GTD: What's wrong with adventure games?

[Bionic Bill]

GarageGothic:
Future topics for discussion will certainly be more specific. This first thread was my way of polling for different topics to hit. After next week's, I'll probably pass the question posing to someone else who will pass it to someone else, that way these discussions don't rely on a particular board member for existence.

Another thing that rubs me the wrong way in adventure games is that if the main character isn't an empty shell of a character, then the "personality" of the main character must be investigative. I am not an investigative person, most people aren't. If someone handed me a note that said, "Meet me in the park at 9pm," I sure as heck wouldn't go to the park and meet the person. If I thought there might be some kind of conspiracy somewhere, I really honestly wouldn't care. The average protaganist, if s/he has any motivation, usually has to be a detective-like character: an investigative reporter, archaeologist, police officer, or just insatiably curious for no good reason. I always wondered what would happen in an adventure game if the protaganist refused to be investigative.

[GarageGothic]

Bionic Bill: I'm glad to hear that. Maybe we should compile a list of possible topics though, just like they do for the Background Blitz competition?

GinnyW: An example from Police Quest 1:

Spoiler

After following a car containing a possibly armed suspect for a while with the sirens turned on, he finally pulls over. You radio for backup (otherwise you'll be shot while trying to arrest him). While waiting, you look at his licence plates and contact dispatch for an ID. You backup arrives. You load your gun (or check that it's loaded), exit the car and draw the gun. You command the suspect (by text parser) to "get out". As he starts walking towards you, you tell him "lie down". You walk up to him, cuff him and search him, finding, among other possessions, a firearm. You read him his rights. You ask him to "stand", and put him in the back seat of the car. Before leaving the scene, you open the trunk of his car using his keys, finding some drugs. You also check the interior of the car and discover a number of fake IDs along with a little black book in his glove compartment. Your backup says he'll take care of the evidence while you drive the suspect to jail.

[close]

As you see, there's not a single puzzle in the whole scene. You just follow proper police procedure.

Can it be done outside the realm of job simulation? Certainly. I think The Dig is an excellent example (ok, so the ARE astronauts, but they're not doing typical astronaut things). It's all about being in a situation and doing whatever would be natural under those conditions. You're stuck on a planet. What are the natural things to do? Explore, try to interact with the strange alien machines you find. Try to help your comrades when they get in trouble. See?
The exact opposite of this are those games where you're just bumbling your way through, only knowing that you did something right because an animation plays or because new locations are opened up. Larry 2 is probably the worst example of such a game (I know, lots of people love it, I don't).

[Ginny]

Yes, I see what you mean. I too of course don't like it when the player just does whatever, and knows he did something right just because of the graphical elemts in the game.
All should be in context.

What I am saying though, that within that context, within the actions you preform, there can be puzzles of traditional styles, such, for example, you are stuck on a planet as you said, and you invetigate some sort of machine, so you try to make it function, or understand what it does. This is in general a pretty typical adventure puzzle, fully in context.
Bad puzzles are a problem in games. Good puzzles aren't, on the contrary, they are part of the context and the story.

P.s. Yes, maybe we should combine a list.

BB: Now that's a good topic for discussion, albeit a little difficult though. But that's what makes it good!
Personally, I agree, in real life I am definetly not an investigative, daring person. I wouldn't go through some portal just cause some weird guy tells me I'm a shifter and there's another world, though I think I might believe him just because I'd want to, hehe. (this is TLJ).

In GF however, Manny isn't all that daring either. Spoilers:

Spoiler

Why does he say he'll blow the lid off the DOD? Mostly because it's his ionly way out. Why does he agree to get Sal the eggs? Once again, it's his only choice.
He does become more heroic later on, but he has fallen in love with Meche, so he has a good reason I suppose, plus helping al those people Hector stole tickets from.

[close]

However, if we portrayed in a game someone who isn't at all adventurous or daring or investigative, then to make the game actually interesting IMO, we would have to make sure he got into certain situattions where he wouls be compelled to do something.
I actually had an idea for a game like this a long time ago, though for some reason I wanted it in 3D, and wanted it to be really detailed to portray the atmosphere. So anyway, the idea was (and is, who knows, I might make it someday. hehe) that you play a totally 'boring' unadventureous guy, who receives a strange ltter, and throws it away. More strange things start to happen and he is having nightmares, but he does nothing, investigates nothing. I hadn't thought much of what happens later on, but he is caught in dangerous situations, and slowly his personality changes, he becomes more curious, etc..

If I see something interesting, I will check it out, since I am quite curious. but I'm not daring. And yet, that is why I enjoy playing daring protagonists. Games for me are sometimes a way to escape into a different, more interesting place, with no risk involved, and it opens up a side in me which is more daring and adventurous. If in games, you enjoy bein daring and doing things you wouldn't do in real life, then there is definetly a more adventurous side to you. At least, i think so.

[MachineElf]

The protagonist in Slacker Quest wasn't adventurous at all and probably hated the whole thing. Bert was just a mad old man. Hm, I seem to have this thing for non-adventurous characters

Well, whatever the player does, is it puzzles or just general exploring or doing his job, it mustn't go against the nature of the game and the character and everything around should show this.
I just played through Simon 2 and I wasn't really enjoyed. Story was ok, had a few twists, but the puzzles are awful. Had to search up a walkthrough and a lot of things still don't make sense. "Why?" is the general question throughout the game. A lot of backward puzzles, a lot of totally illogical things. The only thing that drove me to actually go through it was to see how the story developed and I probably wouldn't have cared unless I was an adventuregame fan.

Well, now the same things have been said over and over again...
Btw, what game are you refering to as GF?
(aaagh... all these abbrevations!)

