Casualizing Point and Click Adventures article at Gamasutra

[Dualnames]

Okay, kill my hero. Damn, that is totally the most illogical puzzle ever created in the human universe. It beats having to pick up 44 chocolate bars any day. A barrel in the middle of nowhere has the best logic there is compared to this.  :o

[Dave Gilbert]

Here's a relevant video you might find interesting: http://vimeo.com/10853366 (I've only glanced at the article and this discussion - will read it properly tomorrow - so apologies if it's already been mentioned.)

Bit late to this thread, but holy crap.  I had no idea that panel was recorded.  Although I did look directly down at the camera at one point, so I must have known on some level.

Anyway, there's not much I can add to this discussion that hasn't been said already.  In regards to ECC, it's a mixed bag.  It started off as a game for the adventure audience, but PlayFirst doesn't have any experience with that market so it was tested with the casual audience instead.  And when that audience didn't "get it" everyone went into panic mode and threw in all sorts of casual tropes that (I feel) did more harm than good.  One day I'll write a more detailed post-mortem of the experience, but in a nutshell what we ended up with was a game that was too easy and condescending for the "mainstream" adventure players, but still too different and "out there" for the casual players.   The casual industry did learn a lot from it, though.  Avenue Flo was a point-and-clicker that was made specifically with the casual audience in mind, and fared much better in the casual space.  

It's a shame that my game became a guinea pig of sorts and didn't fare as well as it could have, but it was the first game of its kind and it was cool to be a part of that.

[GarageGothic]

I must say I enjoyed Emerald City quite a bit - not as much as the Blackwell games, but overall it was well written and designed (especially liked the magic stuff). The static graphics and pretty-and-fun-but-not-terribly-atmospheric artwork made it feel less dramatic than it could have been, but I didn't find it condescending in any way. The only casual game trope that seriously annoyed me were the "mission complete" popups, and I wouldn't even have minded them if they didn't fill the screen and pause the game - would have been perfectly find with Xbox achievement style pop-ups, even more so if they could be turned off

Sorry to hear it wasn't a success, it certainly was more deserving of attention than the vast majority of casual games.