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Top Ten Dying Game Genres
Ant sent us a fun link to an article running over at GameSpy discussing the Top 10 Dying Game Genres. Although I don't think Puzzle games have died - I think they've transformed: Pikmin is just a fancy puzzle game, after all ;) But I still want Dr Mario for my GBA.
Grahpic adventure isn't dying... it's just evolving. DAOC, EverQuest, heck even Ultima Online are all excellent "grahpic adventures" that have either been 3D or are just 2D (ultima).
Maybe single player VGA games are dying, but heck sometimes I still have a craving to play a little Space Quest!
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Free your mind.
I love the Sierra strategy games. It always seems that their games come out and within two months the price has dropped to $10-$20. GameSpy claims in this article "...but now their days as a game developer are pretty much over." Is it really that bad? Am I the only one left that loves their new titles? Empire Earth anyone?
I don't know why they say that text-based games are dying. Muds are still very popular among the online community. Last I check there are hundreds of text based MUDS out there.
Quality over Quantity.http://www.virusgaming.com/
They are regular genres confined to limited technical resources. One example that they have is "Text adventure". Well, obviously, people are not interested text games any more but it doesn't mean that the niche is gone, it has just been filled with games with more technical capabilities but which still satisfy the same needs and appeal to the same types of people.
Or another example: They mention that "beat 'em up games" are gone, and say that it was because they were 2D. Again, obviously no one is interested in Street Fighter or something like that but it doesn't mean that the whole idea of beating the shit out virtual monsters has vanished.
In fact, all of these have just evolved, when you look at any modern game, you can always see the features that are borrowed from old games and just enhanced with new tech.
When men used to be men
most good new games don't adhere to any genre whatsoever; instead of giving examples, look at the games that do stick to one genre; they suck. First person shooters are over, what we have instead is max payne. Genres are boring. As soon as enough games are made of a type, a genre is created. Thus any game that falls into this catagory after its creation is tried and old. Now that the tech bubble has burst, companies are forced to release good games, ie genre busting, or else face the concequences. We will see less games, but ones of better quality and of more varied type.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
You're right, this list is bad. Take number 5, it says virtual reality game are dead. How about, virtual reality games were never really alive! The Virtual Boy was a horrible device designed to give me headaches. I rented it once from blockbuster years ago... sometimes I still wake up seeing red lines!
Seriously, the only good virtual experience I have ever found is the battletech pods. You sit inside a pod which looks like a real cockpit of a battlemech from the inside and you go on a rampage. I guess all virtual stuff will suck until we can walk into a star trek-like holodeck and play some REAL games.
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Free your mind.
We used to have this one arcade game that would come to my town as part of the county fair. It cost $.75 (a LOT for back then!!!) and the gimmick was that it was projected into the air so it appeared 3D, the first level had a cowboy shooting crap i think, i think you travelled through time after that, but i never could even really figure out to play. i think it was called timeblasters or timeshifters, or something like that. anyway, it is one of the first "$.75" games it remember in arcades... the next one being Lethal Enforcers.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
light-gun games are dying? over all the dead bodies I collected from Time Crisis, Time Crisis II, Vampire Night, plus whatever else that I havn't quite bought due to money issues.
On the other hand, the "beat-em-up" - isn't an older version of mortal kombat (which, admittedly, died) had a "keep going" mode that was pretty much like that?
And frogger (3D) is not a fine replacement for pacman/woman/child/mutant-uncle?
Space-shooters have their own incarnations too. in arcades especially. It is amazing how many 194_ variations there are in Japanese arcades. metal slug is available if you want a side-ways-scroll one
I do agree with the graphic adventure, though. Space quest was the bomb. Leisure Suit larry was some crazy stuff too...
However, I would like to remind everyone that in fact I am quite sure that particular genre lives on as adult games. (same thing for full-motion video ones) - so, don't fear - the games are just growing up along with the rest of us. heh.
and no, nobody misses the ghetto edutainment crap.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Don't forget Leisure Suit Larry!
