Desslock News @ GameSpot
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While major publishers, especially in North America, are abandoning the RPG genre (shades of the early 1990s), continental Europe is becoming an increasingly important stage for RPG development. While smaller (in relative terms) developers/publishers in North America are still supporting RPG development, most notably Bethesda, BioWare, Troika Games, Spiderweb Software (which just released Avernum 3) and Black Isle Studios (although Interplay is in fairly dire financial shape), other publishers have abandoned the genre. Massively multiplayer RPGs are still very alive and well, with at least a dozen in development, but there's very few "major release" RPGs in the works from North American studios over the next year or so. In fact, the only ones that have been officially announced are BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Black Isle Studios's Lionheart, which is being developed by Reflexive Entertainment. Troika Games (developers of Arcanum) are working on a very interesting unannounced project (more on that next ramblings) - but that's about it for the next 12 months from North American publishers. Thankfully, RPG fans have European developers to thank for Divine Divinity, Arx Fatalis and Gothic 2 (as well as the impressive looking Sea Dogs 2).
