A Critique of The State of Adventure Gaming

Erwin Broekhuis writes "The fourth and last installment of Beiddie Rafól's The Cold Hotspot: A Critique of the State of Adventure Games, has been published at Adventure Developers. The series explores some of the key points and contradictions of the stagnation and lack of direction within the adventure game genre." From the first article: "The truth is, the adventure game genre, as we all know it, has long been suffering from obscurity, lack of progress, sheer banality, isolation (surprise!), and, simply, from the garden variety of dullness. And everyone - developers, publishers, the media, and yes, we gamers ourselves - is guilty of creating and fueling this suffering."

Comments

As an adventure gamer myself

[El_Muerte_TDS]

I like adventure games a lot, specially those with a bit of action in them (usually called Action\Adventure games).

One of the things that disturbes me most is the incorrect labeling of games as adventure games. Way to often games are labeled as adventure games while they are really just action games. Flipping switches doesn't make an game an adventure game (i.e. tomb Raider).

Besides this most gamers don't want to break a sweat by doing some brain activity. Or so it looks. It's not like there are a lot of good adventure games. Maybe it's because of the popularity of online gaming, adventure games don't work well for online games (hint hint, a new area to explore, e.g. true gaming inovation).
Almost 10 years have past since the popularity of adventure games (or at least that's my opinion), maybe it's time for a true revival of that genre.

I'm specially looking for to good action\adventure games like Little Big Adventure, Dark Earth, Beyond Good & Evil (although the end of that game was rushed).

Definitions

[Pxtl]

I skimmed the article, but like half of it was simply waffling over the definition of an adventure game, rather than a critique. Personally, I just always figured aventure games to be character/story-driven puzzle-games that gave you oodles of time to solve the puzzles, rather than twitch through them, and that provide you with a wide variety of different puzzles (rather than one main puzzle like Tetris).

In any case, I think the underlying problem is not adventure games, but that cerebral puzzle games in general are dead. Modern puzzle games are fast-action puzzles like Tetris and Chu-Chu rocket. While these have tactics and tricks, they don't have the sheer mind-bending problem-solving that classic puzzle-solver games had.

Of course, some adventure games were just obsurd - Sam & Max's puzzles were thoroughly opaque because of the cartoony wierdness of the solutions tp the problems. That one quickly turned into a guessing game.

The genre has evolved

[Jarlsberg]

I've played adventure games since they were solely text based, and I've played just about every Sierra and Lucasarts games that were published (and tons of adventure games by less popular labels), but I still wouldn't want to see a new adventure game made like in the old days. The sudden death of the Sierra games, and the often twisted logic of puzzle solving in both Sierra and Lucasarts games are not something I would want to see in a new adventure game.

For me, it's all about the story, and so for me, GTA: San Andreas is an adventure game. It's got everything the old adventure games had, except for the puzzle solving. I would like to see more games like GTA, that gives you the freedom to do "anything*, but which also includes more stuff to do outside the predefined missions. It's a huge task for the programmers though. :)

I whole heartedly support the author's definition of an adventure game. Paraphrasing:

An adventure game is a game in which first and foremost contains: a very strong and coherent story or narrative structure, sharply developed characterization (of people, places, and/or things), a clearly defined set of goals, challenges that require and emphasize thought and logic reasoning, and elements of exploration and discovery."

Point and click is dead, long live the adventure genre :=)

Someone please explain to me...

[HunterZ]

...how it's my fault that LucasArts cancelled development on Full Throttle 2, claiming that "the market isn't right for adventure games right now" (or somesuch)? I really have to point the finger at the publishers - if not the developers themselves - for being locked in some faulty mindsets about which kinds of games consumers (for lack of a better word) would be willing to buy in sufficient quantities.

On the other hand, I'm willing to admit (if not bet money) that it could be myself who has a faulty mindset regarding which kinds of games will make the most money these days.

Still, diversity can be a healthy thing. Large publishers should consider the extra money they could make by reaching segments of the gamer audience that would be interested in a resurgense of good, original, and of course fun adventure games.

(P.S. I didn't RTFA)