[dekaneas297]

Ehm, we have the release dates of all games in the 'Games A-Z' section. We don't need that.

And what's the point of getting your ratings in order to explain the rank of the list? Didn't you write that the list ratings were scores of approximately 55,000 gamers and 3,800 critics?

Either remove the list which is based to nothing and tell us your preference (which is what we all do in this thread) or back up the creation of the list

[terhardp]

I was hooked to adventure games with Broken Sword II, back in 1998. Though I've played many adventure titles since then, especially this year, I still haven't played some of the games people call "classics", like Grim Fandango, Gabriel Knight, Sanitarium...

Anyway, the games that I've replayed (or I will in the future) are Broken Sword I & II, Syberia I & II, Fahrenheit, The Lost Crown (I can't believe that, at first, I was thinking weather to play this or not!), Return to Mysterious Island 1 & 2, Monkey Island (the whole series, including the Tales and the remake), Runaway 1 & 2 (no matter what some people say) and Still Life 1 & 2. Those are the titles that have left a lasting impression on me.

And yes, I have played "The Longest Journey" and "Dreamfall". Sure, those are epic games, but, personally, I don't dig that fantasy style that much.

[MattWBradbury]

And now - An explanation of the list. Remember that I did this statistically, not emotionally.

I created a spreadsheet and proceeded to copy every single adventure game created since January 1, 2000 to August 20, 2009 to that spreadsheet (including GK3 and TLJ for reference) that was posted to GameSpot.com. The total number of games came out to be 701. Many of these games had no sizable amount of information nor interest detectable, and some had no information at all.

In order to be identified as a viable classic, the game had to have had at least 50 user votes or at least five critic scores. Not a bad limit seeing as an average adventure game such as The Experiment could rack in 17 critic reviews and 486 user votes.

Once the critic scores and game score votes were added to the spreadsheet, all rejected adventure games that didn't recieve any votes, such as Barbie Fashion Show, The Oregon Trail 4th Edition, and a slew adult anime adventures, were removed from the list. There were now 236 adventure games present.

Now came the arduous task of ranking these notable adventure games. I had a mass of scores and numbers to deal with. I had to make some kind of weighting system in order to make since of it all. Basically, the main piece of mathematics that forms these rankings is that 1 critic's vote is worth the vote of 10 user votes. I have the average score for all of the critics, and I have the average score of all of the user votes. This will be easier to understand with an example. I will use a very popular adventure game: Indigo Prophecy.

Indigo Prophecy had received 43 critic scores, and 4891 user votes. The average score of the critics was 8.5, and the average score of the users was 8.9; Gamespot gave the game an 8.4, but they only count for 1 critic score. As I said before, 10 user votes counts as 1 critic score, so you divide 4891 by 10, and get 489.1 voter counted scores.

From here, you can simply apply the proper fraction to the score from users and critics, divide by the total number of usable scores, and add them together to get an averaged score for the title. The function looks like this: (Critic Score * # Critics) / (# Critics + # Users / 10) + (User Score * # Users / 10) / (# Critics + # Users / 10). In this case, the user votes outweighs the critics tremendously, so the final game score comes out to be 8.87. The popularity of the game is measured by simply adding the number of critics to 1/10th the number of users.

When this is done to every game, a problem arises. Several games are marked very high, but are not very popular at all, so not many people would have even heard of them. These are games like Kana Little Sister, and "Time Gentlemen, Please!".

Basically the main step here was to isolate first, the top 25th percentile of game scores (top 59 game scores), and then take the top 50th percentile of popularity ranks (top 29 popularity). This eliminated things like every Sam & Max sequel from being in the top list, and showing every possible installment of Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes, though as it were, all of them were eliminated here.

The only other thing I did with this was remove duplicate games, such as the Sam & Max 101-106 and simply substitute Sam & Max Season 1. This twiddled the selection down to about 20 games. That is how those lists were generated. The method, as I said initially, is not perfect, but I believe it is a decent one.

[dmouse097]

Originally Posted by millenium

Not entirely true. The way pricing works is:

retail price = costs x mark up.

Costs have gone down dramatically in the past 15 years or so: an eaverage PC is now 2x 3x cheaper than it was all those years ago; it's now possible to buy an avid game engine without spending millions, some high quality engines are even open-source and free. That means the costs have gone down.

