how much time do YOU spend?

[Captain Mostly]

I've been pondering (following the release of my latest game [see new games area]) how long people stick with a new type of game before they give up...

I've developed what I hope is a reasonably origional (or at least novel) puzzle-style game, and while I'm very pleased with it, I KNOW that people won't get into it because it's difficult initially to work out what you're doing (let alone how to get high scores)...

I did my best to explain how the game worked, and hope that at least 1 or 2 people get into it, but I think it's a common issue with most slightly origional games.

for example, Sacrefice is one of my favorate games ever, and just brilliant, but because it's not like anything people had played before, it's over-long and more-than-a-little-tedious training sections put all my friends off it (much to my irritation as I wanted to wup their asses in multi-player)...

So how long do YOU give a new game before you say "I don't understand!" and walk away feeling irritable (because it's clearly very simple when you know what you're doing, but the people who made it find it difficult to express exactly what you have to do)?

[furrylilkreature]

probablly when you have to go to to many places just to get one puzzle done. :

[wOoDz]

yeah i feel much the same, having to walk thru a game just to do one puzzle puts me off
in a way a good puzzle should, get you ready to throw the puter out of the window, switch off and walk away, then to get you banging your head off the wall coz it was so easy but the right two brain cells wheren't working the night before!
Frustrating and annoying is good as long as its not because the games tedious and hard work, a good game with 1 room but tricky puzzles, and  sense of humour beats a 50 room, game with 1/2 assed puzzles any day

woodz

[Renal Shutdown]

Four minutes.

I have a very short atten...

[Captain Mostly]

I was thinking more along the lines of, if a game is doing something you aren't used to (like a new GUI, or a new set of game-goals) rather than if the puzzels were hard. I mean, if you were presented now with an adventure game that worked in an entirly different way to all other adventure games ever before, and that seemed like you were having to learn how to play adventure games from scratch again, would you have the patience to sit down with it, learn how it works, and THEN judge if it was a good game..?

It's kind of one of those barriers that games developers must face. If they want to do something new, it has to be only a very small distance away from something everyone is already really familier with, otherwise people don't get it, and it flops...

It's like how "Creation" (by bullfrog) was going to be the next big thing, but because marketing types didn't understand it (on the basis that it wasn't going to be like anything else) it just had it's funding pulled away from underneath it, and it vanished.

is it still worth people trying to push boundries when we often don't want to run to catch up? (sheesh that's a ponsy sounding metaphore, and if I were more dedicated I'd sit here and re-draft it 'till it sounded good... But I think you get the idea... at least I HOPE you get the idea...)

[Renal Shutdown]

Hey

To be honest, I played Shadowman on the N64 for over twenty hours before deciding I didn't like it.  Even with it's awkward controls and it's wierd take on "non-linear".

If it were a new GUI, as long as it made some kind of sense, and you didn't need special training to use it, then it wouldn't bother me.  As for new game goals, a lot of people say they dislike them, but that's their loss.  If it weren't for innovation, then we'd all still be playing pong... albeit with some kick ass Tron-style virtual reality gizmos.  It would still be two lines and a dot, tho.

Nintendo push the boundaries as much as they can, and fortunately for them, their target audience is mainly children.  Children who haven't been playing games for as long as we have, and therefore aren't so untrusting to new things.

People don't like change, but games need it.  Much like everything in life.  Hopefully, your target audience knows this, and will judge you accordingly.

Hugs
Iqu

[MrColossal]

it really dependson the game and my desire to play the game anyway

i mean if i'm browsing through underdogs and come across a game that looks cool and then i download it and the controls are new/different/hard to understand i'll prolly give up on it

if i'm downloading a game from someone from ags and i can appreciate the work that went into it and the controls take time to learn, then i'll stick around as long as the game holds my attention

now seeing that you've started posting in full force and are asking many hardcore questions in tech i can see that you're trying to blow my mind with ags and it's gonna be interesting

