Hello my name is Sean Brady. I am a student researching the reason behind the recent (1990's - present) unpopularity of point and click graphic adventure games.
I was wondering if it was possible to get your opinion on the whole matter. I am dealing with both the development/commercial reasoning and consumer/player interest. If it is possible to get your opinion on both sides that would be fantastic.
I appreciate the time given and thank you sincerely.
The question ultimately is "what factors account for the unpopularity of point and click graphical adventures?"
NOTE: The opinions expressed will be transcribed within the research dissertation with the names of the suppliers beside them but it can be arranged to remain anonymous if required.
Any indication about individuals who from your knowledge would provide a valuable viewpoint, please don't hesitate to say, thank you.
Thank you once, again.
Any opinion / voice is greatly appreciated.
To quote Ron Gilbert: "The majority of today's gamers enjoy things that are more visceral. They like to be told what to do and where to do it and then get good at doing it. Adventure games are fundamentally about not knowing what to do or where to do it and figuring it out. Adventure games are slow moving contemplative affairs."
And he's right.
Thank you, for info. Keep em comin'
Cheers 8)
That and because so many adventure games boil down to using random inventory object on everything you can possibly find.
Thank you, for info. Keep em comin' :)
First, because new styles are invented every day.
Second, because some older players consider themselves too old to play and young players have met the newer kinds of games first and stick to them.
Keep em comin' :)
All the above comments.
I don't like Myst-style game : but here exactly what happened:
Side effect of progress amongs computer graphics in conjunction with cost/benefit calculation.
It's more easy to create 1st person machine puzzles with modern graphics than a 3rd person Point-and-click with huge quality pixel art. (Just think of all animation needed to make the character do everything realistically with the same level of graphic). The choice was obvious. (Same thing with apparition of voices. More interactions you have : more voice acting you'll need).
Illustrations :
-It's not a luck if Full Throttle was the shortest LucasArt*.
-It's not a luck if cutscenes became longer and longer
-If you look at The Dig, you already see that games like Myst are coming
(longer and longer cutscenes, more and more 1st-person screens, less and less hotspots to look at)
The industry answers the graphic/sound progress in 4 ways :
- Going back to 1st persons with machine puzzles
- Going back to Graphic Novels
- Trying expensive experimentation with 3d (Grim Fadango / MI4)
- Trying experimentation with FMV
In all the case, the fun of playing adventure became lowest and lowest. They all created huge linearity. (think the cost of an FMV creation) Or have issues justifying the puzzles / story.
(Machine puzzle can be justified in Syberia or Myst not many other games /theme)
By having huge quality graphic, you can't escape Pixel-Hunting. What can be use on the High-def screens became a puzzle itself. (sometime killing logic)
The relative limitation of puzzles / Family values / no death
While the 1st point-n-clicks feature the most logical puzzle ever:
- Use golden key on golden door in order to go in golden room
- Use dime in coin slot
Innovation implies reinventing puzzles again and again. They became more and more tricky to a point of non-playability. Not to mention the effect of not dying if you glich. Add a touch of family values and the range of possible puzzles is shortened to almost nothing.
As a conclusion : to avoid player becaming lost, they just put doors with machine puzzles on them...
* Post of copy of your paper when it's done, thanx *
* Was Loom shorter than FT?
Here in Germany, adventure games are THE comeback genre. Over the past five months alone we saw almost a dozen commercial releases that border on "some guys in a garage" projects,
and they were generally well recieved. It's save to say that none of these games made a scratch at crowd pleasers like Crysis, Half-Life and its ilk, but they surely beat several casual games and strategy titles.
An interesting (german) article I found last week had a funny theory, which goes like: Adventure games have once been very strong, so people who create adventures TODAY are likely fans of these oldschool games and see these classics as some holy cow. Changing the formula is a big no-no, so even new adventure games are merely remakes of the old classics, without anything to catch the newcomer's interest.
It's not exactly something I'd sign as totally true, but it's a theory, so maybe you can use it.
Cheers lads this is really great stuff, more, more please :o
I will post a copy of it as soon as it is complete.
*Was Loom shorter than FT?*
I would say their mean playing time and game length was about the same but loom was more intensive in certain spots in comparison which may have felt like it took longer than it actually should have.
Nice one. 8)
I would say the average person no longer has the time to play an adventure game, because so much of it consists of, as Voh said, "figuring out what to do" and most often times failing.
When you only have a limited amount of time to plug in to playing new games, I don't think most people want to spend hours failing and then in the last twenty minutes of their session finally figure out the solution and think back, "man, that was a fun 3 hours I spent wandering around and not accomplishing anything." You want some kind of feedback, some guarantee that the effort you put into something will bring back results. With first-person shooters or RPGs, you know you've progressed and will progress every play session. With adventure games, there's always the potential you can sit down and waste away hours doing nothing.
Of course, this wasn't really a problem as a little kid growing up, where just the very fact of playing a game was enough to be entertained. Today, I think the only market for adventure games would be something casual where you don't play it as you would other games. Maybe pop out a game on your iPhone to play it for twenty mintues when you're bored, and if you can't find the solution, just turn it off and come back later. I don't think people will grab adventure games and boot them up on their computers and devote hours of their time to them in the same way as before.
First of all, the way you define the unpopularity period (1990s - present) is all wrong. The genre experienced the peak of its popularity during the early 90s. Also, about 7-8 years ago adventure games were almost dead and deemed non-profitable, but now there are lots of them and selling steadily. They may not make millions, but they have an established niche in the market.
