On Roleplaying Games: Are JRPGs Roleplaying Games at All?

I was reading an article in The Game Design Reader by Greg Costikyan, "I Have No Words & I Must Design," and he brought up a very interesting point. Roleplaying games are no longer what they were. That is to say, most roleplaying games, and specifically JRPGs, at the current moment are not roleplaying. Take Final Fantasy X-2 as an example. I am not playing the role of Yuna, Rikku, or Paine. Nothing about them as a character was dictated by me; I can't affect them as a character in the least. Instead, I am overseeing their actions. I dictate how they fight and how they grow as characters-- in terms of battle, not emotional growth-- but I don't feel that I am any of them. I am not playing a role in the game, unless it's the role of God. Therefore, one could say that FFX-2 is not a roleplaying game.  I wonder if this is a situation peculiar to JRPGs, or whether the divide between JRPGs and Western RPGs is one that I've caused in my game choices.

Fable: The Lost Chapters, for example, is one hundred percent a roleplaying game. I can choose the growth of the character in every way. I AM the Hero of that story. I choose who to marry, what quests to take, what clothes to wear (perhaps I should be a transvestite!), whether my character is straight or gay, whether my character is good or evil. Dragon Age: Origins is another example. I create the character; I play the role of the character; the character is me. There is still some distance. The character is still a character. I create her and she is different and separate me, but I act as her by performing actions that I believe she would perform. This is a sharp contrast to our example of FFX-2, where Yuna is going to perform the actions she believes are right regardless of my input as a player. I can choose how she performs those actions, but not whether she performs those actions.

I think this takes FFX-2 and many, though not all, other JRPGs out of the running as RPGs existed in their original form, meaning a game in which the player takes action by playing the role of a character they've invented. It means that rather than a roleplaying game, most JRPGs could be said to be an interactive drama, or cyberdrama, as coined by Janet Murray in her book Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Many experts in games deny that cyberdramas can be successful. Was FFX-2 successful? Wildly. Is it a cyberdrama rather than a RPG? I would say yes. There isn't enough wiggle room in regard to characterization for it to be anything otherwise. Was it fun? Ignoring some occasional objectification of women, yes. Was it a game rather than an interactive novel? Undoubtedly. And that distinction does have to be made, since many articles on the subject of cyberdramas doubt that what would be left after the creation of a cyberdrama would be a game anymore, but rather it would be an interactive novel.

What is an RPG? Costikyan says that "Roleplaying occurs when, in some sense, you take on the persona of your position. [...] 'Computer roleplaying games,' so-called, are nothing of the kind. [...] That is, they have the trappings of roleplaying: characters, equipment, stories. But there is no mechanism for the player to ham it up, to characterize themselves by their actions, to roleplay in any meaningful sense" (Costikyan 207). Costikyan relies a little too much on roleplaying as a social experience-- I generally like to do that sort of thing in private, thanks-- but I think that his definition of an RPG stands. Which is why I say that many JRPGs are not roleplaying games at all, but instead cyberdramas.

This is all likely to be highly debatable. After all, pretty much anything is debatable if you get around to it. (No, the sky is NOT blue. It's actually sort of gray, with hints of blue-gray in-between and a sprinkle of white clouds. Why do you ask?) But it's certainly interesting to consider. What constitutes a roleplaying game? What constitutes a fantasy cyberdrama? I know where I stand, at least. Where do you?