Except that in many ways, costs haven't gone down. Some of those classics, since you mention the older Sierra & Lucas games, for example, were programmed by only a couple of people, and music was often a side job of another employee (especially with old-school Sierra). Look at the Monkey Island remake just released, the list of people in the credits is much, much longer. Back in 1985, a company with 20 employees could be in the big leagues. Nowadays, it's probably an indie company with much less visibility, except from news postings on fan sites like AG.

A big part of the reason adventures disappeared was that the costs were often much higher than one of those quickly slapped-together action games. Much less time for voice acting, maybe less backgrounds, etc... yeah, the costs of distribution might have gone down, from KQ4 being shipped on a handful of disks costing maybe 50¢ each to a single CD costing less, but even with the free or low-cost engines you talk of, you still have to pay for the people who program inside those tools, paint the backgrounds, etc...

[millenium]

Originally Posted by dmouse097

Some of those classics, since you mention the older Sierra & Lucas games, for example, were programmed by only a couple of people, and music was often a side job of another employee (especially with old-school Sierra)

This, by and large, will only be true for the games released in the very early 90s, especially regarding music... And this brings me to the next point:

Originally Posted by dmouse097

A big part of the reason adventures disappeared was that the costs were often much higher than one of those quickly slapped-together action games.

Wrong, very wrong, for 2 reasons.

First of all, action games are not cheaper to make than adventures. In fact, the relative costs of adventure games have gone down compared to other types of games. Why? Contrary to what you might be thinking, programming costs of RPG/Action/FPS/Strategy games outweight the costs of background drawing and voice acting, something that is especially true for the last 6-7 years. Those flashy lightning effects and sophisticated AI are very costly to implement, and the latest generation of games has also got some very sophisticated 3d models, both characters and environments, which are anything but cheap (and many now have extensive voice-overs. The costs of adventures, on the other hand, have stayed more or less the same: no need for AI, no gameplay tweaking and fine tuning which is needed in FPS/RPG/Strategy and other games.

The sole reason why many developers refused to make more adventure games was because of their low sales. Grim Fandango, for example, one of the best, if not the best, adventure games ever was considered to be a flop by LucasArts, because the sales weren't high enough...

[Origami]

Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper is also good right?

[dmouse097]

Originally Posted by millenium

The sole reason why many developers refused to make more adventure games was because of their low sales.

No, low profits.

I'm not completely disagreeing with you. But don't shrug off the many, many hours of voice acting and generally much more detailed background art and characters as being much less costly than some computer modeling. People are still the most expensive part of any product made in the US.

[gray pierce]

Originally Posted by Origami

Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper is also good right?

Sure ! It's the best in my opinion. But as I said before I allready mentioned the SH games (except the first)

[Ascovel]

Originally Posted by millenium

The sole reason why many developers refused to make more adventure games was because of their low sales. Grim Fandango, for example, one of the best, if not the best, adventure games ever was considered to be a flop by LucasArts, because the sales weren't high enough...

Nope. That's a myth. Actually, so many developers decided not to make more adventure games precisely because of this low sales myth. The nail to the coffin was the fact that the two most well regarded adventure game developers - LucasArts and Sierra - turned their backs on the genre. Every one else looked at this happening and interpreted it as clear evidence of adventure games not making any profit. However, in both cases the reasons were internal, financial problems of the companies and lack of solid management. The climate was for producing quicker and more safe projects, and shooters and Star Wars games are this kind of safer projects, also better blockbuster material than adventure games.

Of course popular comments on the genre's death like the one from Old Man Murray also helped greatly to keep the genre unpopular among critics and publishers alike.

[MattWBradbury]

The low profitability myth may just be a myth, but it does not take a genius to figure out that popularity sells games. Indigo Prophecy, one of the most popular recent adventure games, had far fewer fans than games like Half-Life 2, one of the most popular recent first person shooters. On Gamespot.com, Half Life 2 (PC) has about nine times as many fans as Indigo Prophecy. That means that, even if Half Life 2 was pirated 80-90% (much higher than what was actually pirated), they would still make more money on that game than they would have with Indigo Prophecy. Still, no adventure game company was standing as high as Vivendi Universal Games at the time (now Activision), especially not Quantic Dream.

