Oh no nenjin, I was saying that a "Role-Playing Game" is more than just having a Strength stat.
So it's silly to say a First-Person Shooter has Role-Playing Game elements unless you are actually role-playing: making decisions on what your character will do or say.
For example, let's take System Shock 2. It's an FPS with a horror sci-fi theme, and because equipment is scarce and monsters jump out at you and there are some puzzles, a lot of people call it a Survival Horror FPS. It's sort of midway though, because the Survival Horror elements are a bit weak, in that you can actually go through the game blasting everything. Not like, say, Dino Crisis 1 or Resident Evil 1 or Silent Hill 1. Those I would say are Survival Horror because the elements of SH are strong: horror, terror and surprise, puzzles, limited supplies.
Now System Shock 2 also is
said to have RPG elements because you can upgrade skills and attributes. And sure, your decisions here can affect the flow of the game (are you stealthy or strong? Melee or missile? Physical or magic? Techie or not?). But that character choice is on the same level as deciding whether to go after the Pink Keycard before you grab the Light Red Keycard in some Doom-like. It's not a decision your character makes to influence the game, it's just your approach to playing.
A great example is
Super Mario Brothers. In this game, you can choose to grab coins, or not. You can go through a side passage, or not. But it is clearly not a Role-Playing Game. I haven't heard a single person seriously call SMB an RPG. That's because no matter what you do, you always go from castle to castle missing your Princess until you defeat the boss at the end and win. That's the game. Your choices have no effect on that.
But in what I would call an RPG, at the absolute minimum level, would be a game with multiple endings based on your choices throughout the game. If you don't have that, if you can't affect the outcome, you are just being led along by the nose.
Now the stats and skills and stuff are just the trappings of an RPG. They're superficial. Every game has points. Heck, in SMB you get enough coins and you gain an extra life. Tracking your stats does not make it an RPG.
And just to head off the inevitable fallacy, it is
not and RPG if the game gives you a predefined character to play and you have a couple meaningless choices along the way, or you choose at the end whether you'll take the bad ending or the good one. Because if you agree that, for example, Final Fantasy is an RPG, then SMB is just as much an RPG.