One of the main reasons for the unpopularity of the genre a few years ago was the fact that the primary developers Sierra and LucasArts have given up on them and vocally announced they are bad for business, while in truth these companies have become overgrown and taken over by people without gaming industry know-how (which almost led them to bankruptcy). Still, the stigma of failure has been attached to the genre and affected greatly the way of thinking of both the publishers and developers.
Another thing is that adventure games provide little flair except in the form of cutscenes. And people usually don't play games to watch subpar movies, but like to have the things on-screen be affected by their actions in real-time. It's hard to convince the average player to enjoy the puzzles that demand precise solutions. Players are mostly looking for playgrounds nowadays.
Quote from: Ascovel on Mon 13/07/2009 21:19:16
Players are mostly looking for playgrounds nowadays.
Yeah, that's true indeed- given the choice between a sandbox game like GTA and a classic adventure with a linear plot, well, todays players will opt for the sandbox. And still, almost all modern games use cutscenes, either "interactive" ones (HL2) or in-game movies... Maybe "replayability" is a better word- the typical adventure game has little replayability (at least it isn't very much fun to do a DOTT-speedrun), so once you're done with it, it's really "Game Over".
QuoteThe question ultimately is "what factors account for the unpopularity of point and click graphical adventures?"
(1) many players and game companies want impressive visual effects; adventure games are not really suitable for showing those
(2) likewise, many people want multiplayer capabilities; this is fundamentally incompatible with adventure gaming
(3) for those gamers who want a story, turns out that a story is easier to tell with movies and cut-scenes, than with interactive adventure gaming
and (4) a sufficient number of adventure games published around the end of the "commercial adventure game era" weren't really all that great
This adds up to (A) adventure games are a niche market, and (B) commercial companies tend to aim for mainstream.
I would say with the current climate of downloadable games, adventure games are actually making a resurgence. Whilst they not be the biggest selling games, they are doing reasonable well on casual platforms like xbla and steam, and afaik, the Wadjet games are doing very well. Big name brands like Monkey Island and Sam and Max have been a godsend for Telltale and have sold well enough to sustain a mid sized studio. People do not expect state of the art 3d graphics for their quick fix games. Games they can play for as long or as short as the player pleases.
That says, for these experiences, you don't want to be massively stuck for any period of time, so puzzles have been simplified somewhat. Now you no longer need to spend hours figuring out a puzzle. The answer is slightly puzzling, but not terribly difficult.
These games can do well if you follow this route. If you try to replicate the taxing puzzles and 5 hour long stories of the sierra gen, your game will not sell well, as this is not what the core market desires from these games.
Yeah, I think you made a good point there. Sam & Max already adopted the chapter style releases and others will.
One thing I personally believe (and like) that adds to "hooking" players to the genre is the possibility to discover other countries and cultures, like a tour around a real place that most people don't have the chance to visit. The examples are vast, Gabriel Knight took me on a tour to New Orleans and Munich (was it Munich? I know it was German) and a small village in France, I visited Venice with Indy and the New Mexico desert with George, and so on, and so on.
Even Grundislav made us travel to Greece and the Vatican, and that is something I treasure when I'm given experiences like that.
It's a bit like reading a book, you kind of absorb the locations like you've been there.
This is something that only adventure games can give us, together with a good mystery plot and friendly characters, the time to experience something with...Time.
Quote from: miguel on Tue 14/07/2009 12:29:03
and Munich (was it Munich? I know it was German)
Yup, Munich. And let me tell you, it was actually *better* to play the original with its strange over-the-top dialects. The German version lost a lot there.
Quote from: Layabout on Tue 14/07/2009 11:31:39
That says, for these experiences, you don't want to be massively stuck for any period of time, so puzzles have been simplified somewhat. Now you no longer need to spend hours figuring out a puzzle. The answer is slightly puzzling, but not terribly difficult.
I'm afraid this may be a stereotype. From what I hear from people who are both adventure and casual gamers, puzzles in casual games can be pretty difficult at later levels and people who play them spends hours of time trying to figure them out.
Even Braid is considered by many a casual game and its puzzles are pretty tricky. It even won an award for best causal game 2008 on some popular portal.
The difference with Braid (I never played the full version, so I may be wrong) is that it's very non-linear.
If you can't complete a very hard puzzle, you just go onto the next one. If you can't figure out that one, you keep going. That way if you're ever stuck in the game, you don't have to sit there and stay being stuck. You can just go on to the next puzzle.
And anytime you want to come back and solve the earlier puzzles, it's your OWN decision--you're not being forced to be stuck there for hours, and that's one reason why it succeeds, IMO.
Quote from: TheJBurger on Tue 14/07/2009 19:42:48
The difference with Braid (I never played the full version, so I may be wrong) is that it's very non-linear.
If you can't complete a very hard puzzle, you just go onto the next one. If you can't figure out that one, you keep going. That way if you're ever stuck in the game, you don't have to sit there and stay being stuck. You can just go on to the next puzzle.
And anytime you want to come back and solve the earlier puzzles, it's your OWN decision--you're not being forced to be stuck there for hours, and that's one reason why it succeeds, IMO.
There are quite a few very non-linear adventure games (vide Discworld). And a few adventure games where new cool things keep happening just because of the passage of time (Quest for Glory 3,4,5). Still, if the game is difficult enough, there comes the moment when you have so many puzzles that you can't beat that it becomes discouraging. I also haven't played the full Braid yet, but I already felt the frustration in the demo. After giving up many times I discovered a new trick of the main character that wasn't even hinted at and only then I started to proceed with the puzzles again.
