[L'Homme Dangereux]

Simple, eh? Possibly not. Adventure is a very open word and the concepts involved within an adventure game are often only relevant to the times. Obviously elemets such as exploration, puzzle solving and strong narrative are fundamentals of the genre but so many games contain those these days that surely there must be some ultimate definition of adventure games at the moment?

[Cathy1]

Point and Click.

[Naveed]

Please, for the love of the Lord, not this discussion again.

[Melanie68]

You might want to check out this thread (all 22 pages ):

http://forums.adventuregamers.com/showthread.php?t=7568

As well as this one:

http://forums.adventuregamers.com/showthread.php?t=8093

[Hammerite]

Originally Posted by Cathy1

Point and Click.

not true

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Naveed

Please, for the love of the Lord, not this discussion again.

Agreed

[Jackal]

Hey, just because current forum vets have argued this endlessly doesn't mean the newbs shouldn't have their turn. I'm sure the forum vets when we argued were just as sick of them as we are now.

[Gonchi]

Adventure is a genre of video game typified by exploration, puzzle-solving, interaction with game characters, and a focus on narrative rather than reflex-based challenges.

Don't think there's anything else to say about it. I'm sure people could likely come up with more "elements", but to me those mentioned in the quote are the backbone of the genre and all are requisite for a game to be considered a part of it.

[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by L'Homme Dangereux

Simple, eh? Possibly not.

You have no idea. I'm now holding the box for Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, which is most decidedly a platformer. A 2D (and non-puzzle) platformer at that- classification doesn't get much more straightforward. But it doesn't say "platformer" anywhere on the box, which is why I bring this up. On the cover of the box, what it says is "A DK Adventure with Bongo-Pounding Controls!" Well, I guess it is vaguely adventurous. So there's truth there.

Meanwhile, the term "action-adventure" is used for.. well, whatever you feel like using it for, really. It's such an all-purpose word it's amazing. You can use it to mean an adventure with a bunch of action mini-games or a pure action game of any variety or a FPS with puzzles or survival horror or a platformer or an action RPG or a plain RPG or a game with no ties to either action or adventure games which just doesn't seem to fit anywhere or a stealth game or just about anything else. It won't be long 'til we see sports games branded as action adventures.

Then there may or may not be something called a " first-person adventure", depending on your tastes in puzzles, your level of tolerance of first-person action, the strength of your sense of direction and your hair color. Those three words are enough to cause confusion, outrage (mainly from me), panic and death (occasionally).


Now, I think you were talking about the simple word "adventure", yes? You say:

Originally Posted by L'Homme Dangereux

Obviously [elements] such as exploration, puzzle solving and strong narrative are fundamentals of the genre but so many games contain those these days that surely there must be some ultimate definition of adventure games at the moment?

Wait a minute, let's back up a bit.

Originally Posted by L'Homme Dangereux

Obviously elements such as exploration, puzzle solving and strong narrative are fundamentals of the genre but-

Yes, that's what you said. No. Oh, I mean, no, not obviously. It's your opinion that that's what adventure means. Where the word "adventure" is concerned, you should never let down your guard and assume there's anyone in the world who agrees with you. See, I think exploration is fairly expendable in adventures. Plus, it's rarely very good, so this is hardly a pillar the Form stands on. Secondly, I think puzzles are a bad idea in adventures, so it goes without saying that I don't think they're the be-all and end-all of adventure games. And then you could find some adventures where the story is just a framework for the puzzles (arguably, most of the old ones are like that), or one with practically no plot at all.

Sure, you can disagree with me. But this is my honest thought-out opinion, which I think I could defend pretty easily. (Sounds like fun, if you're up for it.) The point being, it's not obvious at all. And to anticipate a possible move, no, the interface has nothing to do with it. Okay, so maybe I'm the only person who would go there, but still.

Around six months ago (it was sometime around here), I decided on my current view that an adventure is a game which relies heavily on pre-scripting, which is to say that the result of any player action is anticipated by the creator. (This contrasts with other types of games, which may have been planned out in broad strokes but where all the little interactions are based on algorithms.) The adventure game is particularly well-suited to storytelling, but can be (and has been) used for other purposes.


I'll illustrate with a few examples.

