Slashdot Mirror
Adventure Gaming: Rest In Peace?
"From research in newsgroups and articles on various gaming sites (by no means supposed to be academically exhaustive) it seems to me that there are all sorts of idea and opinions on the subject floating around, most, as you might guess, contradictory. Here are a few examples of the kinds of statement that you can find, some from old time game designers, and others from random punters on newsgroups:
- the technology has simply moved on, and adventure games don't allow for the kind of flashy graphics and big bangs that sell video cards.
- the genre isn't dead, it just evolved. Elements that we loved from adventure gaming have been incorporated into the current genres.
- the games weren't really THAT good, we just remember the effect they had on us with rose coloured lenses. We should remember the good times and let it die. After all, who wants to play 'guess the verb' or 'click every item in your inventory on every other item'? We've moved on.
- they were too linear, and offered too little replay value.
Personally, I cherish the memories and the stories from this era of gaming, and would love to see the genre resurrected."
Now the same thrill we got killing monsters or solving quests, we can get by killing an opponent that thinks and reasons just as fast as we do. Its a lot more challanging to kill a real person in game then a scripted bot. :)
No I didnt spell check this post...
Or at least LucasArts hope it isn't. They've got a sequel to the great Sam & Max + Full Throttle adventures.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I'm calling BS on that. Just because no one's thought to make a 3d Sierra-type adventure game, doesn't mean it's not possible. I can see something like a third-person game that used a point-click-menu-select interface, with cinematics, celebrity voice-overs, and one hell of a plot. You could combine free character movement like evercrack or any of the recent Zelda games, with Myst-like puzzles, and don't forget to throw in some action. Oh yeah, and make sure it runs on linux.
Despite millions of years of evolution, human beings, taken as a group, are still stupid, panicky animals.
Wind Waker changes the control from really really 3rd person to less 3rd person, and there's some (easy) combat, but it's basically the same as kings quest
solve the puzzle, move on
use the right item to solve the puzzle, move on
rinse and repeat
It's just that the puzzles in the Kings Quest games were often a bit more intellectual than "push the blocks around" (but at the time I was in grade school / jr. high, so maybe I just remember wrong)
anyway, I'd love another real KQ game (they quit making them after VI), but Zelda has enough of the elements for me
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Take last year's Syberia as a prime example - won a lot of awards (was a bit easy if you ask me) - just walk into your local Game (UK) and pick up a copy.
The problem with the point&click adventures growing into 3D is that no is that one has managed to pull it off quite right yet they are all a bit samey - they fear text on the screen I think and the walk/talk/use type interfaces that are ideally suited to this game type.
Lets hope the up and coming offerings from LucasArts can reignite the *real* games.
failing that I might be forced to write one myself!
Don't Resident Evil type games fit into the adventure category? They aren'tqite as simple but you still have your items and your story line to go an play with.
-G
Then what about Runaway: A Road Adventure released this week? Runaway is one of the games with the most preorders in a long time..
And what about Lucasarts releasing sequels to Sam'n'Max and Full Throttle?
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
..at least, that's how it was for me.
Lucasarts didn't bother to even ask creator Ron Gilbert if he had any input in Monkey Island 3, since they owned the rights to the games. The result was a quite poor followup to a supurb series which would have hooked in many new gamers to the genre. Lucasarts attempted to continue Gilberts' story and ended up tarnishing the story with countless plotholes.
New gamers seem to be looking for the violent and flashier games while adventure game lovers look for the trickier and humourous.
Feed me a stray cat.
I've noticed, however, that games like Splinter Cell incoroporate a lot of the 3-d transferrable characteristics of the adventure genre: Creative thinking, strategy-based playability and a plot.
I loved true adventure games because of their similarities to a book - a full plot a story which could result in a number of different endings. Text adventures and semi-graphical adventures were of the same caliber, IMHO. In fact, independent developers are still making and porting both of these types, which are easy to find and free to play. Those who seek to make a profit, however, expend their efforts elsewhere.
I would say that it is the hardware market which drives the software market, and it is this which is at least partially responsible for the decline in further commercial development of the adventure game genre.
Duke Nukem Manhattan Project was groundbreaking in its method of presentation. Truely a 3d Sidescroller - and nice to look at. We need an adventure game to utilize the same concepts so that we can satisfy Mr Wizz Bang marketers and 12 yr olds while still bringing elements of story, plot, adventure and humor to videogames.
-- -=innocent ramblings from the mind of an insomniatic programmer=-
The adventure games died out when decent 3d hardware accelerated graphics took off. Grim Fandango was probally one of the later adventure games, it had prerendered graphics with 3d characters. Although adventure games have died off many other games are starting to get adventure qualities in them. Think of the diffrence between doom and a modern single player fps shooter.
cat
I'm aware of many reasons adventure games have passed on, but I'm not sure which one I want to put stake in. One thing I do know is Space Shooting games like Gradius, RaidenIII, R-TYPE, etc. and why they died. This might provide some insight into gaming genres as a whole.
Back in the day there were lots of space shooters. 1942 series, ZAXON, Galaga, Galaxian, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender. They all fit in somewhere. But around the time of Gradius, Life Force, and definitely by R-TYPE3, Gradius 3, Raptor:COTS the genre had been perfected. There was no more new ways to innovate and make the game better.