Gameplay wise I'm positive Braid is an adventure game.
And it's popular and has gotten a lot of acclaim from the critics.
Braid is a very good game indeed, but I wouldn't call it an adventure game. It's a genre mix borrowing from adventure as well as jump and run, but at the core it is a puzzle game that focusses on one core mechanic, time manipulation. In a puzzle game, the puzzles are the main challenge and the main reason for playing the game, while in an adventure, the story is more prominent. Yes, there IS a story in Braid, and it's even one that encourages discussion, but I wouldn't say people play Braid for the philosophical statements. They play it for the clever puzzles.
A classic adventure game, at least as I see it, can throw in all sorts of puzzles but always, really always needs a plot to tie it together, as well as fleshed-out characters. In addition to that, puzzles usually are much more varied (though, of course, they can be reduced to a couple of genres too).
You could take all the puzzles out of, say, Gabriel Knight and would still have a few memorable characters and an interesting episode of crime/mystery fiction. Do the same with Braid, and all you're left with is a loading screen.
[*takes cover*]
I wouldn't consider Braid to be a casual game at all really. It has bloody difficult puzzles, an obscure, layered, pretentious story and a painterly art style.
That's not saying I don't like the game, I like it very much (well, except the story, it's being pretentious for pretentious sake IMO, although the obvious story is a great twist on the traditional save the princess shit).
And from what I heard rather successful. Sales of over $4Mil if my sources are correct.
Braid has nothing to do with a conventional adventure game. It's a platform game like Mario that allows you to reverse actions, that's it. Nice graphics though.
[*takes cover where ghost is and tells him that the coast is clear*]
I've only played the demo for Braid, not the full version, and I also think that the way it's structured makes it very successful. There's no need to be stuck - you could just run straight to the exit on the other side and keep on going if you wanted to. (Which is what I did. :))
I'd like to see more games like Braid. The atmosphere created by the music and graphics is very good, also.
Excellent stuff lads :o
Absolutely delighted with feedback. Keep 'em comin'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just an update,
so far I have some members of Cyanide Studios submitting opinions along with some of the development team working on the second title in the witcher games series.
Any other companies want to help out?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All submissions are greatly appreciated, thank you.
Quote from: Ghost on Wed 15/07/2009 01:16:55
Braid is a very good game indeed, but I wouldn't call it an adventure game. It's a genre mix borrowing from adventure as well as jump and run, but at the core it is a puzzle game that focusses on one core mechanic, time manipulation. In a puzzle game, the puzzles are the main challenge and the main reason for playing the game, while in an adventure, the story is more prominent. Yes, there IS a story in Braid, and it's even one that encourages discussion, but I wouldn't say people play Braid for the philosophical statements. They play it for the clever puzzles.
A classic adventure game, at least as I see it, can throw in all sorts of puzzles but always, really always needs a plot to tie it together, as well as fleshed-out characters. In addition to that, puzzles usually are much more varied (though, of course, they can be reduced to a couple of genres too).
You could take all the puzzles out of, say, Gabriel Knight and would still have a few memorable characters and an interesting episode of crime/mystery fiction. Do the same with Braid, and all you're left with is a loading screen.
[*takes cover*]
To me puzzles are integral to adventure games. Much more to adventure games like Myst than Gabriel Knight, but even in that one there would be very little fun left if you'd take the puzzles out.
Braid has varied puzzles from what I've seen of it - they are not all based on the same or similar mechanics as World of Goo for example is. Many times it's not even about modifying the time flow.
I still think Braid is pretty much an adventure game disguised as a platform game. If the plot is scarce in it, it may be described as an adventure game with not much of a plot, but the core game mechanics are the same (or almost the same).
Quote from: Ascovel on Thu 16/07/2009 06:17:28
I still think Braid is pretty much an adventure game disguised as a platform game. If the plot is scarce in it, it may be described as an adventure game with not much of a plot, but the core game mechanics are the same (or almost the same).
Not really. Braid is a platform game with puzzle elements.
Yes both sort of use Puzzles to drive the game and narrative forward, but that does not make Braid an adventure game. Games with puzzles do not make that game an adventure game.
Just because it has a more fleshed out story than most platform games (albiet still one that kinda feels tacked on), it is still a platform game. Platform games are allowed to have a storyline, not just adventure games.
The core selling mechanic is to be able to run and jump. The time travel elements are just an extension on this, and as it is, it would only really work in a platform game format since an adventure game doing the same thing would be too slow and an 1st/3rd person view would be far too difficult to perform the required actions.
It's pointless saying 'oh but it does this, so it must be an adventure game' when the core gameplay relies on mechanics from platform games.
Also, Ghost, if you took the puzzles from a traditional adventure game, you would be left with a badly paced story and not a fun game. The Story is the reward for solving puzzles. And this is why we play games. Rewards. It is why the added rewards that come with console achievements are so popular. People like being told they are great. People like that feeling of achievement.
Although I agree with you Layabout, about Braid not being an adventure,
I have to say that in some cases the story/plot of an adventure game can keep a player glued to the screen and the puzzles are just in the way, stalling time.
When playing the MI series (all of them) I remember clicking everything just to ear something funny by Guybrush. Gabriel Knight's 3rd instalment did the same, the story and characters were very mature and had a relation between them. In that case, the Sidney puzzles (a computer used to solve/investigate stuff) although hard, were interesting and logical.
