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Oooooh I'm so close to being done with mine... What's this talk about extensions?

I'm glad to hear about the Last of Us. There are lots of types of games with good plots or dialog or characters. They are out there. My question is, if you find, say, an FPS with many cliches worse than an adventure game with many cliches, why? Surely an adventure game has a much higher capacity for tedium. But then, someone good at playing an adventure game need not complete it in the fastest time or whatever. You don't have to be 'good' at adventure games to enjoy adventure games. Is that a possible part? Or is it the generally thoughtful nature of an adventure game? And also, why not be interested in making a 'thoughtful' and uncliched FPS? I guess that has more to do with familiarity with a genre anyway. That FPS thing's probably irrelevant.

Hopefully to clarify, the post itself (by the really great artist and writer J. Chastain) is not anti-adventure games, and neither am I. Her post is about how reactive Maniac Mansion is compared to what the genre certainly has the capacity to be, even very recently (which is what she's describing in the quote I used). How many endings are there in Maniac Mansion? How many characters are there who will do a thing other characters won't? How differently can you summarize different playthroughs? Why is a game that was made so long ago so much more interesting from a technical standpoint than the vast majority of 'pure' adventure games made now? Is a limited linear story necessary for an adventure game now, or has it just seemed to become that? Why might those elements seem unnecessary in a typical adventure game now? Unwieldy to code? Does that game exist as a 'proto-adventure game', like proto-punk music or something, before the typical 'rules of the genre' were codified? I mean, obviously not, right?

If you could play a game where every 'door' in the world was open, there were no puzzles, and you just walked around in this environment and had extensively coded dialogs with anyone you could talk to- intensely reactive and with lots of content based on lots of small things you've witnessed and other people you'd spoken to, would that not be an adventure game? Perhaps you're finding out about a mystery, but the game doesn't necessarily end if you figure it out, and you have no bearing on it- it happened a long time ago, maybe. But the graphics are beautiful and the writing is really good. With no puzzles. Is that an adventure game? And depending on who you talk to and how much you put off some people, some conversation topics are blocked off forever. You might come to one conclusion about the mystery on one playthrough and another on a different one, but it's all on you. And there's no 'good endings' or 'bad endings', there's no 'ending', you would just be interested enough to keep playing and lose interest either on your own or when the conversation well inevitably dries up of interesting exposition. Does a game have to tell you when it ends?

But then, you could make a similar game in the Fallout 3 engine, or modding Earthbound. So, you know, I'd say my original question is probably needless, because whether or not someone finds something fun is based very heavily on the player. A lot of other games rely on hand-eye coordination or speed to be fun and adventure games can seem very cerebral to me for taking most of that out of the equation, which still does not stop me from enjoying them. Here's a different question, then: do the standard tropes of adventure games detract from them becoming more widely experimental? Has most of everything been done? I see a lot of self-referentiality in games about the constraints of gameplay, but few actual attempts to break those constraints for the player. Are puzzles essential, and does the prevalence of one-linear-story-one-game games suggest that's what most people who like adventure games think adventure games are? Should every new game (especially by superfans of the genre) be doing something new with the format, or is it enough to just be excellently functional (i.e. a really good story and graphics but typical puzzles)? Or, even, am I missing all the experimental games?

I think the quote is a little irrelevant.  What's makes a platformer fun?  (Well I'm not really a fan of platformers, but anyway) - "Run around.  Jump.  Climb ladders.  Try not to get killed by monsters and big drops.  Collect coins."  When you just say what the basic components are, sure it sounds dull.  Sheet metal, moulded plastic, wheels, dampers, disc brakes and electronics sound dull.  If they've been put together into a Ferrari F40, suddenly they're not so dull.  (Don't moan if I've got the actual components of an F40 wrong, you know what I'm trying to say.)

Well, games like that or, like, for a much different example something like Super Hexagon, a lot of it just becomes tactile, impulse-based. I remember once discussing with someone the idea of listening to podcasts while playing games like Super Mario 64 or Mario Kart because you're not really thinking with words when you're playing those games and they were really surprised because they wouldn't be able to concentrate on both things. For a lot of people (and me) though, games like that turn into a coordination exercise. Meanwhile an adventure game is almost exclusively 'word thoughts', because you're thinking about what to do next and where to walk and how to figure out a puzzle. And typically there is one solution for the one problem, after which there is another problem with a single solution, and so on.

I'm not sure The Cave qualifies as an adventure game, but I agree mostly with your premise.

To me, the "use thing on a thing" ability made it an adventure game to me. Besides a few levers and pulleys there were relatively few pure 'platforming' puzzles or sections.

Planescape Torment and Mother 3 are up there for me with classic fiction, and I'm sure some pretentious asshole would love to come tell me I'm wrong, but I stick by that statement.