You're definitely representing the minority opinion here. I admit that I didn't like N64 Zelda until I made myself play for an hour, thinking that it was a game that you had to get into before it was engrossing. It definitely paid off. I'd recommend playing through it with a strategy guide for when you get stuck, though.
Time Crisis and its sequels and clones were some fun light gun games, but I have a feeling we won't see many more in the future. One reason is the shift from CRT displays to DLP projection and Plasma/LCD/OLED thin panel displays. There simply isn't an easy or cheap way to make a light gun work with a non-scanning display. Light guns and light pens were cheap hacks back in the day, but doing something similar with a more modern display will require much more precise and expensive optics.
I'm sorry, but gamespy obviously doesn't know about
kaillera.
Kaillera enables mame to play just about any old arcade hit online. Since it's
release 2 years ago, it's developed an entire subculture of dedicated players,
clans, and ladders.
According to statistics built by
kaillera the most popular game genre on kaillera is fighting games (King of
fighters, Street Fighter), followed by a single adventure game that dominates
the charts,
Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara.
I think this game was misclassified as an Adventure game, because it's
gameplay really resembles that of Final Fight, and other Beat em ups
Thats all I have to say about that.
dalamcd
moer liek CELtroid prime!!@1!
Ditto for the "Beat 'em Up". Their description: "Most beat 'em ups were fairly straightforward, you were a guy and your goal was to beat up other guys until they disappeared into thin air." Except now instead of a 2D side scrolling guy, we have a first person shooter, with a 3D environment and a Space Marine or Solid Snake whose job it is to get to the end of the level while beating up (or fraging) all the dudes along the way. My, how things have (not) changed.
Maze games could be argued are incorporated into other genres, like the above mentioned FPS, although the genre as a distinct entity does seem to have gone away. Other genres metioned in the article I do not miss. Text adventure, ugh. These things were just obtuse on purpose and a waste of time. (Although perhaps a connection between EverQuest and it's Diku Mud progenitory would be appropriate.) Educational games, sorry. I have A&E now. And virtual reality games were never really popular enought to say the genre has vanished -- it just never caught on in the first place.
But two I truly do miss. Full motion video: Sierra produced a 9 CD adventure game called Phantasmagoria that was just amazing. It featured live actors against rendered back drops. The range of emotion and expression achieved was far superior to any full CGI you get now. Sorry for all you CGI Spirits Within fans ;), but all of the CGI used in theater and games just has a flat look to it.
The other genre I do miss is the graphical adventure. I don't know why these aren't more popular. Maybe because they were made too difficult of many people to play? I think that must be the reason. Stupid puzzle of ridiculous complexity will turn all but the most hard core off to these types of games.
Games have become much more costly to produce. I believe that that is the main reason we see (or seem to see) fewer genres these days. Producers can no longer take a chance on a game that may sel less than 50 thousand copies, I suppose. I wonder if consumers would accept cheaper games, if it meant that some of the more specialized genres could come back. I wonder if that would ba a good question for an Ask Slashdot.
You could try dropping the angst and actually trying Metroid Prime long enough to get used to it.
I've played every Metroid game (Yes, even Metroid II for the Game Boy (I thought the things were actually de-evolving when I first fought the Beta Metroid)) and get all nostalgic about their 2d platforming goodness, but after making the effort to actually play Prime I have to say that it made the transition to 3D very well. Some elements that are decidedly 2D-specific were left behind, but new additions made possible by the first-person 3D format make up for it. The unintentionally humorously named "screw attack" is gone, but the new visor system is sweet.
The usual "sweet mother of crap, that's huge and it's coming this way!" boss battles are still there to keep your knuckles white. There's even the trademark evacuation before the whole place blows to hell... Though where it occurs in Prime kind of breaks with tradition.
The controls also feel very natural after a bit of play time. It's definitely a worthy addition to the series.
I can't really say much about Zelda, though. I only played the two for the NES and the one for the SNES. I liked the first one for the NES and the one for the SNES, but I found I didn't like the second NES Zelda even after playing it most of the way through.
I haven't had the opportunity to play any of the newer Zelda games.