They put more bullets on the screen to dodge. They gave you a wide variety of weapons and defenses. They made really flashy big bosses. They provided environments that were difficult to navigate along with bad guys simultaneously. They did everything to make the games awesome. They had a lot of practice making shooters and they had perfected the art. So the genre died. Every new space shooter had to be perfect. If it wasn't then it was crap compared to the 10 or so perfect shooters. So we get Einhander, G-Darius, and now Ikaruga. There are still new games in the genre, but each one is simply a new perfect game. They each add a new gameplay gimmick to separate them from the rest. G-Darius let you grap enemies and make them join you. Ikaruga has the color change shield thing.
These aren't bad games. In fact, they are about as good as they can be. This is the problem. Because there is no innovation in the genre nobody is buying the games. Why would I buy spaceshootX if it is the same game as spaceshootY, it only adds new sprites to look at?
This is the same reason a lot of PC gaming is going downhill and console gaming is really kicking it. The genres which play well on a PC are lacking innovation. The RTS, the FPS, the simulation. All of these haven't seen any major advances. New games just have better graphics and physics. Tribes 2 was the last great advance in fps gameplay, and they fucked it up. Unreal Tournamet 2k3 and Unreal 2 are just more of the same, but shinier. When a genre doesn't innovate it dies. There is no reason to buy a new RTS if the RTS you already have it perfect. This is why Counter-Strike and other Half-Life mods are still #1. Nobody has come up with anything better.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
While I may not play adventure games, this is the same sort of 'shock' journalism that we always see. Someone says something is dead because it's not as popular as it once was, and two years later, it still is alive, just in it's own niche, as it was before.
It's like those guys who keep saying puzzle games are dead, despite the fact that puzzle games may actually be the most popular on the planet with their inclusion into cell phones and whatnot.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
If you check around, there's a wealth of games that don't break the surface of the mainstream, simply because the bean-counters tell people that they won't make much money and so they never get much in the way of advertising money.
however, if you look at a few of the companies on top, you'll find a good number of quality games, at fairly low prices. right now, I'd say that the up-coming Sam and Max and Full Throttle games from Lucasarts are going to generate a lot more publicity within the genre as well as Dreamcatcher's continued offerings to adventure gamers everywhere.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
Way back in the day, I was an avid adventure gamer. I played through all the Police Quest, Space Quest, King's Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and Monkey Island games... plus any others that I could get my hands on. I still play a lot of games, and that's why I think I'm a pretty good person to ask why I'm not as interested in adventure games anymore.
First, I don't think the main reason is graphics. In fact, I don't agree with the statement that graphics have moved beyond what adventure games can possibly offer. A couple years ago, an adventure game called the Longest Journey came out. It was a great game with fantastic graphics. It didn't do so well, commerically. Why not?
Second, I don't think the reason has to do with adventure games being linear. Final Fantasy X was linear, yet it was fantastically successful. Before someone decides to flame me for my opinion of what concepts define whether a game is "linear", I should point out that technically speaking, a linear game only has 1 primary path to its conclusion. Thus, almost every RPG ever made is completely linear, only deviating from the primary path every now and then, and always to return to it. Note: ALMOST every RPG... Morrowind, and games like it, are exceptions.
I would certainly agree that elements from adventure games are found everywhere. Goal-oriented puzzles are found in many, many types of games, from RPG's (obviously) to FPS's.
The main reason I don't think adventure games do well anymore is because of our growing expectations. If a game was released in 1991 and sold 100,000 copies, it was considered a resounding success. 10 years later, if a game sells 100,000 copies, it's still a relative success, but since games no longer take only 6 months to create, there's much more of an investment, and $5 million (100,000 x $50) just doesn't go as far as it used to. Keep in mind that Final Fantasy X-2 sold 1.2 million copies in the first week of its release in Japan. 10 years ago, when King's Quest 5 was just coming out (I don't remember the actual year, so don't get all anal on this point), selling 1.2 million copies of any game would be incredible, even throughout the game's entire run.
It might be me, but lately, I've noticed that most adventure games are based on licenses from TV shows or movies (eg. Law & Order, or CSI). I think it's still pretty safe to say that most games based on movie or TV licenses suck in the most disturbing ways.
Finally, I would say that adventure gaming isn't dead. It's always had the same number of fans as it always has... but other genres have long surpassed it. I know I enjoyed The Longest Journey, Schizm, Myst 3, The Omega Stone, etc. just as much as I enjoyed Police Quest 3 when it came out. So, in the end, I'd say that adventure gaming isn't dead, it just isn't nearly as popular as a lot of other genres. Why don't we talk about how puzzle games are dead? They don't sell very well either...
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
Eww! Nasty and almost unreadable. I quite assumed it was a rendering error at first...
:-)
How long has this one been here, and can we turn it off QUICKLY please?
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
I think that adventure games died because everyone attempted to copy the success of Myst, and, ultimately, the consumer didn't want another Myst. Certainly not the consumers who were providing the base for adventure games. So, to corporate thought, it went "Hey! Myst is the adventure game everyone loves! We should make all our adventure games like Myst!" Followed by "No one likes adventure games anymore, because none of ours sell. Let's stop making them."