Day of the Tentacle is an adventure because all the puzzles, dialogues and plot points use simple creator-controlled scripting and do not rely on algorithms whose outputs have not been anticipated in full by the writers. You progress through the game not by coming up with solutions which have not been specifically programmed into the game ("Laverne is stuck in a tree? I think she should move around until she gets loose. Where's the jump button?"), but by figuring out what path the writers have put in. ("I'll paint the tree and go talk to George Washington."

To give this some point of reference, let's throw in The Sims here. It's got a similar interface (point-and-click, objects and verbs), but it is definitely not an adventure. That's because it is a complex system in which the player creates scenarios the creator has not planned out precisely by using the game's internal logic and algorithms. It's not a linear path, or even a branching path- the progression emerges logically from the player's actions. So it's not an adventure.

Or let's take Beyond Good & Evil. The story is linear and scripted. On top of that, we've got lots of different types of gameplay. So, yeah, there are puzzles whose solutions are precise and there's no algorithms involved. But there's also platforming, which is unpredictable- the player's just given a tool, put into an area where he can use it, and set free. And there's action, which is similarly reliant on the use of algorithms to create emergent scenarios. And stealth. And racing. And flight. And so on. So it's not an adventure.

Taking a step backward, let's look at Samorost. Not much story, not terribly advanced exploration, and a heck of a lot of puzzles. And the interface is very unusual in comparison to conventional graphical adventures. But all that's irrelevant. What matters is that the entire game is pre-scripted. Nothing is left to chance or mathematics or the whims of the player. All the progression is written into the code. Ergo, it's an adventure.

Photopia has some puzzles, and it has some exploration, but it pushes them aside into what is obviously just a homage to text adventure conventions. The rest has no puzzles (unless you count the sort of puzzle-ish story you get in, say, Memento) at all, and only the bare minimum of exploration it absolutely needed. The rest is all story. Never mind the interface- the issue here is that everything is pre-scripted. Every option the player is given was thought through by the writer (Adam Cadre) and specifically programmed in. It's an adventure, plain and simple.

Now let's take a book. Yeah, the non-interactive kind. It's pre-scripted by definition, but it's not an adventure. "Why?", you challenge. Well, I said that in an adventure the result of all player action is anticipated by the creator. This is technically true, the player action being reading the book, but that's not really much action, now is it?. More like passive internalizing.

Finally, Myst. The story is all there from the start, in books, which as we said are technically pre-scripted. Well, books and all sorts of odds and ends thrown about. The exploration is also all specifically programmed in, since the player can't exactly manipulate the world design as he sees fit. Even without looking at the puzzles (which may or may not be adventure material depending on how you see algorithms), we can already say that this isn't really an adventure. Why? Because you internalize all this passively: You look at things, you read things. You don't really change much as you're playing, you don't really have much action.



But I'm not going to let my guard down and assume anyone will agree with me on any of this.

[Crapstorm]

Yep, this is a most contentious question. I'm from the old school that was founded before adventure games even had graphics, and so I define them like so.

Adventure game: Any of a class of computer games in which the player explores an unknown environment using a basic, intuitive interface and is challenged intellectually by free-form puzzles and riddles.

I know many of the young gamers will disagree, but I think it's essential that the challenges are strictly cerebral. It is also essential that the interface is natural and unencumbering such that the player hardly notices that it's there after a while. I remember when I was first introduced to adventure games, I was blown away by the freedom of the parser. There was no learning curve, you just type in what you want to do. It felt like you could do anything. So, you just put up your feet and explore the possibilities.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Cathy1

Point and Click.

Wrong.

[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by Crapstorm

Adventure game: Any of a class of computer games in which the player explores an unknown environment using a basic, intuitive interface and is challenged intellectually by free-form puzzles and riddles.

What do you mean by "free-form"?

[Kurufinwe]

You know, Mory, I think you ought to drop the whole 'Myst isn't an adventure' thing, because I really feel it undermines an otherwise very interesting argument. I see two problems with it.

