[Intense Degree]

In the good Mr Allin’s very interesting article on the front page about whether mainstream reviewers hate, or are biased against, adventure games, which you really should read if you haven’t already, he asks this question:

Do you think that some genres are more inherently “fun” than others?

It's an interesting question (and not the only one in that article).

He says; “I do believe that some genres are more engaging in their own right than others, and adventures may well be at the bottom of that list”.

His reasoning (or my interpretation of it) is this: The core mechanics of adventure games are not, on their own, as much fun. For example, in a game where you shoot zombies, the core mechanic is shooting zombies! In an Adventure game it is (usually) a mixture of exploration, talking to people and puzzles.

Shooting zombies is fun (for many gamers) on its own and even if the story, characters, graphics, locations, dialogue etc. are rubbish the game can still be enjoyed at some level as the shooting bit in itself is fun.

However, adventure games are dependant upon the story, characters, puzzles etc. being good enough to make the mechanics of exploration, talking and puzzles fun. In short, exploration, talking and puzzles can only be as good as the environment, people and puzzle design actually are. On their own, they are not as much fun as shooting zombies! (comparatively).

This is a different thing from what style you prefer. Personally I don’t like shooting games and I love adventure games, probably like most people here, but I know that lots of people enjoy shooters and would probably get more out of a bad shooter (because they like to shoot!) then I would out of a bad adventure game.

The reason for this is what most people (generalisation) like about adventure games is either the story and characters, or the puzzles (or a mixture). The exploration and talking elements are only fun if you are exploring or talking to something/one interesting. Likewise the puzzle element is only enjoyable if the puzzles themselves are actually good.

I think Jack has a point and some genres might well be inherently more “fun” than others. Levelling up keeps you coming back to RPG’s, shooting guns to shooters, and playing sport to sport games. Adventure games are different because their main “pull” is not the mechanics of the game itself, but the story/characters/puzzles and this is what the game usually stands or falls by. No one cares about the storyline or characters in Call of Duty, it doesn’t matter if they are rubbish because it is fun to shoot (apparently!).

When story/characters/puzzles are rubbish in an adventure game there is nothing (or comparatively not as much) to fall back on and therefore shooters are inherently more fun than adventure games, even if an adventure game beats a shooter every time for me!

What do you think?

[jfcwilson]

Well, it's a question of whether "fun" alone can be a worthwhile experience. I don't personally think so. I play AGs because I'm not looking for fun so much as story, atmosphere, and intelligent narrative. If I do play an FPS once in a while, I mostly do it cause it's fun and actually relaxing(AGs aren't so much, to me).
I don't think you can experience atmosphere, story, and the characterization of a landscape when you're also having "fun" in an action-y way. Games should, in my opinion, get past the "needs to be fun" trap and spring for truly engaging interactive stories, and for me, AGs come closest to that.

[Ascovel]

Good topic and keen observations, Intense and jfcwilson.

I just wanted to point out that puzzles ARE the game mechanics of adventure games. The sudden revelations which the player comes to with greater or lesser effort are the main source of satisfaction he draws from playing.

The main difference I see between adventure games and other genres is that in the latter type of games the player can find himself completely out of tune with the logic of the game and end up permanently stuck unless he resorts to cheating (to some degree it can happen in other genres too though).

[jeppson]

I guess I can call it fun, my fav. games of all is 100% adventure games. I love to explore, mystery and suspense combined.

I want to think, solve good puzzles, explore, dig into a story, understand, be scared, see beautiful surroundings, great atmosphere, good background sounds and so on. I want to forget the world around me and live in the adventure game while I am playing it, be the person in the game, get sucked into it and thats a lot of fun to me.

[millenia]

There is truth to this. I can't get my spouse to play adventures because he finds the gameplay dull. He wants some action. And then some actionish adventures often are clunky and the action is badly implemented, so he mostly stays away from them too.

I live for the stories and sometimes the slow paced style of adventures is just what I want but often I also want to do stuff, like fight or level or build something.

[Intense Degree]

Originally Posted by Ascovel

I just wanted to point out that puzzles ARE the game mechanics of adventure games.

I think I will respectfully disagree with that.

For Professor Layton and maybe even Myst style games I think it is right, but there is more to the mechanics of many (most?) adventure games than puzzles. The exploration part is fundamental to many games (i.e. Dark Fall/Scratches/Blackstone Chronicles). Similarly talking to people is fundamental to others (GK/TLJ) and sometimes puzzles take a backseat. They are part of the equation certainly, but not all of the equation.

Re Fun: I think that fun is ultimately enjoyment or taking pleasure from something in this context. Maybe simply being pleased with it is a better way of saying it.

I live for the stories and sometimes the slow paced style of adventures is just what I want but often I also want to do stuff, like fight or level or build something.

