How painful.

[After a brisk nap]

Since it seems like no one is actually comprehending my posts, maybe an analogy can make it clear. (Against better wisdom. In my experience, analogies only add to existing confusion.)

The term "Adventure games" is kind of like the term "Indians." There are two peoples who, through an accident of history, are both called Indians. They have nothing to do with each other, otherwise.

Now imagine that someone came up with the name "Alaskan Indians" for native people living in Alaska. There could be controversy over whether they're properly Indians or Eskimos, whether they're distinct enough to warrant their own name, and so on. But arguing that if you call them Indians at all you are "stretching the term" to include every people between Alaska and India is just... misguided.

Now, admittedly this is a flawed analogy because American Indians were initially confused with and named after the Indian Indians (while console "adventure games" and puzzle-type "adventure games" apparently have independent etymological origins), and there has therefore been quite a bit of controversy over whether using the same name for both is proper. To the point where we're not supposed to say "Indian" at all, but use some other politically correct term. (Also, we're not supposed to use "Eskimo.")

Hopefully (yeah, right) you'll overlook these flaws and understand the point I am making.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

JACK!!! Please help us!!

You know, I wonder if the FPS community goes up in arms when someone doesn't quite fully understand the genre.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Nah. They only get into a snit if the framerate drops below 75.

*badda da CHING*

[samIamsad]

Snobs.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

And adventure gamers get into a snit if there IS a framerate.

*badda da CHING*

It's funny 'cause it's true.

[insane_cobra]

Hate to bring it to ya, folks, but Snarky is actually right. It's not about expanding the definiton of the genre to include more action heavy games, there are two separate genres with the same name.

The first, the one this website and forums are dedicated to, evolved from Colossal Cave Adventure and the second one from Adventure for Atari 2600 (which was also inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure). Now, the term we use for those games is action/adventure, but most console users simply call them adventure. Although it would be great if they also called them action/adventure, as this article suggests, good luck telling them they were wrong all this time

Besides, they have the right to the label practically just as much as we do. That's why I agree the Wikipedia entry should've been appended to, not completely changed.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Oh, I myself never claimed Snarky to be wrong. In all honesty I think those outside this 'picky, loudmouthed, overzealous'* community of adventure gamers have just as much right to define 'Adventure Game'. Even I suggested such:

Definitions or descriptions should not necessarily restrict what the adventure genre can be fully capable of and how far it can go. At the very least it should provide some kind of springboard for new thematic ideas, concepts, and experiments over and around a skeletal frame. It should give more than hold back.

- The Cold Hotspot: A critique of the state of adventure games

It's just that sites like AdventureGamers.com and some outspoken members from communities like those of JA+ have a very specific, albeit arbitrary, idea of what an adventure game is should be. Me, I might say that Metroid Prime has strong adventure elements, and that games like ICO and Beyond Good & Evil are adventure games, but different from, say, Myst or the Gabriel Knight series.





* So flame me! I don't care!

[squarejawhero]

I'm saying there has to be a central point, even if it's defined by several games. I see stuff like Future Wars and Farenheit as equal as Syberia or Kings Quest 2, for example, in terms of the use of the definition and the sides are blurred. The entry would have to show this. There is no "pure" adventure game, but definitions need a centre to work from.

Metroid Prime in this case only has very, very few adventure elements and extremely simple "puzzles". It shouldn't define solely and publically the FPA adventure as it's just not true, and the facts represented in the original definition were wrong. Don't kid yourselves about people having their "own thoughts" as you're misleading people if you're presenting them as facts.

Fact - Metroid Prime, in general, PUBLIC terms, isn't a first person adventure game but an action game with very few adventure elements. And it wasn't the first. And it doesn't define a genre. Individuals can classify them however they want but ultimately it's going to make communication difficult if everyone has their own singlular definition.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Metroid Prime: "This is an adventure game."

I'm also interested in what you guys think of "outsiders'" categorizing of games under the 'adventure' banner using standards other than those of your [community based] collective? Do you feel it threatens to somehow invalidate your own criteria? Do you think their ideas are just as cogent as yours? Also, there is the stigma of 'adventure games' within the industry as akin to commercial suicide, as echoed by veterans like Ron Gilbert. But then games like Psychonauts, Tomb Raider, and Metroid Prime are perceived as adventure games and they enjoyed varying degrees of critical and commercial succes. How do you take that?