I really think RPGs and graphical adventures sort of merged together. The first RPGs were mostly about combat and the first graphical adventures had no combat. However, RPGs started going beyond "kill this, get gem, bring gem back" to more complicated scenarios requiring you to talk to people and perform tasks. The Ultimas circa 6 and 7 really pushed the limits for RPGs in this regard. In fact Ultima 7 was IMHO more graphical adventure than RPG since the combat model was very simplistic and your stats did not carry very much meaning. It was the story and interactions that made the game.
The Infinity Engine Bioware/Black Isle games had a great deal of Graphical Adventure elements in them---most than most people realize. I still remember in Baldur's Gate I being able to slip past some killers by wearing a "cursed gender-switching belt". They pushed the envelope making RPGs stats as much of a requirement as items in solving the quest, especially in Torment.
At the end the Kings Quest games were going in the opposite direction---putting combat in an graphical adventure.
Brian Ellenberger
The sad thing is nearly all the commercial releases nowadays fall into one of three categories, Quake clones, Warcraft clones, and Sports Games. To me the most important dying genres are: 1. 2D platformers 2. Turn Based RPGs And despite the fact that most of the best selling games of all time fit nicely into these categories, there really aren't any companies willing to produce new content for them. What Gamespy really needs is a list of genres that need to die. How about "Mindless Warcraft or Command and Conquer clone", or "Game loosely based on popular movie license"... and surely the world wouldn't miss "Financial simulation that is so random that there is no strategy involved".
Strip Poker & Other Sex Games
lol, anyone remember those... More often than not B/W horrible graphics, but you still felt a sense of achievement when having stripped a girl completely. I wonder what would happen today if such a game was released?
Sports Games
I mean the specific genre like Summer Gammes, Winter Games, etc. Where you have to wiggle your joystick as fast as you can. Talk about hardware destroyer!
What angers me is that graphical adventures are so uncommon these days... Especially Grim Fandango was easily the game of the year to me, better than most movies I've seen lately even! Everything from the character personalities to the unique setting and music. A true masterpiece..
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
They forgot the flight simulator genre. It is pretty much on life support at this time. Just five years ago, Microsoft flight simulator was a constant top ten PC game. No flight sim has been popular for years and no new major flight sims are on the horizon. Perhaps one might argue that flight sim is similar to space shooter, which was number 10 on the list.
I recently purchased a really addictive game called Triptych found at http://www.chroniclogic.com/triptych.htm
If you like tetris, this is definitely worth a try. There is a demo available.
we come in peace / shoot to kill
I love the Sierra strategy games... GameSpy claims in this article "...but now their days as a game developer are pretty much over." Is it really that bad? Am I the only one left that loves their new titles? Empire Earth anyone?
Empire Earth was Created by Stainless Steel Studios
My point was that Sierra primarily publishes other people's games now, like Half-Life. Most of Sierra's Adventure games were developed in-house.
Genres aren't dying, they're just becoming less well-defined. It's getting harder and harder to pigeonhole modern games into exactly one genre, because they aren't sticking to patterns (in basic design, at least). The only "genre" that has really died is text adventure, but that's only an implementation of RPG. Diablo is the same thing with graphics, and that's still going strong.
This is somewhat true. One could argue Grand Theft Auto is just a free-roaming beat 'em up \ racer.
One game I wanted to somehow mention in this article was 1989's David Wolf: Secret Agent, which tried to combine hang-gliding, flight simulation, driving, diving, and bad acting into one poorly digitized adventure-like package. Try categorizing that one.
Strip Poker & Other Sex Games - lol, anyone remember those... More often than not B/W horrible graphics, but you still felt a sense of achievement when having stripped a girl completely. I wonder what would happen today if such a game was released?
That's true, they probably should have been included in this article since they peaked in the 2600 days and Custer's Revenge... well... jeez
how was side scrolling platform games not on this list. haven't seen one of them in a long time.
I didn't include side-scrolling platformers because platformers are still around, they're just 3D.
All of these genres seem like something that a young kid in the 80's grew up to.
Guilty.
Sure, this article has some flaws and I probably should have included pinball, but oh well, life's tough!
(My favorite was Jawbreaker!)