1) We're trying to define a term that is already widely used. Therefore, our only guides should be (first and foremost) usage and (to a lesser extent) the history of the term. And the thing is, Myst is considered an adventure game by the great majority of people who know about it, both those who consider themselves 'adventure gamers' and those who don't, both those who liked it and those who didn't. So that's it, end of the story. Any viable definition of 'adventure game' must include Myst. Otherwise, you're not defining the term, you're redefining it, sticking an altogether new and different meaning on an older term -- which is probably not the purpose of this thread, and will just add to the confusion.

2) I honestly feel that your argument to reject Myst doesn't really hold water anyway. You can't say that Myst is a passive experience, where you're just walking around a world without affecting it -- because it's simply not true. In the Stoneship age, you need to access a room in the ship, but it's dark and full of water; so you need to interact with the world to pump the water out and turn on the lights. Just like you have to perform actions to get the lifts to work in the Channelwood age. I can't see how this is all that different from the cherry tree puzzle in DotT. Sure, the interaction to exploration, and even interaction to story, ratios are rather low -- but that doesn't mean the player has no grip on the world.

As to your definition, I do think it's interesting, but I'm afraid it's not going to be durable. The reason for that is that I don't think it points towards what people look for in adventure games. Adventure gamers instinctively decide what is or isn't an adventure game, and, therefore, I think what really matters is that. I honestly don't think people play adventure games because the consequences of their actions are all entirely scripted. I agree that it's a characteristic of adventure games as they've been since they exist -- but it's just a characteristic, and it may change. What I mean is that adventure games could incorporate non-scripted elements, such as 'open-ended' puzzles relying on a physics engine, or 'semi-scripted semi-intelligent' conversation (as in Facade); then the characteristic you've focused on would not be true any more, but I'm fairly certain people would still call these games 'adventure games' without even thinking about it for half a second -- because scripted responses is not what they're looking for, just the way adventure games happen to be at the moment.

You know my own definition, it's still hasn't changed: a game which features exploration (in a broad sense: visiting new places, learning more about characters, discovering plot elements, etc.) and in which the challenges rely primarily on figuring out what to do (as opposed to actually performing the deed). It's not terribly innovative -- but definitions are not meant to be, they're meant to put clear words on what everyone already indistinctly know and understand.

[MoriartyL]

By the way, I should point out that there is some ambiguity in my definition. I've separated Myst from adventures because I've basically said it's not interactive enough to qualify. I can certainly see someone saying it is, and I hope he will because I'm eager to talk about the puzzles. On the other hand, I'm saying that Photopia is interactive enough to qualify, because although the player has no control over pacing and direction his actions are crucial to the story. This is a subjective call.

Edit: Ah, I hadn't seen Kurufinwe's response yet.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Because these two games don't necessarily follow the accepted idea of what
adventure games are supposed to be, does that make them any less so?
Left - Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon. Right - The Last Express.

The Cold Hotspot: A critique of the state of adventure games by Beiddie Rafól | AdventureDevelopers.com (love you, Erwin!)

Written in stone?

"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

What exactly is an adventure game? This question is pretty loaded, and the answers you may give could easily be cagey or ambiguous, certainly not final, if you really muse over it. Where was it written in stone that an adventure game has to be this or that? The age old question has been debated within the gaming communities to the point where it's become pure tautology, and yet the genre remains static on many levels and poor in marketability. Oh yes, we can argue what it is, we can and have argued for pages and pages of forum postings, but where has that gotten the genre in terms of moving forward, reaching a much needed wider audience, and becoming more commercially successful and competitive with other game genres like first person shooters, RPGs, and sports games? I mean, is the genre any better off for it? If anything we know what it is not - twitch or reflex oriented, action focused, stats management and level-up-centric, and so on. Ironically, the grandfather of all adventure games, Adventure, was not an 'adventure' as hardcore adventure gamers categorize it today. It was merely a 'game' involving exploration and discovery, its creator never considering a categorization. One devoted gamer who was discussing the notion of categorization, stated:

"…why do many adventure gamers need to hold on to this vague thing called 'genre' so badly? I understand the [desire] to still have the same kind of adventure games being produced in the future, and I don't argue against that, but why would it be such a bad thing to broaden the genre label 'adventure' to include also other games that maybe take a few elements from other genres, but still essentially remain adventures. Yet often we hear being said that such games would not be adventure games any more."

