I've only ever fooled around with RPGMaker; I've never spent a great deal of time with it. But the biggest issue is probably that it's a product of its time, and that was a time long before iOS and Android. RPGMaker executables can be ported to mobile platforms, but the process is wonky, and the total addressable gaming base is very small.
And in a lot of ways, the audience was always small, even in RPGMaker's prime. To me, that was the biggest setback. If I was going to pour 100+ hours into making a game, I would have wanted people to play it. Preferably, a lot of people, but even some would have been fine. That just never seemed to be a likely possibility.
In theory, this project will make RPGMaker games more easily playable on all platforms, and thus more accessible. So that's a worthy goal. I don't think you'd be able to make modern games on RPGMaker 2000/3. But you could make a respectable, if rustic take on the 16-bit-era RPG. And maybe you could find a small, but passionate userbase for it.
I wouldn't labor with RPGMaker under the assumption that you're building the Next Big Game. But if you're doing it to make passion projects or hobby games? Sure.
>And in a lot of ways, the audience was always small, even in RPGMaker's prime. To me, that was the biggest setback. If I was going to pour 100+ hours into making a game, I would have wanted people to play it. Preferably, a lot of people, but even some would have been fine. That just never seemed to be a likely possibility.
That is no longer true, people even make money selling RPGMaker games (e.g. the Aveyond series [1]). RPGMaker(-style) games are an established "casual games" genre these days. You know mostly aiming for the same market and sold at the same sites [2] as Hidden Object, Match-3, etc. games i.e. the audience is mostly female. If you want to try a modern RPGMaker (VX) game I can recommend Skyborn [2].
I'm pretty convinced that the few games making money have a limited life expectancy even there. The Aveyond games are crap compared to pretty much any indie game you care to look at and I think they only had the success they did because they sort of came out before the indie scene was a thing. (Any game that feels the need to highlight "HUMOR!" in their Steam page description is a game that is not funny.)
Games like To the Moon and Always Sometimes Monsters have a place, because they don't try to be RPGs (but rather, games just happening to use RPG Maker), but they're few and far between. The "RPG feel" of RPG Maker games pretty much sucks, and there's not a lot you can do to fix that. Skyborn tries, but it still feels-like-an-RPG-Maker-game. I think the future of these is more bespoke titles, like what Zeboyd does (or what I'm--slowly--doing, shameless plug).
>I'm pretty convinced that the few games making money have a limited life expectancy even there.
They have made money for more than half a decade and new games are released and sold all the time. Dig through the site I linked (Big Fish, which is Steam For Women basically), they have a massive collection with many recent releases. The creator of Aveyond (a truly rare beast: a female game developer!) does not seem to suffer from a lack of business either [1].
>The Aveyond games are crap compared to pretty much any indie game you care to look at
Matter of taste issue. Based on the way you express yourself I guess you are a young male.. you are not the target audience. These games are beloved by their fans.
Thanks for the contemptuous dismissal, but I've been studying games for quite a while and can divorce what I like from what's actually good; I like bad games (I'll play EA's NHL travesties until the cows come home) and dislike good games (I can't get into Spelunky to save my life). The key here, and what you so defensively fail to realize, is that it's completely possible to figure out what's a technically decent game independent of one's own tastes and the majority of commercial RPG Maker releases--Aveyond very, very much included--are bad.
Seriously, go play the field. I have, because I'm making a JRPG, and I find the field lame as hell. Bad UX (how many menus must you click through to do anything? WHY?), mediocre assets (lots of art is expensive, but good art is manageable), and gameplay that is hindered by--wait for it--being in RPG Maker. RPG Maker in all its incarnations has limited ways to interact with the core mechanics. You can't rip out the worst parts of it. You can't fix it (and this is why the good ones, like To the Moon and Always Sometimes Monsters, treat it as a walk-around visual novel instead of an RPG engine). The ability to avoid these limitations is why EasyRPG may have a chance, but I tend to think the overwhelming sameyness of titles using a limited engine will keep them at very-niche status.
And female game developers are honestly not that rare anymore if you pay attention to the indie scene. Before my latest Twitter purge I probably followed around thirty out of a gamedev list of a hundred and thirty or so. It's cool.
There are a few good looking RPG Maker games out there. For example, this game (帽子世界 〜A Little World〜) was made in RPG Maker VX Ace:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-daU4t0Un8
The dev has even made it free (although it’s in Japanese).
I'm not so sure this is a problem with RPG Maker though. The majority of indie games don't make much money and have a limited life, no matter what game engine they're made with. Know what I mean?
And in a lot of ways, the audience was always small, even in RPGMaker's prime. To me, that was the biggest setback. If I was going to pour 100+ hours into making a game, I would have wanted people to play it. Preferably, a lot of people, but even some would have been fine. That just never seemed to be a likely possibility.
In theory, this project will make RPGMaker games more easily playable on all platforms, and thus more accessible. So that's a worthy goal. I don't think you'd be able to make modern games on RPGMaker 2000/3. But you could make a respectable, if rustic take on the 16-bit-era RPG. And maybe you could find a small, but passionate userbase for it.
I wouldn't labor with RPGMaker under the assumption that you're building the Next Big Game. But if you're doing it to make passion projects or hobby games? Sure.