In the old days what I really wanted to see was the next room and its graphics, the colours, the mood. Every time a puzzle showed up I just went on with it, specially the KQ puzzles were you'd find rings under trees and swords lying around for no reason. You just had to search for a suitable place to use them and puzzle solved.
So, to conclude, I value story/characters more than puzzles. It's only my opinion but since the original thread is a research project then I hope it counts for something.
Having not played Braid, I cant really comment on it, but I would say that the exploring and discovering is the driving force behind my gameplaying. That being the case, I find it hard to think that a game where you can skip half the action could be an adventure game, as to me, an adventure game is a story unlocked by interacting with characters/the environment around you.
Well, taking the interactivity out of any game would ruin the game aspect, that's true. I wasn't too specific in what I wrote, and I tend to think pretty much black-and-white somethimes, but do you really think that the core story of any adventure game you care to name would be automatically bad just because it would no longer be a good game? Would Discworld Noir made a bad story? Would Beneath A Steel Sky read boring? I doubt it. The story may be the reward but it's also ideally the origin. Adventure games started as interactive fiction, and I think they still have a lot in common. When people want to tell a story as a game, they made a classic adventure game.
I am aware that that's only my opinion, and a pretty rose-glasses one, though ;)
I definitely agree, Adventure Games are the best way to tell a story through a computer game, and that's probably the reason why I've never gotten around to making an AGS game.
When it comes to storeys, I'm a great receiver, crap creator. ;)
I was going to write pretty much the same as Radiant already did.
I think that people nowadays want to jump into the action of the game super-fast, have ultra-mega gfx effects and so on. Gaming nowadays seems to me a bit....fast-paced? Look at hardcore simulators, they are much more rare than they used to be not a long time ago. People don't have time to study manuals, they want good-looking simplicity. Total simplicity, no guessing what to do. Gilbert's quote nicely says this, they want just get good at doing whatever they are told to.
In adventrues, it's about the story. Gamers nowadays don't really want good stories, they want anything but the story, be it graphic effects, movie-like cutscenes that make more than half of the game, anything.
Playing an adventure game is like reading a book, it's a little bit more interactive book than a printed one. Now how many people nowadays read books?
:o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
Fantasic, loads of great info and viewpoints. Absolutely delighted with input so far.
(All viewpoints and info will referenced to their respective owners so no ideas will be stolen but just referenced to, so to speak)
Thank you.
Any one else want to contribute?
Note: DEADLINE for all submissions to be taken into consideration for research paper that will be added here for your viewing is the 4th of August. Thank you.
Quote from: Oliwerko on Sat 18/07/2009 12:51:31
I was going to write pretty much the same as Radiant already did.
I think that people nowadays want to jump into the action of the game super-fast, have ultra-mega gfx effects and so on. Gaming nowadays seems to me a bit....fast-paced? Look at hardcore simulators, they are much more rare than they used to be not a long time ago. People don't have time to study manuals, they want good-looking simplicity. Total simplicity, no guessing what to do. Gilbert's quote nicely says this, they want just get good at doing whatever they are told to.
In adventrues, it's about the story. Gamers nowadays don't really want good stories, they want anything but the story, be it graphic effects, movie-like cutscenes that make more than half of the game, anything.
Playing an adventure game is like reading a book, it's a little bit more interactive book than a printed one. Now how many people nowadays read books?
That is such a rash generalisation. I totally disagree with it. While there are some gamers who couldn't care less about story, there are many who cherish the story. Games like Fallout 3, Bioshock et al are highly praised by both critics and gamers for providing a great story experience. Different types of games have different storytelling techniques.
Everything we humans do is about stories. When I ask you how your week was, I am asking you to tell me a story. When someone plays the sims, they want a visual story where they can use the imaginarium part of their brain to fill in the blanks. Every game we play tells a story, either through the game story, or through the events that occur and the imagination or playing technique of the player. We want to be told a story every time we talk to another person, online and offline. We want to be told a story every time we play a game, whether it be the designers story, or the story we experinece through playing the game.
While the audience for adventure games may not be as big or the same audience as say an FPS, there is still people who buy adventure games (SoMI is number 1 on steam, ToMI was number 1 last week). Why yes, Monkey Island is a very well known name, but they are also done very right. One of the highest anticipated games on PS3, Heavy Rain is an adventure game. Yes it does involve action, but the core elements are exploration, clue-gathering and puzzle solving. There are also a shitload of adventure games on the DS.
Rant time.
The reason games are often (more often than not) left with a poor quality story is due to the attitude of the games industry (of which some of your comments don't help) that gamers don't care that much about the story, they are more interested in shooting things and fast paced action. Most stories in games are tacked on 6 months before the release of a game. Why sure, a core idea about what the game is about and the characters and enemies is drafted in the initial design, but scriptwriters are not involved in this process. This basically means the writer has to write the game's story around the elements designed and created for the game. Writing a story around pre-defined action and characters is a very difficult task. Thus most game stories are and feel tacked on. If the industry were to involve writers from the initial pre-production phase of the games development, stories would be infinitly better and more integrated into the whole package. Most adventure games rely on the story, which is written in the pre-production phase, the game is designed around the story, thus you have a better integrated story. It may sound nuts to do it this way, since stories are there to give direction, but it's how it is. You wouldn't film a movie without a script would you. (shut up m0ds.) :p
@Layabout: I can always be swayed by convinving rants/arguments ;) . You have a point, and I think I can agree to a lot of it. And you are right, I do tent to generalise.