to further quell your fears one need only look here http://www.capcom.com/SB/

this game was coming out and look at that controller, you NEED that to play the game, no one  thought it would really sell, they thought niche market and that's it. it's been flying off the shelves and as you can see by the text on the page that they have repeatedly run out of inventory on them. i guess the moral is, you can never be too sure what people are going to like and dislike, i guess the only thing you can do is throw it out there and hope they like it

on your other point

this may be dumb to say but i think innovation was easier in the earlier days of gaming and now adays it's such an industry that feeds off of money that it's almost impossible to make a game unless you can liken it to something

animal crossing is like The Sims only blah blah blah, The Sims is like SimCity only blah blah blah, Sim City is like Populus only blah blah blah and then we hit populus, an older game that was wildly popular that people can relate to. "that game was popular so making a game that is like that will be popular"

i guess innovation nowadays comes in small doses tucked into old ideas.

eric

[Captain Mostly]

LOL. I don't think my game will blow you mind. But I WAS trying to make a kind of game I'd never made before (largely inspired by Ikaruga on the Game Cube, although you wouldn't know it if I hadn't told you) and it always seems bizzar to me how, given the creative freedom that people have here (no one is going to tell anyone here to make a game more "main stream") fiddling with the formula hasn't become much more prevalent here-abouts.

I mean, obviously non-adventure games are always going to be an aside in the annals of AGS, but I'd have expected people who've been here a long time to have started coming up with ways to take adventure games in new directions.

I would have said that taking adventure games into 3D is pointless and counter-productive (it adds nothing, and polygon based graphics are less friendly and less interesting, with the only exception being Grim Fandango to my mind). But I feel stupid for taking up AGS and never using it to make an acceptable modernisation of the genre... AGS in the hands of the peolpe who know how to use it could produce exceptional high-concept games that make us re-address the way we think about adventure games, but why has it taken me so long to notice? And how come no-one else has tried it?

Sure Sol was good, well rounded and nicely drawn. Sure, Larry Vales was funny and made by a guy with the biggest wanger in America. Sure there will always be newbies who will make traditional adventure games (of varying quality)... But why doesn't the future hold inventive takes on the theme for us?

My next project (For which I'm going to use a lot of the things I learned how to do in "Vegetable Patch Extreem Turbo") is going to have to be something really radicle if it's going to make a real impact. It's been AGES since something origional has made a real MUST-PLAY splash round here. What was the last one? LV2? Pleughburg? I never even got round to playing the 3rd Robert Redford game... Everything since SOL's been pretty much lost amongst a background noise of endless "short" games, or "joke" games, or "MAGS" games, or "Hour" games... I'm sure they're all good, but everything get's utterly lost amongst them


The most innovative twist on the theme I ever saw was "RON: Eye Spy"

How can we encourage people to follow the example and try doing things a little differently?

[DGMacphee]

It's interesting that you mention trying things a little differently.

I'm working on an adventure game story tutorial that's divided into two sections:

The first is 'Construction', where I talk about systems of developing good linear adventure games -- I base the ideas in this section upon film writing techniques, as film is a linear form of story-telling.

However, the second section is 'Deconstruction', where I pull apart the linear conventions and discuss new forms of adventure game making.

I base this upon the redevelopment of structure in games -- similar to unconventional films such as Pulp Fiction, Fargo, Memento, etc.

Such example include multiple player characters, branching structure, remodified structure, internet adventure gaming, etc.

Through each section, I discuss different points about plot, character, dialogue, subtext, and symbolism in adventure games.

Perhaps it might work -- I'll have to write it first.

But I'm also willing to hear ideas from people.

