Article on state of adventures
 

Interesting article here
http://www.justadventure.com/article...tTheEnemy.shtm

This article makes some absolutely ridiculous points:

What, I'm somehow *wrong* for not likeing 1st-person games? Gee, sorry. It's a matter of preference, and no one has a right to tell me if my preferences are right or wrong. They're mine!

So yeah, damn straight I'll ignore any 1st-person games that come out because I just don't care for the interface, I tend to get lost wandering around, and I find the general lack of interactivity boring. If that somehow makes me the adventure genre's worst enemy... well, too bad.

When I read things like that I just shrug and think "Ok." There's no need to get angry over stuff like that :)

The author also goes on about that the discussions in forums always are about Gabriel Knight and Grim Fandango, you know, the Big Names. You can say the same thing about pop music. There are only so many songs that a lot of people find really good. It isn't that the rest are all bad, it's just that they are not discussed much because not enough people liked them or heard them because they were never that popular.

No, it's our fault. The kind hearted adventure game makers, produce lovingly crafted, wonderful games, often paying for them with their very lives; selling off vital organs and their own children, to fund their beautiful gifts to us.

We, the callous, indifferent and cold hearted adventure gamers, who maim puppies and fuel our fires with the broken dreams of the innocent, cruelly consider that some games aren't very good, and insist on speaking mainly about the games we enjoyed, that were good. Our hearts are black and we feast on the despair and bitter tears of the noble developers, laughing cruelly as wine dribbles down our corpulent, evil chins.

Now I'm sure someone here might disagree with me, but I think the Adventure game genre is enjoying a bit of a resurgence in the last couple of years. Witness the fact that we have games like Tunguska, the Runaway series, Sam and Max among others. While there will be those who dislike those examples, I think there does seem to be a slight upsurge in interest in the genre.

Perhaps part of it could also be those CSI/Law and Order games, while they're maybe not exactly standard adventures they have brought in people that liked the series and wanted similiar game styles elsewhere.

So... He practically suggest that "paying more and shouting our opinions all the time" is the only way to get the Adventure genre to get greater?
I think it would be better if the creators of those supposed games, shuldn't just don't go into the forums in some hunt of peoples opinions, to make something that most people like, but instead make something that they like themself, sure they can show of stuffs to get responses from the crowd, but they shouldn't base their whole game idea on "what most people probably like". Do what people did before internet gotdammit. There were good games then too :P
What could really make the adventure genre bigger again is to make more games that appeal to more people not just the core-public, and no I dont mean by including some embarassing actionsequences or by dumbing it down alot, but by making something more original the the average games.
And I actually think that this is happening right now, even though I havn't been a fan of the genre for very long, I think the Adventure Games might be rising.

And how could talking about the classics do any harm? I agree that we should'nt live in the past, but we should neither forget it.

But that's just one man's bad opinion, (see I actually did have the energy to write a reply at something this time, take That Mr. Whatever-your-name-was review guy)

This is my biggest problem with current adventure games. For all the talk about adventure games having the best stories, none of these stories or settings interests me in the slightest. It's like they're all stuck in the 19'th century. I want to see some more Sci Fi stories, or a detective story that doesn't have to do with secret societies and ancient artifacts.

I'm not too bothered about the setting - although you are right; there has been an annoying, recent trend of setting games in desolate, 19th century locations from literature - but I am annoyed by the fact that it's raiding other people's ideas instead of creating new ones. It's not like they even make games that are worthy of the source material They just come up with a fairly middling, half-arsed concept, stick an icons name on the cover and hope it sells.

We end up with derivative, lacklustre games, that often have very little to do with the famous characters they so woodenly emulate.

Fair enough, make some - there's obviously going to be an audience for the next Sherlock Holmes game - but please stop making games with sub-heading's like: "Inspired by the final paragraph of a footnote Jules Verne penned, at the bottom of a particularly in depth shopping list."

Just invent your own story. Stop raping literature.

Can you give some titles of games you have in mind that fit your description? I have never played a game based on literature but I can imagine that a bad game based on a famous book leaves you with the same feeling as a bad film based on a famous book does. I can imagine why games based on literature are attractive to developers; they're cheaper to make because you don't have to pay the people who write the story a lot.