But generalised or not, I still think my opinion is valid too, in a way.
When you really want to entertain your audience with a story- please notice: this is the only thing you want!- you're going to write a book.
When you want to make a game and see the story as very important, you will not make, to name an example, Peggle. Peggle is an entertaining game indeed. It has eye candy, thrill, everything. But it isn't made by someone who wanted to tell a story.
What I try to get across is a reason to make a game, I think. A story-teller will always favour making adventure games. An entertainer will favour other, more easily rewarding games. And obviously both of them can create a very immersive, rich and interesting plot, but with a different motivation to do so.
Great contributions keep 'em comin'
8)
Adventure games aren't coming back only in Germany Ghost :) I can see the same thing happening in Poland. Also look at the Monkey Island remake released not so long ago. And the new Monkey Island by Telltale.
My opinion is that people slowly get bored with "sandbox" type games. Furthermore graphics are becoming less important. Can you remember the days of Tomb Rider when everyone was excited MOSTLY about graphics? With each year we waited for visuals to get better and better. Now everyone is used to "good looking" games and it doesn't impress as much as it used to. People tend to give more attention to gameplay again. And that's a good thing :)
When it comes to making adventure games, they indeed need lots of people working on them, lot's of animations and voice acting and it all means a big amount of money. Nowadays when piracy over torrents takes away over 80% of game development companies income expensive projects are very risky. Only big companies can allow themselves to invest in an expensive project. However even those companies don't want to invest in something which isnt popular nowadays. They tend to pick the newest trends in gaming like parkour and jumping from building to building because they know they will make profit out of it. And who would buy adventure games? They're not "hot" right now. But I think they will return soon because players look more and more into gameplay and story...
I don't think the reason is as cynical as it has been made it out to be so far. I think it's that it's difficult to make a good adventure game. It isn't difficult to make a good first-person shooter. Even for someone not affected by nostalgia, DOOM is still an acceptable first-person shooter with atmosphere, varied level design, et cetera. It requires a lot of time and energy to overcome the not-fun elements inherent in the adventure game paradigm--getting stuck on a poorly-conceived puzzle, walking around looking for things that you cannot find, et cetera--to make a good dame. Adventure's hook is supposed to be how big a part the story plays, but it's gotten to the point where things like First-Person Shooters (Half-Life 2) and sandboxy type games have just become better at it. Horror and Humor is what we still have adventure around for, and we may soon find some genre more suited to them in time.
That said, when the time is invested to make a good adventure game, it's generally a pretty damn good game, like Star Trek: Judgment Rites.
BJ the movie had a script, kinda! Laya-douche! >:( :P
I see your point, Layabout, and partly agree with that. Maybe I got carried away by taking only people around here into consideration, that might be the reason why I generalised it like that. Still, most people I know fall to that category. Maybe it's only local, I don't know.
The interesting thing is - why the game industry thinks that gamers don't care about stories, while they actually do?
Brilliant and interesting points,
Keep it up.
Thanks. :D
Having spent most of my early life reading(Home Education all the Way), I have always loved a good story.
I suck at action. Every time it gets tense, I get tense. Very tense.
Because I suck at action, and it's normally impossible to lose in an adventure game, they are good for my ego.
Therefore I put forward a very farfech'd(excuse PokePun) theory:
-People these days spend more time playing video games than they used to.
-Proportionally they spend less time reading a good book.
-Because they spend less time slowly reading through the story, they learn to want ACTION!!!
-Because they want "ACTION!!!" they have less patience for the slow Action that comes in your typical AG.
-When they get restless in the early parts of the game, they think they don't like the game.
-.....And that's as far as I've got so far...
Anyway, I like action too, I just can complete Half-Life on easy... ;D
As much as I'm a youngling with an itchy trigger finger, if a game has a rich environment WORTH exploring then I think a lot of people would enjoy it, even if it was slow paced.
Take The Neverhood, an adventure game I played recently. I loved that world. I read the 38 screen in-game backstory and interacted with everything. Everything about it just pulled me in and I was happy to spend time just enjoying where I was.
Slow games are fine if there's something worth sticking around for.
I'm not disagreeing. ;)
I wasn't challenging you, just giving my 2 cents :)
I may be biased though, since I preferred the non-combat sections of Half Life and its sequel.
There are many factors for the decline to be sure, but there's two big factors the way I see it
First, The rise of the First Person Shooter (FPS)
Adventure games were in their heyday when Doom came on the scene. People were just "wowed" by it (and Castle Wolfenstein); nothing like it existed. This was the first time you quickly move about in a 3D enviroment, and people were taken in by the "eye candy" and "3D ness" (for lack of a good word). It was revolutionary. This led the way to more and more FPS games, and the market just shifted to making these instead of adventure games. Game makers felt that this is what people wanted.
Second, The rise of the cheap PC (spurred by the rise of the internet)
People need to realize that during the heyday of adventure games, PCs were not as common place. Nearly everyone has a PC (or Mac) in their home today, but back then only those that really needed to have a PC had one. People didn't buy PCs specifically for gaming as much as they do today. People that had them were largely were for running a business or something related to business. My opinion is that this subset (those that had a PC) of the population was more educated than the population at large. In other words, the PC game market then was made up of more "cerebral" people; the same kind of people that would enjoy "puzzles" more. As PCs got cheaper, and as the internet came about, more and more people started buying and using PCs. Thus the PC game market grew, but now the industry was focused on making more FPSes now. Adventure Games never went completely away, as that same "cerebrial" group was still there, it just accounted for a smaller percentage of the market now. I think many publishers mistakenly viewed this as a decline in interest in adventure games, so they made less and less of them as a result.