Though the adventure game is arguably alive and well as a niche market now, and it seems to be doing well enough to keep existing as a niche.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
In particular, The Longest Journey blew my mind -- strong puzzles and, more importantly to me, a well-crafted story. Unfortunately, it got almost no distribution in the US, though you can find it for $20 at BestBuy, CompUSA, etc. And who can forget Grim Fandango? I'm hoping that the Sam and Max and Full Throttle sequels live up to those titles.
I rather enjoyed the old Monty Python adventure games. Not for their playability, mind you.
I personally have a completely different reason why this genre died.
One of the most important aspects of the games like King's Quest was the user's imagination. Why not type "kick the cat"? It wasn't necessarily the immediate response we enjoyed, it was that the action actually affected the game at a later point in time (remember if you kick the cat, he'll later trip you at the top of the stairs and you die). Sure, it required imagination to come up with some of the statements you had to type, but the programmers showed that they out-thought you most of the time and some of the reactions to your typed statements would make you fall out of your chair laughing. I know I remember doing that several times.
However, imagination is what is becoming a dying art. Why do games have to *look* more and more real? Because if it looks fake, you have to pretend in your mind that you are *in* the game.
People don't want to use their imagination anymore. Just look at the movies and TV. It's so much easier to just be forcefed the stuff instead of picturing it in your mind as you read a book or play a game.
Remember that once we got to King's Quest 5, we were no longer typing phrases in. The game was also looking less cartoony. I personally was disappointed at the new mouse interface because I missed typing in the phrases that got the funny responses.
In my opinion, the genre died because we're getting too lazy to use our own imagination and the market saw this trend and let the games pass away.
***
Charles Martin
Database Developer IV @ Santander Consumer USA
This is a very old topic. I remember reading "End of Adventure Games?" articles 5 years ago if not more than that.
I don't think Adventure games would have been as linear as they were to begin with if the technology were there at the time. So I'll agree with one of the opinions you listed. It didn't die, it split apart and exists somewhere in the genres that exist today.
My opinion really doesn't matter, though, because if this keeps up I'm going to have to say it again in another 5 years.
-Rabbit
The old adventure games aren't dead, they're just getting old. Recently, I played through Day of the Tentacle and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and started playing Sam & Max. These games are still great fun (although I cheat a lot when I'm stuck, being more impatient now in the future than I was back in the present), and the best thing is you can play them in Linux, FreeBSD or on your old SGI through ScummVM.
I actually portupgraded my laptop (a 133 MHz/40 MB antique) from FreeBSD 4.7 to 4.8 just to get speech in Sam & Max. Those games are such a waste of time!
I swear if I heard 'adventure is dead' again, I'm gonna go into a psychopathic rage of destruction. Yes, adventure games now are nothing like their older counterparts who made up for their so-so graphical ability with indepth stories and interaction within the game. Adventure however is not dead since they are still making games for it. Last year 'Syberia' was a pretty big one, and though I did not think it was anything close to the classics, it was an adventure game and a well made one at that. The Longest Journey which came out in 2000 was another great adventure game, one that surprised many people with its appearance and quality. Again, while this may not be as good as the classics, it was a good game, and well made. Full Throttle 2 is slated for released soon, and I know the makers of Syberia are working on another game.
No, those who say adventure is dead are either A) not playing the games at all and thus dont know what theyre talking about or B) have such a rigid definition of adventure games they cant accept whats available now. Thats too bad for you, but don't go around saying the horse is dead when we're all still riding it around. Not to mention the HUGE potential for a really good adventure game to be released; the more people who say stuff like this, the more likely the only adventure games you will find in the future will be on ebay or abandonedware. So yes, please lets not get too dramatic here, nothing is dead yet, only on its way.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
This is true. I think when people hear 'adventure game', they think automatically text or 2-d. Obviously, the genre has evolved with the technology. It could quite possibly become huge again, should some developer with good ideas decide to throw all their resources at it.
In action games you can cover up a bad or missing story by great graphics and gameplay. Adventure gaes are pretty much entirely about the story, and writing a good one is HARD. Not many people can do it, just like not many can write a good movie script.
But the real kicker is that even if you write and produce a great one, the market isn't blockbuster-sized, so companies aren't as interested in funding.
Tim Shaffer (sp?) is about the best writer (Grim Fandango, Full Throttle) and he moved on to his own company and a platformer game for XBox. (doublefine.com)
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
Yeah, sure, there are 'big' adventure games like Everquest, Asheron's Call, etc where there is no real story and the adventure is in exploring (or camping). Neverwinter Nights is (IMHO) closer to being true to the genre. There's a story in which you control one of the main characters.
Neverwinter Nights is a good example of where the genre is going, in fact.
To address the statements you found in relation to NWN:
As for other games,
Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries is another great adventure game. Run a mercenary company that controls giant robots and blow shit up.
Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind is supposedly even better than NWN. I haven't played it but my friends that have keep saying how great it is.
The list goes on and on. If you want, include MMORPGs in your classification of 'adventure' games and suddenly you see where the genre went.
As many have said already, the adventure game genre is not dead at all. Additionally, a lot of features of adventures games have been incorporated inside other genres. For instance, rpg's like Baldur's Gate (or, better, Planescape Torment) have plenty of features which come straight from adventure games. Even some shooters incorporate adventure game features (puzzles, npcs, discussions, etc). I think that far from being dead, the adventure game is ever-present! Nowadays almost every game, no matter its genre, has a bit of adventure gaming sprinkled on top of it, if only to make the bits between the action scenes more interesting.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Now, take out your hardcore MMORPG. Remove the FPS which is just about killing and more killing.