I love the Mother games so much, but even then I'm really just in love with the plot and a lot of the ideas as opposed to really loving menu-based combat or something. A friend actually just bought me Planescape Torment, I should play that soon!

Mainly, to me, there's a sort of game a lot of people are making in Twine where it's just getting to control when the player gets to read the next bit as opposed to giving the player any real choice. It can be great and enlightening, but it's obviously not the most impressive thing. To me, there's only so much separation from that to the linear narrative of an adventure game forcing you down that one track. But then that might actually just be a characteristic of narrative games in general, so I don't really know where that thought goes.

I really like what you said about them being sort of exploration-based Babar because that's probably the best way to put it. The biggest alternative I can imagine to rigorous narrative is just wide-open exploration.

This blogpost about Maniac Mansion by J. Chastain recently changed a lot of how I think about adventure games, the genre I just sort of let become my default favorite. I've spent a while not playing a lot of adventure games and I have to admit I don't play many console games either. The last adventure game I did play, ironically, was The Cave, on a friend's Xbox 360. And while I enjoyed that game enough to play it repeatedly, trying every character on, I was struck by the roteness of repeated gameplay in an adventure game. These are not necessarily games built to be played immediately after you just beat them (although the running-around aspect of The Cave maybe worsened it). Okay, trying to cut to the chase, this bit of that blogpost really stuck out to me:

Use item A on character B. Watch cutscene. Get item C. Walk to next room. Walk to next room. Combine item C with item D to create item E. Use item E on object F. Watch cutscene. This is a script on a drip feed. Your Rubber Chicken and your Crowbar and your Can Opener are keys that unlock doors within this prison world. The doors only lead to more rooms within the prison.

What exactly makes adventure games fun? I enjoy playing them, sure, but is there really 'fun' in their gameplay? Descriptions can be funny or interesting, I can enjoy dialog or the machinations of a plot or my choices resulting in a different ending (although even that's hard to integrate without making it pretty obvious where the cut-off choice is being made) but when it comes down to it aren't they just sort of multiple-choice-answer-sheet packets of art and plot? Is there such a thing as a fun adventure game with boring writing and bad graphics? Does this sound jaded? I don't really know, I'm just wondering about this thing I used to like a lot and still think I probably like a lot, but haven't really been able to investigate lately.

And then off the subject of whatever I think, like the blogpost suggests, is it really possible for you to feel like you're embodying a character when you play a game like this? Like you're not just controlling a little dude on a screen who says stuff or looks cool, but that maybe you have some emotional connection? I don't really know what I'm looking for here but I'm interested in some discussion, unless this stuff's been covered extensively.

This thread's pretty long! I was really surprised by people at all being surprised by Doug Tennapel being like this because he's been like this for a long time. I remember when I was 12 I got three of his graphic novels and they had so many cool drawings and ideas! And then, weirdly, a straw-man atheist protagonist who has an epiphany and believes in God by the end of the story. Odd!

A friend tells me there's a video going around where Tennapel is actually crying about the controversy, like physically crying, and says he just is so sad that there are people not funding the project because of him when there's a giant staff of artists working on it who will not get to work on it if it is not funded. I don't really sympathize with him and I'm probably not going to fund it but I don't think there's much wrong with.. hoping it gets funded? I would rather his game get made than it not get made.

Damn. Looks like we're never going to see Sam and Max: Freelance Police. And I was really looking forward to a fifth Monkey Island game. Now it looks like literally none of those things will ever happen. 

The vast majority of all posts I have made on this site are from between the ages of 9 and 13. It's like some perfect vortex of awful embarrassment. I haven't posted much since then.

One of the very first threads I made (I am certain I was 9 years old) was in General Discussion and had extremely graphic images of spiderbites in this giant, giant resolution. Just the day before my dad had shown me the pictures, to tell me to look out for that kind of spider. The images made me start crying they upset me so much. Naturally I uploaded them the very next day to warn everyone on the internet and my favorite new forum!! Every response was some iteration of "What the fuck?!" and AGA immediately sent me a message telling me to never do that again or I'd be banned. I was horrified and basically felt like I was walking on eggshells forever after that, because I was a dumb child.

Ooh, for instance, I remember someone who had just registered making a post in Adventure-related about how most AGS games were shit, and he had this long apparently nuanced argument because it warranted discussion. And I posted something like "I'm surprised this guy hasn't been banned yet." because I guess I thought people were banned for doing things people dislike. I can't seem to find the thread. CJ quoted my reply and said "Why would we ban him, Bluke?" and I immediately either edited my original post apologizing or made some aimless apology reply just apologizing profusely for saying that. I literally thought I could be banned for suggesting someone could be banned for saying something disagreeable. I think it's kind of funny now, but, man. I don't think I should have been on here, haha. Stressful for a dumb baby kid.

