[After a brisk nap]

Originally Posted by Giligan

The screenshots and story look good. They look great. But it's not in *your* engine, so you won't bother with it.

Or will you?

What kind of question is that? Do you really think anyone would choose not to play an adventure game because of the program it was made with? That makes about as much sense as only playing games where the graphics are made in Photoshop, refusing to play any that are drawn in Paint Shop Pro.

Look, I see a lot of anti-AGS prejudice in this thread, and I don't really get it. If you're a developer, use whatever engine is best for you. And if you're a player, the only thing that really matters is the quality of the game. Bias is only going to blind you to what's out there.

Of course, there are differences between the "typical" games made with each engine. AGS games are more likely to be in VGA resolution. SLUDGE games tend to have kooky hand-drawn graphics. Visionaire games are usually in German. Many Wintermute games have a polished, CGI look. Flash games often have poor user interfaces (probably because they can't use the right mouse button), and so on.

There are great games for all engines and there are crappy games for all of them. Even if your personal taste isn't for the typical example of a particular engine, there are still plenty of exceptions (particularly for AGS, just because of the sheer number of games). Just look at the Underground News item I posted yesterday. They were all made with the same engine, but are radically different both in graphics, gameplay and style.

Originally Posted by Squinky

That said, those damn AGS people can get pretty cliquey at times...

Originally Posted by Giligan

...Which is the main reason why I created this thread.

I think Squinky was mostly joking. I have never heard AGSers dismiss games made with other engines, or show anything at all like the thought process you describe in the original post. In fact, many of the most well-known AGS designers have worked with other engines as well.

AGS is a community as well as a game engine, with annual week-long meetups and other social aspects. So yeah, it's cliquey, because among other things it's a group of friends. And the AGS Forums are of course mainly focused on AGS. But as indie adventure game fans, the AGS crowd is perfectly happy to play non-AGS games, and I think that most of them are genuinely happy that there are alternatives to AGS.

Originally Posted by Giligan

This is quite a problem, too, as AGS inarguably is huge, and has a monopoly on all amateur adventure game creation.

But it doesn't, though! If there weren't other engines, we wouldn't even be having this thread.

The only "problem" I see is that players may never hear about non-AGS games. That's really the fault of the creators, though, for not announcing their games in places where players will see it. Flash games, especially, rarely get announced on adventure community sites (probably because many Flash developers aren't themselves part of the community). But when Pinhead Games made the Nick Bounty titles, they did a great job spreading the word about them (including on the AGS Forums), and you can see that they've become really popular.

If your game is good and you make sure people know about it, it doesn't matter what software you used to create it.

I would certainly imagine so. Amateur adventure gaming is a very small and isolated community, and the majority of players are, in fact, game creationists themselves.

I very much doubt that. It's almost always the case that a small group creates (game creators), a larger group participates (forum regulars), and a much larger group just silently consumes (lurkers).