What do you have? Resident Evil types. Zelda:WindWaker types. Genre busters (a la the "Theif" series, Deus Ex, System Shock 1&2). Those are all evolved Adventure games.
And, yes, I was (and still am) a HUGE fan of the adventure genre. Quest for Glory (formerly "Hero's Quest") lured me in, Monkey Island kept me from leaving.
Seriously, go buy Thief 2, System Shock 2, or Deus Ex. Yes, they are a First Person perspective, but they are very much an adventure genre.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
One of my favorite games of all time, The Longest Journey, has just announced they are working on at least one, maybe two more games in the series. It seems to me that this whole "adventure games are dead" stuff started when Sierra got bought out and stopped making adventure games. But companies like Revolution are still going strong, and now are trying to get adventure games out to the consoles.
I don't think the genre will ever be truely "dead".
I think the typical, pure adventure game genre died out because pure adventure games were boring.
All you did in them was read text, click some action icons and click on objects/characters on the screen to interact with them.
The actual "game" part of adventure games was usually pish.
What was good about adventure games then? The story (and all the elements of it, such as the characters)!
Can only pure adventure games have that? Well, apparently years ago most game developers though so, but of course that's not true. Any type of game, be it an RTS, a FPS or whatever, can, and should have, a great story!
I'd quite like to see some new, innovative adventure-focused games, though. The game "Blade Runner" was quite cool, imho. It was similar to typical adventure games, but it was non linear, there was a bit if action (you had your little blaster which you could use), it has a awesome atmosphere (thanks to good graphics/sounds).
Anyway... to conclude, imho pure adventure games suck and are boring, but the actual adventure element is important and should be a part of any good computer game.
The adventure games are almost dead, but they also evolved. Take the Shen Mue saga. The Shen Mue games are adventure games, moved to 3D graphics the right way, not like the Lucasarts failures such as Monkey 4 (crap all around) and Grim Fandango (good story, but crappy control).
In Shen Mue there is a great story, lot of objects, lot of people, lot of interaction. I think that if the real adventure creators (Steve Purcell/Ron Gilbert) had worked with current hardware, they would have created something similar (probably with their twisted humor).
Game makers have been rushing to make everything 3D and support directx9 opengl and the fancy nvidia, ati extensions. Companies are no longer focusing on the storyline and art so much.
Even lucasarts were'nt immune to this. Remember what they did to monkey island?? Monkey Island 3 was a big success, at least for an adventure game, but then there was the obscene monkey island 4, made in 3d, dysfunctional and uninteresting.
I occasionally play sonic2, wonderboy and some atari, commodore64 games. Theres nothing wrong with a good sidescroller or adventure game and they still have their own place. But game developers are focused elsewhere.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
You are in a maze of twisty little corridors, all of which look alike.
My monocle! I've lost my monocle! If I don't find it soon, I'll lose all the monocle-grabbing muscles in my eye!!!!
Would you like to buy a shuba?
"Over my dead body!" "Preference noted..."
Use the rubber chicken with the pulley in the middle...
Zkull.
Play humbug with octopus.
Take filofax from Viking.
Lie down in front of bulldozer.
The code phrase is, "say alexis."
You have been bitten by chiggers. If you don't stop the itching soon, you will die. (Get Mud) Whew! What a relief!
Vichysoisse Avec Rat Hair.
Give comfit to Dodo. Take stick.
Kill Goblin with sword. Take amulet.
If you recognised 3 or more of the previous references, adventure games are not dead.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
For proof of what "modern" adventure games would be check out Gabriel Knight 3 or Starship Titanic.
Gabriel Knight 3 is, in my opinion, the greatest adventure game ever. The graphics are beautiful, the voice acting is excellent (led by Tim Curry as Gabriel Knight), and the story is amazing. I need more adjectives, this game is that great. It is proof that you can take a Sierra adventure game into a 3d environment and have it work extremely well. It ended with a whole setup for GK4, but unfortunately I doubt we'll ever get it.
I mention Starship Titanic because it shows how a text based control interface can still work and be fun. The greatest thing about adventure games was that you could do anything. Even if you got the standard "I don't know how to 'bang a gong'" message, at least you could try. The modern day point and click just doesn't give you that option. You're confined to the limits of the graphical interface. With text based interfaces your only limitation is verbal.
There was also a little known massively multiplayer online adventure game in the works called Gryphon Tapestry. I was fortunate enough to beta test it for a few weeks before the whole project got shut down. They had some really great ideas on bringing an adventure type game to the online market and it's a damn shame that it wasn't completed.
In a weird twisted way kinda reminds me of Police Quest adventure games. Except you can go and shoot anyone you want, and the game is a far bigger sandbox than Police Quest ever was.
Personally, I would love to see this merge between the sandbox nature of GTA and the adventure gaming style of PQ or KQ or any of the series. That would be way way way too fun. (IMHO)
~ kjrose
Every year we get someone pontificating on the death of adventure games. It really gets tiresome. If only we could get some 'FACT: Adventure games are dying' trolls to liven things up...but they seem to all be scared away by the color scheme here.