Hell, look at all the "official" Pac -Man variants that they released.
And who can forget the Pac Man cereal? It was basically just a Lucky Charms ripoff!
Actually, one project I used to help familiarize myself with the Neverwinter Nights toolset was to mimic Quest for Glory I. I wasn't able to do everything quite right (you'd probably want a special hakpak for it), but it still went surprisingly well. Obviously, QFG is the best adventure game to remake using the NWN engine, but I think you could do a decent job with some other adventure games too. And that works so well because single-player NWN is basically an adventure/RPG game itself: it's nowhere near as heavy on the RPG aspect as, for example, BG and IWD are, and while RPG purists complain that the plot is scripted and dull, well, it's exactly the sort of plot you get from most adventure games. (Which, let's face it, are produced by an Adventure Game Cookie Cutter.)
Now that I talk about it, I am really tempted to make another go at finishing that QFG1 module. The thing that was holding me back was my inability to extract the conversations from the game without actually playing it through (not objectionable in itself, but it would involve a lot of note-taking and playing it through at least 3 times to get the different classes). Also Sierra would probably sue me if I tried to release it to anybody, and I can't really blame them.
... is the interactive fiction equivalent of Cage's 4'33", and is still the subject of controversy in the community. It's worth trying, and it will only take five minutes out of your day (but stimulate a lifetime of contemplation) (well, maybe not).
Here's the link in case you missed it.
I know Microsoft is still churning out updates to Flight Sim, but I used to spend hours and hours flying around, doing imaginary missions and such, and I haven't seen any new simulators come out for years.
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
The death of gun games? What is that guy smoking. Time Crisis 3 came out, one of the more popular games now. Also a game called "Wolrd Combat" with 4 player action (4 machineguns in arade!) Also the helicopter game (air assault) where you fly in helicopters and shoot mechanized robots. Area 51 is classic and I still see people playing it.
Death of Puzzle games? Bust a Move, Puzzle Fighter, are still very popular. I would even consider Dance Dance Revolution a type of puzzle game but one has to use the whole body to achieve a goal.
Biggest Crap is the death of side scrolling beat them up games. One of the most popular games in Taiwan/Singapore/Malaysia is this side scrolling game based on Romance of 3 Kingdoms. 4 player action which gave rise to 4 generations of the same game. I think it is called "Knights of Valor"
Over all the article is writen poorly and without much research. Dont know why is there a debate the article hold no water if parts of it are not true.
Nope, it was the sequel to Maniac Mansion, based on the 'SCUMM' system from Lucas Arts. Maniac Mansion did have some almost risqué content at one point, though, but Nintendo neutered it. There was an article by one of the developers about the changes NOA demanded posted as a link somewhere here on slashdot at one point; I'm sure that google would turn it up again :]
Hopefully, they will bring some of the good stuff back someday.
I just wish they realized 3D isn't always the answer. I wish they don't screw the mechanics of Rygar by making it 3D. Metroid Prime is fine but has little to do with the original. That's just fine, better that a 3D rip-off of the original.
Thank God we still have mame and the different emulators for the 8/16bits...
Puzzles dead? huh... try again.
They are still around, just take a look at Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball! Something tells me that game wasn't made for the gameplay...add on the fact that someone released a 'nude' patch for it...
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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
I think the meaning of genre has been lost over the years, it is independant of any presentation aspects of the game , including graphics and audio. It just defines the principle game mechanics, just as movies and books have the same genre, a text-based adventure game has the same genre as Baldurs Gate
-Shrapnel
Actually, DDR and similar games are classified as Bemani (which is actually a Konami brand) - a lot of people also call them Musical Rhythym games.
Bemani games also include virtual drumming and guitar games, for example. It's a lot more prolific in Japan.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
When I worked for a printer company I kept threatening to implement a back-door game of Tetris. One sheet per frame. (These were high-speed barcode printers, so you'd have been able to do 2-4 fps. More if you used smaller labels!) I figured it'd be a great gag for trade shows, and a good hook for a few extra sales for our supplies division.
