Slashdot Mirror
The Rise and Fall of Graphic Adventure Games
The Opposable Thumbs blog has a detailed retrospective on almost three decades of history in the graphic adventure genre. While this type of game has fallen from favor in recent times, many classic titles made indelible marks on the memories and preferences of an entire generation of gamers. If you played video games in the '80s and '90s, you'll probably see something you recognize. Quoting:
"In its sometimes-turbulent thirty-year history, the graphic-adventure genre has driven technology adoption, ridden at both the crest and trough of the graphics and audio waves, touched the lives of millions of people, and shaped the rise (and, in some cases, fall) of several big-name people and companies in the gaming industry. It's a genre that has often been held back by its own insularity, suffering from an unwillingness to adapt to changing market conditions or to further push the boundaries of interactivity. Adventure games certainly did these things, but the efforts to truly innovate seemed to peak in the mid-'90s, before rapidly falling off—with only a few exceptions. The improving fortunes of adventure game developers in recent years may at least in part be attributable to their efforts to innovate—Telltale with the episodic structure, Quantic Dream with a new control system (for better or worse), and Japanese developers such as Cing with Nintendo DS titles that introduce elements from visual novels.
The quickest way to cause me to roll my eyes and discount anything else you have to say is to use terms like "visual novel" or "genre film". It says to me that you're so insecure about the subject's ability to stand on its own two feet that you have to invent overwrought euphemisms (seriously, "visual novel"? Does anyone call a movie a "motion novel"?).
God. It's a comic book.
I was iffy on reading the article in the first place, as it seemed too self-congratulatory and nostalgic, but I lost all motivation once I ran into that stop phrase.