Anyways, adventure games aren't dying. Text adventure games may be dead (commercially), but they live on thanks to the goodly number of tools that people can use to make their own (the most widely known being the Z-machine, which has interpreters on just about everything under the sun). In fact, I'd say that the best of the recent releases are far superior to anything that Infocom produced. Examples: Anchorhead (Lovecraftian), Christminster (Detective), and Spider and Web (Espionage). But, yes, commercially, text adventure is more or less dead.
Adventure is still going strong, though. You've still got classic adventures like The Longest Journey and Syberia, and you also have the "new" set of adventures (which tend to involve shooting things repeatedly in between the puzzles), such as the Resident Evil series, which, last I checked, seemed to be doing quite well. But even putting that aside, more and more games are now becoming adventure games mixed with something else. Every time you're playing a FPS and you encounter an obstacle that can't be overcome by force, they've taken a page from the adventure genre (many bosses fall into this category). Every time you're in an RPG, and you have to do deliver object A to point B, or convince NPC to agree with you...that's the adventure genre again. And you'll find that games that contain those sorts of puzzles tend to be much better received than games that don't (which would you rather play: Half-Life, or Quake II? Baldur's Gate or Pool of Radiance (the remake, not the original)).
Grand Theft Auto is sort of an Adventure game. You complete quests, gain weapons, build your running skills, etc.
I nearly cried at the ending of Syberia, the story was great and graphics beautiful.
Speaking of graphics, the technology behind Syberia is nothing like Doom III, but it incorporated 3D for character animation (even let you turn antialiasing on). Post Mortem is a bit of a step forward graphics-wise, but just wait for Syberia 2:
- Dynamic graphics and lighting details such as glass reflections, ice texture, uniform fabric, and decals.
- Real-time snowfall and footsteps marks.
- Dynamic lighting and shadows.
- Animated fog.
- Enhanced in-game animation.
(taken from an interview with Benoit Sokal on Gamespy).That's pretty impressive for an adventure game, if you ask me... Just take a look at screenshots in the interview.
This signature is only a product of your imagination. It is not real.
When someone mentions "Adventure Games" I still think of text adventures like the old Infocom games. I played games like Calixto Island on my TRS-80 CoCo that were still text adventure games but had graphics to illustrate the story. I didn't really appreciate the new fully graphical adventure games from outfits like Sierra On-Line where you didn't have to type anymore--I still like the old art of text adventures. That art, called Interactive Fiction, is exploding and every year there is a competition.
I have an online sampler of Interactive Fiction text adventures online. Just go to:
Kriston.net/Games
Kris
Kriston
The quest for glory series would be easily ressurectable into 3d. The integrated RPG/adventure model was spectacular. It would be sorta zeldish, but with different hero classes and not leveling up abilities, but character build up stats (intelligence, strength, etc...) They already incorporated semi 3d combat into the game, this could be seemlessly done now.
I am an avid adventure game fan. I have been playing adventure games and loving them as long as I can remember. My first computer games I played and loved were adventure games: Below the Root (if that counts), Adventure, Zork, King's Quest, Space Quest, Monkey Island, and so forth and so on.
I have lots of reactions to what is implied and asked by this story:
Most importantly, it has to be emphasized that adventure games are not dead. The original submitter was careful to note not dead "commercially", but the connotations of the story is the same--that adventure gaming is a dead genre.
Why am I picking at this point? Because many fans of text adventure games will note that whether or not adventure games are commercially dead is a moot point. They are very much alive in the open-source and independent gaming community. I really am not saddened by this--in fact, I am gladdened by this! It's one of the few--if only--vibrant gaming communities that are populated primarily by independent developers, typically individuals writing games for a hobby, but less frequently, as a secondary vocation. It's almost irrelevant that they're not a large source of commercial income, because good games are still being written and produced--and that's all that really matters.
So that's actually text adventure games--or interactive fiction. What about graphic adventure games? Well, putting aside quibbles about games like The Longest Journey, I would admit that there is a dearth of graphical adventure games, even in the independent gaming community. There are numerous explanations for this problem.
First, I think there's something to be said about the typical computer gaming population or audience. Just as the typical internet user has become more representative of the general population as time has gone on, so too has the typical computer user. Let's face it: adventure games put an emphasis on thinking and puzzle solving, and are not sensational or viscerally exciting. This is not a criticism necessarily, as books aren't either, and I'm not about to say that books are bad. But it is to say that most of the population doesn't like to play a computer game that requires sitting around and thinking about a problem. Think of Grand Theft Auto, for example. As the market has changed, and game development has become more corporate and commericalized, more effort is placed on genres that deliver sensational, exciting, extravagant stimuli.
Second, adventure games really did fall behind technologically. This is definitely true of graphics, games like The Longest Journey aside, but it's true of a whole host of other things. Even with text adventure gaming--with all the advances in natural language processing and AI, it's amazing someone hasn't done anything more with parsers, dialogue generators, and plot flow. Adventure games remained remarkably linear in plot and related factors. For a long time, first person adventure games were horrible in their interface--ridiculously restrictive movements, limited world interaction--absolutely horrible. Many of them still are.