Evan Dickens, former Editor-in-Chief of AdventureGamers.com, in an amusing topical post in the site's forum, quoted U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart (on his 'definition' of pornography in 1964): "...perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it...". Fair enough, Evan, and I won't spank you for it, no matter how cagey you are.

But therein lies the wrinkle. It is ultimately not the definition (whatever that may be), but in actually how it is defined - by us and by the industry and the media. Jack Allin, Editor-in-Chief of AdventureGamers.com, and adventure game writer and reviewer, tactfully pointed out that he "...prefer[s] to use the word 'description' rather than 'definition'. The former is used to explain what IS, and the latter is too often used to demand what MUST be." This makes good sense, because it places the emphasis on the genre's behavior rather than the 'categorically correct' perimeters within which it is expected to stay, allowing for some flexibility. But what happens when an adventure game begins to behave differently than usual yet still moves within those perimeters? Is it still an adventure game? Or can we now expand or modify whatever that 'description' or 'definition' is to encompass this seeming mutant? I'll explore this further possibility in a bit.

...as an antidote to all this moldy dogma, I propose the idea of abstraction. That's right, the good old technique of blurring the lines, making it fuzzy while retaining the essence. How so? Back to the charming Jack Allin:

"By 'description', I just mean 'a definition based on what we've seen SO FAR'. But not 'a definition for the way it MUST be forever and ever, amen.' It's just semantics, but I'm just trying to allow for the possibility that the genre will continue to expand in ways that push the boundaries of how we understand the term today."

See how painless that was?

And here is my own 'description': "An adventure game is a game in which first and foremost contains: a very strong and coherent story or narrative structure, sharply developed characterization (of people, places, and/or things), a clearly defined set of goals, challenges that require and emphasize thought and logic reasoning, and elements of exploration and discovery." Of course, that could mean practically any game. But, the trick is to throw in a bit of Jack's insight, basing all this on "...what we've seen so far.." , and on Evan's (*ahem*, Justice Potter Stewart's) wisdom of "...know[ing] it when I see it...". And voila! What we end up with is, um…….a mutt, but a very nice cuddly one - structured yet porous, defined yet still like a filter, anticipating modifications and expansiveness but ultimately staying true to itself. And if you were paying attention, nowhere in this amalgamated 'definition' can be found ridiculous sentiments like '2D backgrounds only', or 'point-&-click only', or 'egregiously stuck-up over-intellectualized' puzzles.

Definitions or descriptions should not necessarily restrict what the adventure genre can be fully capable of and how far it can go. At the very least it should provide some kind of springboard for new thematic ideas, concepts, and experiments over and around a skeletal frame. It should give more than hold back.

[Crapstorm]

Originally Posted by MoriartyL

What do you mean by "free-form"?

I mean that the puzzles and riddles don't have to fit any prescribed structure. This would exclude games like Jewels of the Oracle, which offer a series of puzzles within a few strict, specific puzzle formats.

Kurufinwe made an excellent point. We need to define the term as it is used, not as we would like it to be used.

[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by Kurufinwe

Adventure gamers instinctively decide what is or isn't an adventure game.

I can give you a million reasons to not group Myst with adventures (and chances are I will), but you've just summed up my problem. I know adventure games when I play them. I know what they feel like. I don't see that in Myst. I know that Myst is not an adventure. I don't care if the whole world yells at me, "It's an adventure, you idiot!"; It's not an adventure. Playing it feels to me exactly like playing Metroid. Playing it feels to me nothing like playing The Secret of Monkey Island. How am I supposed to reconcile this with the majority opinion? I can't, and I won't- Myst is not an adventure. I am not questioning this and I don't think I ever will. The question I am trying to answer is "Why is it not an adventure?", "How is it different from an adventure?". Now that's cleared up, maybe you could poke some holes in my latest answer, because it could help me find a better one.

I honestly feel that your argument to reject Myst doesn't really hold water anyway. You can't say that Myst is a passive experience, where you're just walking around a world without affecting it -- because it's simply not true. In the Stoneship age, you need to access a room in the ship, but it's dark and full of water; so you need to interact with the world to pump the water out and turn on the lights. Just like you have to perform actions to get the lifts to work in the Channelwood age. I can't see how this is all that different from the cherry tree puzzle in DotT. Sure, the interaction to exploration, and even interaction to story, ratios are rather low -- but that doesn't mean the player has no grip on the world.