That even a massively referred to information source like Wikipedia identifies Metroid Prime as an adventure game surely indicates a frame of mind operating perhaps as validly - and whoah! possible even more effectively - as that of sites like Adventure Gamers. Semantics, yes, but it looks to be an $11 billion dollar a year kind of semantics, as well as perhaps a ubiquitous epistemological awareness.

[AFGNCAAP]

The way I see it, out of the following sentences:

1. Game X didn't sell because it was marketed as an adventure game, and mainstream gamers HATE adventure games.
2. Metroid Prime (GTA3 / Doom 3 / etc.) is an adventure game.

... at least one must be false. Pure logic, simple as that.

Also, yes, you could say that common misuse of the definition sort of invalidates (or, a better word, dilutes) our established criteria. And it's usually not good, as it leads to consumers' confusion. Let the criteria evolve gradually, don't revolutionize their meaning with artificial updates generated by one new game (that's not to mention, the old version of Wikipedia's article consisted largely of Nintendo advertising blurb, really).

[smashing]

I'd yet to finish reading the whole thread yet. In fact, I'm still in the process of marvelling over the well-written articles that Trep have written (The Cold Hotspot). However, I couldn't help but see how the ongoing argument parallel to many other areas, not just for gaming, but for every thing that are classified.

One of the most similar instances I'd witnessed so far, is how people tried to force a definition upon "Classical music". This will bore a number of people who ain't musically-inclined, but I'm still gonna say it anyway. When it comes to Classical music, most people would tend to associate the music with the strong European tradition and glorified music from powerhouses such as Beethoven, Bach (J.S.), Brahms (or what we call the 3Bs), Mozart, Mahler and Mendelssohn (or what we call the 3Ms). However, classical music wasn't as simple as that, much like adventure games ain't just Sierra or LucasArts products.

Classical music comprises of music from the unknown composers from the pre-Renaissance era, to well, today. Other than the well-known composers, with tunes that are almost too familiar to everyone (tunes which appear from television series, commercials, movies, and games), there are lots of music written from classical music traditions/training, but ended up as nothing close to what we're familiar with. So much so that many of the 20th century classical music have been condemn as "non-classical" by some of the harshest critic for classical music. Here are some of these non-classical classical composers that you might heard of: Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Tan Dun, Meredith Monk, Pierre Boulez, Gyogi Ligeti, Charles Wuorinen.

Anyway, with people insisting classical music should just simply follow the way of the glorious past, the whole genre just got tainted into being seen as archaic, impractical for playing and a total bore. Even though the genre did indeed move ahead with many advant-garde composers, no one gives a damn anymore about the classical music. (other than those who aspire to be the next Mozart!)

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by AFGNCAAP

Also, yes, you could say that common misuse of the definition sort of invalidates (or, a better word, dilutes) our established criteria. And it's usually not good, as it leads to consumers' confusion.

Which consumers? The ones that bought Metroid Prime? Do you think it matters to them anyway? MP looks to be an adventure game to them (never mind titles like Still Life or Monkey Island) so they'll look for other games similar to MP and discover, say, Half-Life 2 or Splinter Cell. So to them our established criteria might mean nothing. And really, their criteria may also not matter to us. But it is MP, Half-Life 2 and Splinter Cell that make the money.

EDIT: Actually I just realized how this thread is beginning to run more or less parallel with another thread: What about them?

[AFGNCAAP]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

Which consumers? The ones that bought Metroid Prime? Do you think it matters to them anyway? MP looks to be an adventure game to them (never mind titles like Still Life or Monkey Island) so they'll look for other games similar to MP and discover, say, Half-Life 2 or Splinter Cell.

Or, alternately, they can google for "adventure games", find our website, follow some of the recommendations here, play Still Life and Monkey Island, realise they are boring (for them), and come to the false conclusion that there are no games similar to Metroid Prime, unfortunately.