Third, on a related note, the gameplay of adventure games never really advanced, and to the extent they did, it was because of the introduction of new genres from outside adventure gaming. For example, adventure games could have branched into first-person action, but the impetus never came from within adventure gaming. So you got games like Half-Life and System Shock, from the action gaming community, to create a new hybrid action-adventure genre. Note that it's generally action-adventure, not adventure-action. Role playing is another example of this--character attributes, and nonlinearity, never got any attention from the adventure gaming community. It was, however, taken up by games like Baldur's Gate, revitalizing adventure gaming in the form of role-playing. Thus a resurgence of role-playing, even though it resembled adventure gaming in a big way.
Finally, I think it's important to point out that adventure gaming isn't necessa
I asked myself the same question a few weeks ago. So I asked Google about my favorite oldies and their hypothetic new versions, and I found this :
:)
the Zak McKracken 2 project
Zak McKracken and the Alien Rockstars
Simon the Sorcerer and the whole magic door
And many many other links (most of them are here)
It seems that the Adventure Games Community is still alive, and producing quality remakes of the old games we played many years ago
____
nico
Nico-Live
Go back about two years and you magazines regularly ran articles saying, "Flight Sims Are Dead".
Sure, you could find a few examples like Microsoft Flight Sim but they were dismissed and the genre was considered dead. Then the stunning IL2 came out, Combat Flight Sim 3, B17, Project One and a whole slew of others while Lawrence Holland, one of the biggest names in the classic era of PC flight sims is coming out with another in the Secret Weapons line.
Basically, the genre was in hibernation until several different sources came up with new tricks and new technologies to exploit and then, once there was something new to offer, it was back with a vengence.
Currently, adventure games are considered dead. There are examples of the genre that are still getting rave reviews such as American McGee's Strawberry... uh, I mean Alice, Syberia, Anacronox (or whatever it was called), etc. but they, just like the examples with flight sims before them, are getting dismissed.
Go in to other fields entirely... Guitar was "dead" during the dance music era, guitar soloing was "dead" a couple of years ago. Yet it all strangely comes back as soon as a couple of inovators coincide at the same time.
Declaring a game (or indeed any) genre dead generally proves one of two things:
1) You're a magazine after a sensational article title.
2) You've just not been in the field long enough to recognise a cycle when it hits you.
Adventure games may currently be in hibernation but they'll almost certainly return. Maybe it'll be through realtime Myst style graphics on modern cards (look at Links now compared to what it was like 10 years ago). Maybe it'll be in an FPS engine - ultimately, other than Counterstrike, what's made Halflife so popular is that fact it was the most Adventure Game like FPS out there and still is. Maybe, with the capacity of DVDs, someone'll figure out how to make the old CD-ROM interactive movies in to something that's actually any good. Maybe it'll be a new approach entirely. It'll almost certainly be a combination of several. However it happens though, it almost certainly will happen.
Then they can start writing about the Post Doom III death of the FPS genre or whatever it may be.
Hmm, Full Throttle 2 is coming out soon. That and Resident Evil are the new types of Adventure Gaming. They are mixing it in with the action genre more then they used to.
Zork.
> My monocle! I've lost my monocle!
It seems familiar
> Would you like to buy a shuba?
Below the Root.
(Extra credit, people: Who actually read the books once they finished that game? Who read them before the game existed?)
> Use the rubber chicken
Monkey Island.
> Lie down in front of bulldozer.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
> You have been bitten by chiggers.
I know the reference, but don't know why I do.
> Vichysoisse Avec Rat Hair.
Monkey Island 2.
> Give comfit to Dodo.
I know that one, and don't know why either.
How about these two easy ones?
The tentacle's gonna be pissed!
This don't look like the Lincoln Tunnel, Sam.
Adventures games are not dead.
For myself and several of my friends, the death of the point-n-click adventure genre came just after King's Quest 4: The Perils of Rosella. Honestly, the puzzles weren't puzzles in any sense. They were just examples of "do some random thing and hope it's the same random thing the programmers thought of."
An example: You need a plank of wood to cross a (very shallow) area. A frog is blocking your way. Get the shiny ball hidden underneath the bridge two screens back, then throw it at the frog.
Honestly, does that make any sense? The writers for some of these things just couldn't come up with plausable situations, puzzles, or solutions.
I'd really love to see sales figures of the games as compared to sales figures of the solution books.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
They just live on in the forms of other games, merged with other genres, to make new experiences.
Take a look at the Resident Evil series, many RPGs, and several other games that borrow heavily from the adventure gaming style. Many borrow heavily from Adventure Games, just as other games borrow aspects from them.
I think I've heard "I have decided this game genre is extinct!" a few too many times now. You really aren't looking close enough, or really understanding the way that games work and evolve to be able to claim such a thing.
adventure games aren't dead.
You're saying Zelda isn't an adventure game? It sold almost 1 million copies last month.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Wait, what was wrong with MI3? I loved MI3, and was going to go back and play the first two if I could ever find 'em.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What about the new Zeldas? Hell, Mario too. Just because you can stab things, jump, and roll around doesn't make it not an adventure game. The new ones play just like old adventure game in how you have to think and solve problems (even if the solution is often to shoot it with an arrow).
I like the old adventure games (Space Quest era) more then almost any games, but now you can combine adventure and real time action, and it works pretty damn well.
