Adventure Games Design Research Project - Need Opinions - Thanks ;)

[virtualpsycho]

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.

[voh]

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.

[virtualpsycho]

Thank you, for info. Keep em comin'

Cheers  8)

[Galen]

That and because so many adventure games boil down to using random inventory object on everything you can possibly find.

[virtualpsycho]

Thank you, for info. Keep em comin' 

[passer-by]

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.

[virtualpsycho]

Keep em comin'

[LUniqueDan]

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?

[Ghost]

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.

[virtualpsycho]

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)

[TheJBurger]

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.

[Igor Hardy]

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.

[Ghost]

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".

[Radiant]

The 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.

[Layabout]

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.

[miguel]

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.

[Ghost]

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.

[Igor Hardy]

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.

[TheJBurger]

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.

[Igor Hardy]

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.