[BacardiJim]

Suggesting that game companies and designers have somehow "lost" the 8-13 year old consumer demographic market is like saying that sales of vodka are suffering because companies aren't targeting more Mormons.


Despite the experiences of the members of this forum, when the concept of adventure gaming evolved, very few 8-13 year olds owned computers. Kids went to the arcade in the late 70's, then had Nintendo in the 80's. Home computers were owned almost exclusively by upper-middle class adults. Thus, that's who adventure games were designed for. It has only been in the last decade that this has changed, with half of all homes now having a PC. (I am speaking only of America; I simply don't know the European statistics.)

Why would companies have been designing games for consumers that didn't even own computers? Why try to sell vodka to people that don't drink?

It is true (as evidenced repeatedly in this forum) that the last 10 years have seen a huge shift in the PC marketplace. I have addressed this before in my oft-castigated editorial about how Nintendo did more than any other single factor to "kill" adventure games. But laying that aside for the moment, I will agree that relatively few companies have attempted to re-think adventure games and design them specifically for today's new younger consumer. Offhand, only HER Interactive, Tivola (Physicus et al) and Infogrames/Humongous (the Freddi Fish series) come to mind.

Of course, that might partly be because adventure games, at least those constructed using the traditional paradigm, simply don't appeal to the great majority of 8-13 year olds. Just maybe.