Diluting the definitions is just as bad for THEM.

[samIamsad]

Originally Posted by smashing

Even though the genre did indeed move ahead with many advant-garde composers, no one gives a damn anymore about the classical music. (other than those who aspire to be the next Mozart!)

He. But I really don't think this applies, um, here.

[Uniikki]

I've often felt that the term adventure game is a rather bad one, for it is rather vague. And no one has never bothered to define it so here we are. Adventure implies some danger and somekind of a goal. Thus basicly any current game with plot worth a damn could be called an adventure.

Game genres are traditionally defined by their gameplay. Platformers, sidescrollers, first person shooters. Gameplay in traditional adventure games is about solving puzzles. Much closer to crossword puzzles than anything adventurous :p

I do not think coming up with a new name for the genre makes sense, for while I do consider the confusion unfortunate, a new name would just create more. The different meanings for the term are probably here to stay. I just usually talk of puzzle driven adventure games to people who come from the outside world and of adventure games to the real people :p And hope that people understand.

EDIT: reworded it just a tad

[Wormsie]

Originally Posted by Snarky

Looking at the discussion page for the article, it's clear that "first person adventure" is a genre label widely applied to Metroid Prime. It's also clear that this is somewhat controversial. Finally, it's clear that the people who are using it thus are not "misappropriating" the term. They're completely unaware that other people are already using it to mean something else.

The article was basically an article of Metroid Prime. That is NOT necessary. The only POV in my article at the moment is that I say "mistakenly" but in the talk-page we can see that there has been discussion if the term FPS should be used instead. Besides, the only games Wikipedia listed in the First-person adventure category were Metroid Prime 1 and 2 and some old arcade games. So it's not at all widely used in Wikipedia at least.

[squarejawhero]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

Metroid Prime: "This is an adventure game."

I'm also interested in what you guys think of "outsiders'" categorizing of games under the 'adventure' banner using standards other than those of your [community based] collective? Do you feel it threatens to somehow invalidate your own criteria? Do you think their ideas are just as cogent as yours? Also, there is the stigma of 'adventure games' within the industry as akin to commercial suicide, as echoed by veterans like Ron Gilbert. But then games like Psychonauts, Tomb Raider, and Metroid Prime are perceived as adventure games and they enjoyed varying degrees of critical and commercial succes. How do you take that?

That even a massively referred to information source like Wikipedia identifies Metroid Prime as an adventure game surely indicates a frame of mind operating perhaps as validly - and whoah! possible even more effectively - as that of sites like Adventure Gamers. Semantics, yes, but it looks to be an $11 billion dollar a year kind of semantics, as well as perhaps a ubiquitous epistemological awareness.

Trep, you actually reading what I'm saying or just glossing over it?

1) That Wiki entry was poorly written and from a single individual. He invalidated himself by glossing over an entire history of first person adventure games and even shooters that had done similar things in the past.

2) I used to think that definitions were inhibiting. And they ARE. To a point. I now feel there should be a core which umbrellas out inclusively, not pushing things out arbitrarily like some people seem to think is necessary.

Do you see what I'm saying? I'd quite happily include Psychonauts within the realm of adventure, but not completely. It's primarily a platform game with adventure elements. But I'm not about to invalidate action or different styles of presentation and gameplay from the adventure remit, as after all the old Sierra titles (amongst others) freely included action within their otherwise more sedate style of play.

IF you're going to define something, at least ground it in fact, knowledge and some degree of historic sense. Otherwise you might as well not bother. I don't see other "outsiders" (I'm an outsider too) taking a name as being anything other than making communication of different game styles difficult to do.

When a game is so blatantly reliant on mainly action with very few, simple puzzles, you have to be hesitant to so broadly label it an adventure. If anything, and I mean this word in its true meaning and not a derogatory term, it just shows, in this case, ignorance to gaming history and titles before it that have been defined in this way.

Bear in mind I've still got a thing against the use of the word "traditional" in relation to the newer, solely sedate adventure titles. Tradition indicates a historical way of doing things which, in this case, has no basis. Definitions need a net, but there's no point casting them too wide otherwise you'll end up catching the wrong kind of fish.