Adventure Gaming: Rest In Peace?

cordsie asks: "I've been doing a bit of research lately on the past and present states of the story-based adventure game market. I'm talking about the old Sierra and Lucasarts games, e.g. King's Quest or Zak McKracken. Generally, (and this is fairly obvious from the titles that have been appearing over the past couple of years), the consensus is that the genre is dead, at least commercially. But there seems to be a bit of disagreement when it comes to the reasons the genre died. Why did the genre die, and is it worth resurrecting?"

"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."

Comments

[OT] Colourscheme

[GregWebb]

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? :-)