I agree with that personally and I suppose it raises the question of whether AG's are somehow more passive than other genres?

[Siddhi]

IMHO the problem with adventure games is that its possible to get completely stuck. There are only a couple of things that you can do at a time, and if you dont do them then you have to either wait for a brainwave or consult a walkthrough. And there are so many ways to be stuck - you missed an item, the puzzle is too tough, the puzzle is illogical etc.

In most other genres its not possible to be stuck this way. If you spend enough time with the game you'll almost always get ahead. "Grinding" in RPGs sometimes gets a bad rap for the same reason - but at least you know that if you do it long enough you'll be able to get ahead.

The challenge for developers is to make it hard enough that its a challenge, but not so hard it stops people in their tracks.

Having said all that I love playing adventures

What adventures do better than other genres is exploration, story and characters - it needs to be exploited well.

[Lucien21]

I think part of the problem is that there is a lot more down time in adventure games.

In most other genres you are constantly moving or interacting with the game through constant movement of the sticks or pushing buttons on the controller.
It keeps the player constantly engaged and in control.

Adventure games and in particular the old style point and click games involve way less interaction. This is due to the nature of less interactive spots and the click and wait for the character to move mechanic. Most of the time you are watching the actions rather than have complete immersion.

[Ascovel]

Originally Posted by Intense Degree

I think I will respectfully disagree with that.

For Professor Layton and maybe even Myst style games I think it is right, but there is more to the mechanics of many (most?) adventure games than puzzles. The exploration part is fundamental to many games (i.e. Dark Fall/Scratches/Blackstone Chronicles). Similarly talking to people is fundamental to others (GK/TLJ) and sometimes puzzles take a backseat. They are part of the equation certainly, but not all of the equation.

Oh, I can fully accept that point of view. Though I'd still insist that the adventury puzzle-solving is the only unique element of the genre's gameplay. Exploration and dialogs can be integral elements of RPGs and visual novels in no less degree. So it's the puzzles that ultimately decide if you treat the game you're playing as an adventure game or not.

Anyway, previously I was mostly referring to what you said here:

I think Jack has a point and some genres might well be inherently more “fun” than others. Levelling up keeps you coming back to RPG’s, shooting guns to shooters, and playing sport to sport games. Adventure games are different because their main “pull” is not the mechanics of the game itself, but the story/characters/puzzles and this is what the game usually stands or falls by.

Story and characters - ok, these are very important while not being game mechanics. But solving puzzles (and exploring the game world) is what you do playing an adventure game - those are its core game mechanics and sometimes are fun even without the story/characters (e.g. Zork, escape the room sub-genre). So I don't think it's inherently more difficult to make an adventure game fan satisfied than with the other genres - believe me, in the past I have been repeatedly frustrated by exploration elements in FPS games, or put off by atmosphere that didn't appeal to me.

Notice also how horror games that limit the amount of fighting (or remove it altogether) are very eager to put in adventure game puzzles. Another example - Batman: Arkham Asylum introduced some lite adventure game challenges to showcase Batman's detective side. Not to mention a game like L.A. Noire didn't seem like it ever had the goal to become an adventure game - it seems its gameplay was more the result of limiting the focus on action elements to do something more cerebral.

So even games belonging to the more mainstream genres can still sometimes opt for adventure game elements - to make them more fun and interesting.

[cbman]

I don't think certain genres are inherantly more fun beause what constitutes fun is so personal and subjective. But I think the type of fun to be had in a shooter or driving game is more popular than the more cerebral fun to be had in an AG. I think this is mainly because those games utilize things that people would consider that they would like to do in their leisure time; they are linked to 'real world' hobbies, like playing football for instance, or fantasy professions they would dream of having.

Whereas Adventure Games, from a gameplay point of view, are about problem solving, method and, as many would see it, hard work, which are things most people would more associate with their working life than their leisure one. We are, unfortunately, socialized from a young age, through schooling (dividing our lives into 'work' / school and pleasure / home, the format we must learn to deal with in our adult lives) into associating indolence with pleasure. We need to constantly be reminded that effort has its own level of satisfaction and pleasure (me as much as anyone; i'm not being condescending here).

That is the inherant limiting factor in an Adventure Games audience. Unfiortunately, not enough developers put enough work into making the game appear to be less of a chore with a good interface. As much as it galls someone introduced to the genre through the Myst series maybe it is time more games went the Nancy Drew route and had different difficulty levels. Even if the differing challenge levels are not in reality much different it will at least give someone who may be put off the perception that the game may be more approachable. And if they do, they'll find it's not really that difficult after all. I'm not talking about changing the content of Adventure games (though I would love to evolve them a bit, particularly the dreary inventory based ones) or making them into bloody hidden object games or things like that, just rethinking how they're presented. Why don't all games have hot spot finders? Why don't they all have a built in notes system if you want to use it. Why don't they have a Help function to explain the mehanics of a puzzle, if you want to use it? The best ones do.

