Slashdot Mirror
The Future Of Adventure Games Discussed
Thanks to AdventureGamers.com for the first part of their continuing feature article discussing what the future holds for the adventure game as a genre. The author shrewdly points out: "The death of adventure games is a topic that's been... well, done to death", and goes on to muse: "We can restlessly theorize about the genre's supposed 'death' forever, but it won't really get us anywhere. Instead, we need to take a closer look at the stuff (adventure) games are made of." He then points out: "Syberia or Jak & Daxter - ask anyone on the forums which one is the adventure game and everyone will reply the former. It's a no-brainer. However, things get difficult when you try to define exactly why Syberia is the adventure game." It's then claimed that "...the most visible characteristic of adventure games is that they offer a departure from action-and-reaction gameplay and manual dexterity" - but do games in this genre still appeal?
Final Fantasy isn't adventure, it's role-playing. Myst is adventure. Adventure just means that the primary focus of the game is exploring and puzzle solving. Role-playing is where storytelling is the main focus.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
In the 2D console days, most side-scrolling games could be considered an adventure game. Once the PC gained popularity, most of your point and click games, like Myst, were classified as adventure.
Now, the adventure genre disintegrated into various other genres. Most titles could be considered adventurous, whether they be first-person, third-person, side-scrolling, RPG, point and click, etc. I don't think that the adventure genre should really be considered a genre in which you classify games at all, because the term adventure covers so much ground. In fact, I would even go as far to say that past games shouldn't have been called adventure games, either.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
My favourite Adventure game was 'Little Big Adventure' (or 'Relentless' as it was called in the US, such barbarism).
An absolutely delightful game and Twinsen will always have a place in my heart. I bought the sequel but I'm stuck near the start!
Twitch games will always be more popular because by the laws of the bell curve, the brutes will always outnumber the non-brutes.
It is a genre where the small coding shop can still keep pace.
Luckily they are games that can never die, Day of The Tentacle is still a class act.
I can wait for the next gem, it will be worth it.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
RPGs are a sub-genre of Adventure games. The article, though well written, seems to be a "fluff" article to just generate a thesis and support it with points. And it does it well. It's still a good read, fluff or not. I think it presents us with a trip down nostalgia lane and points out that old game styles are often abandoned for newer "formulas" because a great game that doesn't sell well is still a commercial flop. It's a shame, really, since I spent a lot of time on King's Quest.
Adventure games now have all become along the lines of Myst and such, there is very little interaction in them between multiple characters, and most of the games I've played lately that call themselves 'Adventure' games have less adventure in them than Grand Theft Auto! I'd say it's not that Adventure games don't exist or are dying, but that they've changed significantly from the older Adventure games. IMHO, the older games like Kings Quest and Space Quest, Bards Tale, Loom, Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, etc, are all substantially better games than the newer Adventure games like Ico (PS2), Syberia (XBOX), or Myst. The new games just seem to be lacking in story and interaction.. Space Quest and such had such great plots (even if they were tongue in cheek!) and at the very least were entertaining throughout, whereas Myst and such just don't seem gripping to me. But-- That's just my opinion, and I've been wrong before. sYn
To the darkened skies once more, and ever onward.
The adventure genre has dissipated... not that it's a bad thing. After all, it's not often that a whole genre grows so gigantic that it renders itself obsolete.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
But if you think I'm going to advocate the bastardization of adventure games through the inclusion of action elements, you are wrong.
I nearly wrote a rant about how assinine a name 'Adventure' is for this genre that really means 'ass backwards dream logic'. But that's not the point.
the point is, the absolute refusal of any genre, to accept a blend of good elements from other genres is the mark of death. If you refuse to accept new ideas - you will stagnate and die. It's that simple.
The games that revitalize and create genres blur traditional boundaries. Diablo, Thief, Half-Life, Deus Ex, GTA -- they're great -games- regardless of what 'genre' you try to lump them into.
Adventure games are dead because they weren't fun anymore: developers and purists refused to aknowledge that their genre -needs- a shot in the arm.
The stories were no longer compelling, and the puzzles were overly ludicrous in the name of making them 'clever'.
Most Adventure purists reviled at even the idea of 3d engines, with first person or chase cam views. I mean, a camera angle? Is your genre so incredibly fragile that changing the camera angle or rendering style is enough to destroy everything about it? christ.
