Has adventure gaming had an aggregate effect on your life over time?

[FamousAdventurer77]

Today I had to choose a topic for a critical thinking essay for uni, with the option to turn it into a research project.

I could rant all day about how the gaming industry's changed and how I wished I was born earlier to have been a programmer in '92 or '93, I know that this forum is where thousands of other people feel the same way I do. However, I'd like to propose this for a research project:

What do you feel is the aggregate effect that long periods of adventure gaming have had on your life?

In a nutshell for myself for instance, I've been playing these games for about 16 years, back when a 5-year-old child using a computer was considered a prodigy. (Today, toddlers are conditioned to using computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices the same way they are conditioned to use other things in daily life.) I won't get into the details of the unhappy portion of my childhood, but adventure games were my number one escape from everything. I played them when I needed to run away. Or when things were good, I still played them because I loved to and just liked a good story. It made me want to be a programmer so I could do the same for kids just like me. But the aggregate effect it also had was that it gave me vocabulary much larger than expected for a child, and strengthened my imagination and creative resolve. It made me a more resourceful person without a doubt: the ability to use whatever I can around me to solve problems.

Some aggregate effects are different though. Maybe some gamers feel that they have had no effect. A few other old-schoolers I talked to said they felt the same as me; that gaming was an escape for them since they hated home and school life. Others may not have felt this way.

I'd like to get at least 15-20 different peoples' opinions based on their life experience and the aggregate effect of playing adventure games frequently for incredibly long periods of time. All ages, genders, creeds, and calibres of gamers welcome. However, the only stipulation I ask is that you can't be entirely new to the adventure/old-school adventure genre. 16 years is a long time and I know that some people in my age bracket may or may not have a number that high, but I say, you have to have been a hardcore player for, say, at least 1-2 years or more.

Thanks in advance!

[m0ds]

I've been hooked on adventure games since about 10, so that's 12 years. However, I don't think that through playing adventure games that I started to go about things differently. I found that adventure games were suited to and relevant to the way I was already living my life. For example, you say that you learnt to use things around you to accomplish a task. I was like that already, yet didn't find that level of detail in any other kinds of games, so I was glad to find a genre of computer game where the people were more like me, and situations were more like real life. For example, platformers - which were probably the second biggest style games I used to play, but didn't require any life like skill, they barely even involved your brain. I see a clear difference in "learning" a level (i.e. how to jump over spikes in all areas of a level without dying) and "learning" through a level (using inventory based puzzles, dialogue puzzles etc).

There was a slight sense of escapism, but only slight. Adventure games were the nearest things to films for me, they were the closest cinematic experiences I could find on a computer. I don't even find FPS's nowadays that cinematic because no film is seen literally through the eyes of one person. With adventure games, you do get involved in a personal journey but with much more style and conventions of a film.

Anyway, hope that helps a bit. I don't have a clue what aggregate means

[LimpingFish]

I don't know how many people will be able to pinpoint what, if any, effect playing adventure games would have had on their lives, but very interesting question nontheless.

I would agree that gaming in general was an escape, not from homelife though, but from a continued battle with school (which I hated, and rarely attended) and unsympatethic peers to whom I was always an outsider.

Personally, I first started playing videogames in 1982 when, as a six year old, I caught my first glimpse of a Galaxian arcade machine. For the next decade or so my exposure to games was almost exclusively limited to arcades.

I played my first traditional adventure game on the Atari ST home computer, my first computer, in 1992 or thereabouts. Space Quest 3.

It immediately turned me on to the concept of story-driven games, that relied on problem solving more than reflexes. Playing games became almost exclusively about playing adventure games, and I devoured every Sierra, LucasArts, Delphine, or miscellaneous european adventure games published by Infogrammes, Silmarils, and other, usually french or german, publishers.

Seeing as I didn't have access to a PC until 2000, I enviously watched the silver-age of adventures (post Monkey Island 2) pass me by. To compensate, I found console-based games that had some of the ingredients that had so enamored me to the adventure genre.

These were mostly RPGs, japanese usually, and fulfiled the need for story-driven gaming I found lacking in most console games.

