to be an obvious roguelike (forgetting for now the details of how it fits into the genre in the kind of picture I'm advocating). A successor to omega might say, like I'm sure a lot of people who played omega have, "this game seems like it's full of ideas, but it doesn't come together into something that seems playable to me" -- let's try to clean this up. In my view, the developer has license to freely use aspects of omega's design that chafe against the template set by the original examples/canon I put forth, e.g. breaking from the "one man, one character" idiom for overworld maps. On the other hand, if this successor devolves into a pastiche of random bits of other roguelikes, many of them being the bits most divergent or controversial, containing a lot of unmotivated "innovation," then this would weaken the argument that it's a genuine successor and a genuine roguelike.

To be clear, I do agree with you that Spelunky is outside of "Roguelike".  But I do not agree with your claim we can just look at the broken continuity and declare it separate.  If we were to erase Diablo I and II from the record, suddenly Diablo III looks like a sudden departure from the roguelike genre.  Yet with them there, we have a strong line of continuity.  Similarly, there could be a series of games we are unaware of that link the two smoothly.

You raise an interesting point. Perhaps in the fullness of time, a succession of platformers in the vein of Spelunky will approximate something with a clear claim to roguelikeness through an effort to get back to "roguelike fundamentals." I don't know what that would look like, but I would like to see it. If that happened, I think successors to the game that finally makes that link might qualify as "according to mushroom patch" roguelikes. So then you ask, "what is the status of Spelunky?" I think this puts Spelunky as the originator of a separate lineage of games that led to a new branch or subgenre of roguelike games. I don't think we have to call it roguelike. It doesn't have to flow both ways. A definition that takes into account influence, history, and tradition avoids the possibility of rewriting history.

re: Beneath Apple Manor: Why don't I declare it not a roguelike out of hand because of the release date vs. when the rogue developers started on rogue? I don't know what the original release looked like and I'm not optimistic about finding a copy or reliable information about it. I see more about releases five years later -- that's a long time. I also see suggestions that it largely copied another game by another author. These factors make me want to reserve judgement on whether there is an influence one way or another. I'm somewhat suspicious of this kind of exercise anyway.

The closing comments about disclaimers in the Berlin interpretation are mostly fair. It's true that there is prominent mention of a canon, which is mysteriously missing from certain derivatives of the Berlin interpretation and totally absent from discussion based on it that I've seen around here (although I think that part is less mysterious).

About why I say mangband and related angband variants are cut out by the Berlin interpretation: They're not turn based (as understood by posters I've encountered here -- although I find the notion of turn based play put forth in those discussions incoherent), they're not single player, and the notion of permadeath in these angband variants does not correspond neatly to the mechanics of angband or other roguelike games (the closest thing being nethack's amulets of lifesaving). No one really knows how many high or low value factors you can flout and stay in good standing -- it would be better if this were not a debate that ever occurred.

There probably is some justice in your claims that the way the lists are used is not in keeping with the spirit of the Berlin interpretation. 2008 was well before the appeal of lists to the reptilian core of the human brain became widely known among internet users. The lack of foresight in employing lists this way might therefore be forgiven. Still, I think the Berlin interpretation (or "7 Weird Reasons Your Game Is Not A Roguelike") ought to be updated to something that looks like a definition more than a Buzzfeed listicle.

[JeffLait]

While this discussion doesn't change my view of the Berlin interpretation that much, I've got to hand it to JeffLait who, as a guilty party, showed up to explain himself and take whatever abuse was waiting for him -- and he's done it with impressive equanimity at that. Kudos.

Thank you!  I certainly wouldn't expect you to change your opinion.  You have a very interesting and logical roguelike definition, just not one I find useful.

re: JeffLait's never played a Japanese roguelike, this is a case of what happens when I assume. I think this Japanese roguelike stuff provides a nice angle for situating your work in a broader context after the fact, but sure, it's not exactly influence or continuity. Nethack's a pretty solid source to draw on in any case and developing for a console might be a reasonable excuse not to target the vt100.

Having six buttons and a d-pad is the real reason to abandon the vt100.  Further, I looked into vt100 emulation, but you can't fit 80x24 on the GBA screen.  Windowed views of Nethack are *NOT* Nethack, IMHO.  An important part of Nethack is that you see the entire dungeon when blindfolded.  Without this, you have a different game.  As soon as I realized I was not making a 80x24, I had to start to rethink everything.  When you abandon glyphs, 8x8 stops being a useful tile size, forcing me right to 16x16 tiles, which then gave me a very tight window on the action.  These constraints probably sent me right where the Japanese Console Roguelikes already were :>

Again, this is why I like a history-free approach, as you can then validly compare POWDER and Shiren's choices without having to worry if they come from convergent evolution or from direct ancestry.

re: Beneath Apple Manor: Why don't I declare it not a roguelike out of hand because of the release date vs. when the rogue developers started on rogue? I don't know what the original release looked like and I'm not optimistic about finding a copy or reliable information about it. I see more about releases five years later -- that's a long time. I also see suggestions that it largely copied another game by another author. These factors make me want to reserve judgement on whether there is an influence one way or another. I'm somewhat suspicious of this kind of exercise anyway.