There will still be a huge market for adventure games. About twenty notable titles are released each year with maybe one or two good ones. I think the other genres are simply inundated with games, but even with the huge volume, only about two to three good first person shooters come out ever year.

[millenium]

Originally Posted by dmouse097

No, low profits.

I'm not completely disagreeing with you. But don't shrug off the many, many hours of voice acting and generally much more detailed background art and characters as being much less costly than some computer modeling. People are still the most expensive part of any product made in the US.

Uhh... This is getting brutal now...

Profits are dependent on costs and sales. When making Grim Fandango, LucasArts correctly estimated the former but not the latter... Hence profits were lower than expected, because the game didn't sell enough, and not because of costs...

Yes, the backgounds in adventure games are usually more detailed, but do you realise how much time, effort, manpower and consequently money goes into making low-polygon models that look good and at the same time do not inflate system requirements or run smoothly in the case of consoles? Loads...

As for character model quality, I seriously disagree. In most adventure games, characters are shown from angles and zoom levels that avoid the need to model facial features and some other stuff. How is that more detailed than games such as Assasins Creed or Mass Effect?

Originally Posted by Ascovel

Nope. That's a myth. Actually, so many developers decided not to make more adventure games precisely because of this low sales myth.

From what I remember, Grim Fandango's problem was low sales... And that came from the mouth of LucasArts. They made an excellent game, spent a lot of money and consequently expected it to sell really well, something that didn't materialise. And yeah, it's true that uncertainty plays a big role these days.

I'm not sure how GK3 sold (the last adventure from Sierra if I'm not mistaking), but I'm pretty sure the figures weren't too great.

Adventures simply don't sell as well, it's a fact. Tell me of a single adventure game that, in terms of sales, did as well as Half-Life, Diablo, Sims and many other games...

Why was there a shift to action and other genres? At the end of 90s, new graphics accelerators and CPUs hit the market, making adventure games look a lot more realistic, dynamic and therefore more engaging, something that was impossible before... Decent looking and feeling adventure games, on the other hand, were much easier to make in the case of slow computers for technical reasons that I will not go into.

If you look at what's popular in terms of movies, music and probably books as well, is that people don't particularly enjoy things that are intelligent, in this case adventure games...

Put that together with the fact that action games made a leap forward, and the end result is a decline in the popularity of the adventure genre.

Btw, by no means do I think that all of those who play FPS games and other stuff are stupid, so please don't bash me for that (do bash for everything else)

Crap, another huge post...

[Ascovel]

Originally Posted by millenium

Adventures simply don't sell as well, it's a fact. Tell me of a single adventure game that, in terms of sales, did as well as Half-Life, Diablo, Sims and many other games...

Adventure games don't have to sell as well as Sims, you can still make money from a niche market. In fact it's often easier than competing against the biggest hits.

[millenium]

Originally Posted by Ascovel

Adventure games don't have to sell as well as Sims, you can still make money from a niche market. In fact it's often easier than competing against the biggest hits.

Yes, but why sell less, when you can sell more? That's what you do when you are a publisher.

As for niche markets, if I were in charge of Electronic Arts, I certainly wouldn't want to publish, say, Secret Files. Why? Because my brand is associated with a certain kind of games. When a person buys an EA game, he expects certain qualities and even gameplay, so that's what I want to give them, because everything else, especially a rusty looking adventure game with slow and boring gameplay, may disappoint my customer and therefore make him think twice about buying an EA game in the future.

As EA, can we perhaps spend more money and make a decent looking and feeling adventure game? Yes, but who's going to buy it? It may work out, but the risks are too high. (If I'm not mistaking, EA is working with Spielberg on a new type of computer game that will be capable of having an emotional impact on the player).

Some publishers try to specialise in adventures. By and large, they're not doing well (Lighthouse and Dreamcatcher come to mind).

[Ascovel]

To me EA stands for some bland games with an even blander logo. I'd indeed think twice before buying an adventure game accompanied by it.

I think a smart strategy is to cover games of varied sizes. So, adventure games aren't becoming mega-hits right now? Then you have to invest into lower budget adventure projects that will make less profit, but also take less risk than the expensive games in the most popular genres.

Look at what LucasArts is doing at the moment. They have a place for games like Star Wars: The Old Republic, but also for Monkey Island and Lucidity.

