First of all excuse me of my bad english and my long post.So... I keep reading about budgets and i have to point two major things. First of all a big budget does guarantee a quality product.Maybe in other industries but not in the Entertaintment indusrty( and i'm also counting here movies ,music ). It's like the awful hollywood movies compared to small budget independant underground movies.
Then, a budget can be smaller in number even from a game produced in 98 because of two reasons: economy of scale (kheops studio )which the developers /producers have achieved and of course greater leaps in technology which made it more accessible and cheap. If you asked me for the biggest mistake in the adventure history i would tell you that the high budgets was the fault for the temporarely collapse of the scene . They producted vastly expensive products (FMV) without targeting the appropriate market size. it was a matter of time that most companies declared bankruptcy. So i hope i covered you about the budget.
Secondly, and to answer your question there are indications that the adventure scene is steadily recovering. Unfortunately we dont have sales for products (i keep searching them for years found only some sporadicaly like myst, runaway ) and if we had them we could tell for sure. The fact we know is that the number of published adventures is getting bigger year by year. The only problem is that even if some numbers seem big , compared to 90s sales, the computer games market size has expanded so much that adventure games are now just a niche. However i wish we knew some numbers from the distrubutors.That would be a nice question for you at AG next time you interview someone. Even though piracy is blooming, adventures have their marketing channels through internet which enable many companies to survive and make a profit.The scene has caught the attention of many people and mre and more games are being developed.
in conclusion,adventures are not dead ,period!