I don't know much beyond the Wikipedia page and what Slash had discovered.  In any case, the author seems to have commented that he had no influence from Rogue, and I'm willing to go with that.

Mind you checking the edits there I see at some point someone claimed that DND was a roguelike that predated Rogue, which is ridiculous as DND isn't a roguelike.

The closing comments about disclaimers in the Berlin interpretation are mostly fair. It's true that there is prominent mention of a canon, which is mysteriously missing from certain derivatives of the Berlin interpretation and totally absent from discussion based on it that I've seen around here (although I think that part is less mysterious).

Yep, damn internet.  At least anytime anyone bugs you about the Berlin Interpretation you can just throw that back in their face :>

About why I say mangband and related angband variants are cut out by the Berlin interpretation: They're not turn based (as understood by posters I've encountered here -- although I find the notion of turn based play put forth in those discussions incoherent), they're not single player, and the notion of permadeath in these angband variants does not correspond neatly to the mechanics of angband or other roguelike games (the closest thing being nethack's amulets of lifesaving). No one really knows how many high or low value factors you can flout and stay in good standing -- it would be better if this were not a debate that ever occurred.

Odd, I thought mangband was turn based by my definition.  Single Player is a strange accusation, again showing the danger of putting anything online.  There is nothing in the Berlin Interpretation saying Single Player.  It says Single Player Character: you are playing one character.  Dungeon Master is a single player game, but is not a single character game.  So, Mangband only really violates the last clause of that sentence: "that character's death is the end of the game."  The main reason for that clause, however, is to make it clear each game session is a fresh start.  This is an important nature of roguelikes - you don't bring anything with you - which is violated in a lot of modern variants.  Japanese Roguelikes tend to have a special chest to store stuff in between lives, for example.

I do agree that there should be no debate about how many of these checks you need to be a real roguelike.

There probably is some justice in your claims that the way the lists are used is not in keeping with the spirit of the Berlin interpretation. 2008 was well before the appeal of lists to the reptilian core of the human brain became widely known among internet users. The lack of foresight in employing lists this way might therefore be forgiven. Still, I think the Berlin interpretation (or "7 Weird Reasons Your Game Is Not A Roguelike") ought to be updated to something that looks like a definition more than a Buzzfeed listicle.

I think we can agree that Buzzfeed has been harmful to human interaction :>

I'm not sure, however, how you could ever hope to present something like the Berlin Interpretation without using a list.  And as soon as you use a list, you'll trigger this behaviour.  It would be interesting to see a more modern interpretation, but I will note that at the various IRDCs I've been to the consensus is to leave it alone.

As you note with the reference to the canon being conveniently dropped, I'm pretty confident any reference to "THIS CANNOT BE USED AS A CHECKLIST" would also have been lost.  Nonetheless, I do agree that it would have been useful to make that more clear.  But, I should caution this is my own opinion.  I don't remember the discussion well enough to confidently assert it was everyone else's, it could be some participants did/do view it as a checklilst...

[Bear]

Wow.  I must have posted a completely uncontroversial definition of a roguelike game.  It's now three pages on, and nobody's even bothered to tell me why I'm wrong!

I don't think anybody is going to come up with a definition of roguelike games that satisfies everybody.  That said, I'll throw something at the wall.

I think that roguelike games must give the player as much time as he or she needs to plan and input the next move.  Being turn-based single player games is the easiest but not the only way to accomplish this.  If having slow reflexes or a motor impairment is a handicap then you are not playing a roguelike game. 

I think that exploration of procedurally generated maps in the presence of opposing forces is an essential part of roguelike games.  It doesn't really matter whether the player is playing a medieval-fantasy character, or the crew of a starship, or a cockroach.

I think that an unambiguous 'game over' condition is essential to roguelike games.  How much of the game's objectives a player can accomplish (and how much of the game's content a player can interact with) before the 'game over' condition is met, must be limited by player skill rather than just by how much time the player spends playing. 

Those three conditions are the ones I think are absolutely essential. And they already leave out some games that people consider roguelike.  I'm okay with that; I don't think that those games are in fact roguelike. 

There are some other conditions that I consider 'nearly' essential to roguelikes, such as a power curve; the idea that the player makes long-term gains in power and resources during the game.  If a game has no power curve I will doubt that it's roguelike, and suspect instead that it's more sidescroller-like.  I think a symbolic (in the sense of being unambiguous) display is important; character-based displays are an easy way but not the only way to accomplish this.

[Slash]

Should I feel non-smart for not understanding the evil of a list of features as the most helpful way for someone to grasp what is it we are talking about? am I an inferior human being?