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

Genre isn't dead

[Peachy]

Or at least LucasArts hope it isn't. They've got a sequel to the great Sam & Max + Full Throttle adventures.

Turn on the lights.

[user no. 590291]

You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Doesn't allow for the flashy graphics?

[KCardoza]

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.

I'm playing Wind Waker right now

[cheezus]

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

Not dead yet

[Galapas]

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

The third Monkey island near confirmed it's death

[SolubleFrank]

..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.

My take...

[Paddyish]

I think this change can be seen through the evolution of the King's Quest series. The series had its ups and downs (KQ6=up, KQ7=down), and the final game (KQ8) was more of a 3-d shooter style than adventure, and that trend continued with other games and companies as well.

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.

Space Shooters

[Apreche]

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.

My Reaction to Adventure Gaming

[Matrix272]

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...

Blame Myst

[Snowspinner]

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.

It's not just the game industry...

[ASPirant]

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.

SCUMM!

[MrHanky]

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!