[JohnGreenArt]

I find it interesting that this thread has devolved into a battle of statistics.

It's not about which company made the most games, or which company had the most diverse games, it's which company is your *favorite*.

I've played plenty of Sierra Games in the past, more of them than LucasArts games the first time around (thanks to ScummVM I've caught up.) I had only ever played Maniac Mansion, Fate of Atlantis, Sam & Max and CMI up until a year ago. But I did play Quest For Glory 1-3, Liesure Suit Larry (forget which), Police Quest 3 & 4, Space Quest 1-3, Willy Beamish, and a few others when I was younger.

I'd played far more Sierra games, but I enjoy the LucasArts games a lot more. I just prefer cartoon adventures more, which explains why Willy Beamish was my favorite Sierra game.

So it's not which company has made more or is more diverse or was more successful, it's just which one made the adventures you've enjoyed most.

[Gonchi]

Originally Posted by JemyM

If you count games like Shivers, Woodruff, Mixed Up Mother Goose and Lighthouse, Sierra produced around 50 adventuregames until the end.

There is not reason for not counting any of those games.

Originally Posted by JemyM

A bonus is that they actually did not release a single game that is not today considered a "classic" and is still playable and enjoyable despite the aged graphics.

I agree with that, but this is really beside the point.

Originally Posted by JemyM

In numbers, discounting the bad games, Sierra passed LucasArts in amount of quality titles. But kinda like Hollywood it's sometimes difficult to see the good games between all the "cash in" games they did.

To put it simple, there are 4 lucasartsgames I would not recommend to anyone who are not a rabid adventuregame fan today; Indiana Jones 3, Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken and The Dig. The rest I believe are good enough to be played, and enjoyed, even today 2006even if you do not have any prior nostalgic attachment to the game.

I cannot say the same about Sierra. They have many many titles that I simply cannot recommend to anyone today. Sometimes it's because of the graphics that decayed too much, but in many cases it's because the games are actually not good from a 2006 point of view. The stories are uninteresting and the characters are not as memorable. Discarding all nostalgia, far from every Sierra game was a "classic".

Why are we discounting "bad" games? What's bad to you may not be to me, and vice versa. What's "bad" is subjective, I don't care what the industry and their grading system say.

We're also mixing things up now. No one mentioned quality (which I'm going to assume you're referring to the design, program, etc. aspect of the games) and personal taste is irrelevant to the diversity discussion, neither of their addition change the fact that Sierra had more diverse titles than LucasArts. I suppose you could justify that LucasArts' weren't as diverse as Sierra because their games were of higher quality, but that would be a fairly unsubstantiated argument.

Originally Posted by CrimsonBlue

All the games you mentioned can go under most of the genres I already described. Freddy Pharkas was basically a Larry game in the west. Torin's Passage, I haven't tried it much. Codename: Iceman was basically a Police Quest game in disguise, which isn't a surprise, as it's made by the same guy behind PQ1-3 (Jim Walls).

I'm sorry, but those games were just nothing alike. For starters, I must have missed the bit where you go around picking up women in Freddy Pharkas, I also don't recall the naval simulation sections in Police Quest.

Originally Posted by CrimsonBlue

But anyway, it depends on how you look at it. You look at every game as something entirely different, and why shouldn't you do that with the LucasArts games? They ARE very different. They're every bit as different as King's Quest is to Camelot and Longbow. But the point it, if you don't like King's Quest, chances are you won't like Camelot and Longbow either, so there's goes diversity out the window. So, let's try again, and this time, let's not blend humour in as its own genre.

For starters those games are nothing alike either, besides sharing the Fantasy setting. If you can't tell the differences between these games, we shouldn't even be having this discussion.

"Chance's are" isn't much of a certainty; I absolutely hated King's Quest 1 and 2. I mildly enjoyed King's Quest 3, didn't finish KQ4, thought KQ5 was pretty boring, loved KQ6 and didn't even bother to buy KQ7. On the other had, the Quest for Glory games were excellent and I considered them some of the best adventure games ever made (yes, including QfG3, which everyone hated) and I also thoroughly enjoyed playing both Conquest games.

Humour is its own theme or genre, and just because you shoot yourself in the foot in PQ2 and get a funny message, it doesn't make the game a part of it. Coupling the PQ games with Leisure Suit Larry's is absurd. All the Gabriel Knight games were radically different from each other, and are all about as close to being like Shivers as Space Quest is to being like Rise of the Dragon, despite sharing the same themes.

Originally Posted by CrimsonBlue

I'm not sure where to put RAMA and Lighthouse, I have no idea what they're about.

