Interview: Jonathan Blow wants to modernize adventure games

[blueskirt]

I don't think he's right but he's not entirely wrong either. Adventures games progressed technically but the core design remained the same since Zork, Myst and Monkey Island, you don't see much procedurally generated murder mystery or multiplayer adventure games or brand new ideas like that, and you don't see much games like Loom or The Last Express, people tend to stick to Zork, Myst, King's Quest or Monkey Island in term of design.

In the case of IF, sure you can now type stuff like "Pick up the vase, the keys and look under the desk" but do they react to commands like "How big is the vase? What color is it? What's under the desk? Where am I?" You don't see much articles about design or the actual mechanics of adventure games like Vince Twelve's article on badly designed interfaces and how useless it is to have two different verbs to talk and interact when you never talk with objects or physically interact with NPCs, an article that left a huge impact considering the number of AGS games released in the last years that used only two buttons, one to walk and interact and another to examine.

I also don't think anyone should feel offended or take Blow's remark personally or get the impression they're part of the problem either. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using the same old mechanics or making a game like Monkey Island if that's what you want to make, Abbaye Des Morts was one of the best platformer I played last year and it was a very basic yet fun platformer, same thing with Tiny Barbarian released earlier this year. You don't have to tread new grounds if you don't want to, I forgot who here keep saying this but to quote him or her, make the game you want to make. But I think we should all feel concerned that adventure games design are still stuck in the nineties.

[Igor Hardy]

I definitely agree that finally working out the solution to a puzzle after having been stuck on it for a while can be rewarding, but I think that after the first few minutes, while you're ransacking your brain for possible avenues of progress, the period of being stuck is effectively a time when the game is broken.

I seem to be that odd person who, when stuck, enjoys just walking around adventure game worlds, listening to the background music, trying all the different interactions (that's one of the reasons why I enjoy more complex interfaces) and even repeating certain dialogs with other characters (I hate when the game doesn't allow you to do that). I feel more confined and powerless when I'm stuck in a linear level of an action or strategy or puzzle game.

When was the last time something "fresh" was inserted in the genre?

Like anian, I think you could just as well argue there it's been years since we've seen something "fresh" in other genres. Or I could say that for example Ben's "!" felt really fresh and different to me - I loved having all the locations condensed on one screen. And I was impressed how decision making was handled in Downfall. Gemini Rue's "leg interactions" are something quite interesting too - it's not just Full Throttle like kicking.

"Something fresh" can be pretty much anything, not just Loom's unique interface which was rather tedious to use for me.

[Babar]

But the calling of it as being "outdated" isn't because of improvements in technology (such as your examples using books and paintings). It's because of it being a style or genre that is just...outdated.
I suppose it may just be semantics here, I'd consider "stale" and "outdated" to mean mostly the same thing.

But I'm talking about creation of the thing here, not the actual thing itself. Monkey Island is still a great game (especially if you haven't played the 5 billion derivatives that came after). Much of Bach's music is still awesome. But if someone tried making a game exactly in the style of Monkey Island or making music like Bach, it'd just be weird, and a "good copy" at best, or (more likely) crap at worst.

I can't really answer you about RTSes, as I really don't find them very interesting . I played....Warcraft 1 and 2, and even 3 when it came out, and I believe I probably played one of the Command and Conquers at some point, but they really don't stick in mind other than "1) build up troops and support 2) Attack". My favourite strategy game (for some inexplicable reason) is Colonization (the original one). It's turn-based, though, but that doesn't stop me from coming back to it about every year, and spending a week of almost continuous play beating it.

FPSes were pretty stale genre too, but then (people tell me that) Half-Life changed all of that. Personally, I still find them all very samey, but at least with FPSes I'm able to have some mindless fun whenever I want, so it makes for a good time waster.

As an aside, I'm going through the video GarageGothic linked, and it makes a very interesting definition for "Adventure Games" (as I consider and love them), but without calling them that. One of his suggestions for good game design" is story progression, i.e., not just having an initial condition and requiring the player to "solve" that.

You'd think that an adventure game would automatically have story progression, and it should, but many people don't seem to have that. For example, "I am at an archaelogical dig site, and I must go deeper in" is the initial condition and "I've made it to the deepest inside level of the dig site, some grand mystery has been shown, and I win!" is the end condition of an AGS "adventure game" I recently played. It had no story progression, just a situation that had been lengthened and "interactified" by artificially inserting puzzles into it.

