Adventure Games - What are they?

[Babar]

Yeah, of the (non-family) people I know, at least 5 are fond of adventure games (so much so that they wanted to exchange CDs with me to be able to play a few of the classics), and quite a few know about the games in a vague sort of way. Of course, I know some who don't even know what an RPG is....

[blueskirt]

I don't think adventure games need to be saved. Adventure games are quite possibly as alive as they will ever be. You can run SCUMMVM on pretty much anything, thanks to Telltale and other companies there are still some good adventure games being sold every years, adventure games took over the DS even if they are slightly more casual than the older ones, adventure games and interactive fiction are thriving on the indie scene... the sole thing that could make the adventure genre healthier than it is right now is if Telltale announced the production of Monkey Island 5 with the colaboration of Ron Gilbert.

If the genre doesn't seems as healthy as it was back in the days that's because the demographic changed. Adventure games and puzzles were popular back in the days because before the internet arrived only nerds owned computers. You had to like solving puzzles and brainteasers because getting a game to run in DOS was a puzzle in itself. Nowadays everyone and their moms own a computer, for the internet, drawing, chatting, work, school, video, music... the demographic changed and the market changed to suit this new demographic, and what was once one of the most popular genre has become a niche, but just because we are a smaller percentage, I don't think we are less numerous, and I don't think we need to spread the word or anything. At best you can make newer fans aware of the good old titles like Monkey Island, FOA and DOTT, and make older fans aware of indie adventure games and the better commercial titles of the recent years, but overall I think the genre is doing fine.

[GarageGothic]

But the thing is, the only reason that most of us got into adventure games is that they were the "in thing" when we were kids. If I was 10 years younger, I'd have probably grown up playing games like Quake and Halo, and I wouldn't really be interested in some quaint "adventure game".

You've got a good point - I remember trading adventure games (often lending boxed copies) with other kids in the schoolyard. Gaming on the PC was pretty much adventure games, and maybe a few simulator games, because everything else was shoddy ports of arcade or Amiga games that never played well with keyboard controls.

But another important factor, at least for me, was that adventures were some of the most sophisticated games of their day. Not only did they offer a strong story element, usually in the most cinematic ways current technology would allow. They also gave you a full word to explore, and to interact with it in any way you could think of (thanks to the parser) instead of just shooting or punching your way through the levels. They offered arcade mini games, not because it was a requirement of the genre, but because the added gameplay variety and often fit quite well into an action-filled narrative. That those mini games sometimes were lacking was rather a result of the technology of the day, and they were rarely much worse than contemporary action games on the PC.
Keep in mind that Sierra was always at the technological forefront. They were quick to take advantage of EGA, Adlib sound cards and later Soundblaster, VGA, scanned hand drawn graphics, digitized photos and video, CD-ROM and Full Motion Video. Today's hardcore adventure players seem to be running them on 5 year old machines, and any game with high hardware requirements is immediately met with suspicion and resentment.

If Sierra had gone on producing their Quest series in their original spirit (not deviations such as KQ8) they would most likely be producing sandbox games and MMORPGs today. And you know what? I honestly believe that if this had been a fluid development, fans of the original series would most likely be loving those genres.
Think about Police Quest, a world in which you can drive around a whole city, explore selected interior locations, engage in car chases and shootouts, and even play a poker mini game. How is this any different from the recent GTA games? At least personally, I find that those games come much closer to realize the potential I saw in the adventure genre back in the late eighties, than today's guess-the-designer's-mind inventory clickfests.

Sadly, market realities of the industry meant that companies like Sierra and LucasArts stopped developing the always advancing adventure genre. A few years later, certain smaller game developers realized that there was money to be made in this niche genre without too large investments. So they started churning out pale replicas of what the adventure games these people so fondly remembered used to look like in the genre's heyday. And adventure fans, they keep buying these mediocre products out of spite that the rest of the world has moved on.

Edit: Also, can't we please get rid of this silly genre tag that keep us so isolated from the rest of the gaming world, on our own misty little island full of puzzles to bash our heads against? I mean, seriously, a body of widely disparate games rigidly defined by the name of a spelunking simulator from the mid-seventies? At least the term "Doom clone" only lasted until Quake came along. I hear that the term "story games" is being now used to describe a category of games deriving from the hidden-object genre. Sounds good to me, I honestly hope that this genre gradually takes on more adventure-like elements, perhaps bringing something new to refresh the stale conventions, and becomes a more widely known term for this type of game.

[Buckethead]

Funny that you say so CJ as I'm about 10 years younger than, I have played games like Quake and Halo and and I'm a fan of next gen games of today. But I still like the adventure game genre. It's simple and enjoyable for me. 

[woot52]

to be 100% honest, I don't know anyone other than on the forum that knows what an adventure game is...