You seem to be a big fan of "Top Ten" lists. I've only seen two of your "Top Ten" ideas, Renodox.. but based on what I've seen, I give your ideas Top Ten out of Top Ten Stars.   

It's pretty funny the way video games are different from real life! Lots of potential in just this idea.

Here's some I came up with:

* You have more lives than just one.
* Men sometimes shoot at you when this is usually improbable in everyday life.
* It is possible for things to sometimes float in midair!
* Water is a toss-up: it might kill you- it might not!
* Give me an oil and a salchow anyday.
* Days are typically far shorter than 24 hours.
* It is possible to not eat or drink anything for several hundred hours.
* Sometimes you can fly.

Al Lowe really stays connected with the fans-  8) But it's good to stay connected in this modern age. Just look at Tim Schafer and his Kickstarter page! 

I don't think I can think of another developer I'd pay money to make a game like I did Schafer here. Maybe Gilbert on his own? But I imagine that most of the industry people whose ears are prickling up at this are the sort who possibly can't find funding for their games for good reason..

As creators of these games, we would like to professionally distance ourselves from the comments made by SuperButts.

Nifty.

I stopped caring about Duke Nukem Forever about 10 years ago or so. *yawn*

I stopped caring about Duke Nukem Forever before I was born *yawn* *drag of cigarette* *ponder existence's futility*


Looking forward to this game whether it's good or not, to be honest.

This is going to be good. The remake's graphics are kind of iffy for me, but it's cool that they have the switch option..

Honestly, I see nothing wrong with the new games. Call me an optimist, I guess.

Haven't been here in a while.


Next: Twelve houses with four windows each and ten men standing outside each one and there are seven skies as well

I vote Krazy and kaputtnik

Warning Forever

Dan stood outside the gate. He'd been standing there for quite some time and he'd resigned to the idea of standing there for quite some time. He'd forgotten why he'd stood there, but then he remembered and he laughed out loud. There was a time when it would've made him frustrated and angry but now it was amusing. He gazed back at the mansion with a facial expression not unlike Barbara Bush's, whenever she makes any facial expression, ever.
He remembered that day- the day he entered the mansion- and smiled. Just imagine where he'd be without it! In a desk job, probably. Working for the MAN. Actually, dead, probably. Dead would make more sense. But still! Look at where he ended up! This was much better than anywhere else he could've ended up. No responsibilities, no cares.. Well, one responsibility.
A boy passed by, walking down the street. Dan cleared his voice. "Hey, you!" warned Dan. "You better not be thinking of heading for this here MANSION!" Dan gestured towards the mansion with his fingers, which he often used for gesturing to the mansion. The boy continued walking, now with a confused expression. "There's an EVIL WIZARD who lives in this mansion!" yelled Dan. "And if you bother him, he CURSES YOU!"
The boy used his entire surplus of cognitive strength to ignore the strange man. Dan grinned as the boy disappeared on the horizon. He'd been warned, there was no chance of THAT boy coming to THIS mansion! Dan folded his arms across his strapping young body, and also groped his strapping young groin. He had a definite boner for warning.
There was a time when he hated the whole idea of warning. But that time had passed and as the years went by he came to take his warning duty as a gift rather than what it was. He put more gusto into it. He would alternate between days; Mondays were gloomy warnings, Tuesdays were threatening warnings, Wednesdays were cheerful warnings, etc. He had to come up with a way to make it interesting.
The problem was, he could only warn. In the beginning he'd come out of the mansion and stood by the gate and his girlfriend couldn't carry on a conversation with him. She'd ask him how it was, if there was really a wizard, and all Dan could do was warn her. She'd come by from time to time, but nothing'd changed. She'd plead for him to say something, anything besides a warning not to enter the mansion, and he'd warn her not to enter the mansion.
The immortality definitely came as a blessing.. What fun was warning if people kept on bothering you with things not having to do with warning? He'd warn them, accentuating the "STAY AWAY" bit of his mantra so they'd get the point to get lost. Then, as his friends died off, he stayed and warned.
He found he was awfully good at warning.
He never wanted to stop.

This'd have to be my favorite old song, from the '30s: Sittin' Around by Coon-Sanders' Orchestra.

Other than that I agree with pretty much all of what Eggie said, and there's also this group called Dion and the Belmonts that did a lot of great songs back then.

Only played the demo.. The humor's okay, but the camera angles and combat system left me unimpressed.
I'm looking forward more to that DeathSpank game.

Either Stevie's Spanking, or Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?, both by Frank Zappa.

I like them there songs, but I wouldn't call either of them the best rock song ever..