The biggest thing is they need to understand the player wants reward. solving a puzzle should always do one of the following:

Open up a new area for exploration (The journey is the reward, as was the Myst motto)

Trigger a cutscene / meaningfully evolve the story

At the least, provide a firm clue to another puzzle.

Please no more locked chests inside a chest. Adventure games can sometimes give the impression that its designer is insufferably smug.

[aimless]

cbman, you make some good points but I have to get in my plug for the 'dreary' inventory puzzles. I love them. I don't care how logical or ridiculous they turn out to be, I love them. So game designers reading this, there are still some fools for inventory puzzles out here.

Not getting het up just saying.

[Siddhi]

Originally Posted by cbman

Whereas Adventure Games, from a gameplay point of view, are about problem solving, method and, as many would see it, hard work, which are things most people would more associate with their working life than their leisure one.

I don't think this is true. Casual adventures are doing very well, and they have all the elements that real adventures do.

Originally Posted by cbman

The biggest thing is they need to understand the player wants reward. solving a puzzle should always do one of the following:

Open up a new area for exploration (The journey is the reward, as was the Myst motto)

Trigger a cutscene / meaningfully evolve the story

At the least, provide a firm clue to another puzzle.

Please no more locked chests inside a chest.

Yes!! There is nothing more annoying than to complete a long series of steps with the expectation that you would get ahead, only for another roadblock to be introduced before the story moves on.

I was playing Runaway recently, and while I really liked it, it had a lot of these. Do a long sequence of steps to get an item from a person, and instead of giving you the item he throws it and it gets lost, and now you have another puzzle to retrieve it... thats annoying.

Originally Posted by aimless

I have to get in my plug for the 'dreary' inventory puzzles. I love them.

I love inventory puzzles too. The annoying thing is not in the puzzle so much as that you might have missed an item, and thats always in the back of your head whether you need to go back and search every screen again.

I've been playing Tex Murphy: Overseer in the community playthrough, and its been wonderful so far.

• Interesting story and characters
• Superb mix of character interaction, logic puzzles and inventory puzzles
• NO pixel hunting for items. At least so far I've always had the item I needed. I'm surprised, because given the interface for this game I expected to miss out a lot of items
• The story keeps moving forward. No momentum kills so far
• Adjustable difficulty levels
• Skippable puzzles

[Idrisguitar]

fun comes from reward. so for me its as simple as being able to creatively solve puzzles with my brain being more rewarding that headshots in one of those many similar uninventive FPs'.

[terhardp]

Personally, I need more than just 'shooting zombies' to have a good fun.

I do enjoy a good gameplay as much as any other gamer out there, but it basically boils back down to four 'magic ingredients' which must be met for me to be insterested in a particular game: atmosphere, locations, characters and story. This applies to both adventure and other genres out there. Outside the genre, I've found most of these requierments in the games like Hitman, Max Payne, NOLF, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Mafia 2.

But in the end, my first question when picking a new game to play is: "am I interested in its topic?" For me, this often the most decisive factor, regardless of the great reviews I've read about the game in question.

[Jackal]

Hey, great topic! I approve. Just for the record, Intense Degree understood my article point exactly, though it seems to be getting more and more distorted.

The question isn't whether adventure games CAN be fun. Of course they can! And it's not about fun vs. something more deeper/rewarding. In this case, "fun" is an all-encompassing term that includes the latter as well.

The point is that the fundamental gameplay formula in an adventure has no inherent "fun" quotient on its own. Puzzle-solving isn't entertaining/fulfilling/challenging/rewarding on its own; it only becomes that if the puzzle itself is good. Exploration is mildly diverting at any time, so there's some inherent value there, but it's really only satisfying if the setting is rich with interesting stuff to look at/do. Ditto talking to characters. All the things that characterize an adventure are absolutely dependent on the quality of the execution. Bad puzzle = no fun. Dull setting/low interaction = no fun. Boring characters = no fun. And in an adventure, that's all there is. If those things are weak (in the mind of any given player), the game fails totally. I really believe that's why we see so many 30% and 40% review scores for games other people enjoy. There's no middle ground where everyone kind of agrees that there's some underlying fun to be had, which might bump an otherwise mediocre game up to 50-60%.

As for other genres, obviously the formulas alone aren't enough. Just shooting zombies, building bases, looting treasure gets old fast. And there are lots of lousy games spent doing those things. I'm just saying that even if all the other stuff fails, there's still some underlying entertainment value in the process itself. It may not last long, but it can certainly help smooth out the rough edges when the game starts to stumble in other areas.

[Ascovel]

Isn't that still very subjective, Jackal?