Adventure games as these people define them are better off dead. Any genre that refuses to aknowledge its own shortcomings does not merit anything more than a fringe, niche market.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I know that "Beyond Good and Evil" is an adventure game, and a very good one at that.
-idvah-
The Gabriel Knight series is another example. The first was a classic point and click and sold well. Sadly the developers caught the "full motion video" bug that was doing the rounds and number 2 was well not as good. By the time it was time for number 3 the FMV bug had died but a more virulent strain had sprung up called "3D". Even reviewers thought this Gabriel Knight 3 was not very good. The public avoided it like the plague.
Broken Sword 1 & 2 were moderately succefull point & click adventures. Number 3 caught the 3D bug however and while it makes for a nice looking game you once again find yourselve controlling a character with sub-standard controls (no side stepping) in the hunt of pixels. Add some pointless Tombraider bits (pointless since there is no skill involved) and a bit of dragon lair and you got another adventure killer. Nice game but not an adventure as we know and love them.
Is all hope lost? No. Funcom released a little gem called "The longest journey". In a great example that shows the value of reviews it was highly regarded by most game sites and mags and totally ignored by the buyers. Then something happened. Word of mouth got out that here was a classic point and click like in the olden days and slowly it started to sell becoming a moderate success.
And here is the good bit. THEY ARE MAKING A SEQUEL. Oh yes. Working title "The longest journey. Static".
Another new hopefull is syberia. Granted I thought it had a few to many empty screens but at least the interface worked. It is successfull enough for a sequel as well.
Out of nowhere came also "Runaway a road adventure" not sure how this one did but it again is a classic point and click and a lot of fun to play even if the characters are horrible ripoffs from the broken sword series.
So what of the future? Well it is hard to tell. With PC games becoming more of a niche the lure of consoles and a more arcade like adventure may proof unresistable. Broken sword has fallen to the unwashed hordes of the gamepad others may follow. However there will always be new and brave people who are willing to make the classic adventure. After all did not a group of volunteers make a classic "Space Quest" game? Even got the old ega graphics for that bit of nostalgia.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I have always thought that adventure games didn't die, they just got eaten up by other genres. There are plenty of games, especially in the console world, that involve solving complicated environment puzzles. It's just that puzzles by themselves can't support a whole game.
I just finished Mysterious Journey II, a child of the Myth school, and found while the puzzles were generally interesting and about the right difficulty, they actually interfered with the story instead of complementing it. Puzzle games are always weirdly disjointed in that way in my opinion. Any tension (you must get off the exploding space station!) is destroyed after you spend 45 minutes manipulating a cryptic set of levers and buttons to open the airlock. I guess the danger wasn't so imminent after all. (Who the hell designed that system anyway? That's not OSHA compliant). The same thing can happen in FPS games, but it's less frequent. The fact that you also get to run around and shoot things in addition to finding the right sequence of buttons also helps mitigate the problem.
I don't think adventure gaming is dead, I just think it doesn't stand on it's own as a genre anymore. Adventure game puzzles are all over the place, in RPG games, in Shooters, in Platformers. And they are still fun.
Look ma, no tpyos^H^H^H^H^H^H . . . oh crap.
Of course consoles never had pc styled adventures.
To make it clear when pc players talk of adventures they mean games like Monkey Island 1-3, Gabriel Knight Sins of the father, King Quest series, Sam & Max and so on.
So the original post is true from a console perspective. The response is true from a pc perspective.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Ummmm... no. Adventure games were spawned from RPGs. RPGs have been around for a very long time.
An adventure game to me is pretty much the same as an RPG but without stats, armor, weapons, and fighting. A lot of the old school Sierra/Dynamix games would fall into this category for me. Kings Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Freddy Pharkas, Phantasmagoria, Gabriel Knight, Leisure Suit Larry, Quest for Glory, and Adventures of Willy Beamish. Most of these could be full RPG's if stats, weapons, and armor were added. These games usually require you to get item A bring it to person B to get item C. How you get item A can be a decently long puzzle.
I guess adventure games could almost be considered to be puzzles which are brought to you in a non-straightforward sort of way...