Never did get around to it. sigh
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
No! I don't have a problem! I don't need your 12 steps I can quit mudding anytime I want to! (Gonnna go mud now)
Little Brother, watching the watchers
With the space shooters, I would say they are still alive, just implemented in 3D. The example of this that remains most true to the genre would be the first Starfox games. Even the latest preserved it in the sort of 'mini game' of flying. If you want to relax the definition to allow free-flight as opposed to force progress along a path, a great number of 'space-flight' sims could fit the description (A lot of them are dumming down the micromanagement and physics). If you'll make that same allowance for 'side-scrollers' (how many 3d games force a path?), then I would say the space shooter is quite alive.
Puzzle I think he make the argument himself for. They are widely available online for free and don't require high-end hardware to play, so they are popular. Are they huge at the software stores? No, but they are used to draw in advertising revenue and the like, so they continue to be a commercial success.
The light gun has always been a rather small, niche thing for frequent use. How many games were released that supported the 'zapper'? The 'super scope'? How many platforms ever had 'official' light guns that were that popular? Has Sony ever released a non-controller 'official' method of control? Time Crisis series and its kind are pretty much as numerous and popular as Duck Hunt would have been if it was not bundled. Same with the dance pads, maraccas, etc, they are still quite popular in their niche, *especially* DDR.
Text adventures I've always thought were ways of representing a rich world not possible through the power of the computers of the time. Now worlds can be acceptably created in 3D graphics and that has worked well. Could be compared to books vs. movies, except books require no power, and are ultimate in portability and convenience, and with text adventures, whatever is in front of you could just as well play the fancy, 3D graphics world that you are free to explore on your own terms.
With maze games, I really haven't cared much. It is probably safe to say that those games, if they have nothing other than a maze, are dead. A lot of games have mazes in them, but by itself it gets boring now.
VR, well, I agree with the article, except it is not technically 'dying' but rather 'stillborn'.
Edutainment is still alive and kicking. The author may have grown up and doesn't really find anything big happening, but my young nephew loves new games coming out that are edutainment. Far from dead, but the audience of the 80s edutainment has grown out of it.
'Pure' FMV games were a really passing hype when they realized they had the tech to play movies on computers and consoles. They are still quite promiment in other games as a story-telling mechanism, just really really toned down. Those games listed as examples always sucked and never were popular enough to say that genre was ever really 'alive'.
Beat-Em-Up is another one of those things were the definition gets tricky. Does Devil May Cry count? Does Shenmue? Does Tenchu? All these games have a number of characteristics similar to the examples given. Some add a bit more depth and sophistication, but retain the basic principles at their core.
Again, I would say the 'Graphical Adventure' type game is a sticky definition. It is hard to draw the line between those and some RPGs. I'll leave this one alone.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
What I mean is that games like Mario RPG were 3d but used in a 2d manner. It worked really well. I wish other developers would experiment with this route.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
OK, so this is perilously close to an OT troll, but: :-) and try a few games. Some of the advantages over vids: You can actually win free games, it's real hardware, you can trap the ball and catch your breath every now and then, and... when you whack the cabinet it actually affects the pinball's motion (try knocking down an ogre by hitting the vid box).
If you haven't played pinball in a while, get out of the house
And BTW there are LOTS of great pinball sims available, many for free.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
It won't be long until we can all afford 3 monitors and a multi-display adapter
Forget that. I wouldn't be surprised if someone starts marketing a long, curved LCD (or OLED if you prefer) monitor that would wrap partly around you. You could turn your head and not have to deal with the split between monitors. Besides being nice for gaming, think of how much more screen real estate you'd get. Then eventually it would start to curve up as well, a little above your head. That would give you just about full visual immersion. Combined with a great sound system it'd be faboo.
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Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
Another interesting thing is that DDR may look like an absurd parody of dance, but it actually does teach you rhythm and a kind of basic dance movement. It's actually harder than real dancing in the sense that it's much faster and more frantic: whenever I see a professional dancer I'm surprised at how leisurely and slow it is. I didn't believe it at first either, but when I go to a real nightclub now and do DDR-like legwork, everyone is impressed and thinks I've taken dance courses. Of course you don't tell them the real story :).