There has been a resurgence of Adventure games in the past several years, which I have been grateful for. I think the industry is finally starting to realise that the interest in them never really left.
Here's some other articles that may help you.
http://www.nowgamer.com/news/305/playstation-blamed-for-adventure-game-decline
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/NelsAnderson/20090505/1307/Without_Readability__The_Decline_of_Adventure_Games.php
http://thenewgamer.com/content/archives/the_decline_of_adventure_civilization
http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,318
Absolutely brilliant, thank you for all useful information and articles. :o
All contributions and help are invaluable.
Thank you.
Appreciated, keep 'em com in' ;)
Quote from: Greg Squire on Fri 24/07/2009 22:24:00
My opinion is that this subset (those that had a PC) of the population was more educated than the population at large.
Not to call you out specifically but I never understood this mentality. In fact I hate it.
When I played adventure games, I was a little kid. My dad had a PC because he was interested in technology and he was certainly not anymore "cerebral" than any other middle class father out there.
My brother and I played Space Quest games, King's Quest games, all Lucasarts Games, Under a Killing Moon series, Gobliiins series, etc etc
When Quake came out I was obsessed with it. I played it all the time along with Mega Team Fortress, holy crap did I love that game. Then I started playing other FPS games like Blood and Duke Nukem 3D and loved them too. I also played a LOT of Nintendo and SNES games like Mario World and Street Fighter.
I think you'd find it a tough argument to suggest that I got less intelligent as my gaming got more broad. I'd still rather play an average shooter or platforming game than an average adventure game.
I'm not suggesting you feel this way but through talking to other people it seems they usually put the "blame" for the downsizing of what we consider adventure games on other genres. Imagine if puzzle games "killed" the adventure genre, what would the argument be then? "Cerebral people got too smart and killed the genre!" It's easy to look at a shooting game and just demonize it as a lower class of a game but that's so unfair as to be insulting.
Adventure games also have serious problems "melting" into other games, you occasionally see lone features from adventure games in today's blockbusters but never any true hybrids or evolutions of the genre.
For example, I can't say I've ever seen an adventure game that had an action sequence that wasn't, well, shit...
Point-and-click just becomes incredibly finicky when trying to quickly escape from somewhere or when trying to interact with a moving object.
Dialog trees require extensive testing and designing in order to work with all possible circumstances (has the player already said something, has he retrieved a valuable item or performed an interaction that warrants a change in dialog options etc) plus they end up being static, although from what I've seen of the game Mass Effect it does appear to have created the true successor: real-time dialog options.
Basically, like the older number-crunching RPGs of yesteryear, their time has come. They'll probably live on for years, maybe even decades, as a niche market but I can't imagine them ever truely taking off again.
Cheers ;)
Keep em rollin' in.
Quote from: MrColossal on Fri 24/07/2009 23:00:34
Quote from: Greg Squire on Fri 24/07/2009 22:24:00
My opinion is that this subset (those that had a PC) of the population was more educated than the population at large.
Not to call you out specifically but I never understood this mentality. In fact I hate it. ... I think you'd find it a tough argument to suggest that I got less intelligent as my gaming got more broad. I'd still rather play an average shooter or platforming game than an average adventure game.
I don't mind being called out on this. I figured someone would. ;) First I must say that I don't think any one person became less intelligent as gaming got more broad. Individuals don't usually get dumber as time goes on. My opinion is that the "average education" of computer users "as a whole" went down, because computers became cheaper and easier to use. In other words the computer was now usable by less educated individuals. People sometimes forget how hard it was to use a PC back then. If you've ever used DOS extensively, then you'll know what I'm talking about. With DOS (by itself) there was no point-n-click interface, it was all command line driven. Ever tried to get a soundblaster card working in DOS? It was a pain. This was not a computer for the masses yet. Installing programs wasn't as easy then as it is now. There was a lot more training involved in using a computer back then. The classic LucasArts adventure games were DOS based (though they may have been launched from Windows 2 or 3, which was a "shell" on top of DOS). So that's why I have that opinion. Now with that said, I do believe that the bigger factor was the genre change to FPSes. (That's why I listed it first).
Still, the Commodore was a huge success as far as personal computing goes and my family had one of them, I played many games on it, mostly arcade games, mostly pirated games and mostly bad games. I also played Zak McKracken on it. My father salvaged a PC out of the throw away pile at his office and brought it home and then we had a PC. I remember DOS and I remember the Commodore and I played every adventure game I could get my hands on and I was a kid that could not understand what Load "*",8,1 meant, all I knew was it loaded the game.
I just can't understand this reasoning I guess. It's too... Elitist for me and it passes the blame so easily. The idea that smart people played games until dumb people ruined it for the smart people just doesn't sit well.