[MrColossal]

bah i guess i'll add a header, i'm not trying to be mean or nasty to you cap'n, i hope you don't read this as me picking a fight or writting angry


i don't know how fair that is mostly but it's an opinion

how about the idea that some people don't want to innovate, i'm making an adventure game that involves a story, a character, jokes, puzzles, and music. that's what i want. i don't want to push the envelope and neither do a lot of people

and there's nothing wrong with that.

now let's see what ags games have been truly inovative with the adventure game form...

i can't think of any really.

now what commercial adventure games really tried hard to break the mold?

i don't know that answer either. it's all just a series of little innovations in small areas, grim fandango didn't push any boundaries, it just went over to 3d and changed up the way we interact with the game [no gui that is] everything else was standard adventuring

under a killing moon and it's sequels did interesting things, like actors, full motion video, a 3d world, 45 million cds to swap, but it's innovation was still pretty small and the rest stayed well in the realm of adventure games that we knew

and for you to say that 3d holds nothing for adventure games is crazy, one of the best things that never happened in under a killing moon was my brother and i were playing and we were in an office complex, we looked at every desk in every cubicle for a clue but saw nothing, then we ducked and looked up and under every desk but still nothing

THAT was amazing, not the fact that nothing was there but imagine, actually having to duck and move your character around a 3d space in order to find clues. instead of moving the look icon to the desk and the character finding it on his own.

climbing a trellis on the side of a building not to shoot some thugs or tigers, but to get a frisbee someone threw up on the roof. navigating the shingles or balancing on a board.

i have 2 game ideas that utilize 3d, one for the purposes i explained above and another for stylistic reasons, i'd explain them but i'm very protective. if you feel that pushing adventure games forward is necessary, maybe limiting them to 2d isn't a good idea

and also the whole "no must play games lately" is rude to the great games that have come out. but it's your opinion, Just Another Point and Click Adventure Game was great and i loved all the games that creed malay and dezil quixiixixoatal [my last name is feurstein, you'd think i'd be more sensitive to hard to pronounce names]

rode quest 2 was also really fun, keptosh was quite interesting and had a very nice feel to it, and of course... revenants is combining rpgishness, survival horror and adventure games [although not out yet]

i have more but it sounds like i'm yelling at you so i'll stop

eric

[Pesty]

I really like originality in games, the ideas, the way they're set up and all, and I'm insanely stubborn when I set my mind to something like that (unless I'm feeling particularly lazy that day), so I probably wouldn't just dismiss it as not worthy of my attention.

Also, as eric mentioned, I would spend a lot more time on an AGS (or other amateur) game than a commercial game, but I give both a fair amount of chance before dismissing it.

[Captain Mostly]

I apologise for the "no must-play games" comment. What I meant was that all the games that WERE really really good (the ones you mentioned) were lost to me because of the constant barrage of games coming out, so I didn't even notice them!!! I bet Rode 2 was high quality, beautifully drawn AGS gold, but I missed it because I failed to pick it out against a background of "Smokin' Weed"s and "Mika's surreal dream"'s (neither of which are any worse than any of our first games. It's just there seem to be so many first-games around now, they're blocking out the oldies ones)


Also, I agree that not everyone wants to be innovative (hell! No one starts off with AGS if they want to forge new types of gaming.)
I'm just surprised that with all the people here who've had prolonged exposure to game development, there aren't more of them saying "why! I could do something no one's ever seen before!"


As for innovative commercial adventure games, I'd say Loom and Lure of the Temptress were the ones that stick out the most for me. Day of the tenticle KIND'A although I guess I'd be saying Maniac Mansion if I'd played that first...  But part of what I'm trying to convey is that there aren't many really innovative commercial games because it's difficult to get them made because of the money and funding. And it surprised me that in an entirly money-free environment, there's still this backing-away from re-thinking how we approach games...

I don't want everyone to feel they HAVE to make a steller jump forward in game design. I don't want ANYONE to feel they have to make a steller jump forward in game design. I'm just amazed and a little dissapointed that NO ONE seems to want to make any jump forward in game design...

Also: I am NOT picking a fight either! (before anyone starts getting offended again)

[GarageGothic]

Whoa, there are just too many interesting things in the thread that I want to comment on. I'll try to limit this to two or three:

First of all, DGMcphee I must say that I'm really looking forward to your tutorial. Sounds like great stuff.