I remember myself mostly giving up action games upon discovering adventure games. The gameplay seemed so much more advanced and interesting than relying on the basic physical actions I was previously limited to.

Ultimately, I'd say the excitement of problem solving and interacting with the game world certainly helped smooth out rough edges when the adventure games I played stumbled in other areas (such as boring characters).

[Jackal]

I'd say what's subjective is whether or not a particular adventure game execute its elements well. In fact, that's the whole crux of the argument. Every adventure is judged on that basis alone. In a shooter, you can swap out one gun for another, one enemy for another, one setting for another, and still have the fundamental gameplay to fall back on. You can't just swap out one adventure game puzzle with another, or randomly replace settings and inventory and characters. The enjoyment of those things comes solely from their individual quality.

Originally Posted by Ascovel

Ultimately, I'd say the excitement of problem solving and interacting with the game world certainly helped smooth out rough edges when the adventure games I played stumbled in other areas (such as boring characters).

They must have offered interesting puzzles and rewarding interaction, then. Which doesn't change what I said. The act of sweeping the cursor around a screen, clicking hotspots and dialogue trees, etc. isn't exciting in its own right. I'm sure you can think of many examples you didn't enjoy that used all the same basic mechanics and fundamental principles, no?

I'm not insulting adventures by saying this, of course. I'm just noting something that makes them unique -- and also makes the genre most susceptible to vastly different opinions. Rarely do you see a shooter or RPG or strategy game get scores that range as widely as 90%-30%. Seems to happen to adventures a lot, and I think this is at least part of the reason why the range drops so low with some people.

[After a brisk nap]

Well, I agree completely with Jack's point. I've made the same argument myself in the past.

Maybe one way to think about it is to consider the game stripped of all the semantic content. Often as you develop a game, you use placeholder graphics and leave out the dialog and all that storytelling stuff until later in the development. For many games this doesn't make a huge difference: it may seem a bit unpolished, but you can still get a feel for how it plays. But in an adventure game, sure, you can put together the puzzle structure so that all the actions necessary to complete the game are possible; but without at least a rough version of much of the graphics, the animations, the text descriptions and the dialogue, you can't really play the game, because the actions only make sense within the context of the story and the specific situations it puts your character in.

Or put together a YouTube video of an adventure game playthrough where you only show the actions a player needs to take, skipping all the resulting non-interactive dialogue, animation, cut-scenes etc. It would just be a nonsensical series of disconnected actions.

[After a brisk nap]

Originally Posted by Ascovel

Good topic and keen observations, Intense and jfcwilson.

I just wanted to point out that puzzles ARE the game mechanics of adventure games. The sudden revelations which the player comes to with greater or lesser effort are the main source of satisfaction he draws from playing.

If (inventory) puzzles are a mechanic, I think it's quite a different mechanic from those in many other games, since the quality of a puzzle is much more dependent on the quality of its presentation (how well it is motivated, how subtle and well-tuned the hints are, how much semantic sense the action makes, how well it supports the story) than on the details of how it is performed (Combine item A with item B, Use item A on hotspot B, Pick up object A...), and more often judged on a standalone basis rather than as a sequence (unlike many other mechanics, where flow, balance, learning curve, difficulty progression etc. are important criteria).

You can (more or less easily) write computer programs to play many computer games "for real": if you define the game mechanic and the goals, the program can "understand" specific situations within the game and decide on appropriate actions, because the mechanics can indeed be analyzed and applied "mechanically." But it would almost certainly be hopeless to write adventure game solvers that would do much better than brute force (try everything), because determining the appropriate action requires a really deep understanding of current goals, obstacles and possible ways to overcome them, which vary immensely from case to case. There's no good mechanical way (apart from brute force) to solve adventure game puzzles.

This kind of ties back to what I say in the post above about not being able to properly play an adventure game without the semantic content. A well-integrated puzzle is almost wholly semantic. You could take an existing adventure game, change only the graphics/animations, the text labels and the dialogue (leaving the actual structure of the puzzles and the playable layout of the screens unchanged), and you would have a completely different game that most people wouldn't recognize at all, even if they had played the original. A terrible original game could become great if re-skinned this way, or vice versa, even if the actions necessary to complete the game would be identical apart from label changes.

[Siddhi]

Originally Posted by Jackal

In a shooter, you can swap out one gun for another, one enemy for another, one setting for another, and still have the fundamental gameplay to fall back on.

I'm not sure this is true. There are tons of shooters which have all this fundamental gameplay and yet are utterly boring.

The unique thing about adventures is that even in the really good ones, it is possible to hit a roadblock and be stuck for hours with no progress whatsoever - that is what causes the frustration for many people. With a shooter, you either progress fast or slowly, but rarely is it impossible to get ahead.