I also branched out into playing games that companies such as Delphine and Infrogrammes now produced for consoles (Another World, Flashback, Alone in the Dark (on the PSone), etc) that, although their central gameplay mechanic had changed, retained the story/puzzle aspect of their point and click relatives.

So, to answer your question, the biggest influence that adventure games had on me was the ability to see games as a viable medium to tell a complex story and to engage the player on not just a physical level, but also a mental and, probably most importantly, emotional level.

Hope this helps.

[thomasregin]

Oh, I honestly believe that adventure games have had a tremendous influence on my life.

I have been playing adventure games since the beginning of the 80s. As the matter of fact I got my first C64 in '83 just 7 years old. The biggest influence these games had on me was of course that they taught me English. In a very short period of time I was practically fluent in English - something that has more of less lasted up until now. And again something that was completely unheard of at that time. A 7-8 year old kid with Danish parents reading and writing English.

Secondly it gave me a lot of quality time with my father. Adventure gaming is the _perfect_ tool for bringing people together. As an adult I've also spent many nights with friends playing adventure games while drinking beer etc.

Lastly, adventure games broadened my sense of humour greatly.

I honestly believe that I'm in dept to adventure games. And I can't believe that good games are so hard to come by these days with all the big companies focusing more on FPS than plots and puzzles! How are today's children ever going to survive?

Tom..

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I've been using computers since I was about 6, so for 24 years or so I've been fiddling with electronic hardware and media.  I would not claim, however, that playing adventure games has made me more capable of solving real-world problems primarily because most adventure game puzzles are so removed from reality.  Games in general, however, did spark my creative curiosity from a programming standpoint; I wanted to know how they worked.  Obviously, the multitude of construction kits released on the C-64, languages like Blitz and AMOS and regular BASIC all helped to shape my interest towards the design side of things, and I still find myself looking at bad design decisions in modern games and thinking "I can do better."

The flip side of the coin is that the transformation of the industry has also made me jaded, both as a player and a designer.  I see less and less of the kind of creative innovation in game design that interests me and more hardware innovation, and I think for a lot of older gamers it can be disillusioning.  The strange thing is, looking back on the some of the classic adventure games you see just how simplistic their design really was.  Fetch this for me to get this to do this.  Games made by Cinemaware, on the other hand, were usually far more complex and innovative for the time, yet they enjoyed only a modest success.  Play "It Came From the Desert" or "Rocket Ranger" if you haven't.  These were games I found to be really innovative in terms of weaving a story into a mix of action and problem solving that was much more like an interactive movie than any traditional adventure game I ever played. 

"There he goes!"

[ManicMatt]

(Played adventure games since hmm lord of the rings text adventures on C64)

When I was on holiday this year, on a boat, there was my cousin's toddler wanting to run about. I was in the bedroom, and it was stuffy so I wanted the back door open to let the air in, however this meant the toddler could open the bedroom door, and go through the open door and climb the steps outside and potentially fall in the water. So I made this device using my cousin's other daughter's scoobies. These weird plastic cables that kids use to make necklaces and stuff with. I noticed two holes in the wall next to the door and tied some scoobies up, and slotted them through the wall and onto the handle of the door.



Now the toddler with her inferior strength could not pull the handle down to open the bedroom door, and I could leave the back door open! Anyone stronger than the toddler could easily still open the door.



Crude, but effective!

So, you have to ask yourself, did playing adventure games help me make a makeshift door locking device, or am I naturally resourceful? I couldn't say myself.

[FamousAdventurer77]

Thanks to everyone who replied so far!! This is definitely putting me on my way to getting an A on this project!

Replies, personal and general:


m0ds: "Aggregate" pretty much means overall, but with a reference point-- ie, over a period of time, or for a couple different values, etc. In this case, it's the views of different people who are adventure game aficionados. Individually, it would mean the overall effect that adventure gaming may have had on your life.

The most common themes I've found so far (the 3 in-person interviews I've had and in the forum replies I've just seen) is escapism and entertainment, namely for those who prefer the puzzles of adventure games over something like complex TV shows or reflex-based video games. Escapism ruling for those who use these games as an outlet to escape being mistreated by peers, co-workers, etc.

I relate to the escapism theme the best: My life now is nothing like my childhood and adolescence. I was lucky to get out alive. My family didn't understand me and they could only help me so much with what other people put me through.