"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." -Philips
What I've found frustrating is the lack of adventure games available for Linux. TuxGames offers a number of strategy and FPS games but only a few adventure games. On the surface this makes sense, strategy and FPS (along with RPGs) are the best selling genre of computer games.
But I wonder if the Linux gaming market isn't somewhat different than the Windows gaming market. Many of the people who run Linux are older professionals. We're often not runnng the latest and greatest equipment. Perhaps one explanation for the lackluster sales of Linux games is that they're targeting the wrong population.
It also seems that the sales of Linux adventure games might be better relative to other genres. As it currently stands in the overall industry, adventures games are a small fish in a big pond. Selling a few thousand copies of Doom III for Linux is a drop in the bucket when compared to the number of Windows sales. But selling an few hundred additional copies of Siberia may be significant. (Not to mention that many adventure games are produced by small, independent publishers for which the margins are even more important.)
Personally, I would plunk down $50 right now for The Longest Journey or Siberia or The Last Express on Linux. There are a host of adventure games that I would happily pony up for. But I have little desire for the scores of strategy and FPS games that TuxGames offers.
...out of the genre. Too much popularity, too fast, not enough game. Non-gamers flocked to it; game companies tried to clone it (incredible graphics on a relatively small number of screens, who needs characters anyway); more interesting projects in the genre couldn't get funding if they couldn't prove they were "the next Myst."
It's a familiar story. MS sucked the oxygen out of "push technology" with a bad implementation forced on all its OS users, but PointCast was a good idea.
Then something interesting happened: "The Longest Journey," "Syberia," "Zak McCracken II," "Sam & Max" getting ready to hit the road again. And then there was a bunch of guys setting up SCUMM-engine web sites and amateur-publishing efforts.
Anytime that happens, you know the genre's never gonna die. Just ask Neil Young.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
> Give comfit to Dodo.
... Alice in Wonderland. That and Below the Root were really quite great games (:
I know that one, and don't know why either.
That's from another great Windham Classic
And yes, I did read Below the Root after playing the game, and try from time to time to actually find a copy to buy (; I only read the first in the series, wasn't it a trilogy?
I'll tell you why adventure games don't sell. Because people don't appreciate them any more. We live in a world where everything's gotta be *fast* and engaging. No one wants to sit and think out a puzzle, at least not a really challenging one.
;)
Did anyone here play Sierra's Rama? It was *fantastic*. The gameplay was linear, but it was it was simply amazing in terms of puzzles available, and the amount of lateral thinking required.
Computers, and thus computer games used to be available to a certain section of society, a long time ago, that for reaons I don't understand completely was more inclined to play such games. Now every Tom, *Dick*, and Harry has a computer, and plays games that involve a was rinse repeat cycle of 1)Get around the corner, quietly; 2)Kill that @!#@!# alien; 3)Goto (1)
Off to play UT now,
I think what the person meant was after King's quest VI Sierra diverged from the standard formula that made the series great namely King Graham questing to save a person, people, or place. I personally think it stopped at Kings Quest VII. Yes they made Kings Quest VIII but the only similarity between it and previous games was it starts in Daventry. There's no king questing, none of his family questing, Connner isn't trying to become the new king. It became more or less a glorified 3D RPG or perhaps a 3rd Person Shooter as opposed to an adventure game. Going around killing everything in sight working to level up and get better armor and weaponry.
I would disagree with that - MI3 was great. It was MI4 that left a lot to be desired...
sig fault
It is really expensive to produce a rich adventure game in 3D (and you can't sell a 2D game anymore). Creating environments and characters like those of King's Quest for real-time 3D is just hard. In contrast, driving a game by combat lets you deemphasize the environment and squeeze a lot more game time out of a few hallways filled with the same crate model. I think Deus Ex was a pretty good adventure game/RPG, but it was heavily combat driven. Making a non-combat interaction game with 100 hours of play would require a lot of cash to create-- and there isn't any market data showing that lots of people (by modern standards) will buy it. I think the ideas don't get off the drawing board because of this.
-m
I think gamefaqs and the internet was a big downfall. get really stuck on a puzzle and you can just look up the answer. I remember space quest, some puzzles stopped me for months (space quest II, rub the berrys on yourself to swim through the swamp) honestly parts of the game like that really aren't fun, and if I had had the internet I would have looked up the answer, but not being able to made the game fun only after I was all done, it made beating the game a big acomplisment and made me real happy.
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
the Viking filofax and the humbug/octopus reference are both from a more recent basic text adventure called Humbug.
The chiggers are from an atari (128, i think) cartridge game where you had to kill a vampire. Everytime you entered the swamp, you got bitten by chiggers.
The kill goblin but comes from the Palm OS game, oh, what's it called now? i can't even remember. Something '...Castle... ' Real simple, but a start for adventure games on the handheld, so ifigured folks might recognise it.
The 'over my dead body' reference is from LOOM, of course, and Monkey Island later included the phrase "Hello, I'm bobbin threadbare. Are you my mother?" which was said when the main character gets shot from a cannon, and falls on his head... the joke being that bobbin threadbare was the main character in LOOM, and spent all his time looking for his mother, who had been turned into i think a swan... made by the folks who later made Monkey Island... you know, adventure games might not be dead, but i'm starting to understand why my social life was so tough in grade school...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
I may not be bearly as hard-core a gamer as I used to be, but I couldn't help but throw in my $0.02 here. Yes, Adventure games are in a slump right now. So what? I think everyone is forgetting the most obvious example of something similar happening. RPGs. I remember that, before Baldur's Gate came out, everyone was lamenting the death of RPGs. I was one of them, because I'd loved all the Ultimas, Phantasy, etc. games and it really looked like the genre was just about dead. Then Black Isle came out with Baldur's Gate and, well, I think we can see how popular the genre is today! And it *didn't* completely fragment, it just improved dramatically.