Excuse me? These forums and the AGS ones at the very least seem thriving and vibrant. Perhaps he needs to look around a bit more.

I also love the way he blames his customers for not liking his games more

It's a matter of preference: you like adventure games, so you should like everything about them. It's like "i like westerns, but only Sergio Leone, not John Ford". And 1st person or 3rd person, after all, has NOTHING to do about interactivity: don't tell me than in Still Life, Syberia or Black Mirror there is much more interactivity than in your average 1st person adventure.

SSH said:

It's not a very Fine Article is it? ;) We more or less tore it to shreads in 9 posts :)

Yes, but this is because you take it personal. Of course we don't like most of adventure games, and of course the Egipt, Sherlock, etc games bore me to death, so I don't buy them unless I have some faith that the developers will be creative enough. And it's true that we are a splitted fan-base. This is NOT blaming: this is just looking for causes.

I found it a very interesting article, though I don't agree on some things.

Or maybe some people just get more motion sickness when they play first person :) Depends on the controls and movement

Off the top of my head:

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened

Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Silver Earring

Sherlock Holmes: Mystery of the Mummy

Mysterious Island

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Jules Verne: Journey to the Moon

Murder on the Orient Express


All of these are either dreadful to middling - in my opinion, obviously. The developers seem to think that basing a story on classic literature is more than enough to sell a product. Gameplay itself seems to be quite unimportant.

I must say I only played the demo of the Silver Earring game, but I liked that one. I also liked the demo of And then there were none, which is another Agatha Cristie game. But I still think you are right. It's better to make a new game than to make a bad game based on a piece of good literature.

I think part of the problem is that the original concepts, characters and stories, were not written with computer games in mind. These elements are therefore squeezed into an alien format and have to be forced to work, instead of naturally working.

These are characters and places that people follow fanatically and I doubt that any representation will truly live up to their imagination, let alone a stiffly animated, computer generated version.

I'm not being very clear, but I suppose with each transition from the original work, the format changes slightly and is corrupted, with diminishing returns.

I'm sure it's possible, but I imagine it to be highly unlikely, that a truly great game will ever be made this way.

Most excellent games, have at their core great gameplay and interesting characters. If you're discovering characters for the first time through a game you enjoy, chances are you'll take to them and perhaps even grow to like/love them.

When you meet Sherlock Holmes, for example, in a game, you probably already have your own idea about what he's like, and if the game fails to deliver and engage you in that respect, there's an immediate handicap.

I don't know if I'm making sense, it's quite a tricky concept to explain. There's a whole bunch of words that I've just typed, that, maybe if you experiment, mix them up and rearrange them however you like, may become more coherent.

You ARE kidding, right?

Am I no longer entitled to my opinion?

Why? Personally, I do like Leone westerns but not Ford ones. I don't see how enjoying one thing imposes a duty on me to like something else.

While it's ridiculous that people should have to justify their preferences, there are many reasons why I tend to steer clear of 1st-person games. The navigation is often confusing (I particularly dislike the 360-degree spinning found in most modern node-based games), there's a general lack of character interaction and conversation, the stories often seem like an afterthought, I find the 3D-rendered graphics anonymous and sterile, and the mechanical/logical puzzles feel like brain-teasers rather than organic challenges. True, there are 3rd-person games that are no more interactive, but as a rule I don't like those games either.

The article is a load of nonsense. It appears to assume that the purpose of adventure game communities is to provide developers and publishers with a ready market for whatever games they want to put out. Nope, sorry! That's not what we're here for, and any failure to live up to this "responsibility" is not our problem. If people would rather talk about Monkey Island and Gabriel Knight than your latest release, well, suck it up. People are going to buy (and discuss) whatever games they want, and as long as they are informed about the options that are out there (something adventure game sites do a pretty good job of) you shouldn't think you're entitled to anything more.

Also, this obsession with "epic" adventure games is just sad. An adventure game doesn't have to be 20 hours+ to be memorable. Is Samorost epic? The funny thing is that the writer performs a pretty reasonable analysis of the adventure game community and market, but instead of asking himself "what can I do to release a successful adventure game given this situation?" (and there are several pretty obvious steps to take) he wants the world to change to suit him. Good luck with that, mate!

Amen! :D