Take an action game. At it's base an action game is a game where a character goes around getting involved in some form of combat. These kinds of games include everything from Devil May Cry to Jak & Daxter, or even Beyond Good & Evil. These games may or may not have extra elements involved, such as puzzles, storylines, whatever. As long as it's third person and it has more than a few combat moments, it's an action game. A adventure game is pretty much the same thing, only you cut out the combat. Instead you play a character that runs around and mainly solve puzzles (with perhaps a few moments of combat involved) with the purpose to further the storyline. The only real problem defining an action game and an adventure game is when you get into the realm of games like Omikron. You've got what looks like an adventure game, but still has a fair amount of combat. Adventure games are not dead either, they simply aren't very popular. Look at Flight Simulators, no one is claiming they are dead, but they aren't popular either. Hell, just in the past few months there have been two new great adventure games, Uru and Broken Sword 3.
The series has more games than that, too. Mystic Quest isn't usually considered an FF game, since its so much of a departure from the series, but it does share the name. There were three (?) GB FF 'Adventure' games, as well. They were, as I remember, much like Zelda 2. An adventure game with RPG elements like experience building. Pretty much an action-RPG.
And it takes a really immersive story to make a normal human care enough to "procure A, bring it to be in order to accomplish C" over and over.
CRPG games also have some "fetch-bitch" tasks for the characters, but the designers have an easier time. If the back story is a bit stale, a heated fight with a few orcs will liven it up. That's a luxury adventure game authors don't have. If their stories are a bit stale, their game fails.
I think this is enough to explain why adventure games must inevitably suck, on average. When it's done on a large scale and by the numbers, it always fails. It reminds me of romance novels: Seriously, how likely is a romance novel to be a good book? Vanishingly. And how many are you able to read before you declare the genre "dead" as far as you care? Even if romance novelists were good writers, there is a certain wall that the genre hits. Everything will read like something else. That's what's happening to adventure games. It gets progressively harder to write original ones, to the point where it starts requiring storywriting genius. And that genius is busy on other genres with more vitality (and money).
So did I just describe the death of adventure games? Not really. I mean, they'll live on in exactly the same way that romance novels with bumpy covers live on.
Roughly half a million downloads for King's Quest 1 VGA and King's Quest 2+ VGA can't be wrong.
Above games were created by AGDInteractive, formerly Tierra Entertainment.
They're currently working on a VGA version of Quest for Glory 2.
Soylens viridis homines es
Uhm no, adventure games were spawned from text adventures, which have been around almost as long as computers.
Many people now only buy games with a high replayability or a strong multiplayer component. Pure adventure games almost never have either. That's a big factor in the declining financial success of these kinds of games.
Pure adventures need some value added, like new monthly content or game editors. Imagine an easily mod-able Leisure Suit Larry...
Promote civility: mod down any post starting with 'ummm'.
What about Pokemon?
....
.....
It's a classic adventure game, running round collecting bits you need to open the door to get more bits to open the door
oh and we also loved the 'Tombi' series on PS1
Whacky Japanese nonsense, run round collecting feathers and leaves and stupid stuff to take to the old man to get the magic mushroom to
The genre isn't dead by a long stretch, we are out here playing and enjoying them games it's just a trip to the games shop will show you 500 fps/driving/sim X games for the brutes.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The 'Tex Murphy' games spring to mind. They combined full motion video and a first person 360 degree perspective, with everything you'd expect in an adventure game.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I think your points are dead on...
System Shock, then Half Life, and then later Deus Ex were so successful--at least in the critical establishment, if not popularly--precisely because they integrated adventure gaming elements into FPS.
Adventure gaming didn't die, it just got folded into other genres.
I still play text IF, and love it. But I do think more could be done to improve the status of adventure gaming more generally.
One thing I would like to see that would raise the status of adventure gaming is adventure-action games--as opposed to action-adventure games ala Half Life, NOLF, etc. That is, first-person games that include action as well as adventure gaming, but emphasize the puzzle-solving and environment exploration over action.
Project Eden was an example of one such game. Admittedly, it had severe problems with the action element of the game, including massive problems with AI and combat-gameplay characteristics. But I loved the game, and if anything, it left me wondering why no one had made a similar game, but keeping the action elements of the game up to par with what is now standard.
Among current games, Deus Ex 2 may fit this characterization somewhat. But even that game doesn't emphasize the puzzle-solving as much as it does RPG and nonlinearity of action gameplay. It's not really the same.
I think you're right that the pure adventure game, with a few remarkable exceptions--e.g., The Longest Journey--is no longer tenable. However, I do think it's possible to create games that are easily identified as being more in the adventure genre than other genres. I just think few developers are taking this really seriously.