The main focus of an adventure game shouldn't be the puzzles, and when the puzzles basically become the story, it's all lost

I have to rescue the princess - Okay, I've gotten to the castle - Okay! I've gotten past the guard in the castle - Okay, I've gotten/manufactured the key to the dungeon door! - Okay, I've gotten the princess! - Okay, now I've escaped the castle with the princess - Yay! I've won!

Isn't an adventure game in any sense at all to me, and is probably simply total boredom. But by mode7's definition (and I'm not knocking mode7 here, just that he exemplified the general understand of adventure games here), it is an "adventure game".

EDIT: As a response to a point Ascovel brought up that I hadn't responded to, I also enjoy the exploration aspect of many adventure games, and it most certainly can be counted as a form of gameplay for me. And the feeling I get when I find something new in my explorations is almost as rewarding as solving a puzzle to advance the story.

[Absentia]

The main focus of an adventure game shouldn't be the puzzles, and when the puzzles basically become the story, it's all lost

I'm only half in agreement here, but I might just be misunderstanding you. I think in an ideal adventure game, the story would be told through the puzzles, rather than puzzles being obstacles for story progression.  In fact, calling them 'puzzles' makes them feel separate from the rest of the game. It's an awfully difficult thing to design and keep consistent, but ideally puzzles need to be almost as important to the storyline as cutscenes and dialogue. It's my view that for good storytelling in games, the actions of the player (not the player's character) should be what directly relates to the story. That's not to say you don't need cutscenes / 'story progression'  but they should give a clear link between what the player did and what resulted. I'd rather think of story progression as an ongoing thing that's inclusive of puzzles, since theyre pretty much the most 'complex' way that the player can interact.

EDIT: As a response to a point Ascovel brought up that I hadn't responded to, I also enjoy the exploration aspect of many adventure games, and it most certainly can be counted as a form of gameplay for me. And the feeling I get when I find something new in my explorations is almost as rewarding as solving a puzzle to advance the story.

Agreed. I get the feeling that exploration is an overlooked element of adventure games.  Monkey Island has always had explorable islands that are avaliable from the onset of the game, which works great, but I'd love to see that taken a step further and have an even bigger explorable world,  almost like in an RPG.


I think the inherent 'flaw' in adventure games that Blow talks about is actually more of a 'hurdle.' The kinds of actions your player performs in adventure games are so much more detailed than in other genres. Most people know what a gun does, and most shooters will make it clear that there's a button which will fire your gun.  I'm sure a gun could be used for a few other nifty things that don't involve firing it, in the same way that Gordon Freeman's crowbar wasn't built for swinging at headcrabs, but you likely won't come across it over the course of a shooter (barring a QTE.)

Since there are potentially a limitless amount of actions that a character can do in an adventure game, both the functional uses and the unofficial uses of an item are valid. Then it becomes incredibly easy to start to enter the realm of subjection in regards to what the purpose of an item or some element of the world is.  In many adventure games, the lack of detail on objects (not so much on a visual level, but thats certainly a part of it) and the lack of explanation as to what the object might be used for (not just the functional use) leads to players falling back on their own ideas based on things that they know of in real life.  This is bad, because not everyone has the same experiences, knows the same things, and you have to design the game to only work in one way...most of the time.

I think the general problem is that making good adventure game puzzles is actually really freaking hard. You need to strike the balance between giving the player everything he needs to know (apart from logical deductions) but not holding his hand, not letting it become too nonsensical, but then still making it challenging enough that the player feels at least a little bit smart.

Another thing I think isn't done enough with adventure games is non-linearity. I imagine mostly because it'd be *insanely* difficult to do it well.  I would love to see adventure games where the manner in which you solve a puzzle has a consequence on the story, where dialogue isn't just a way to get hints and establish characters, but it can change elements of the story. Or perhaps the order in which you visit locations can impact the story as well.  Too often an adventure game is boiled down to this puzzles + story idea, but if most people identify an adventure game by its control scheme and interface, then it seems to me that there is a lot of unused potential in the genre.