Here it is again , it is such great survey thanks Kurufinwe you had made a great effort
The true Golden Age of adventures
When looking at the years at which the games were released, it's useful to have both the raw number of games (top) and the results weighted by rank (bottom):
I think those graphs are absolutely amazing: they give a
perfect picture of the history of graphic adventures. We may have our gripes about some games on the list, but I think these graphs confirm that the top-100 is a very fair and accurate representation of the genre.
You can clearly distinguish several periods:
- 1987–1993, the Sierra-LucasArts era: The classical era. The graph shows the companies perfecting their craft, releasing more and more great games. 1990 to 92 have the same number of games on the list, but the quality is steadily increasing, climaxing in . . .
- 1993, the golden year, the turning point: 1993 is the year when the Sierra/LEC classical style reached its peak, with games such as GK1 and Sam & Max. But it's also the year when Myst and The 7th Guest shook everything up. Sierra and LEC had failed to see the potential of the CD-ROM, but these two games showed that the new technology could be used to create a completely new experience. 1994 was a slow year, when everyone was trying to build the infrastructure to catch up with Myst, but the best was to come . . .
- 1995–1998, multimedia madness: The glorious era. After the success of Myst, people over-evaluated the potential of the genre for commercial success. And nobody really knew what might work. So for a few years, you had games that combined the inventiveness and risk-taking of independent productions with the budget of Hollywood movies. Those were crazy, nonsensical years. Those games that we got from this glorious period are to be treasured, because it will never happen again: those games were commercially disappointing (or outright failures) and the bubble burst, leading to . . .
- 1999–2003, the death of a genre: After the end of the multimedia madness, the new hot technology was real-time 3D. And this time, the genre was utterly unable to embrace the new tech to renew itself. Those were the lean years, with just a few 2.5D gems to tide us over.
- 2004– , recovery: Looking at the list and at the graphs, things have been going better and better. 2010-2011 were around the levels of 1990-1991. We'll never see another 1996, but maybe a new 1993 is around the corner, just in time to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Golden Year of Adventure Gaming.
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