[Barcik]

Btw, what game are you refering to as GF?

Grim Fandango.

[Ginny]

Yep, GF it is.
I thought it'd be easy to guess even if you didn't play it because sometimes I refer to it in it's full name.
Yes, I'm obsessed with it, I know .

Anyway, should we make a list of topics and then choose one to discuss in the next thread?

[GarageGothic]

I suggest that we create a seperate, possibly sticky, thread similiar to the Background Blitz suggestion list: http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?board=9;action=display;threadid=4466

Anybody who wants to can post a topic suggestion, and, if they feel like it, volunteer to host that discussion. Or you can volunteer to host a discussion suggested by others.
Topics that nobody care enough about to host will just be dropped. As for how to choose next week's topic, I think democracy is the easy but boring way - I'm afraid that it'll just lead to uncontroversial subjects. I'd much rather see whoever hosts that weeks discussion choose the topic - a topic they really care about - and then write a short, preferably provocative, essay on it to get the debate started.

So instead of choosing next week's topic, we should choose (or rather, let people sign up to be) next week's host.

[Bionic Bill]

Well, whether we get a sticky thread or not, for now passing the discussion leader position will be done by the previous week's discussion, uhh...leader. Maybe leader is too strong a word. "Starter" then. Whatever.

All that to say, I choose you GarageGothic, to pose something interesting for us to ponder, maybe something from this discussion that you want debated, maybe something entirely from your brain. Have fun and such. Just do it sometime in the next couple days, I say.

[GarageGothic]

"With great power comes great responsibility"

I'll see what I can come up with. It'll probably take me a few days, I'm kinda busy at the time. Monday at the earliest, maybe Tuesday.

[GarageGothic]

I'm sorry that I'm taking so long with this. But 1) I want to do it properly, as an example of how I think these discussion topics should be presented, and 2) I'm just really busy with my thesis, and this turned out to be more time consuming than I thought it would be.

I had hoped to start the discussion today, but it'll have to wait till tomorrow. Sorry about that. I can however reveal the topic, so you can start thinking about it. This time it's content related rather than technical:

Minority characters in adventure games

[Bionic Bill]

you are so fired.

[DGMacphee]

Maybe I should try.

This next topic is SUBTEXT AND SYMBOLISM IN ADVENTURE GAMES

What are your favourite examples from the commercial games?

How about examples of your own?

My favourite is the gun exchange between Manny and Meche in Grim Fandango:

"(Hands over the gun) Here. What's a relationship without trust, right?"

"True, a relationship without trust is like a gun without a bullet!"

[edmundito]

Maybe I should try.

This next topic is SUBTEXT AND SYMBOLISM IN ADVENTURE GAMES

What are your favourite examples from the commercial games?

How about examples of your own?

My favourite is the gun exchange between Manny and Meche in Grim Fandango:

"(Hands over the gun) Here. What's a relationship without trust, right?"

"True, a relationship without trust is like a gun without a bullet!"

but adventure games already have this. I think we should concentrate more on gameplay other than anything else because this is really why people are not playing them...  I'm still not too sure why; maybe they're not game enough .

[Las Naranjas]

Wasn't he asking for examples from the games that already had it though?

[Bionic Bill]

DG, I think the discussion topics should probably be a bit more narrow and a little more practical. We can recall symbolism, but really games are the worst example of this narrative device. We'd really need to look at literature, and that's probably something we can't cover here.

I can imagine GarageGothic's future-discussion actually making people change the way they approach design. I can also imagine an overly scholarly socio-economic analysis of game designers and the subconscious racial schema that result, which could be ignored by mostly everyone. Eh, maybe it wouldn't be. I can't imagine symbolism examples changing anything, but I could be wrong. Let your conscience be your guide, don't pee on the electric fence, etc.

[GarageGothic]

I'm not sure what's happening here. SHOULD I post my discussion topic or not (still needs some tweaking but should be ready within an hour or so)? And no, it's not a socio-economic analysis, although it IS in part descriptive (looking at older games), the main part consists of thoughts on representation, stereotyping and political correctness in regards to racial and sexual minorities, in part inspired by something rodekill said in a recent post: ”I actually made Earwig as an experiment. First I wanted to see if anyone would point out the fact that he wasn't a white kid (No one did, and most people I asked later said they didn't even notice).”

Edit: And I should add - I approach it taking interactivity into consideration. If I didn't, it might as well be about books or movies.

And by the way, DGMacphee is the MASTER of symbolism - his thoughts on the subject are really interesting and could certainly influence the future of AGS games.

[Bionic Bill]

Yes, post your topic I say. Not in this thread though, or else it will become unweildy. I think DG should take the next discussion.

[GarageGothic]

Ok, cool. I expect it to be posted within the next hour or two.

[DGMacphee]

* DGMacphee shrugs

I just saw the "You're are so fired" from BBS to GG and thought "Umm, maybe I should start some such thing".

But we can continue the Minority Character thing if everyone is happy with that.


Netmonkey: Not very many adventure games have this as it's a little difficult to implement.

For example, I'd like to see a demonstation of subtext and symbolism in a game like Phantasmagoria (which plays more like a soap opera than a piece of interative dramatic fiction).

BBS: I was also thinking about how we could better use the interactive environment in AGS to better the usage of symbolism and subtext -- That's probably more what you're after, I think.


Anyway, enough of my yappin' -- let's move on to GarageGothic's topic in the next post.

[gravyflood]

To be honest, I think games made in AGS are better than commercial ones.  The reason is that they can't wow the players with jazzy sound and impressive graphics most of the time, so they have to enrich the gameplay to compensate.  I also think that puzzles and story should be symbiotic in a game - that is, the story should bring about puzzles, and the puzzles should feed the story.