[NemelChelovek]

Adventure games, in the eyes of Vivendi Universal, are not profitable. They believe that if they release a Space Quest 7 game, they will not make money. No amount of pressure from the fans is going to prompt them to make a new Space Quest, because the number of gamers out there far outnumber the amount of Space Quest fans. Do I wish they would still make adventures? Yes. Can I see their side of the argument? Yes. While current market trends show adventure games on the rise again after a long period, big companies like Vivendi Universal are not willing to take a chance on it. This is why we get so many clones of successful games instead of fresh, original, innovative ones from the big companies; they know people will buy them, and as an entrepreneur, their primary concern is to A) satisfy their own financial needs by way of satisfying the highest number of consumers. The fact that it would make the fans happy is never going to make a profit-oriented business produce a product that will cost millions of dollars to plan, staff, program, market, patch, and reprint. I'd love to see a SQ7 or an MI5 (which, of course, is not Vivendi, but you see my point), but the fact remains that it is unlikely to happen while adventures are still considered a risky endeavor. In my estimation, LSL8 was put out because, stripped of its adventure qualities, it could provide the gaming public with a product as desirable as explosions and submachine guns: SEX (and yes, I saw the opportunites for the "put out" and "stripped" jokes, but I decided to ignore them...until this point...damn.) If the LSL series hadn't involved sex, do you think Vivendi ever would have cranked out a followup in '04? I don't.

Until adventure games are as marketable as the current crop of FPS and RPG clones (and looking at the Hype-o-Meter on this website, I'd say that the universal appeal of adventure titles is on the rise again), you'll never see a Space Quest 7.

EDIT: By the way, Filmman, the things that led to QFG5 were mainly A) QFG4's ending was extremely abrupt and left the game without a sense of closure and B) Dragon Fire had always been a planned entry in the series, while Wages of War (QFG3) had not. Wages of War was inserted between Trial by Fire and Shadows of Darkness because the programmers believed the character was not ready for such an abrupt shift to a dark atmosphere from TBF to SOD (there is even an ad for SOD at the end of TBF calling it "Quest for Glory III"). The programmers had a story planned for the fifth entry, so a portion of the work was already done when people began clamoring for a more fitting end to the series. Had the previous circumstances not occurred, I don't know whether or not we would ever have seen QFG5.