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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.
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
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.
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!
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.
Graphic adventures place emphasis on puzzle-solving and a good storyline. Because of the latter, they also tend to be linear.
RPGs are more like the games that you described. The motivation is more on leveling your character up and becoming more powerful rather than a storyline-driven game.
I think that many gamers prefer the freedom and "possibilities" that RPGs tend to offer over graphic adventures. Pick your character, choose where you should be placing emphasis on as far as spells/stats go, etc...
The freedom factor strikes me as one of the reasons that GTA3 has been so successful.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.