Secondly, I agree completely that we, as non-commercial game designers, ought to spend more time on innovation than repeating old formulas. There's nothing wrong with making old school game. In fact, most of us are here becase we love the old LucasArts and Sierra games and always dreamed of creating something similar. And a large part of the community is still stuck back in the early 90's. I thinks it's a noble effort of the Tierra people to bring the old games to a new audience, although I think the percentage of fans who've already played the original is pretty high. I admire their devotion, but in some ways, it's a bit like that kid who did his own version of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I never really liked Sierra's own remakes (much like Hollywood remakes, or even colorization of old black and white movies), and when there are people this talented making free games, I'd much rather see them spending their time on something that I haven't played to death already.

This isn't a call for avantgarde game design (we've already had Davy Jones C'est Mort, thank you very much). Rather than the experimental films of the 60's and 70's (Warhol et al), I see the AGS community as being closer to the independent film makers of the 80's and early 90's (John Sayles, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Kevin Smith, Harmony Korinne, or maybe the French new wave in the 60's).  But unlike them, we aren't limited by costume budgets and available locations. We don't have to make games set in convenience stores or Brooklyn streets. But just like them we can allow ourself to tell personal stories and go against convetions and expectations in style as well as content. But is this enough?

The innovation within the adventure game business has primarily been technological (text->drawn graphics->digitized graphics->FMV->3D). True, there have been some attempts at new approaches to storytelling. But let's be honest, most of the great writing achievements were in text-based IF. Mostly's examples, Loom, Lure of the Temptress, Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle (yes, I mention both, as separate concepts), are innovative within what I would call "gameplay concept" for lack of a better phrase. I hadn't considered this before, but looking at these examples it becomes very clear: Interface (musical spells instead of verbs, no inventory), NPC interaction (the Virtual Theatre system, intricate orders), multiple player characters, and parallel universe interactions (the different ages are in a way similar to the double reality of Darkseed). None of these are technological innovations, nor are the games telling stories in a new manner. They are new ways of playing games! Roughly put: You haven't tried this shit before!

And this is probably the most interesting, and most challenging, take on innovation. I mean, how innovative can you get before it's no longer an adventure game? I thought Tender Loving Care was very interesting, but I wouldn't call it an adventure game (not because of the lack of real puzzles, but rather the lack of a participating player  character). But on the other hand, I probably wouldn't call Myst an adventure game  either, if I had my say.

The major question is how to innovate without losing the genre, and to do this, we probably have to set up some "rules", some elements that HAVE to be there for a game to be a real adventure game. When you have those, everything else is fluid.

[Captain Mostly]

I'm not sure I understnad why we need to stick within this field of "adventure" games at all.

I mean, I'm not particularly encouraging people to specifically breal away from it, but no one should turn down a good idea just because it's moving outside of this funny kind of box we call adventure games...

It's crazy that I'm forever seeing people saying things like "would a loom style interface be possible in AGS?" because they see it recognise that a new kind of interface opens doors to new kinds of puzzles and a subtly different kind of games. Only instead of thinking "that worked marvelously well as a break from the adventure game standard! I wonder what other sorts of interfaces/puzzle structures I could come up with..." and then ask if THESE new ideas are possible, they seem to just think "I wanna do that too!"

It's not a particular failing of a person to react like that (hell! I do it all the time!) but does everyone want to follow trends ALL the time?

It's a slightly depressing thought that, perhaps the reason AGS has seen so few real jumps of inspiration is because there's a culture of derivation around here. Within this on-line community there's no one pushing for innovations. there's no section of the web site or the forum that says: Innovation with AGS is EASY, and there's loads of people around to help on the technical side for YOU to realise YOUR dream of the adventure game of the future!!!

Even our non-adventure games are (by and large) just other genre-games (platform games, darts games, the constant murmer of different people coming up with the idea of making an RPG game etc). Yes they're technical marvels (although I confess, for mine I took most the marvel from the people who helped me on the forum) but why has no one looked at AGS and said "This language has so many brilliantly helpful functions and features built in, it would be a perfect platform from which to launch my vision of novelty gaming"?


I dunno. Maybe there is no reason...

[DGMacphee]

I agree that, in a practical sense, there have been few innovantions

However, I disagree because, theoretically, there have been some major ideas floating around.

For example, we discussed the idea of Internet adventure gaming a while back.