Let's forget what they're about for a minute and concentrate on what they are. Like Shivers, both are first person perspective, heavy on puzzle Myst-likes... how many of these type of adventure games were made by LucasArts? Do you see what I mean by diversity?

Originally Posted by CrimsonBlue

Okay, I could do LucasArts now, but I won't. You can just use the above groups for reference. Also, the titles above can most likely be put in more than one of the genres, and the same with LucasArts titles.

But basically, LucasArts created 10 different franchizes (sort of), but all of them are very different. And yes, most of them have humour, but that was their thing and the humour from game to game were all very different.

But okay, I stand corrected, Sierra has the edge when it comes to diversity, but only just. And considering how many games they've made, the diversity should've been a LOT bigger than this. Different themes necessarily mean diversity.

I think I see what the problem between our views is. When I say diversity, you think of only themes, where as I also consider gameplay differences amongst other things, and the difference in diversity is vast in that regard.

As for LucasArts humour being very different from game to game, I seem to recall a tendency to excessively quote Star Wars.

Originally Posted by JohnGreenArt

I find it interesting that this thread has devolved into a battle of statistics.

It's not about which company made the most games, or which company had the most diverse games, it's which company is your *favorite*.

...

So it's not which company has made more or is more diverse or was more successful, it's just which one made the adventures you've enjoyed most.

Well the discussion is very dated, it has to modernize itself if it wants to survive in today's market.

[Josho]

Originally Posted by CrimsonBlue

Conguests of Longbow and Camelot were basically derived from King's Quest. Same with Quest For Glory, but added rpg elements - and had plenty of humour.

I'm guessing you've never played most of the games you're talking about. King's Quest titles were, for the most part, woven out of Andersen and Grimm fairy tales, with some other kids' fiction mixed in (Alice in Wonderland, for instance). Longbow and Camelot were heavily researched dramas based on longstanding hisotrical legends, set in historically accurate locales. The puzzle design and writing could not have been more different. In fact, Christy Marx had never even played a computer game when she set down to create Camelot (her first). The Coles' writing and puzzle design was, again, very different, and their work was based NEITHER on fairy tales NOR on established historical fiction, but on Dungeons-and-Dragons, a fantasy genre, with the addition (as you point out) of a lot of broad, Monty Python and Three Stooges-type humor. How Christy's work and the Coles' work derived from King's Quest, I have no idea, but it seems like you're lumping together anything that is based on non-contemporary fiction.

Originally Posted by CrimsonBlue

Freddy Pharkas was basically a Larry game in the west.

Larry was a series about sex and sexual stereotypes in a contemporary setting, with only a passing nod towards plot. Freddy was a game about a reluctant ex-gunfighter whose town is being mysteriously beseiged. Sex was not its theme; it was not even a plot element. And they were written by different people. So, pray tell, how are they the exact same?

--Josh

[Erwin_Br]

Sierra games generally did lack a certain amount of 'polish'. Especially in the animation department. Some of the walkcycles I've seen are quite poor. Space Quest 5 comes to mind.

Not that it spoiled the fun or anything, but I look at these things.

--Erwin

[CrimsonBlue]

I give up. There's obviously people more enlightened than me on Sierra, so I'll step back and just let the nostalgia of all these great games run through my head instead. Sierra and LucasArts, both are great companies, although I think LucasArts have influenced the genre a bit more than Sierra has. Problem was, while they have a fair share of excellent games, there was just overproductive. And while some people might enjoy that, I'd have preferred if they put some more energy to make every title unique. Because, a lot of the time, they just picked up the bow and shot, hoping for a hit. Most of the time they failed, but sometimes they got a lucky bullseye.

As for the games I've played from both companies, they share about the same amount of games on my top ten lists.

So I lost the discussion, I'm defeated. But I still think the LucasArts titles are a lot more diverse than given credit for, as I can't really compare them.

Oh, and just because a number of them had Star Wars in-joke doesn't mean the humour is the same. A couple of jokes about Star Wars doesn't make it a game where Star Wars jokes are made. There were hundreds of other jokes too. And I still don't think that humour in itself is a genre, as there are a lot of different types of humour.

[Gonchi]

Originally Posted by CrimsonBlue

And while some people might enjoy that, I'd have preferred if they put some more energy to make every title unique. Because, a lot of the time, they just picked up the bow and shot, hoping for a hit. Most of the time they failed, but sometimes they got a lucky bullseye.

I don't want to drag the discussion further, but I'm just going to go on record as severely disagreeing with that statement.

Originally Posted by CrimsonBlue

And I still don't think that humour in itself is a genre, as there are a lot of different types of humour.

