New Interview with Dreamfall creator Ragnar Tornquist
 

A developer's interview has just been posted at Adventure Classic Gaming with Ragnar Tornquist, who is best known as the creator of The Longest Journey and Dreamfall at Funcom.

http://www.adventureclassicgaming.co...nterviews/231/

Enjoy.

Ragnar about TLJ and Dreamfall:
Oh'boy, Oh'boy, that is good news :D

as long as it has more gameplay i am fine.

HI

Interesting read indeed.

I, however, am not convinced that the point & click adventure genre is dead (like Ragnar seems to think).

If yoou look at the games out there, only Ragnar seems to think so. I say this because all the adventure games released this year uses point & click interface: SF:Tunguska, BS:4, Sratches,
Intrigue at Oakhaven Plantation, Keepsake etc. etc. All except for one: Dreamfall - TLJ.

A number of these adventure games is played in 1st person, but still uses the traditional
point & click interface.Imho, thisgives more sense and meaning in an adventure game in which you have to solve varius puzzles to get the story moving and as well as get the characters to interact.

Apparantly, Ragnar think it is the other way around: First you make a story, then you throw some puzzles into this story, and then you have an adventure game. In one part of the interviw he says that it is the story, the interactions and such that makes an adventure.

I partly agree with this, but I would stress that an adventure games first and foremost needs goof solvable puzzles that makes you think.
It does not need to be an FPS subverted into an adventure/puzzle game as Ragnar obviously thinks it does.

He also needs to understand that the adventure game market always has been a niche market. And that ne needs to cater to his niche market: If the niche marked wants point & click interface, then this is what they should get.

The Myst and the Zork series as well as Scratches etc. have proven that you can have a fully 3D world as well as a point and click interface.

Maybe Ragnar would like to move the genre (or his game) in the direction of the Myst games ??
(with both fully 3D worlds as well as full 3D characters which, imho, look terrible and awful).

Or maybe he just want to make movies instead of games, since he thinks that point & click adventures is dead. My bet is that he thinks that adventure games should be interactive fiction games in which the story just plays out before the players eyes, and then at certain crucial points the gamer has to decide if he or she wants to go left or right i.e. what action to take. If this is what he wants to do, then by all means, do it.

I know, I'm not going to play such a game. However, a dvd-video with this kind of interaction would be nice, imo...

aries323

Don't forget Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy. With Dreamfall, that pretty much makes the two highest profile AG releases in the last year or so, except maybe Phoenix Wright, though that was actually released long ago in Japan and only recently remade, plus you don't even need the stylus for anything in that game except the final added-on case. Point and Clicks seem to be staying in the same niche, while games branching out beyond that interface seem to be getting more publicity.

Years ago, the adventure game (especially if you count text adventures) was pretty much the main genre out there for games. It was far from a niche genre back then.

HI :)

It is my understanding that text adventures were the main genre for one obvious reasons way back in the 1980's: The people writing them were university graduates as well as the people playing them did have a university degree of some sort.

The action games and the tactical games as well as the FPS games weren't that popular simply because the technology didn't support the gameplay.
And, imho, is wasn't before Doom was released in 1993 that the FPS genre were born and computer gaming started to become some sort of mainstream activity/hobby. Also, in 1996, a little thing called Settlers II came out, and kicked the start of the tactical/RTS game/strategy game genre.

I think I need to clarify my post then:
Way back in the 1980's the people played text adventure games, then these people played semi-graphics adventure games, then they played full graphics adventure games. And these people did continue to play adventure games, starting with Myst, The Monkey Island Games etc. These people still play
adventure games --- so it is not the adventure gamers that has declined. The numbers pretty much have stayed the same (and maybe grown a little) -
while the other game genres have grown. The same could be said for the
RPG genre.

My bet is that Ragnar would want to develop and adventure game with FPS element or vice versa, but I still stand by what I said in my first post: An adventure game is measured by its puzzles first and foremost, and by the story surrounding these puzzles.

aries323

Thanks for posting the linkey,

I have the utmost respect and admiration for Ragnar, and indeed I like him as a person, from what his blog indicates, he is a warm, intelligent, compassionate and very creative spirit with, yes, a touch or more than a touch of genius in him. I enjoyed reading his words, and think he is pretty right on about some of the observations he makes, and wish all the best for him and Funcom for future worik. But my doubts remain after seeing the debacle of Dreamfall, which is harsh and disjointed in some very basic fundimental ways and I sense that Ragnar still does not realize its major failure when it could have been a tremendous success if he had only kept what was unique and wonderful about TLJ and added what the new tech can do and built on a beautiful story without falling into plot traps and overly sentimentalized scenarios. It is a mailaise of our time I feel, simplistic and frankly banal trivialized plots are everywhere, and the 15 minute fast rush of TV thinking is eroding literature in print, film and games at a rapid rate. We are becoming a high tech illiteratti, and Ragnor symbolizes this, which is sad, for we KNOW he has the genius vision in him he has created from that place, and can again. I fear perhaps that the game industry and its so called
LAWS of success, sales, supply and units is a huge monster to face alone, and there are some but not many in the game world at the producing end with the courage and strength to stand up against the dragon, which demands to be fed full of the lowest quality diet and the highest degree of hype and glitz and violence and frenetic hyperactivity.

The slow pace and peace of mind of classic, and I insist, NOT old fashioned, has been, point and click, or deep story modern tech games is still the Gold Standard and will remain so, and the audience is NOT dwindling as Ragnar implies, indeed the potential for quality games is vastly expanded from the 1980's and 1990's for millions more are now computer literate who are potential and real customers and appreciators of any thing of quality. The problem is that they have very few chances to be drawn into the world of computer games, CGI, because they will be totally turned off by hyperactive and viloence addicted trash that is churned out each year by the game factories and the zombies in the suits that rule of them.

I question myself to be writing such questions when I know how much time and effort of human hands and minds and hearts goes into a game and how much work indeed went into Dreamfall and TLJ, and yet, my hope and dream to see the games literature rise and flourish and deepen rather than become a trivial pursuit of hyperactivity lured into numbness by glitz and glamor screens, and hyper actition. I still sense that there is huge potential in the games medium that has only been touched upon, and we can go higher and deeper by far. So I hope it is my hope for this and not a easy sniping that comes across, for I care and do admire and really like Ragnar and Funcom's efforts and will keep hoping.

I can only hope they wlll somehow return to the high and narrow path, that leads ot true quality and greatness and fun and beauty. I will remain hopeful and trust in the power of truth and the spiriit of the voice of adventure.

"Point and click"... "classic"... whatever you want to call it. It's NOT dead. And I wish influential designers like Ragnar would stop saying so. Blame your own design faults and gameplay issues.. not the entire genre.

Yeah,that's right.I couldn't find the right words to say that!:P
great post.:)

Thanks Milad, I tried, I really don't like being negative about any game that takes a lot of work and had really tried, but we need to be honest in what we share with this all I feel so that we can help in the overall hopes for adventure gaming.

Eriq I totally agree, it is just not true to try to label real adventure game design as being a think of fads and just chasing the latest technical developments, the fundimental balance of story, content, graphics, puzzles, and challenges remains I feel in my own humble opinion a matter of content and not of forcing the game to be a clone of FPS styles, or any current market driven fad. Content, Content, Content. and Quality. Depth, feeling, vision, imagination, creativity. There are no substitutes. IMHO. :)

Dear god please tell me this isn't the future. Those two games stand as two of the worst adventure games I've ever played. In fact, I would call both of these storytelling games instead of adventure games, as there aren't any real puzzles to speak of. But then again, movies already do a better job at storytelling than games, so what's the point?