Oh well, I'll end it here!
eric
I don't think that's what Greg means, and personally, I see the merit in what he's saying. Back when computing was far more complicated, people were learning in order to use these machines, coding things that are considered simple by today's standards but were highly complex and very select back then. The industry had little competition, few people were really, really talented with programming...I could go on. The simplification of the pc and the enrichment of its user interface allowed a greater audience to get up to speed with technology that, before, was overly complicated to many people and not worth the bother. One way to look at it is that the average person can sit down at a windows 98 and figure out quite a lot in a short time without help (ooh, start button - what's that do?) but many people today would sit down at a Commodore 64 and be completely lost at the blue screen. You could argue that this is only a matter of user interfaces evolving, but then you'd have to admit that user interfaces reduce the complexity of operating the machine by providing shortcuts and pre-made applications to do things you used to have to code (or boot up) yourself. DirectX is the single greatest example of a software that simplified computing, both for developers and end users. Imagine having to code your own joystick driver in assembly (I've done it, it's a pain); now imagine having to code one for every popular joystick on the market and then add to that having to make a sound driver for every popular brand just so your game works for most people. Or all the crap you used to have to finagle in the DOS setup for games with sound channels and IRQs that kids today don't even think or worry about!
Yes but I don't see how that equates to people being more cerebral and wanting to play adventure games. Computers used to be annoying to use therefore adventure games were popular?
I quote' After a while of clicking around it can get boring thats where 3d games come in'
If used mention me ;D :D :)
I'd say that the simplest answer would be that because adventure games were the only worthwhile games around for many years, by the time a new kind of good game came in, people were ready for a change.
Unfortunately, that change lasted long enough for allot of people to forget about the ancestral genre of point-and-click.
I'd say that for a long time, the "3D-change" was a very welcome option to most gamers.
All submissions will be referenced to their respective owners and a link will be added to the discussion submissions from this community and others.
Great submissions and intel keep 'em coming.
Cheers :)
As with most things, I think there are a lot of factors that need to be taken into consideration, although simple explanations can be given...
Changing market - Obviously there are more PCs around, more people using them and broader range of interests - with the game industry targetting an exponentially larger customer base they aim firmly for what they see as middle-ground options and safe tactics by following genres that, by median, sell the best.
Ironically, the larger market is also the exact same thing helping AGs come out of the doldrums now, because as the market grows larger, smaller niche markets emerge within that become very profitable, and so a company like TellTale can be feasible.
Difficult to design - Adventure games, in spite of being seen sometimes as a lesser genre because of the passive gameplay, are in general harder to make than a lot of games from a design point of view. They contain by far more dialogue than any genre aside from RPGs, the spotlight is right there on the story, a feasible reason is needed to resolve most conflict peaceably and work out alternatives where necessary, there aren't any hard-and-fast conventions for interfaces and structure, and lot of thought needs to go into those damn puzzles. And if you want the user immersed into a game you need to program for a lot of possibilities.
With all the factors in design it's very easy to make a poor adventure game, as shown by a lot of people who have managed it. This goes hand in hand with the fact that these factors also make adventure games costlier than most other games - because players will have a lot of time to sit there and look at it graphics and music are meant to be brilliant, you need a good voice cast to perform the 10,000 odd+ lines of dialogue and other such diversions to create a true classic. It's telling, for example, that Blizzard, one of the richest and most successful studios around, decided simply to cancel their near-finished game than release it at a time when they didn't sell. Whatever AGs are, they are not cheap.
(Combined with this is a lot of blunders trying to translate all of this into a 3D environment at a time when the PC technology to do so was quite limited, which set the AG back a long way in the eyes of publishers..)
Personality driven - With their emphasis on plot and character, adventure games are highly personality-driven products. When people talk of the 'golden age' games, odds are they know the designer. We all know Monkey Island was Ron Gilbert's baby, that Leisure Suit Larry was driven by Al Lowe's unique brain and that nobody but Tim Schafer could create Day of the Tentacle. However, PC gaming was becoming big business at the time, and big business men and philosophies took over, to whom the individual is often of lesser importance - this had some bad effects on ongoing series.
Space Quest V and VI are widely seen as inferior entrants in the series - one was made without the knowledge of co-creator Scott Adams, and the latter he was brought in purely to straighten out the disaster left behind after a co-worker quit the project. Plenty of other series have had similar controversies, especially since game companies themselves retain the rights to a series and the characters within rather than the actual creator. Notably the recent Leisure Suit Larry games have proven unpopular with... virtually everyone.
So I guess I agree with most people. Expensive games mishandled by executive bungling in a constantly changing marketplace - which gets misinterpreted by a overly sensationilist press as a 'dead genre' and becomes a sort of self-perpetuating myth for a good six years creating financial poison.
I think AGs is a genre where all departments need equal attention to detail and funding. You can't cut back on anything, which makes them expensive to develop. Every aspect of the game is important. I've played tons of Adventures where parts of it just didn't cut it and made the game less joyful to play, because I was constantly thinking: the animation is bad, the voice acting sucks etc.
Everything needs to be brilliant for the game to shine. There's a lot of time for the player to notice it's flaws. A fast paced FPS can get away with a lot in my opinion.
In the days of yore there was no particular need for a game to include speech, ultra-high resolution or surround sound, no-one knew about these things. And in my opinion that was a good thing, because the player had to use their own imagination to fill in the blanks.
Perhaps that made those games even better than many of todays modern efforts.
Cheers, great stuff. :o
Keep 'em rollin'
The deadline for submissions has past.
Thank you for all insight comments.
Much appreciated.
Roberta Williams' failures are in no way her own fault, but are due to the fact that you, dear reader, are an uncultured dimwit. (http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/374.html)
I hope we'll see the final project? This was one fun discussion, for all the lack of trains and religion.