From this dicussion, I suggested an idea for a mystery game where players are invited to the mansion of an old relative.

However, one player (randomly selected) commits a murder and has to try and leave the place without getting caught.

Meanwhile, the rest of the players figure out who committed the murder.

I think this is a very innovate idea and very possible considering the Internet plugins for AGS.

However, and I think I speak for a lot of people here, some things restrict me: resources, money, and the fact I'm already working on a project.

However, the project -- Dark Hero -- is innovative in it's own right too.

Although the game may play like a conventional adventure, I plan to expand upon the story-telling techniques, using film-like conventions.

You see, I believe conventional projects are stepping stones in being able to create new and innovate stuff.

It's happened many times in history, for example:

- Picasso first mastered light, shadow, and perspective before deconstructing these rules for the rest of his life -- and he succeeded.

- The Beatles first started playing bubblegum pop songs before experiementing with different song styles and instuments on Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club, which was an amazing album!

- Filmmaker Woody Allen first started making screwball comedies before deconstructing the comedy genre with his Oscar-winning film Annie Hall (and he breaks TONS of filmmaking and filmwriting rules but gets away with it because they work fantastically!)

I think the same can apply to adventure games.

This is why I'm basing my tutorial upon the whole method of contruction and deconstruction.

I think one has to learn the rules of game making (yes, there are some rules) before one can break them.

It's a great process to use -- learn the rules, then break the rules -- construction, then deconstruction.

However, as an after note: this is strictly my own opinion -- Like anything, there are no right or wrong answers.

[Captain Mostly]

Discussing ideas is all well and good, but we never SEE any of these high ideas realised.

Also, is there really no one here who's learned the rules to adventure games yet? Is there no one who'se got to grips with doing basic games well enough that they can start playing with the formula? For such a well established community, this is astonishing!

[Las Naranjas]

* Las Naranjas waits and hopes for Donna.

[DGMacphee]

Mostly, you've got to give people time.

Like I said, we're all indie developers -- we have limited resources and time.

We're starting to see small changes here and there.

And I think there are some people who haven't come to grips with adventure game design.

Even I haven't.

I'm still learning -- and I've been here for over two years!

There are things about conventional structures of games that I've never thought about before, and have only learnt about them recently.

I want to find out what I can (and put it into practise first) before I move on to a more ambitious project.

Just gotta give me time -- After devoting little pieces of my time here and there, I'll finally write a great game -- one that's better than Stickmen or Ultimerr!

[Captain Mostly]

I'm sorry DG. I didn't mean to suggest that YOU ought to be leaping ahead of us! I naturally want everyone to go at their own pace!

It's just kind'a bizzar that after however many years this's been going, there's still not been any considered effort to move the adventure game on a little bit, by ANYONE...

[Las Naranjas]

The problem is, the poeple who can conceptualise the change rarely have the patience to carry it through.

Innovation is easy, which is why we talk about it so much, but implementing it is hard, especially when it's a genre like adventures that require so much work in plot and graphics before you even start the gameplay.

[Captain Mostly]

Now you see, I think this is another area where we're going wrong!

gameplay ALWAYS comes first, you can't help it!

The only reason it might feel like we think about the graphics and plot before gameplay is because gameplay is pretty much handed to us on a plate. AGS is an adventure game maker, with standard interfaces, which is why it's so good when you start to make games!

Perhaps this is why there's so little innovation... Because people don't think of game-play as the fundamental underpinning factor in adventure games. It's ALL about the game-play. I can't HELP being about the game play. Sure, in an adventure game, the line between gameplay and plot is somewhat blurry, but that doesn't mean that the way an adventure game plays doesn't make most immediate impact of the game, second only to the graphics.

Also, it seems stupid that in a community that (quite justifiably) considers pleughburg one of it's crowning glories, can graphics REALLY be that important to a game? I don't want to slag P:DA off, but it didn't exactly have sophisticated visuals.  

