The CRPG genre has experienced a resurgence in recent years after years of relative obscurity. Since the 2000s, the genre had all but vanished from the player consciousness. It's been blamed on retailers who sold discs.
Legendary game designer Josh Sawyer, who worked on iconic games like Neverwinter Nights 2, Icewind Dale, and Pillars of Eternity, as well as Fallout: New Vegas and Repentance, says that despite fans' love for the genre, the classic isometric role-playing game genre was killed off by retailers in the early 2000s.
Sawyer recalls that the Infinity Engine was popular at the time, but the studios had to abandon development of it and its games after retailers convinced them that CRPGs were unpopular.
This situation arose because brick-and-mortar stores were virtually the only distribution platform for many developers. This allowed retailers to influence the market, dictate demand, and set trends—for example, the hunting simulator genre owed its very existence to Walmart.
Today, Sawyer believes that the advent of digital storefronts has given developers and fans greater freedom. According to the game designer, studios have to actively attract players to their games, but companies can find an audience even in the most niche genres, as evidenced by the resurgence of CRPGs in recent years.