Well, when I said the player doesn't have much control over the world design it was in comparison to other types of non-adventures like simulations. But since you bring it up, the player is hardly an active participant in the game world. The puzzle you point out can be likened to the opening of a door. Sure, you can move things back and forth a little, but it's not having any real impact beyond opening areas and blocking areas. Picture a pop-up book, with a little flap standing in for a door. (And never mind the sophistication issue.) You open up the door to see what's inside, and then you close it to hide what's inside again. Are you changing what's in the book? No. In the DotT example you are actually changing the layout of the area, while in the Myst example you're just opening and closing something. In theory I see what you're saying, but it doesn't feel the same at all. The interactivity here isn't really comparable.

So yeah, Myst is somewhat interactive. I don't think it's interactive enough to be called an adventure, though.

As to your definition, I do think it's interesting, but I'm afraid it's not going to be durable. The reason for that is that I don't think it points towards what people look for in adventure games. ... I honestly don't think people play adventure games because the consequences of their actions are all entirely scripted.

Of course that's not why people play them, any more than people watch movies because they're pictures that are moving, or any more than people like looking at oil paintings because they're painted in oil. It's just what it is, is all. I don't know about you, but when I play an adventure, I can tell I'm playing an adventure. It feels like an adventure. And that's because of the pre-scripting.

Now, if we were talking about the appeal of adventures rather than the definition, of course I wouldn't bring up the pre-scripting. I'd say that people play adventures to experience a good story, to have their brains stimulated, for the leisurely pace, and so on. None of these are defining characteristics.

I agree that it's a characteristic of adventure games as they've been since they exist -- but it's just a characteristic, and it may change.

If it were to change, it wouldn't feel at all like an adventure any more. For example, if the story were to progress following algorithms instead of a set path, it wouldn't feel too loose to be an adventure. Or if there were a more complex interface in which the player could solve a problem in a hundred different random ways using a physics engine, it wouldn't feel like an adventure puzzle anymore. And so on.

And sure, people would still call them adventure games regardless. So what? Look at the usage of the term "action-adventure" for proof that the masses don't always know what the heck they're talking about. I'm telling you what it means when I say "adventure". Crapstorm, that's how it is being used by myself, present tense. The masses don't know what an adventure is. I say we don't let them decide for us.

[MoriartyL]

I have to say, Crapstorm, that's one great definition you've got. Requiring diversity in the puzzles is a very clever touch. It's very limiting as far as future potential goes, but as far as defining what we've already got I think it's the best definition I've ever heard.

[AdrianWerner]

Originally Posted by MoriartyL

laying it feels to me exactly like playing Metroid. Playing it feels to me nothing like playing The Secret of Monkey Island.

You're crazy.
Myst plays nothing like Metroid. It's much closer to Monkey Island than to any Metroid game.

Anyway..to me adventure game is simply a game where gameplay is concentrated on exploration and puzzle solving. That's what "adventure game" means to me, which is why Myst is adventure game to me, while Samorost isn't

[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by AdrianWerner

You're crazy.
Myst plays nothing like Metroid. It's much closer to Monkey Island than to any Metroid game.

No, you're crazy!

Seriously, it's a nonlinear world presented somewhat linearly by putting obstacles which need to be passed to continue, some of which can't possibly be passed until later on. At the series' best, everything in the game can be observed or examined to reveal something which makes sense for the story. Speaking of the story, it's entirely revealed as background, there in order to give context to the world design. And the world design is the main attraction. (The world design is incredible.) The player feels very isolated (though there's a lot of animal life) since the environments have no other characters in them - this is not so much because there are no interesting characters to talk about as because having them there would just distract from the exploration. (Exploration of the world design being the whole point.) To be fair, the latest iterations of the series put in characters, but there was no interaction at all- they were only there to tell you something that could have been told through text. The player is often asked to go hunting for various objects throughout the game world which will be used to push the story forward in the very end, in order to force the player to examine the gameworld more carefully (which is very rewarding because, as noted, the world design is incredible).

..and the fact that I'm not sure whether I just wrote about Myst or Metroid Prime should give you an idea of how intertwined they are in my mind.