[Sughly]

I'm interested in starting up some discussion on this. I recently researched Amanita Design (Samorost, Samorost 2, Machinarium - as everyone reading knows anyways) and had no idea the level of success they were able to have. It's obvious how well Telltale have taken off, and with Daedalic garnering so much attention, I thought it was worth reconsidering the place of adventure games in the gaming market.

Now I know a lot more developers than these are part of that picture, but these are the ones I'm more familiar with. I visit plenty of gaming blogs and mainstream news websites, and I've noticed more attention being on adventure developers such as the ones above then I ever have before. Both 'The Whispered World' and 'Machinarium' have turned plenty of heads because of their art designs, and both have got hoardes of people talking about adventures again in sites I would never expect them to.

From what I've found, I think a lot of this success has to do with distribution. Because digital distribution is becoming bigger and bigger, it's the perfect outlet for the genre that is otherwise slowly (and by now almost completely) stripped off the retail outlet shelves and in the process killing adventure production based on the fears of distribution costs. The best part about this is allowing companies like Amanita and the director behind Whispered World to even exist - productions that literally started out as university projects. They stand out and get noticed because they are unique, fresh, ad interesting, and something that millions of dollars of budgets that are going into the mainstream games are too often losing a focus on (seemingly caught up in overbearing interests in target markets, market research, whatever! Anything that helps sell their next game). Some of these indie developers just want an interesting experience, and some of those are adventures that are great.

I have more to say on it then just that, and it's a general starting point, but I've talked enough already . I'm definately feeling more discussion and focus returning to the world of adventure gaming and I think, right now, it's a good time to be an adventure fan.

Thoughts?