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Originally Posted by Jackal
See, this is where I'm not convinced. The notion is that it's a transition from one thing (casual puzzle games) into something similar (adventure lite). . . .
Seriously, there seems to me to be a gap there that can only be bridged by wishful thinking. An adventure game really CAN'T be played in 10-30 minute blocks (by virtue of having an ongoing narrative), which changes the very nature of a casual game.
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I agree, but with the emphasis on the first part of the reason here. I think the problem with the idea of "casual AGs" is not that the narrative comes in chunks. I can read five pages of a book and put it down and then come back to it later, and that's a fragment of a narrative. As Emily said, a GOOD narrative would want you to come back to it no matter what. Children's books (early chapter books) are written in very SMALL chunks for small attention spans
, but that doesn't mean people don't want to continue with the episodes. (Take a look at the size of the chapters in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for example.)
The bigger problem is the idea that an Adventure Game can be casual or "lite." To me, that is just the opposite of what most AGs strive to do. They intentionally block your progress through the narrative with puzzles. We can talk about whether this is done effectively--whether the puzzles are seamless, intuitive, well-integrated, inventory-based, well-cued or well-clued--but in the end, the puzzles are still there. (See Jake's great post in the 8-13 thread about this.) If you read any "How to Get Started in Adventure Gaming" guide (even game inserts), they will usually tell you something like "Slow down. Explore. Examine things. Check out the scenery. Pick up objects. Talk to people. Look at the environment. Enjoy the gameworld." This is the very opposite of the motivation for "I have 20 minutes before the kids come home to turn off my brain and turn into Tetris mode to relax." I haven't played the pay casual games, so it could be that I don't have the right standard of comparison, and these things require far more mental energy or input that I am giving them credit for. But I find even the many free, excellent, amateur, downloadable or online AGs to be very challenging to get into, and the ample quantity of online games I would use as timewasters to be just the opposite.