@Ghost, yes definitely.
@Ultra Mangus,
thank you for article link, extremely helpful.
Quote from: virtualpsycho on Wed 05/08/2009 12:04:07
thank you for article link, extremely helpful.
Seriously? It's just a guy ranting. :)
I really only posted it in reply to some of the arguments on the previous page.
But if you actually found it helpful, then you're welcome, and I'm glad I could help.
If you're interested (and if I'm not too late) here's another one. (http://zeus.mirtna.org/blog/2008/05/why-pc-games-no-longer-sell-hint-its.html)
It's not directly about Adventure games, more about how PC games are losing out to consoles in general, but seeing as the PC is the spiritual home of point-n-click (there have been console ports of some games, but they rarely were as well received as their PC counterparts), you could see it as having a knock-on or, if you prefer, trickle-down effect.
Good luck with your paper VirtualPsycho.
Please send us /me a copy. (It will be much appreciated).
@Ultra Mangus, thanks alot.
Sometimes a well expressed rant reveals the most pertenant information.
Articles are fine to keep notfiying as it allows me refine and strengthen evidence from literature based sources.
This research study will hopefully help to some extent to uncover and organise the collection of reasons attributing to the decline, in order to correct a problem's roots must be uncovered and presented to guarantee success.
I am finished accepting opinions because they are primary research(from a person). Secondary research is literature based. The literature research is ongoing until all possible views are catered for or repeated. Opinions while being important to my primary research section, they go on forever and time is not a luxury I have to split into two (for both literature and opinion).
Thanks again. ;)
@LUniqueDan, Absolutely
I will be posting it on this site once finished. Hopefully it can contribute to the resolution of the constant debate about the decline and to also ensure these mistakes if avoidable can be avoided. :)
As with books, genres exist. Some may prove more popular but it doesn't mean they all can't co-exist and make money. People need variety. That's why genres exist. Depending on who you ask, adventure games are making a comeback or is simply a niche genre. I want to know if someone can get industry figures to enlighten us all.
I am optimistic that adventure games can be profitable and most gaming companies know that there is more potential for profit in "casual-gaming" that are more accessible to more people... I mean people other than the testosterone-fueled 13-35 age bracket [Think Guitar Hero (social aspect), The Sims (simulation), etc.]. Beyond the PC for adventure gaming, I think the Nintendo DS is a great device for it. I've enjoyed quite a few commercial titles. The one that stood out for me is "Hotel Dusk" and "Another Code" which are very familiar to adventure gamers because the stylus mimics a mouse but also make use of the system's unique hardware like the mic and dual screen for some more varied game play. The Capcom series "Ace Detective" are popular aren't they?
But the one that outshines them all is "Golden Sun" published by Capcom which is a fantastic RPG with an expansive world and story and puzzle solving is the main mechanism of advancement.
And finally, as some other posters have commented, it's clear that Telltale is thriving. Instead of making one huge adventure game, they're serializing the series like a comic or TV series.... And they're priced right too for each episode. Or a consumer can just buy "an entire season/box set" and save a couple of dollars.
It's kind of addicting. It's like a subscription to cheap Harlequin romance novels. You devour one after another. Kind of like a cheap thrill bc you likely won't necessarily read er play the same work again.
Disclaimer: I am not saying that either Telltale and Harlequin's works are "cheap" in and of themselves. Telltale Games is a great production studio and I'm proud of Harlequin because it's Canadian and is a well known publishing house the world over. Wish Drawn & Quarterly is as successful. :P
To my shame UM, it took me a paragraph or so to realise that rant wasn't serious. But I was laughing before that point, so all was well.
Quote from: Jared on Tue 25/08/2009 13:09:16
To my shame UM, it took me a paragraph or so to realise that rant wasn't serious. But I was laughing before that point, so all was well.
If you haven't already, take a look around the site. The guys that wrote Old Man Murray also did the dialogue for Portal and Psychonauts.
Here's another cool AG one, (http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html) which admittedly I should have mentioned earlier to help virtualpsycho out. Sorry about that, vp.
Here is the complete dissertation, thank you to all contributors.
Much appreciated.
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mwztoz2mmtk (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mwztoz2mmtk)
8)
Nice job mate.
Hope you do well. :)
@Layabout
Cheers.
So do i.
@ Everyone
Just to clarify, all the information presented was based upon the readings and responses received. Responses have been added to text in appendices and texts were referenced in both references section and bibliography.
Thank you.
Opinions were not used at all as that would jeopardise the strength of the research.
Thank you to all the participants and contributors for this study once again.....
Just a late and final update.
The final result I received for this study and dissertation individually was 68%. Two percent away from a first. Was very delighted with it, thank you once again.
Take care.
Could have shortened that up for ya!
"Over time people became bored with what was essentially identical gameplay across all brands, companies and individual titles. With the emergence of more sophisticated computers the potential for different forms of gameplay attracted consumers and ultimately the stale unadapted adventure game genre would be left to sit in a corner and talk to itself, slowly growing more and more insane until the only people that would play them are the people that make them. That, would be AGS..."
Dissertation = Finished
You probably would have gotten extra points for using less words, too! =P
Yeah sure you could, the markers would have loved that. :-\
You never know, until you try... ;D
Seriously though, nice work!
Thanks man. Its good to hear. :=
The creation of the project itself sucked but I still enjoyed the subject matter. After looking it and my other documents over I only realised then how much effort I put into it. A good thing to look back on.