LimpingFish: Believe me, I relate to peer trouble and adventure games being your number one escape outlet. I sure do:

What the kids at school put me through bordered on hate crime. Namely because I'm a Jew. But so much more than that. Lots of things...one of the most hurtful was that they said I was really just a boy with boobs. (In the 3rd grade.) The things they said and did, I didn't even have self-esteem until I was 17.5, 18 when I moved back to NYC. So in adventure games...I was able to escape being the only New York Jew in a culturally sterile backwoods south New Jersey pit (Ask me about the pure living hell of the Stokes State Forest trip in the 6th grade, a special edition of Rachel's Tales From Hell), where I could dream of having magic powers and awesome weapons to smite the living crap out of the kids who made my life hell and treated me like a subhuman because I was this "f.cking weirdo" and "foreigner". I could put myself in other worlds where conventional life and order didn't even exist, let alone ones where it did and I could let my imagination run free. I loved those games more than anything and still do. Even today when I want to escape from the hassles of my everyday life and haven't been too social lately, getting deeply into one of these games appeals to me more than other forms of entertainment.


thomas- that's a remarkable achievement regardless of age, to pick up another language mostly by playing adventure games in such a short period of time. I didn't fluently pick up French until after I had it for about 3 years in high school (had 5 yrs total) then went off on my own in France and in French Canada (also helped by playing French games as well) but on a non-English speaking point of view, English is indeed the toughest language for most people to learn. And it's very sad but true that the gaming industry today markets more reflex-based games or games with 3D graphical explosions and whatnot, than puzzles and storyline. Not only will our future's children be conditioned to speaking multiple languages on numerous electronic devices, but who knows what other things they may be desensitized to.

ProgZmax: I wholeheartedly agree on both the player and designer viewpoints of what the industry has turned into. I had an epiphany a year ago that made me drop the Computer Science sector I was in at uni, when I realized there was no point in me learning the new languages just to made into a drone writing codes for mass-market games that are just pyrotechnics, not interactive stories with memorable dialogues and characters. I changed majors before it was too late to switch out. And you're precisely right: They care more about hardware revolutionizing than about writing ingenious software. It's all about having more memory to get a higher score and the toughest reflexes.

But I disagree just slightly on the note of adventure game puzzles being removed from reality here:

ManicMatt: That is one nifty device!! See, it may not be the actual puzzles and objects that are represented in adventure games that have relevance to real-life resourcefulness. But it's the problem-solving techniques and ingenuity picked up over long years of playing these kinds of games that can lead people to build nifty devices like this to solve real-life problems.

And here's a fine example of it right now!! I didn't realize my battery had only 18% in it because the outlet behind me is dead! I'm going to tear off a piece of paper in my notebook and write a note telling the maintenance dept. to fix it. and since there's no tape around...the gum I've been chewing on the past hour will do just fine to stick it to the wall above the outlet. See what I mean! Most people would've just said, "No tape? Screw it."

But they don't call me the Famous Adventurer for nothin'! I'll be checking back here after my battery's had a chance to recharge!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

But are you sure these examples are directly related to playing adventure games and not human ingenuity?  I mean, the people who came up with the crazy puzzles in adventure games got their ideas from somewhere, and humans are constantly absorbing information (whether they want it or not) from everywhere.  I don't believe Matt's example is proof of anything except that he saw a solution to a problem.  I know people who have done similar things in similar situations and have never played adventure games, so where did they get their 'epiphany' from?

[Ali]

I find myself more prepared than most people I know to walk across town visiting the same locations over and over.

I think the source of this is apparent.

[thomasregin]

I find myself more prepared than most people I know to walk across town visiting the same locations over and over.

I think the source of this is apparent.

ROFL!!

Yes, I too find myself trying to combine things I find by looking in people's drawers. And when I talk to people I always ask them so many questions that they start repeating themselves!Ã, 

/tom..