There were three (?) GB FF 'Adventure' games, as well. They were, as I remember, much like Zelda 2. An adventure game with RPG elements like experience building. Pretty much an action-RPG.
Those games were originally part of the SaGa line, renamed for US release to capitalize on the success of the NES/SNES FF games. The Mystic Quest game was originally going to be a North America-only release which was severely dumbed down from the rest of the line, but was eventually released in Japan anyway because the Japanese audience thought they were missing out on something.
The primary difference between adventure and RPG games is that adventure games don't usually involve character building. Almost everything descends from text adventures simply because text adventures were among the first games developed. However, graphical adventures show a fairly obvious direct line back to text adventures, as they were originally little more than text adventures with pictures. Then along came Myst and the Lucas Arts and Sierra games. Next came a handful of 3D games that convinced everyone that the genre was no longer profitable, when in reality they simply moved to 3D before everyone was really ready to move on. Or maybe they simply spent too much money on their last few 2D games, too, and over-estimated the market in a time when FPS and RTS were taking over the market.
I'm not sure how well the Myst series has done, but I'd imagine well enough, since they keep releasing sequels. RPGs and Adventure games, though, have only a small amount of crossover in their audiences, so the continued success of RPGs, especially on consoles, where they never really faltered, doesn't apply to adventure games. Then again, the RPG on computers was all but dead outside of MMO games until Baldur's Gate came along.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
RPG's have exsisted for as long as adventure games. RPG's are spawned fromt he table top RPG's. Adventure games decent from more a novel/story telling lineage.
If your talking about purly genre, then RPG's shoudl be the super set because table top RPG's predate Adventure games and are currently a larger catagory.
It's be more correct to say RPg's are a genre and Adventure is a genre.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
RPGs have been around for a LONG TIME. People have been playing various forms of RPGs for centuries. Those text adventure games were what? The first attempt at RPGs on a computer.
Far from it. The first text adventure game arose as an homage to Mammoth Cave, KY. For years it was merely a description of the caves. There is only one character. There is damn near no dialogue. There is no "combat" as RPGs think of it. It's half about the puzzles, and half about the incredible descriptions.
People may have been playing various forms of RPGs for centuries; but other people have been ignoring RPGs for centuries because they are boring.
Thats very subjective. Adventure games are ussually endless tedious fetch quests. Or a few random one off puzzles. Hardly innovative. We remember the good ones but there were so many bad ones. For each Siberia or Space Quest 1-3 we get four lame onse like space quest 5+ or any of the series beyong 4. It seems 4 is the magic number in which a adventure games starts to suck.
Adventure games were the FPS of the past, numerously cloned cash grabs.
I don't miss them.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was designed as an entry-level RPG, primarily for the American and European market, back in the days when console RPGs were an extremely small (almost insignificant) portion of the US market. The game reflects this, too, and, aside from a rather spectacular soundtrack, is little more than an RPG-lite.
As for the Game Boy games, there were four titles released in the US under the Final Fantasy banner, but these were all seperate Japanese games/series, retitled to take advantage of the FF name. The Final Fantasy Legend series (there were three of them) were entitled SaGa in Japan, and later had iterations on the Super Famicom/SNES (the three Romancing SaGas, none of which were released outside of Japan), the Playstation (the two SaGa Frontier games), and one on the PS2 (Unlimited SaGa). These were blisteringly hard RPGs (especially for the console market at the time), and stylistically quite a bit different from the FF series proper.
There was also Final Fantasy Adventure, another retitled US Game Boy game. This was originally Seiken Densetsu in Japan ("Legend of the Holy Sword"), and later entries in the series (on the SNES and Playstation) were released as part of the Mana series (Secret of Mana and Legend of Mana, specifically). This was your basic console adventure/action-RPG game in what was basically a Zelda mould, albeit with more RPG elements (experience-based levels, for instance). Actually, a complete overhaul/remake of this original game was just released for the Game Boy Advance, under the US title Sword of Mana.
All things considered, and excusing the opportunism of Square's American branch in the early 1990s, the Final Fantasy series is fairly straightforward, particularly for a series that's been going on for so long. Compare it to, say, the Might and Magic series, with its multiple spin-offs and derivations, or the Mega Man games, which have spun wildly out of the control, with an almost obscene numbers of sub-series and so forth.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
Like RPGs did with Baldur's Gate. Well, survival horror games are a form of adventure game so, it hasn't entirely died out.