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).

Re:As an adventure gamer myself

[buffer-overflowed]

I loved Beyond Good and Evil. The Zelda series also qualifies as action/adventure.

I really miss the old Sierra/Lucasarts games though.

I actually still play them. Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, Space Quest, The Dig, etc. etc.

Great games with a sense of humor. Each one different. There used to be a whole slew of them every year. Then came the great 3D transition and away they went. They survived the transition from text to graphics, but couldn't cope with the 3D.

Even Grim Fandango was tough to control, and I don't think it benefitted much from 3D gameplay.

Almost no more 2D games outside of portables, next to no new adventure games... sigh. It's really rather sad actually. The playstation and quake mark the death of whole genres that really never should've died.

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 old Sierra

[Morgon]

There was no better time in PC gaming than when Sierra was actively developing their Quest games.

Kings Quest (at least KQ 1 - 7)
Space Quest (This NEEDS a 7)
Quest for Glory

These are what made gaming great. I absolutely loved their Robin Hood game, Conquests of the Longbow.

The only other game that was remotely as fun (though perhaps not as involving) as these was Grim Fandango from LucasArts.

Wonder what the Williams' (Ken & Roberta, the founders of Sierra) are up to these days, anyway. They need to get the old team back together and remind people why they were the powerhouse of PC gaming in its day.

Defining the genre

[NetDanzr]

I consider myself to be a big adventure game fan. The kind of a fan who plays upwards to 30 adventures per month: one or two big-budget games, a whole bunch of new independent adventures and a dozen or so interactive fiction games on my Sony Clie while sitting in the bathroom.

I'm also one of the people guilty of a certain degree of snobishness, when it comes to defining the adventure genre. In addition to the usual "story- and character-driven" requirements, my definition also includes interface and game mechanics-related things, such as an absolute lack of action or timed sequences in adventure games. Why? Because when I go to the store and approach the adventure section, I want to be sure that I'll enjoy the game I pick. I don't enjoy any real-time games, and only two genres can guarantee that I'll be spared of those: turn-based strategies and adventures. Please note that turn-based strategies already have a qualifier in their name; the entire strategy genre split into real-time and turn-based, precisely to offer a guarantee to people like me. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening with adventures.

That said, I acknowledge that there are adventure games that don't fit my definition. As the article said, I recognize an adventure game when I see it. However, instead of calling some games action/adventures, as I should, I tend to severly downrate them in my reviews for their violations of my definition. Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon is a prime example. As good as the character development, writing and the majority of puzzles were, I gave it only 75%, courtesy of the action sequences.

I'm not planing to change my approach, though. There are so many good adventure games being released every month, thanks to a very strong and dedicated independent fan community, that I can afford to remain stubborn.

Not quite dead yet

[LKM]

The newest somewhat-high-profile adventure game is probably Another Code/Trace Memory by Cing/Nintendo.

Hopefully, this won't be the last good adventure game for the DS. I think the DS with its touchscreen might kind of start a new trend towards adventure-ish games.

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)