[FamousAdventurer77]

ProgZmax: You bring up an interesting argument. Indeed, life's full of puzzles and the game creators had to seek some inspiration from that in order to create what we've all played over the years.
You're totally correct in saying that some people just find solutions to problems and think logically, whether or not they're hardcore adventure gamers-- my point (and one of the points I'm bringing up in my research project) is that not everyone out there has completely inherent resourceful thinking and that adventure games brought it out in them and/or really strengthened it. Since I've been playing these games for 16 years and my starting point was early childhood-- the aggregate effect it's had on me from the ages of 5-21/present or other people who started playing these games as a young child appears to be stronger than it would be for someone in an older age bracket who wasn't as impressionable with learning things.

Here's a good analogy for it: In most American public school systems, by the second/third grade (average 7-8 years of age) or so the teachers really start drilling multiplication tables into your brain and it's nonstop until the fifth grade or so. This way, when you're asked a simple multiplication problem, you can answer it in 1.5 seconds and when you look at one, you can do it in your head incredibly fast. That is the desired aggregate effect they want you to have by age 11 or so.
So when someone starts adventure gaming at the same young age: Resourceful thinking really gets drilled into your brain and becomes automatically part of you, just like the multiplication tables. If it wasn't inherent in you already, then it becomes inherent in you by default.

A little sidenote I must add to this too: My height of playing adventure games before the internet became as widely used as it is today, we still had that great old-school hint system UHS before it became an online system: but walkthrus weren't as readily available, instead there were pay-per-minute hint lines and hint books you could order through the company (if available). But because this was just slightly before the wonder of millions of walkthru/hint databases in cyberspace and being able to hop on forums as easily as this and talk to fellow gamers about how far they got in games-- it was sort of like back then, there was no option for walkthrus to get past that one  litte part/uberly frustrating puzzle you were stuck with. (Like the infamous cheese thing in KQ5!!) So you HAD to learn resourceful thinking. See what I mean? By the mid-90s or so, then yeah, if you were stuck...you could always just take the easy way out and look for a walkthru or find a gaming chat forum somewhere to ask for help. Though of course, a lot of us gamers are now grateful for all those aforementioned things because there's nothing worse than spoiling the immersion factor with a brain-frying puzzle or that one little thing you forgot to do or inventory item that your eye keeps missing on the screen.


thomas & Ali: I relate to that heavily!!!  Have you ever felt like there was a literally a little map in your head too? And that after you just talked to someone and they told you about something somewhere you heard a bell and saw the words "NEW LOCATION!"?

And of course, searching your pockets and seeing an inventory screen in your mind and wondering what items can be combined and what can't and what can currently get you out of a certain quandary.


Once again thanks to everyone who sent me a reply with their opinions, input, life stories, gaming observations, etc...you're all helping me get an A on this project for sure!!

[Andail]

ManicMatt; when I saw that picture my first reaction was "oh, he tied that fire extinguisher to the door handle. Quite a prank!"

[Tom S. Fox]

I learned read especially early.
You know, even before I went to school.
If this has to do with adventure games and the fact, that adventures didn't have voice speech back then, I can't say.

[EagerMind]

I find myself more prepared than most people I know to walk across town visiting the same locations over and over.

Now that you mention it, whenever people start asking me to do things, I find myself much more adept than others at saying things like "I don't see how that will help" or "I can't use those two objects together." And I thought I was just lazy!

But in all seriousness, I pretty much agree with what ProgZ said. Other than providing a somewhat intellectually-stimulating pastime, I don't really see adventure games (or games in general) as being able to have an impact on someone's life, other than the "I loved this game so much I decided to become a game programmer" type of thing. Learning english by playing games is certainly a neat example, but I think along the same lines as learning a foreign language by watching tv or listening to the radio.

I suspect that since adventure games generally require a bit more thinking than other types of games, they probably attract a smarter audience to begin with. And as ProgZ pointed out, adventure games puzzles tend to be too removed from reality to really be practical. Sure they may encourage some degree of lateral thinking, but in reality there's more to making a safe helmet than putting a cooking pot over your head.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

but in reality there's more to making a safe helmet than putting a cooking pot over your head.

At least we know why Guybrush got dumber with each game!  BRAIN DAMAGE.

[MarVelo]

I know that the games I played have effected my intrests. My first adventure game was Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis and now I have a lifelong obsession with Atlantis. Games with factual content are so great. I also played KBG - Conspiracy and it has made me deeply interested in the former Soviet Union.