I don't see how there being different types of humour makes a difference. Every other medium has a comedy classification, why not games?

[CrimsonBlue]

In movies and such, we have Action/Comedy for example. There are rarely any pure comedies in there, usually it's mixed with another classification to further specify what you can expect. It's a bit vague to just put comedy anymore.

Besides, if you classify the games in comedy vs serious, you'd end up like this:

Comedy; Sam'n'Max, Monkey Island series, Zak McKracken, ManiacMansion series
Serious; Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Indiana Jones, The Dig and Loom

Sure, some people would say Grim Fandango was comedy, but I'm not so sure. It's a lot more serioius than the other games I'd classify as comedy.

This leads up to four comedy series and five serious. Hmmmm.

[Bobske]

Originally Posted by CrimsonBlue

I give up. There's obviously people more enlightened than me on Sierra, so I'll step back and just let the nostalgia of all these great games run through my head instead. Sierra and LucasArts, both are great companies, although I think LucasArts have influenced the genre a bit more than Sierra has. Problem was, while they have a fair share of excellent games, there was just overproductive. And while some people might enjoy that, I'd have preferred if they put some more energy to make every title unique. Because, a lot of the time, they just picked up the bow and shot, hoping for a hit. Most of the time they failed, but sometimes they got a lucky bullseye.

As for the games I've played from both companies, they share about the same amount of games on my top ten lists.

So I lost the discussion, I'm defeated. But I still think the LucasArts titles are a lot more diverse than given credit for, as I can't really compare them.

I've read the discussing and I just had to add my 2 cents

I also severly disagree with, well about any statement CrimsonBlue made (execpt for the "I lost discussion" part ).

I think Gonchi pointed out most statements and I have to say I agree. What I can't understand is that you still think that Sierra was overproductive. Yes they produced a lot of adventure games in a short period of time (http://www.vintage-sierra.com/gameList.html) but not all adventure games were done by Sierra itself. Some games came from Dynamix, Cocktel Vision or another partner/daughter company from Sierra. Yes they were all released under the name Sierra but that's it. Also Sierra produced games that the market or the fans wanted. Almost every adventure game was a best seller so if you can keep up the quality, which imho they did, why not produce that amount of adventure games? Mind you that Sierra was a whole lot bigger that LA at that time and that LA was part of George Lucas' companies. So that takes away a bit of the stress related to publishing a best selling game. I read an article somewhere that verified this statement but I can't find the source. I'll edit it when I do.

Also, I severly disagree with your statement that LA influenced the market more that Sierra did. I believe that Sierra started the whole adventure gaming scene with KQ. Also Sierra adapted the newest technology at the time available and implemented it in their games. A few examples;

- KQ started the adventure gaming genre (1984).
- KQ IV - mouse implementation + fully orchestrated midi soundtrack +
support for a wide range of soundcards (1988)
- KQ V - 256 color VGA support (1990). A year later LA came with their first
adventure game (MI2) in 256 colors.
- KQ VI - full cdrom support + professional actors to do voice overs +
Microsoft Windows support (1993).
- KQ VII - High resolution SVGA support for adventure games + cdrom
only (1994).
- Phantasmagoria - One of the first adventure games supporting FMV. Came
on a mind boggeling amount of 7 cd's! (1995).

LA didn't have that big an impact on the hardware behind the adventure games, but I also don't think LA had as big an impact as you would like to think with their adventure games. They produced adventure game gems (except for GF ) but I believe Sierra made a bigger impact on the adventure gaming scene with their succesful franchises and diversity.

I hope a got my point across on this dominantly LA fanboy forum!

[Erwin_Br]

Originally Posted by CrimsonBlue

I give up.

Give up what, exactly? I mean, it's impossible to change everyone's opinion to match yours. You can only state yours, which you did, so you succeeded.

--Erwin

[CrimsonBlue]

Actually, I tried to end this discussion with these words:

I lost the discussion, I'm defeated.

So give it up already. I've already accepted that my view was wrong and that Sierra DID have more diversity than LucasArts. I could delete all my previous posts that reflected my ignorance, but I won't do that. I do, however, want them to be regarded as just that... previous posts. It's over. I've been convinced. Can we go on to better things now?

[Bobske]

Originally Posted by CrimsonBlue

Can we go on to better things now?

Any suggestions

[Junkface]

Originally Posted by Bobske

LA didn't have that big an impact on the hardware behind the adventure games, but I also don't think LA had as big an impact as you would like to think with their adventure games. They produced adventure game gems (except for GF ) but I believe Sierra made a bigger impact on the adventure gaming scene with their succesful franchises and diversity.