So how come graphics come before game-play?


anyway, this thead is looking dangerously like me ranting AT people about how origionality is a good thing, when clearly none of you think so (certainly not to the extent where you would agree that promoting it is worth while) so I'm going to try and stop posting here, before anyone interprets something I've said as "offencive" again.

if the output of AGS is gonna' stay the way it is forever, it's no catastrohpy. People will still be making good games with it. I just thought it'd be nice to encourage a little bit of origionality. (for which, incidently, I don't think it's neccessary to have "mastered" regular game development because, in the words of  Shunryu Suzuki: "In the begginer's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few")

[DGMacphee]

Innovation is easy, which is why we talk about it so much, but implementing it is hard, especially when it's a genre like adventures that require so much work in plot and graphics before you even start the gameplay.

And not to mention the fact that adventure games are supposedly the "dying genre" (Personally, I don't buy it -- genres go in an out of fashion, but it sure is a disheartening thing for this community to hear time and time again -- but I think they'll bounce back very soon)


Capt Mostly:

Even if it's a rant, people here will still respect your opinion.

I very much agree with you comments on graphics vs gameplay.

I also believe that gameplay and plot are very closely linked in adventure games because the progress of the gameplay relies upon the advancement of the narrative through interaction (also the different choices of interaction within a "branching narrative").

This is what separates adventures from games like Doom (where the gameplay relies upon shooting targets, rather than plot) or Command and Conquer (where the gameplay relies upon strategy, as opposed to plot).

As for originality, Eugene Delacroix said, "Newness is in the mind of the artist who creates, and not in the object he portrays".

What I believe he means is this: Even though most of everything in the world is not really original (more so, just an advancement upon a previous advancement), we are constantly discovering originality within ourselves.

Our portrayal of this perspective adds to our multi-faceted global society -- and our ability to see this perspective brings a newness within ourselves.

For example, I'm writing Dark Hero using the theories of film writing to experiement and see if they fit with a game structure that works.

So far my testing shows that it does work, and hopefully I'll have the finished project out by this year.

However, I saw these techniques used with Grim Fandango, which had a very film-like quality to it (especially in the noirish style).

I realised why I liked Grim Fandango so much and sent out to emulate it used the techniques from film writing books.

It may not be a new concept to adventure game making as a whole (cause Grim Fandango has done it), but I have never done anything like it.

That's why I make adventure games at the moment -- not because I want to be a technical innovator and redefine the genre, but because I want to discover and my perspective on certain techniques.

This will give me the needed experience to put my ideas into practice.

When I am ready and I've gained the experience, then I'll do something different.

However, right now I'm still a beginner.

Yes, in the beginner's mind there are endless possibilities.

However, a beginner is not ready for those possibilities -- there are still a great many things to learn, which is why he's a beginner in the first place.

However, an expert is an expert because he has learnt what he can and achieved his possibilities -- and is totally comfortable with that -- and that's why we call him an 'expert'.

Note that last bit: "and is totally comfortable with that" -- In my opinion, if someone is still uncomfortable despite learning and achieving possibilities, they're not an expert yet.

They still need to overcome that lack of comfort by facing it -- which leads to achieving and learning more.

It is this transition of creation that teaches us new things, which in turn moves us from beginner to expert.

However, this is just my opinion (and it's too damn long) -- I think I'll just reply here using one or two sentences from now on.

[Las Naranjas]

Also talke note that several of us are taking into account the impacts of games not as games but as interactive literature, and how that has it's more affective than other interactive material like choose your own adventures.

But perhaps that's because we're viewing Adventure Games as games whose gameplay is brought out of the story, so one cannot be before the other because they are one and the same.


But anyway, that's how I'd see innovation going, in the exploitation of the genre as a possible art form. As games, changes will be cosmetic unless they're just post modern genre blurrings, most of which have been attempted and can't be called innovation.
And in terms of attacking Adventures for not developing, what genre is developing, besides greater ploy counts. Most Genres seem to be like the internal combustion engine. Sure it looks prettier and runs better, but the intrinsic concept has been the same for decades.

If they can't innovate with the market forces we are told stimulate change and millions, how the hell can a student do it when he is serving only a small clique and personal interest.