[MrColossal]

I know that the games I played have effected my intrests. My first adventure game was Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis and now I have a lifelong obsession with Atlantis. Games with factual content are so great.

hehe, FoA is the last place you want to look for factual content on the Atlantis myth.

To answer the question:

"...the biggest influence that adventure games had on me was the ability to see games as a viable medium to tell a complex story and to engage the player on not just a physical level, but also a mental and, probably most importantly, emotional level."

I agree a lot with what LimpingFish wrote. Except for the emotional bit because even though adventure games have some nice stories, they're not more complex than "you good guy, he bad guy, find way to get to bad guy only without guns." In my opinion.

Not that I had much bias in the other direction, that games aren't a viable way to tell stories, when I was growing up... But playing adventure games through the years exposed me to a wide variety of puzzle design and then making adventure games I've tried to take what I learned and cut out the crap and only keep the best. I also learned that I am more interested in exploring an artistic vision of a world than I am in solving random puzzles stuck in that world.

[Ghormak]

The Commodore 64 contributed significantly to my learning. With its and my brother's help I could read (Swedish) at the age of 3. Once this obstacle was overcome, I gradually started to pick up English words here and there from various games, and eventually I started playing Interactive Fiction games. I'm not sure really at what age I learned English well enough to play these games properly, but I do know that I considered myself fluent by the time we started learning English in school, at the age of 10.

But of course, I was much more self-confident when I was 10, so "fluent" is to be taken with a grain of salt. I think.

[Dave Gilbert]

While adventure games are a type of escapism like films or books, when done right they can provide a level of immersion that isn't present in other media.  I remember playing KQ3 in the 7th grade and really feeling SCARED when that bastard wizard kept appearing out of nowhere.  I was feeling what the main character (gwydion) was feeling, and it helped me identify with a character in ways that were not possible in a non-interactive genre.

That's the one thing that good adventure games can do.  It really gives you the sense that you are shaping and molding a story as it goes along.  Or at least it might give you the impression that you are.

[FamousAdventurer77]

Big General Reply:

Really interesting perspectives!

Not to mention researching for this dull class was finally made fun and interesting for once!

Indeed, adventure games are a lot like movies and books-- there is a story to be told and the events unfold as you go along. The major difference is that some games have more than one ending, some games are more like interactive movies than puzzle-solving series, but the key word here is interactivity. One gets immersed into an adventure game in a different manner than one would with a good film or a captivating book.

And while more intelligent people as a whole are drawn to adventure games to start with, a majority of the people I've asked IRL/who replied to this thread, seem to have felt that these games made them smarter. More resourceful, maybe. And a smaller percent who feel that the games have not had an aggregate effect.

Once again, everyone's entitled to their opinions and I'm not expecting everybody to have the same exact replies, or agree with each other and the researcher (me). If everybody felt the same way, well, then what's the point of interactive research eh? But also, like most research out there too-- some things are dependent on other variables that don't have to do with the research topic. Like, how old you were/what generation of gaming and computer innovation did you grow up in. For me it was the late 80's/early 90's which was quite volatile really, I seemed to see a lot of advances made in a fairly short amount of years so that by the time I was in junior high (middle or intermediate school to those not from eastern USA), my favorite games were not really being made anymore, or at least not in the way I liked them to be. There's so many other variables that tie in too-- my family was ahead of nearly every other family we knew and lived near when it came to computers and most electronic devices (we had CD burners and DVD players before they were put in nearly every household in the late 90's.) so I was conditioned to using computers and having to think a lot at an early age. For some people in my age bracket, maybe they lived with a technologically impaired family and it impressed their parents that they knew just how to use a computer let alone get into this complex gaming genre. So you see, there's lots of variables that get taken into account here. But I'm still finding that escapism is a highly prevalent theme, and the aggregate effect being that some people felt it made them smarter and/or improved deductive reasoning skills.

Monday or so when I'll have to start writing the said paper to have it handed in by the end of the week. I'll count up how many interviewers I had (now it's 5 in person and I think about 10 or 12 answered here so far, but that could change by the time I write the actual paper and can fix that stats as I go along) and make a fancy pie chart of effects. I hate writing papers but pie charts do own. And of course once again thanks to everyone who replied here or PMed me with what they had to say, your participation is literally helping me pass this course!