A question about adventure games

[Vince Twelve]

I just have to throw out a dark secret: I love the first three Myst games (four and five didn't do it for me), especially Riven which is easily in my top 5 games.  I even like a bunch of Myst clones, including games like Safecracker which are purely puzzles from a Myst perspective without even a pretense of story beyond the introduction: "You are going into this mansion to crack a bunch of safes, ready, go!" 

My game Anna is really just a mini Myst game with a character thrown in front of the camera...

To me, adventure games are characterized mostly by non-emergent (heavily-scripted) gameplay that relies more on thought than reflexes, though clearly some adventures mix in emergence and twitch gameplay to varying degrees of success.  I used the word "characterized" rather than "defined" because I think the adventure genre can reach beyond those limits (plus it's hard to draw a line where enough emergent behavior makes it no longer an adventure) and I prefer not to get hung up too much on definitions and semantics.

The future game concept that Snarky linked to wouldn't be an adventure game by that definition, since it would be largely emergent, but I would still think of it as an adventure game, because on the surface the player would still see what he would see if it were a pre-programmed game, it's just that the computer, rather than the designer/programmer directly, is deciding the outcome of the player's decisions.  The player simply has more options (an infinite number actually) than a game relying on the scripting of each outcome due to the procedural nature of the game.  But the interaction still is more cerebral than physical and more resembles the interaction found in today's adventure games than it does any other genre.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

How could you, Vince?  A Myst lover?!


I remember playing Myst when it first came out for about 2 hours or so and thinking to myself 'why am I wasting my time on this thing?'  That's when I knew it was time to uninstall and find something else to do with my time, and I tend to apply that same approach to most games:  I'll give just about any so-called 'adventure' game a try, but when I start asking myself why I'm even playing it or I fall asleep (this has happened on several occasions), that's my cue to rapidly erase it from my computer and move on.  A vast majority of text adventures have not had this effect on me, so it's clearly not an issue of needing interesting visual stimuli.  It's ultimately the story and how it affects me (what personal stake I have in it) that decides whether or not I'm going to enjoy a game, so visual/aural immersion are just additional motivators.  This is why I don't really like Myst or Myst-inspired games, because if they have any story at all it's so paper-thin and stretched over a long series of complicated and seemingly unconnected puzzles and rendered images that I begin to feel as though my time is wasted and move on to something that captures my imagination.

Do I think you can make a Myst clone that succeeds in being a real adventure game, with an engaging story and lots of fun, while keeping true to the general design?  I honestly don't think you can, at least not one that I would consider to be anything more than a puzzle game.  I don't really see Anna as similar to Myst because the protagonist can interact in many ways with his environment instead of being limited to solving strange puzzles.  He is also not alone and develops the story with the help of the computer, who keeps him informed on what it is he needs to do.  Myst is far more abstract, and at the same time more obviously linear, and by obviously linear I mean that the more choices available in Anna, whether implemented or not, give the player a greater sense of freedom.

[Hudders]

Myst is far more abstract, and at the same time more obviously linear, and by obviously linear I mean that the more choices available in Anna, whether implemented or not, give the player a greater sense of freedom.

I think this is a key point. Central to an adventure game being immersive is the notion that the protagonist has free will, as well as individual thoughts and feelings towards his environment. For the most part, you're not being asked to BE the character, but instead to understand and care about him similar to how you would if you were reading a book or watching a film.

[Snarky]

a real adventure game, with an engaging story and lots of fun

Right. So I guess we have another definition, then:

"Adventure games are heavily-scripted games in which a player assumes the role of a character immersed in a narrative, in which the gameplay centers around non-linear space navigation, and solving narrative-based problems by means of object manipulation, dialogue and logical thinking. Also, ProgZmax has to like it."

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Sounds like a plan.  I have no problem with this definition!

[Vince Twelve]

Now that we've cleared that up, how much of the games database now need to be moved to the "Non-Adventure" category?

I don't really see Anna as similar to Myst because the protagonist can interact in many ways with his environment instead of being limited to solving strange puzzles.

I would disagree with that.  Even though I'm arguing my own game down...  The protagonist only had one interaction button, the space bar, and it was only used to interact with six screens, each of which (or at least four of which) were strange (or cliche) puzzles which must be solved in a specific order which the player must discover.

In Myst, you have only one interaction button, the left mouse button, and it's used to to navigate through and interact with countless screens, filled with strange puzzles which must sometimes be solved in a specific order, and may sometimes be solved in any order (giving more of a feeling of non-linearity), which the player must discover.

Anna's story is more direct and laid out for the player.  The main character, Hero, actually talks back to Anna.  While, in Myst you have to piece together the story from fragments -- notes, journals, recordings, and people talking directly to you, rather than through your proxy on-screen character -- scattered around several worlds.  But neither game really tells you what to do, you just have to explore and discover for yourself.  The difference is really in scale.

[Invalid]

Adventure games- games scripted with the sole perpose of exploring, solving puzzles, thinking criticly, ect..... diferenciating from other games in that it usually has no elements of other games. Eg. RPG's or Arcade.    Time consuming and enjoyable

[incobalt]

I'm really enjoying that people are continuing to talk about this   Of course, I've been thinking about what I've written and decided that I don't agree quite with it and it may need to be completely remade.  It's a pretty bad paper when you read it and you don't agree with yourself   I'm coming around to the camp of why bother defining "adventure game?"  Why not just leave it at "game?"  The reason I wanted to define "adventure game" was to break the definition, or point out where the genre is lacking (trying to pinpoint why adventure games are commercially dying out).  Of course this comes from my deep love for adventure games, and my disdain at the usual crap that I see on the shelf at the store, and a desire to not see this wonderful style of game just die out because it doesn't sell.

Of course, commercial isn't everything, and I enjoy many games that come up on AGS.  Every year I even try to make a game with AGS and fail for one reason or another, usually art-related (although I did make a "game" with AGS for a class, which I don't think is very good).  But I don't know.

By the way. I really enjoyed Anna (and voted for it in a few categories, iirc).  Anna had a deep story, really made you think about your own life, had fleshed out characters.  I don't think that Anna would have been enjoyable without the story that was in it.  Myst, on the other hand, is very enjoyable without the story (And I say this as you practically don't get any story until the very end of the game).  Don't get me wrong, I actually like Myst (though I liked Exile the most).  It's just when I play Myst it feels like a bunch of puzzles thrown together.  When I played Anna, (or Return to Zork/Zork Nemesis, since it was mentioned), I felt at all times that there was a reason why I was doing all of the puzzles.  It wasn't just to get to the next part of the game or get back to the main part of the game, but it was to repair the ship.  I was doing the puzzles in Anna because of narrative-based motive.  In Myst, you're just plopped down into the world and you start playing around with machines without any notion as to why you're doing this.