Even as a fan of both companies, I think that, from a design perspective Lucasarts had a more lasting influence than Sierra. You just need to look at the move to make any sort of deadends anathema, the current widespread aversion to any sort of death or action elements (often much to a game's detriment) and the large amount of games that seem to want to be Lucasarts comedy adventures. I can't really think of many modern commercial games that seem to be emulating the design ethos of say, Conquests of the Longbow or Quest for Glory.

[Bobske]

Originally Posted by Junkface

Even as a fan of both companies, I think that, from a design perspective Lucasarts had a more lasting influence than Sierra. You just need to look at the move to make any sort of deadends anathema, the current widespread aversion to any sort of death or action elements (often much to a game's detriment) and the large amount of games that seem to want to be Lucasarts comedy adventures. I can't really think of many modern commercial games that seem to be emulating the design ethos of say, Conquests of the Longbow or Quest for Glory.

I understand what you mean and I do agree with your statement, but I personally didn't mind the deadends or the backtracking. When playing SQ4 I tried to die in almost every screen just to see the death messages Some "dead ends" like the escape from the cruise ship in LSL2, were actually pretty cool. I'd rather die on the escape boat then getting the message: "Sorry Larry, you can't enter the escape boat. Didn't you forget something?".

Come on, didn't you like the death scenes in Phantasmagoria, The Colonel's Bequest or The Dagger of Amon Ra?

Ok, I admit! The death scenes/dead ends in games like PQ were ANNOYING!

I also agree that most modern commercial games "want to be" LA games because of the design ethos and I think in most cases they made the right choice. Death scenes/dead ends don't add realism but annoyance to adventure games. But I have to say that people were more annoyed with dead ends/scenes in Sierra games than in games like Broken Sword of the Tex Murphy adventures.

I love LA games but I got more stumped with playing LA games than Sierra games because I didn't know what to do next

[Mordalles]

er . . . i like lucasarts games more, but i accidentely voted sierra.

[Solid Snake]

It wasn't an accident ,it was God who is a Sierra fan

[ATMachine]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

It wasn't an accident ,it was God who is a Sierra fan

Now that's just being petty.

In my view, this is the situation: LucasArts made a relatively small of adventures, almost all great, which were mostly comedic.

Sierra made LOTS of adventures, some comedic and some not, of varying quality. Some were great, many were good, and a few were not very good at all.

I would agree that Sierra games taken as a whole have more "variety." But this also means that liking one Sierra game, or a few, is nowhere close to liking the company's entire output. With LucasArts, on the other hand, a person who likes one of their adventures will probably enjoy nearly all of them (imho).

As for the issue of who influenced modern adventures' design, LucasArts wins beyond a doubt. Modern adventures generally lack ways to die, and they get criticized for having dead ends. With Sierra such things were par for the course, but not in LucasArts games. Call it a "dumbing down" of the genre if you want, but the trend started with LucasArts and snowballed from there.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by ATMachine

Now that's just being petty.

Nope. You're the one who's being petty.

[Spiwak]

Geez people. LucasArts > Sierra

Thread closed. (Oh how I wish I were an admin, sometimes)

[The Seed]

Originally Posted by ATMachine

As for the issue of who influenced modern adventures' design, LucasArts wins beyond a doubt. Modern adventures generally lack ways to die, and they get criticized for having dead ends. With Sierra such things were par for the course, but not in LucasArts games. Call it a "dumbing down" of the genre if you want, but the trend started with LucasArts and snowballed from there.

How does lacking ways to die = dumning down? Most of the deaths in Sierra games were stupid and pointless anyway:

"Oops you wakled to close to edge of the cliff and fell off, somehow..."

"...F*** off, I was nowhere near the edge!"

[Scoville]

Originally Posted by Bobske

- KQ started the adventure gaming genre (1984).
- KQ IV - mouse implementation + fully orchestrated midi soundtrack +
support for a wide range of soundcards (1988)
- KQ V - 256 color VGA support (1990). A year later LA came with their first
adventure game (MI2) in 256 colors.
- KQ VI - full cdrom support + professional actors to do voice overs +
Microsoft Windows support (1993).
- KQ VII - High resolution SVGA support for adventure games + cdrom
only (1994).
- Phantasmagoria - One of the first adventure games supporting FMV. Came
on a mind boggeling amount of 7 cd's! (1995).

Actually, Maniac Mansion had mouse support in 1987, so LA was ahead of Sierra on that one. LucasArts' mouse functionality was much better at first anyway, as Sierra's mouse control was practically useless until King's Quest V. And adventure gaming had been around since long before 1984 (although Sierra most likely did create the graphic adventure with Mystery House).