[ozzie]

Geez, EA does everything: Sports titles with Fifa, Madden, NFL, EA Sports Active,...
Action titles with Dead Space, Mirror's Edge,...
Strategy with Command & Conquer...
Simulation games with Spore and The Sims...
Puzzle games with Bloom Box...
Roleplaying games with the upcoming Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2...

Oh, and they have publishing deals with Valve (HL2) and Double Fine (Brütal Legends). So no, EA certainly doesn't limit itself to certain gameplay styles. That would be silly for such a company giant.

Adventure games are a viable niche for some companies. Sure, the big players won't care about them, but smaller ones may find their place on the market there.
Telltale Games specializes not only in the niche of episodic titles, but also of adventure games. The release of MI:SE was a surprising success for LucasArts. Deep Silver seems to be successful with their Secret Files titles and the recently released Whispered World. The Book of Unwritten Tales seemed also to be a success for HMH Interactive since King Art is able to develop a prequel. So, adventure games can be successful. No, they don't make the big money, at least not for now, not in this state of the genre and with no one willing to take a big step forward, to take risks. Well, maybe Heavy Rain is this risky title. Anyway, on a smaller scale, you can make profits with adventures.

[shezcrafti]

Originally Posted by inm8#2

The Lost Crown and Scratches were top notch story telling experiences, and of course amazing games as well.

I will second both of these.

[shezcrafti]

I think to get the most accurate and unbiased results, one would need to set up a list of all adventure titles released in the past 10 years, then have forum members rank each game based on a fixed set of criteria agreed upon by the community. The ranking system should be kept simple, for example, from 1 to 5 stars, where 1 is poor and 5 is excellent.

The criteria could include things such as:
- Quality of Graphics
- Quality of Sound and/or Voiceovers
- Quality of Music (yes, this should be separate from Sound)
- Quality of Puzzles
- Overall Level of Fun
...etc. etc. etc.

Each survey participant should vote once, and ONLY once, and should ONLY rank the games that they've actually played. If someone has not played one of the games in the list, they should leave it blank. When the results are compiled, the scores will be averaged out.

Now who feels like creating a survey? ;-) I'd volunteer to help with one, if there's enough interest.

[Little Writer]

Enough survey tools out there, so it's just a matter of having enough time to put it all together. Be sure to add the possibility to skip having to rank games you haven't played yet (sometimes surveys don't offer that option and then it completely messes up the result, because the answers can't possibly be accurate).

I'd sure sign up to take such a survey. Would be interesting to know the results and see which games are worth checking out.

[marvio]

Originally Posted by After a brisk nap

Surprised to see Dreamfall repeatedly mentioned as a "top class adventure". In my opinion it is a terrible game, with gameplay that swings between "broken" and "non-existent" and a story that ultimately falls utterly short of what it attempts. I mean, Fahrenheit isn't perfect, but it never reaches the depths of suck that Dreamfall descends to.

As for a great adventure from the last ten years: Phoenix Wright (the first one).

Oh my God! thank you!!

Let me put in that pile of suck : Overclock and Syberia 1 and 2, both of which made me angry to have wasted my time getting to the end!

In the case of overclock , it's just a very contrived story, tries way too hard to be smart and then delivers the obvious and cliche

And Syberia... Oh!! Syberia...

I'm willing to put up with some cluelessness from adventure characters, but our heroine in Syberia is a true fucking retard! Not only that, the pay off at the end, ISN'T!! In the end the dude really just wanted to see some Mamoth's, that's it! THere's no deeper meaning, there's nothign else to it, he just wanted to see them!! Fuck!! That alone made me want to reach into my monitor and strangle both him and her; You mean you made me play, what comes down to, two entire adventure games for this!!

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but if anybody mentioned "Memento Mori" , please just let me know so i can avoid any conversation with you...

The only game I can remember, in the past 10 years, that worthy of such praise is the original:"The longest Journey"

[ozzie]

I don't think you got the point of the Syberia series, but that's okay.

I agree with you on the second part. I remember reading that the ending was so emotional. Sure, the ending of the first game made my eyes all watery, so I expected something. But the second...yeah, the mammoths come. Wow. I predicted that the whole game long. So, why should it grab me? The credits rolled, I shrugged. Now, if the mammoths wouldn't have come, that would have been devastating.