The primary focus of a good adventure game is to tell a story. If a good, engaging story is written, the money will follow.
I think you've got it dead on. There isn't a whole lot you can add to an above view/side scrolling shooter with modern technology (as a matter of fact, trying to do one in 3d can just complicate things). It's still fun to play 1943 or R-Type. Without the technological advantage, it's hard to beat the best of the best.
May we never see th
I think this has happened with most genres.
Every two or three years, there's a particularly popular yet unexpected game which becomes massively cloned. Counterstrike (realisticish military gaming), Ultima Online/Simms (MMORPG), Myst (adventure games), Doom (3d mow-em-down games). The followup surge oversaturates the market. There's no *possible* way that the market can support the number of games going into it, competition becomes brutal, and lots of publishers get burned. Consequently, it's really hard to get publishers to immediately spend more money on similar games.
It would be much better if publishers stopped trying to follow new genres as much. It's fairly rare that hit titles come out that are simply same-genre games as another popular game, and *very* frequent that there's massive amounts of same-genre games coming out.
Right now, we're coming off of a realistic modern wargame FPS kick. I wonder what it'll be next...
May we never see th
Yes, and damn them for selling out. Damn them for firing the two guys from Andromeda and damn them for stopping actually making software.
Oh well, the whole industry has changed. It's not only the "intellectual elite" who own computers anymore, it's a lot of luddites who didn't know the internet existed prior to 1995/96, and who bought typing programs to learn how to type properly around the same time. They've completely changed the environment. Look at IRC now compared to 7 years ago. "Ripper is hardcore!" Perfect example of what I'm talking about. That incident signaled to me loud and clear that the common man really had entered the internet in full force.
Gamers who think that playing FF7(and being one of the first to 'discover' that series... at number 7...) on the PS1 makes them oldschool. People like that don't have the necessary tastes or sophistication to get a space shooter, or adventure game, or why someone would find the original Zelda still fun to this day. They don't want real plot, they want the relatively shallow plots of the modern Final Fantasy (admit it, if you can't figure out the twists before they happen in a square game, you haven't been paying attention). It's the same type of person who doesn't read, they watch TV. Sigh.
And yea, I was mocking that kids death.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Ah, yes, Alice in Wonderland. I remember it now. I actually have it (and Below the Root) for my C64 emulator. But I can't remember the damn controls!!
It was the first in a trilogy. I don't remember the name of the whole trilogy, but as a kid, I do remember reading them all. We did manage to acquire them, but we bought them from a local library that was closing. I don't have them anymore, and I doubt that my mother kept them, either, so I think they're lost to time.
Damn shame.
One of the best adventure games I ever played. Monkey Island I/II and Space Quest I beats it by just a hair though.
Proof, courtesy of Old Man Murray: http://web.archive.org/web/20010417025123/www.oldm anmurray.com/features/doa/page1.shtml
There are only so many times I want to open the drawer to find the piece of paper with the combination to the vault that contains the key that opens the door that ...
And whaddaya know, they're back online!
http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/374.html
was by Erik Wolpaw at Old Man Murry. Click here.
http://www.farmerbob.org
When I think of an adventure, my mind goes to Infocom... or even the PDP-11 version of Zork, whose name I am forgetting in this moment. .mau.
It is obvious that those kind of games do not exist anymore - what the heck, even Linux starts with a GUI!
ciao,
Anyone remember Zeus, by Impressionsgames?
They were very good games, more advanced variants of sim city. After releasing Rise of the Middle Kingdom, they were bought up by Sierra and their webpages transferred to *.sierra.com, but they aren't updated. By the time they were bought up, it seemed likely that they were going to release sequels to the zeus series, but now...?
Does anybody have any information about them??
The adventure game genre was big in its day, and could still hold its own given the right avenue.
One way the genre could change would be to switch platforms. Nowadays nobody wants to sit in front of their PC to "play a story." Adventure games would be perfectly suited for PDAs. The player would usually play by himself and would save his progress to pick up where he left off. This model is perfect when travelling. Games like the Sierra Quest For Glory and King's Quest series, the Police Quest series, and the Lucasarts SCUMM games would do well in a market where online games are slim. I, for one, love playing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis on my Zaurus SL-5500.
Another way the genre could change would be to add some online features. Adventure games, to me, have always been an interactive story. If a small group of players worked together through the story, the genre could be brought up-to-date. Zak McKraken or Maniac Mansion would work great with an online feature such as this, since there are parts of the story where the player actually switches to a different character. Each player would work toward the same goal, but would share in reaching it.
Another online feature that has yet to catch on with adventure games is downloadable episodes. If more episodes were available online (either free or with a reasonable price model), the players would be able to continue the story rather than having to shelve the product when the game was "beat."
Adventure games have held a special place in my heart ever since I played Zak on my Commodore 128. I would love to see this genre updated and brought back to life.